In this series of columns, we’ll look at the world you want to build on several axes. What is the geography? How many nations or cultures does your world have? What is the tech level?
How many languages? The usage of the languages in your world can make or break your novel. The languages of the cultures in your world MUST reflect the geography of your world. In another column, we’ll talk about how the geography shapes the cultures, technologies, and languages.
Our own Earth has something like 700 languages, with even more dialects, and more than 300 writing systems. Even with the technology and connected communications of our world, within languages there are dialects, ways of speaking, accents, and other regionally inspired differences. To make your world seem real, you need at least a few languages, some dialects, and at least one writing system. This gives you what actors and directors call “stage business” when you set a scene. This is what J. R. R. Tolkien did in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Do you have to be as rigorous as Tolkien? No, of course not. He, after all, was a professor of languages at Oxford, and unless you are also a professor of languages you don’t need to completely follow his example. Even if you are a professor of languages, you probably shouldn’t follow his example. Don’t overdo it.
Let’s suppose you have a High Medieval culture, and your main character’s name is Pug or Bob or Jimmy. How did those names, which certainly do not belong to the culture, get into the book? This kind of problem can throw the reader right out of his trance. It took Ray Feist an entire series to explain away the names in Midkemia. “High Medieval European” names require a bunch of things to have gone before—like the Greeks and the Romans, the Christian church, and so on. If you don’t want to deal with those issues, come up with characters, names, and cultures that aren’t High Medieval European.
You don’t have to think up entire languages like Tolkien did. You can provide throwaway lines for your characters in their language. “‘Sacre bleu!’ the soldier swore.” It doesn’t have to be French, and it doesn’t require inventing an entire language. All you have to do is suggest one exists.
Systems of magic are language based. Here is where you can really run into trouble with slang, usage, and style. Make sure that your magic conforms with your culture and world. You can’t say “Alakazam!” without positing Arabic and an Arabian Nights culture somewhere on your world.
Terms of art are tricky. Most sailing terms are derived from seventeenth-century English sailing technology, so if you don’t want that in your story, you need to think up new terms. Other terms of art are similar. For example, the word “pauldron.” Part of a suit of armor, it is from medieval French. Be careful what you use for terms of art.
It’s not just language that is important in creating the world for your characters to exist. It is also the usage of the languages, including the language you are telling the story in (probably English).
What kind of slang or colloquialisms do your characters use? They define who the character is. Sharon Lee and the late Steve Miller gently inserted turns of phrase into their Liaden Universe novels. “See you later!” became “Until soon!” Rosemary Edghill used a dialect similar to Cockney cant in her Hellflower trilogy, serving to describe a completely different culture from our own.
Next, we’ll look at religion and society and their effects on language. See you then!
Walt’s been an author and editor for fiction and nonfiction for more than 30 years. He was editor in chief of Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press and editor of the Grantville Gazette magazine, and currently is an acquisitions editor for Misti Media LLC and editor of their Nazca Press imprint. He’s edited over 50 novels and hundreds of short stories, and before that, he was an avid reader and fan.
