Word building
Hello!
I’ve got something exciting in the works, but the contract isn’t signed yet, and I hope I can share in next month’s newsletter.
I was at Flights of Foundry over the weekend, which was a delight as usual. I was on a panel about phonetics and conlangs (which inspired this newsletter), one about liking things (in a fannish way), and one about translation. I also gave a presentation about roller derby to … three whole people because it was at noon Berlin time, when all of the Americas were sleeping, but one of them was inspired to get involved with their local roller derby, so I’ll count that as a win.
This one is going to be short, because I want to get it out while it’s still September. (I’ll try, anyway.)
Word building
I don’t think I’ve talked here much about putting words together beyond some in the German mythbusting entry. The first third of my book gets into phonetics at a fairly superficial level (partly because once you get into the phonology part, it gets really complicated really quick), and that’s still more detail than I want to get into in this newsletter.
So I’ll sum it up as superficially as I can. Sounds are made using the vocal tract. Consonants are made when two parts of the vocal tract interact to disrupt or alter the flow of air. Vowels are made when the mouth, lips, and tongue change the shape of the oral cavity where the sound resonates.
Every language has a set of consonants and vowels that belong to its phonetic inventory, and there are rules about how these consonants and vowels can be put together. Every language has different rules, even if related ones are very similar. Some languages permit things that other languages forbid. If a language borrows a word that has sounds that aren’t in its inventory or that violate the putting-together rules, the word will be adapted to match the new language.
Can you show us some examples?
Chocolate was my first thought, but apparently the etymology of the Mesoamerican word (where Spanish took it from) is contentious. But still, we can see the adaptation of the word into a wide variety of languages when it was introduced, from English chocolate to German Schokolade (4 syllables) to Turkish çikolata.
Staying with the theme of food, because that’s a very common category of loan words, taco is pronounced differently in Spanish than in English, sushi is pronounced differently in Japanese than in English, cake is pronounced differently in the Scandinavian languages where it originates than in English.
Or, as I think I mentioned in another newsletter, the names of Christian saints. John is Juan, Johann, Jan, Ivan …
Humans are pattern builders
Most languages have words that fall into a pattern — the phonetic inventory plus the putting-together rules see to that. But we also, as noted above, borrow words from other languages, and, in the case of English for sure, entirely new sounds. The zh sound in azure, leisure isn’t a native Germanic phoneme. It came from French with the Normans. So it’s not used in a whole lot of words, and all of them are borrowed from French. (Fun language factoid!)
But one of the things our infant brains do when we’re surrounded by language input from our caregivers and the world around us and trying to turn it into Language is build patterns. These sounds exist; these sounds are allowed to go together, but those are not. Science hasn’t figured out how the brain does this yet, but we know that it does somehow. (And this applies to signed languages as well, except with gestures and signs!)
So speakers of English can recognize that a made-up word like Zivandra (which could be a new best-selling pharmaceutical product) is a plausible English word, because all of the sounds and sound combinations are permitted. But a made-up word like Jgudnr (which, let’s be real, could be a dating or fintech app) isn’t a plausible English word.
Your readers also build patterns
When you’re coming up with names for people, places, and things in your book, story, or game, it’s good to have at least a concept of what sounds exist and what words from that language should sound like. With the caveat, of course, that in your setting there may be intercultural (and thus interlingual) exchange of people and things — but the borrowing language will likely need to adapt the word to their phonetics. (Arkady Martine did this in the Teixcalaan Duology. She even provided phonetic alphabet notation in the appendix.)
The danger of not doing this is that you end up either with words that all sound the same or start with the same letter or with words that sound like you pulled tiles from the Scrabble bag and made them into words. (I accidentally named two side characters almost the same thing, which I only discovered on revision. And I’m just writing in our future timeline! But I am also really bad at naming things.)
The benefit of doing this is that your readers will have a sense that the world is fuller. They might not be able to place their finger on why, exactly, but their brains will be filling in the patterns of how the world’s language(s) work(s). And if there’s a word (person, thing) that breaks the pattern, that’s a signal: Does this person or item come from somewhere else? Where is it from? The answer may or may not be important, and may or may not be answered, but it’s still something your readers might pick up on. (Lara Elena Donnelly did this in the Amberlough Dossier.)
Until next time!
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