Creating a Language for a Culture?!?

[TheUltimateChosenOne]

I happen to hear about a book by J.R. Tolkin who wrote lord of the rings, also wrote a book about the Elvish language that he created himself.

I'm curious on if there is some book, pc program or something that would help science fiction and fantasy writers to come up with their own language.
(Also, I found some site that had some program called language mate, but it would only work on a windows 95 or 98 computer and I'm using a Vista & XP, so please don't suggest that

 

[Pravuil]

Sad to say, but if you want to write a language anywhere near as composed as Tolkien's, you'll have to do all of the legwork yourself. I find it simple enough to make words first, then tackle the frequently used consonants (dh, tn, etc.) and vowels (a, o, ai, ae, uo, etc.).

 

[littlemissattitude]

I'm curious on if there is some book, pc program or something that would help science fiction and fantasy writers to come up with their own language.
(Also, I found some site that had some program called language mate, but it would only work on a windows 95 or 98 computer and I'm using a Vista & XP, so please don't suggest that

It might help if you learned something about linguistics, so that you can get an idea about how languages work. You don't necessarily have to take classes, but you could do some background reading as research, that would probably be helpful. At any rate, it seems like it would be kind of difficult to invent a credible-sounding language without knowing something about how languages work.

 

[Ursa major]

You might like to take a look at this Wiki article:

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
​

(Don't worry, the Mr Whorf here is a real person, not the fictional one from Star Trek.)

 

[Marky Lazer]

You might want to pick up a course in linguistics or philology.

 

[Malloriel]

I can definitely identify with not only wanting to create a language, but to be able to do it easily. Now, the easiest way is to use simple words or phrases rather than building the whole thing. As I understand it, Tolkien studied languages quite extensively, and so fabricating his own was not so large a task as it would be for you or I, not being qualified to professor courses on languages. Short of spending years learning various languages in depth (which I have great interest in doing anyway) I plan on analysing the grammatical structure of various languages, including English.

You see, I know more about the simple How of using the English language. But I can't tell you how it comes together. It's a sad fact, but the American public school system is supremely lacking. They spend time teaching things you should have been taught in grammar school (HA), or primary, but not a whole heck of a lot of time teaching you what you really should know for your age. I lucked out with an old school high school English teacher for a grandmother, but there were never sit down lessons. I picked up almost everything I know from simply reading.

And so, I'll continue to do so. Pick up books about English grammar. Understand why English is the way it is and how it fits together, and then study other languages: French, German, Italian, throw in Latin for a nice base as French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish all sprouted from it. Look at some Greek and Russian, and if you're feeling especially ambitious, choose an Asian language, which has a completely different root system from the Indo-European. You might also look at Native American, Egyptian (ancient and modern). It's a lot of reading, but with all the variations, it really allows you to understand the fundamentals of spoken and written language in a way that you can then manipulate for yourself. It's much more difficult to build in the dark than to turn on the lights and see what you're doing. Finding the light switch may be an epic journey itself, but it makes the task at hand MUCH less painful.

If you're doing it for yourself, or because you want more than a phrase or two here and there, then it's the best process I can advise.

I've got the basics of one of my languages in that there's a large base for vocab and modification of words from singular to plural to posessive, etc., but there's no grammatical structure just yet.

Personally, I'm also reading up on dead languages -heiroglypics to various cuneiform- to better understand not only the distinct variations between the old and the new, but to give me ideas about how I want my own to find their structure. Do I want it to reflect a more modern dialect, or be remeniscent of more ancient times?

 

[TheUltimateChosenOne]

Wow! Thanks for your reply. That does seem to be a good way of starting.

Since the end of the year of 2006, I had this idea for a story, and I spent about 4 months doing research on science fiction, outer space, science, technology, government, english, grammer, writing tips and guides. Getting tips on the best ways to create a character, describe them, describce surroundings...etc.
Aftering finishing enough of my research I began with the story idea I had and began to develop it. I decided that it would be a long series for my main character to go on a long and challenging journey.
Since I would have all kind of creatures, planets and alien life, I decided that I wanted to create a form of language for them. I've come up with names of some of these languages. One in perticular is very smooth and is an ancient language. So for this, I've been doing reseach on ancient greek, egyptian and celtic. I hope to create a form of language from these three.

So, basiclly, I've been coming up with an idea for my language and I categorize it as: rough spoken, smooth spoken, softly spoken or sloppy spoken.
I came up with these cateories after listening to how different languages sound.
For one, there is the star wars language for jabba the hutt, and I consider that a slopping sounding language. Where as something like elvish in lord of the rings is more smooth and softly spoken.