Model Languages
The newsletter discussing newly imagined words for newly imagined worlds
Volume I, Issue 3 (2/2) -- July 1, 1995
Table of contents
Nobody believes me when I say that my long book [The
Lord of the Rings] is an attempt to create a world in which a form of
language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is
true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and
whether it was an allegory. And I said it was an effort to create a situation
in which a common greeting would be elen si-'la lu-'menn omentielmo
['A star shines on the hour of our meeting'], and that the phrase long
antedated the book.
Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Christopher Tolkien,
Feb. 21, 1958
Model languages come in many different sizes and types. You can classify
a model language both for its scope and for who is intended to speak it.
For different scales, a model language might be used for jargon, names,
proverbs, conversations or literature. Each layer of complexity requires
a more detailed lexicon and grammar, ranging from a jargon consisting
of a handful of words and a way of forming plurals to a complex language
that can be used to carry on a conversation or support a literature.
Most of the model languages that have gained recognition have been intended
for use as true languages, but many other model languages of smaller scale
exist within works of fiction. Few writers can create an entire language,
as Tolkien or Anthony Burgess did; few writers need that much detail in
the first place.
When trying to decide what model language to create, you should not
be intimidated by the magnitude of the works accomplished by Tolkien or
Burgess -- that would be like fearing to write a short story because you
had read War and Peace.
Creating a language for jargon simply means you are only interested
in having a few words to convey the flavor of another culture. A model
jargon is rarely even dignified with a name, since it is so small. A science-fiction
author might coin a few words for unusual aliens and new technologies.
For instance, I do not recall much linguistically about Larry Niven's
Ringworld, other than to remember that he coined the word tang,
"there ain't no justice", as the curse word used by his characters;
no doubt he had coined other words to reflect the technology and topography
of Ringworld and to enhance its ambience.
Besides classifying a model language by its use, you can classify a
language by whether the people who speak it are alive today or are an
imagined people of the past or future. A model language might be intended
to represent the language of a people who lived in the remote past. It
might be intended as a linguistic experiment, showing how a language might
have evolved if the past had been changed (alternate past). A model language
is commonly something intended for use in the present, such as Esperanto.
Finally, it might be set in a future world, such as Burgess' Nadsat or
Marc Okrand's Klingon.
The following chart illustrates one way of classifying some popular
languages. Most of those languages listed under "Present" and
"Literature" are meant as auxiliary languages or international
languages, designed to be learned as a common second language.
|
Past
|
Alternate History
|
Present
|
Future
|
|
Literature
|
Quenya |
|
New Norwegian
Esperanto
Basic English
Volapük
et. al. |
Nadsat |
|
Conversations
|
|
|
|
Klingon |
|
Proverbs
|
|
|
|
Yilane
Fremen |
|
Names
|
Hobbit English |
|
|
|
|
Jargon
|
|
|
|
|
What follows are some ideas drawn from across the above classification
matrix, to encourage you to create your own model language.
A naming language is a model language created primarily for the purpose
of naming people, places and things in an imaginary country or world.
It is the simplest type of language to create, since it doesn't need a
detailed grammar. The last issue provided an overview on how to create
such a language.
Science fiction contains a sub-genre of literature known as the alternate
history, which postulates worlds that never existed, but might have. What
if William the Conquerer, instead of Harold, had fallen at Hastings? What
if the French Quebecois and their English neighbors had assimilated? What
if the Moors had not stopped at Spain but had conquered England? Alternate
universes such as these suggest languages that might have emerged but
didn't -- these alternate universes are ripe for the creation of model
languages.
If William the Conqueror and his Norman troops had failed to conquer
the Anglo-Saxons, the English language would have taken a different course
altogether. English would have retained much more of its vocabulary, which
instead was largely displaced by Norman French. Since an Anglo- English
would have retained much of its vocabulary, it might have proven more
resistant to borrowing foreign terms. Anglo-English syntax would depend
more on inflections, for English lost the Anglo-Saxon inflectional endings
under pressure from Norman French, which had a different system of inflections
all together. Anglo-English would be a fascinating language indeed. (If
anyone out there wants to be the Ivar Aasen of English, let me know.)
If the French- and English-speaking people of Quebec had been less interested
in preserving their own backgrounds and more interested in building a
community together, a new Gallic-English might have evolved as the two
languages merged. This new language would have an even simpler grammar
than English, as speakers concentrated on the distinctions that French
and English had in common.
The Moors expanded from North Africa to conquer much of the Iberian
Peninsula. Had al-Mansur been able to forge a kingdom that would have
survived his death (rather than degenerate into quarelling taifas), the
Moors might have tried to invade England, giving rise to a Moorish English.
Alternative languages are fun to think about, and you should always
be able to come up with one moor version of English.
The model linguist need not stop at the past or imagined alternate pasts.
He can move to the future, postulating languages that might come to exist.
For instance, the Roman Empire spread Latin across Europe. As the Empire
declined, the farflung local speakers of Latin slowly changed the language
they had learned from Rome. As a result, Latin evolved into Italian, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, Catalan, Rhaetian, Occitan and
Dalamation (now extinct). A different type of empire has risen today,
the cultural empire of English. English is now spoken as the mother tongue
in Britain, the United States, Canada, Guyana, Australia and New Zealand.
Over time, the dialects of English spoken in these areas may diverge as
much as Italian, Spanish and French diverged from Latin, giving rise to
new languages, based on English, but different from it. English has already
given rise to new Englishes, such as Krio (an African creole) and Singlish
(Singaporean English).
The great thing about constructing a future English is that you already
know English! You have already mastered its vocabulary and grammar and
can postulate how you would like to see those evolve in a future descendant
of English.
Anyone who has traveled extensively through foreign countries wishes
there was one language she could learn that people everywhere could speak.
English comes close, but carries with it a cultural baggage that many
find oppressive or offensive. From Volapu:k to Esperanto to Interlingua,
people have struggled to create languages to make it easier to bring people
together. Nor are these efforts in the past. For instance, Phil Hunt is
creating Eurolang, which he hopes to position as the common language of
the European Union.
It is easy to think of situations where simplified bridge languages
would be beneficial to people -- to Quebec and to the U.S./Mexico border,
to give two North American examples. While the practical steps required
to see that an auxiliary language establishes a significant community
of speakers are daunting, you can always choose to create such a language
as simply a fascinating linguistic exercise, rather than a new social
movement.
The possibilities for model languages are endless. Timothy Miller has
been entertaining CONLANG subscribers with his Monkey Language, and he
is also developing a Ferengi language for Star Trek fans (the Ferengi
are the big-eared aliens, in case you didn't know). The possibilities
are endless, so get working on your language today!
Contents copyright 1995 Jeffrey
Henning. All rights reserved.
Last updated: March 1996
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