On Creating Your Own Language

Language can be a very funny thing. I don't mean funny ha-ha, but rather funny that's-weird. I could drone on and on with the typical examples - "Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?" (an example which is largely only understood by North Americans) - but that wouldn't get any of us anywhere now, would it? I think it's safe to say that language has its own little quirks and funny loop-di-loops and move on to talk about the creation of language.

Writers have always enjoyed dabbling in the creation of new languages. Why? I'm not aware of any definitive answer being given, but I personally believe it comes with the territory. Writers on the whole are a wordy bunch, and enjoy playing with letters and shifting sentence structure around. After you've mastered one language, you can always move on to another. But if you want a real challenge, why not make up one of your own?

The way in which this task is approached varies from author to author. J.R.R. Tolkien, for instance, is famous for inventing the languages of Arda - a monumental undertaking in which he invented not just words, but a grammar to structure them and a completely new alphabet to represent them. Thomas More created an alphabet for Utopia that is both deceptively complex and deceptively simple - no mean feat.

Others approach the creation of language more as a creation of voice - that is, they do not create the language from the ground up, but rather create a new way of speaking an existing language. Perhaps one of the best examples is Anthony Burgess' "Nasdat," the language spoken by the narrator in A Clockwork Orange. Nasdat is primarily English, but stirs up the pot by throwing in slavic words and mixing it with a dollop of cockney rhyming slang, then peppering it with a few words that Burgess created on his own.

Taking that approach to the next level was Russel Hoban, who created a future English in his novel Riddley Walker (and continued it in a later dramatic adaptation). The language of Walker's post-apocalyptic world is a mash of world dialects and misunderstood terms. In a culture that has fallen from the height of modern man, Hoban's use of the language speculates, old words have to be given new explanations and new meanings. When the characters discover old texts, they have to interpret them in their own context. Faced with a paper titled "The Legend of Saint Eustace," one of the characters takes the unfamiliar word "legend" and speculates that it refers to a journey - the "leg end," or "legging." Eustace's name, itself, plays an important role in the devolved language, as the legend of Eustace becomes combined with the history of the U.S.A - both blending into the culture's folk hero, Eusa.

My own fictional linguistic dabbling follows more the patterns of Burgess and Hoban than Tolkien and More. I don't do it often, but when I do it usually centers around the characters of Ermajesty and her ever-faithful sidekick. A typical exchange between the two might look like this:

"But, Ermajesty," sez me, "why is yer filmin' me watchin' ther movies like such?"

"Cause," sez Ermajesty, "I has an inspirationings fer a new series o' films, an' it's all paid fer by ther EmPeeAbity-A. They's contractings me fer ter prevent piraticals, an' so they pays fer my next film."

"Ther EmPeeAble-A?" sez me. "Weren't they ther ones what tooks yer camera last time yer went to ther movies?"

"Sure," sez she, "but now they pays me to bring it cause I don't films ther films no more. I films ther audience."

"And watcher does wi' the film then, Ermajesty?"

"I edits it!" sez Ermajesty. "An' it becomes my next film, 'Morons Who Sits in ther Dark!'"

Translated into English, the above exchange would look more like this:

"But, Ermajesty," I say, "Why are you filming me watching the movie?"

"Because," says Ermajesty, "I have an inspiration for a new series of films, and it's all paid for by the MPAA. They've contracted me to prevent piracy, and so they're paying for my next film."

"The MPAA?" I say."Weren't they the ones that took your camera last time you went to the movies?"

"Sure," she says, "but now they're paying me to bring my camera because I don't film the movies anymore. I'm filming the audience."

"And what do you do with the film then, Ermajesty?"

"I edit it," says Ermajesty, "and it becomes my next film, 'Morons Who Sit in the Dark!'"

The exchanges between Ermajesty and her loyal hanger-on are written in a bizarre, personal language for the two. The language is English, but it's heavily-accented English with a smattering of misunderstood words and inconsistencies in pronunciation. For example, in the piece that I just exerted they make multiple references to the MPAA, and each time it is brought up they refer to it in a different way. The sounds of those letters are funny in their mouths, and so they never quite make it all the way out.

Tolkien created his languages because it made sense in the world he created. With several intelligent species sharing the world, it would only be natural for them to have developed different languages. It made the world more logical and more real to him. Similarly, Burgess and Hoban both used their variations on English to make sense of their world. Burgess' work shows an English language after increased influence from Eastern Europe and under the added influence of British youth culture. Hoban's variation shows an English language used by people whose society has seen a sharp decline, and therefore reflects a growing ignorance of what the words actually mean.

Ermajesty's voice popped into my head fully-formed from the first time I decided to write her. Both she and her underling have a disordered, anarchic view of the world in which Ermajesty is the only one who can create order (and, in case you missed the none-too-subtle point, Ermajesty's name is even a twist on "Her Majesty"). They have always spoken this way as a consequence. The language is as fluid as the reality they see around them, and it twists to fit their needs. The result, I hope as a writer, is a language that reflects the inherently ridiculous nature of the characters.