How to create a fictional language without a linguistics degree

You do not need to be a linguist to give your fantasy world a language that sounds like it belongs to someone. You need to decide what the language is for, choose a small set of sounds and a syllable shape, build words from a few roots, and write down every word you invent. The reward is a world where a name, a curse or a greeting feels like it came from a people with a history, and where the language stays the same from chapter one to chapter forty.

This is part of the wider job of worldbuilding. For names alone, see how to create fantasy names, and for how a people's values shape their speech, see worldbuilding culture.

Decide what the language is for

Wikipedia defines a constructed language, or conlang, as one devised by a person or group for a particular purpose, unlike languages that emerge from human interaction. It sorts them by purpose, and the category that fits a novel is the artistic language, made for aesthetic pleasure, including secret languages and mystical ones. It also describes a "naturalistic" conlang as one that models real languages, imitating the way sounds, words and grammar change over time.

Two questions settle most of your choices. Will a character ever speak it in a scene, or will readers only meet names and a few phrases? And should it feel like a relative of a language readers know, or alien? Mark Rosenfelder's Language Construction Kit, written for people who want to make languages for a fantasy or alien world, notes that you can vary how alien your language looks. His own Verdurian is meant to look mildly familiar, as if it were a distant relative of the European languages.

What a novel actually needs

A novel borrows a language rather than needing the whole thing. The best-known case shows the scale. David J. Peterson built Dothraki for HBO's Game of Thrones, working from the words and phrases in George R. R. Martin's novels. Wikipedia reports that he delivered over 1,700 words before shooting began and that the language comprised 3,163 words by September 2011. That is a television production with actors who had to speak it, and the same article lists two constraints he worked under: it had to match what the books had already shown, and it had to be pronounceable by the cast.

Your book has its own version of those constraints. It has the names and phrases already in your draft, and it has readers who must say the words in their heads. Build what the next scene touches, and let the rest of the language stay a private resource that makes the surface feel deep.

Step 1: Start with sounds

Rosenfelder lists the order of work as the sounds of the language, then the lexicon, then the grammar, then an alphabet. He says the order matters: working backwards, creating a text and then devising a grammar to match, leads to a work that is inconsistent. His cautionary example is Hergé's Syldavian in the Tintin books, which was made up in pieces as needed, so that no consistent phonology or morphology can be derived from the scraps.

He also names the beginner's habit to avoid. Non-linguists often start with the alphabet and add a few apostrophes and diacritical marks, which tends to produce something that looks too much like English, has more sounds than necessary, and that even the author cannot pronounce. Of alien languages, he says the Marvel Comics solution is to throw in apostrophes, and that you can do better by thinking about the shape of the speakers' mouths and bodies.

A practical sound palette is short: a handful of consonants and vowels you can say, with some common English sounds left out. Peterson's work shows how this feels in practice: Wikipedia quotes him describing the sound of Dothraki as a mix between Arabic (minus the distinctive pharyngeals) and Spanish, and lists Estonian, Inuktitut, Turkish, Russian and Swahili among his inspirations. You are not copying a language, you are borrowing a flavour and then fixing your own rules.

Step 2: Fix a syllable shape

Rosenfelder says the constraints on what words can occur do a great deal to give a language its flavour. English speakers know that blick and drass could be words and that vlim and mtar could not. He recommends starting with a distinctive syllable pattern, and gives real ones: Japanese allows only (C(y))V(V)(n), while Quechua allows (C)V(C). Both read as themselves because the pattern is narrow.

Write yours as a formula before you invent any words. If every syllable is a consonant, a vowel and sometimes a final consonant, names such as Tomar and Keli will start to feel related without any further effort. Add a stress rule as well. Rosenfelder points out that English stress is unpredictable and that an invented language will tend to work that way unless you decide otherwise.

Step 3: Build words from roots

Inventing a hundred words in one sitting, Rosenfelder warns, leads to running out of inspiration or to every word sounding alike. Make a short list of roots for the ideas your world leans on, such as water, road, salt, grief and oath, then derive the rest.

He lists derivations that multiply a root's usefulness: a suffix for the person who does a thing, one for a place, one for a collection, one for a diminutive. His examples include fighter and librarian, dining room and book-place (library), woods and word-hoard (dictionary). A language built this way has a family resemblance, and a reader who meets salt and a word for the salt road will sense the connection without being told. If you use a random word generator, he reminds you that sounds are not equally common in natural languages: English uses many more t's than f's.

Step 4: Keep the grammar small

Rosenfelder's warning is that if you stop at a list of words and an alphabet, you have probably built an elaborate cipher for English. A little grammar fixes that, and a novel needs only a little:

• Word order. He notes the six possible orders of subject, object and verb, with examples: SVO in English and Swahili, SOV in Latin, Quechua and Turkish, VSO in Welsh. Choosing a less familiar one gives every spoken line a different rhythm when you translate it word for word.
• Plurals and pronouns. Decide how a plural is marked and whether there is a separate word for "you" when speaking to a superior.
• Tense. One marker for the past is enough to start.

He also shows how much there is to choose from: case instead of prepositions, gender classes that are not masculine and feminine (Swahili has eight, and Algonquian languages divide animate from inanimate), and adjectives treated as verbs, so that "the red wall" becomes "the redding wall". Pick the one or two features that suit your people. A culture that values courtesy, as in the worldbuilding culture post, might mark honorifics on every noun, the way Japanese does.

Step 5: Spell it plainly

Rosenfelder advises against being creative with spelling. An outlandish orthography, he says, is probably an attempt to jazz up a phonetic system that did not turn out to be interestingly different from English. Work on the sounds first and spell them in a straightforward way. He also reminds fantasy writers to consider how English-speaking readers will mangle your words, and holds up Tolkien as the model: he spelled Quenya as if it were Latin and avoided truly difficult spellings. If you use a diacritic, give it one meaning and keep it.

What Tolkien shows about why this works

Tolkien began his first Elvish language around 1910 and restructured its grammar several times until it reached its final state, according to Wikipedia, which names Finnish as a major source of inspiration. In his 1931 lecture "A Secret Vice", he is quoted as saying "The making of language and mythology are related functions." The lesson for a novelist is that a language and a world grow together: each word you coin is a small fact about the people who coined it.

Keep a lexicon and show the language lightly

Rosenfelder's rule is to never create a word without adding it to the lexicon, in alphabetical order, which stops words from being lost and from accidentally becoming homophones. He also suggests writing sample sentences with a gloss, since every sentence is a chance to develop the lexicon and show the culture.

On the page, show the language the way you would show any worldbuilding: a word in dialogue that the context makes clear, a name whose meaning a character explains once. Dothraki reached a television audience, and one detail from the Wikipedia article shows the discipline: the Dothraki themselves have no writing system, so there is no Dothraki script to invent.

Frequently asked questions

How do I start creating a language for my fantasy world?

Choose its purpose, then a short list of consonants and vowels and a syllable pattern. Rosenfelder's order is sounds, lexicon, grammar, alphabet.

How many words does a fictional language need?

Only the words your book uses. Peterson built thousands for television, but a novel needs the words and phrases its scenes touch.

Do I need to know linguistics?

No, but reading a basic phonetics or grammar guide helps. Rosenfelder's free Language Construction Kit is written for fiction writers and hobbyists.

Should I invent a new alphabet?

Only if the story needs one. Rosenfelder advises spelling sounds in a plain way, and Dothraki shows that a people need not have a script at all.

How do I stop my invented words from contradicting each other?

Record every word in one place as you coin it and check new words against the list.

Where Musael fits

A writer who invents a language and keeps it consistent becomes someone readers trust with a made-up word. In Musael's world and characters codex, a word, a phrase or a custom can be a concept entry beside the people and places that use it, with notes on what it means and where it came from. When the name appears in the manuscript, the entry counts the mention, so you can see where each word turns up, and continuity checks compare what you record in an entry with what the manuscript says. Your plan holds the story around the language, and the words stay yours to write.

Sources

• Mark Rosenfelder, "The Language Construction Kit" (sounds, lexicon, grammar and writing chapters): zompist.com
• Wikipedia, "Constructed language": wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "Dothraki language": wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "A Secret Vice" (Tolkien's 1931 lecture): wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "Quenya": wikipedia.org