Introducing a Lexicon

[DthenB]

While reading through one thread last night, I got the lightning bolt of inspiration and worked straight through until five in the morning on an urban fantasy concept. Looks like I'm doing it again tonight, too.

In a nutshell, my world is post-human, and remembers none of those roots. The technology level of the setting city would be 1860's New York City. There are dozens of cultures and hybrid subspecies living in tight conditions. They experience magic first-hand of a day-to-day basis.

The narrator-protagonist is an illegal courier, usually of forbidden magical materials, such as rat-hybrid livers or cat-hybrid feet, so she is street-smart working-class criminal who has lived in a nebulous city for her entire life.

My problem is with the vernacular of this society and using it effectively in the story. This culture is not based on any particular region. They have their own terms that, while based in English, are very specific slang, even broken down further with occupational and socio-economic differences in the terminology.

My question is this: What is the best way to introduce these entirely new terms?

In what little I've scratched out so far, the narrator speaks to the reader as she would to a contemporary, thus slamming you with a deluge of unfamiliar terms from line one. It is then up to the reader to pick up contextual clues and determine the meanings of the words.

The other option seems to be to write as an ambassador from their culture, breaking down the elements and only use the slang terms in dialog or for specific references. But that seems boring.

Anyone have any insight on how to deal with this?

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

My advice--for what it's worth--is to be very, very careful with introducing new words and slang into your piece. This kind of thing is akin to seasoning a meal. You only want to use a pinch here and a dash there to make the world come alive. If you drown your reader in slang and invented words, you're serving them a plate of salt with a bit of steak buried beneath it.

Check out A Clockwork Orange for a good example of this done well. Check out The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or some of Toni Morrison's slave narratives for this done not so well. They're great stories, but when the dialect takes over, that makes for really tiresome and difficult reading.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

A book I read (so many years ago that the title and author escape my mind's grasp) featured a character who refused to talk in anything but his exaggerated street-slang. One character understood it, and had to translate for all the other characters. This got very difficult to read. Please do not make this mistake.

 

[Hex]

Have a look at Trainspotting (the book) and How Late It Was, How Late for examples of this done with Scottish dialect. There's Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban where it's done almost exactly as you're describing in a fantasy setting.

I must admit I find this sort of thing a bit of a struggle, but when it's done well, it's stunning.

I think if you just launch into the language it's probably most effective but if you're worried about introducing certain terms how about having your narrator fairly early on describe an encounter with someone posh who doesn't speak the way she does?

When you look at Scots poems, sometimes words that are unfamiliar to the modern reader will be translated into English in italics in the margin -- that means you don't need to go looking through dictionaries etc to find out what they mean.

e.g. http://www.kitsuneyama.com/Mountain/Bardic/Songs/tamlin.htm

I can't bear fiction books where I have to go and look things up in an index. Drives me nuts.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Have a look at Trainspotting (the book) and How Late It Was, How Late for examples of this done with Scottish dialect. There's Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban where it's done almost exactly as you're describing in a fantasy setting.

I must admit I find this sort of thing a bit of a struggle, but when it's done well, it's stunning.

I think the reason it works in these books - and including Feersum Endjin as an example from SF - is that the language is put down phonetically. So when you realise that that is way you have to read it, the brain adapts really well (plus you tend to find it's mostly English - with dialect of course!)

It's a bit like the fact that you can remove all the consonants from an English sentence and if the reader is aware of this, it's surprisingly easy to read.*

i.e. Ths sntnc hs n vwls nd yt qt ndrstndbl.

However when you start introducing more complexity (like changing the grammar of the English language or new words) I'd agree with the FH and DEO. Another Iain Banks example which I'd say failed was the aliens in Matter who tried to speak English, but it comes out all broken. Probably fun to do for author and interesting at first when I came across it, it just wound up irritating me very quickly.

I can't bear fiction books where I have to go and look things up in an index. Drives me nuts.

Completely agree. All it does is break the readers concentration and takes them out of the world. Please avoid!!


*Although I admit there can be sentences that could be designed to be quite confusing...

 

[Mouse]

I can't bear fiction books where I have to go and look things up in an index. Drives me nuts.

Agreed.

To be honest, if the book was full of made-up words it'd probably put me off reading. If a book has a few made-up words, then I tend to skim them anyway. We already have a language, I don't see the point in daft words. We get that the character might not be speaking English, we don't need it spelling out.

 

[Ursa major]

I suppose a certain number of new words is fine: if the concept** does not already occur (and has not been invented in some other fiction), you probably will need a new word.

However, give the reader a chance of knowing what the concept is, within a reasonable time of them first seeing it on the page. Otherwise, they're going to be at a loss and without any means (your word won't be in a dictionary; or, worse, it is there, but has a completely different meaning from the one you had in mind) of finding out.

This doesn't have to be plain description (and it would perhaps be better if it wasn't): show someone using a/the <neologism> and the readers will soon cotton on.



** - idea, item, whatever.

 

[stephen.samuels]

Agreed.

To be honest, if the book was full of made-up words it'd probably put me off reading. If a book has a few made-up words, then I tend to skim them anyway. We already have a language, I don't see the point in daft words. We get that the character might not be speaking English, we don't need it spelling out.

I also agree but having done this myself with my WIP, I would offer this advice, think about the context of the sentence. For instance, in my WIP there is no heaven and hell, so phrases like 'Oh hell!" is out of the question. So my lexicon has to replace those types of phrases, the challenge for me is too slip those phrases in and then try and explain them casually.

I try give the reader a measure of context and then fill in the blanks where ever possible.

 

[DthenB]

I think I'm going to avoid a lot of the pitfalls you guys are talking about in that I'm not making up any words, just re-purposing them using a clear etymology. It's just about one step beyond moving to an entirely different region that still speaks the same language and then encountering a local who thinks you're from around there. I haven't even gone so far as to make any portmanteaus. No made up words, just new meanings that are logically derived.

I know that Clockwork and Trainspotting just jam it in the your face from the jump. Does anyone prefer that approach or do you all like something a little gentler?

 

[Venusian Broon]

I know that Clockwork and Trainspotting just jam it in the your face from the jump. Does anyone prefer that approach or do you all like something a little gentler?

Difficult one to answer - all I can really say is that to lay it on heavy the story will have be carefully constructed, well written and probably heavily tested on a number of beta readers. Maybe it would be a good idea to write a couple of short stories with the language or how you see the language being used and guage reactions from that - should help you choose a route that makes sense, before taking the plunge.

I can't imagine what it's like to read something like Trainspotting when you're not really clear on what the accent sounds like. I grew up in Edinburgh so I understood exactly what Irvine Welsh was trying to make them say. So it was really quite natural for me. But it still took me half the book to finally work out why one of the characters kept saying 'Likesay'...

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Check out A Clockwork Orange for a good example of this done well. Check out The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or some of Toni Morrison's slave narratives for this done not so well. They're great stories, but when the dialect takes over, that makes for really tiresome and difficult reading.

Now, see, I'm completely the other way around on those two examples. I had to slog through A Clockwork Orange, flipping back and forth to the glossary (which I understand was only in the American version), but I had no trouble at all understanding The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It read perfectly normally to me; I don't even tend to remember, in between readings, that it is full of dialect.

I agree about the salt, though. Odd words can sometimes be too much of a hassle. Make sure there is plenty of context so they aren't hard to decipher.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

I think I'm going to avoid a lot of the pitfalls you guys are talking about in that I'm not making up any words, just re-purposing them using a clear etymology. It's just about one step beyond moving to an entirely different region that still speaks the same language and then encountering a local who thinks you're from around there. I haven't even gone so far as to make any portmanteaus. No made up words, just new meanings that are logically derived.

In a way that's even worse than making up words. If you have characters going around calling a flying rubbish bin a 'car' then you're going to have some really confused readers.

The most basic rule of written communication is effectively communicating. If you use existing words but change their meanings you will constantly trip up the reader, even if you explain the usage in the narrative. You'd be better off making up words that don't already have a context and meaning than trying to repurpose existing words.

 

[Galacticdefender]

Agreed.

To be honest, if the book was full of made-up words it'd probably put me off reading. If a book has a few made-up words, then I tend to skim them anyway. We already have a language, I don't see the point in daft words. We get that the character might not be speaking English, we don't need it spelling out.

In most cases. I'd consider Dune exempt from that, however. In that case, all of the different words largely added to the feeling that the planet had it's own, distinct culture.

In my Space Opera universe, the main spoken language is a combination of many different Human, as well as a few Alien languages. Of course the stories are written in English, so the way I show it is occasionally using a different word for a greeting (either in an existing language or a made up word), or another short phrase.

 

[Hex]

That reminds me -- I just started watching Firefly over again and they use Mandarin for -- er, I'm not sure, swearing and stuff? I have no idea at all what they're saying but it works fine in context.

 

[Galacticdefender]

Hah, yes, I generally take Firefly's approach. For any heavier cursing, I'll usually use a word from a made up language. It works out pretty rheking well.

 

[DthenB]

In a way that's even worse than making up words. If you have characters going around calling a flying rubbish bin a 'car' then you're going to have some really confused readers.

So how do you read hard-boiled detective fiction, or sci-fi, or anything that was written before your time, or in a region other than where you're from?

I think as long as the slang is logically linked to what it signifies and the context is there, it's easy.

As for re-purposing words, that's just how it is done. The only new words created any more are portmanteaus, nouns turned to verbs and vice-versa, publicly-claimed product or personal names, appropriated foreign languages, or scientific names that that I'm never going to hear.

For my slang, I'm just trying to think up terms that a working class person in this culture would use in shady situations that come organically from the item itself. For example, some characters trade in enchanted feathers. When enchanted, the feathers are called plumes. Someone who sells plumes is a plucker. And when he has a bundle of plumes, it's called a duster. It's all logically and thematically connected.

I guess it's just trial and error to see how fast a reader can handle all these things hitting them in the brain.