Thursday, February 4, 2016

Creating a fantasy language

Several popular fantasy languages exist in different fiction worlds.

Tolkien's Quenya, Valarin, Dwarven, Elfin, Black Speech, Mannish, Adunaic and several scripts are widely known as structures that underlay the very foundation of his Middle Earth writings.

The structures lead to a naming system that remains somewhat consistent throughout the series.

For Aioskoru, I wanted to use less known and more ancient languages as a basis.

For humans, I had heard of Proto-Indo European is the theoretical language spoken at the latest before 3500 BC. Older than than many languages. It is the common ancestor of Latin, Greek, Celtic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Armanian, Balto-Slavic, Anatolian, and Albanian with generally accepted confidence. I would find what I could about known words and then add my own vocabulary, based on the same families of languages. I would simplify my own grammar if the real grammar seemed too complex. In a nutshell, I would take what I could, and create what I needed.

For elves, I saw that Proto-Austronesian would be interesting. I know Filipino rather well, and so I could fill in the holes with my existing knowledge of one of the important Austronesian languages. It is a related cousin of Malaysian, Polynesian, and Oceanic languages.

For Orc and Goblin, I decided to corrupt the human into goblin and elf into orc languages.

In the future, I have plans of making the dwarf languages out of ancient Middle East language.

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