Greetings and welcome fellow humans! At least I hope you’re all human. . .you’d tell me if you weren’t human wouldn’t you?
Right, well, back in the land of the sane — and what a strange land it is — I have news. Due to The Hippo Events revving up to go in a couple weeks, I’ve decided to postpone work on Echoes In Reed House until after the event’s completely over. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but just consider this a reiteration
In the meantime, however, I’ll not be sitting back and chillaxing (I think I can honestly say, I’ve never once in my life used that word until this very moment), no, I’ll be continuing work on my conlangs for my books. And, as I haven’t actually made the necessary changes to this site to incorporate my conlangs and characters yet, I think I’ll blab about that. I won’t go into the grammar of anything, though — I don’t want to bore anyone just yet lol.
So, without further ado.
When I first started creating this world of mine, I knew its inhabitants would speak different languages — as people tend to do in reality — but I hadn’t gone about creating them . . . until now. So I looked at the fantastical history of my world and drew up natural divisions where people split it, came together, or would’ve had time to develop accents and dialects which could become whole other languages. However, I had to keep one thing painfully in mind — human languages generally evolve quickly because people don’t live very long and we constantly having kids, so each generation can create something new. BUT, I’m not dealing with humans — every single race/species is immortal in one way or another, so their languages would take much longer to change or do so in very different ways, even incorporating conscious changes in a way that humans don’t tend to do with the desired affects.
With all that in mind, and because I can’t seem to do anything small, I got to work creating an entire language family.
So far, I’ve completed three languages and am working on the fourth which will lead to a host of actually important languages. None of these have names in-world, yet, as the language which would name them is currently the fourth and still under construction.
The first language, we’ll call it the Old Tongue, was, ironically, a constructed language — consciously created by the first and sole inhabitant of the world many eons ago. He named things with no knowledge of grammar, assigned basic classifications to the world as it benefited him, and assigned meaning to sounds as they came to mind — picking the ones he liked best. It was a nightmare, but it worked: the nouns were paired with classifiers, verbs had tense and were paired with other verbs for specific translations (aspects, moods, further tenses) and he could operate well enough.
The Old Tongue was filled with a ton of small words that were combined to give information that most modern languages can give in a few words. It’s verbs were simple but required a ton of helper verbs and nuanced analogies to convey any real meaning beside past, present, and future. The nouns were divided into three odd classes based on whether something existed before the first being woke, was himself, or if he made it.
It was tedious at best.
So, the language simplified into what I’ll call the Classical Tongue. At this point, verbs had full charts of morphology, nouns had cases, number, and gender all sorted into four declensions based on similar endings, and adjectives were essentially verbs. It was a well oiled machine, even if still a bit clunky. But, because of fantasy shenanigans, the first speaker was silenced and a new group of “gods” rose in his place.
Again, because of fantasy nonsense, this group inherited a broken form of the Classical Tongue in their memories — unevenly distributed between themselves. So, they cooperated to piece together as best a version of language they could. In the end, they had a functional language, but it wasn’t perfect: pieces were missing, knowledge was lost. This was, however, amended by the fact that their predecessor made a huge collection of writings they could study and learn from.
By the time they attained full understanding of the Classical Tongue, though, the way they spoke had already changed to suit their own needs. The old genders were reinterpreted and paired with new classifiers, verbs were broken into several conjugations and added upon with new helper verbs, adjectives were created in three different ways, and systems of deriving words from others were being cemented with regular patterns.
It was a new language, despite these speakers denying it, so I’ll call it the High Tongue. Given enough time, the speakers of the High Tongue conceded that their language and the Classical Tongue weren’t the same, so they appointed the Classical Tongue for official and religious matters, and left the High Tongue for their regular goings-on.
Later, however, another group would emerge and learn the High Tongue — some living with the High Tongue speakers, and others making camp around their settlement, preferring to be allies rather than integrate. Those that stayed on the outskirts further evolved the language, so much so they couldn’t call it the High Tongue if they wanted to.
I’ll call it the Low Tongue, as it was considered a bastardization of the High Tongue and something for the common people or outsiders to speak.
The Low Tongue merged the four new classifiers of the High Tongue into four new genders that interacted with the existing three to form a complex paradigm of classes within classes. Its verbal morphology grew ever more complex, not only with the creation of whole new meanings with existing verbs, but the beginnings of a verb class system wherein all nouns can lump into greater classes depending on physical shape but only if they’re unliving, plants, or groups of animals. This was optional, however, so it wasn’t a true verb-classifier system . . . yet.
This brings us to the end of the languages I’ve been able to make, thus far, but it doesn’t bring us to the end of languages I still need to create.
Due to clan rivalry, a small branch of Low Tongue speakers left and settled a new area, where the Low Tongue slowly developed into what I’ll tentatively call the Early Ancient Tongue. This only included a few changes to overall sounds, though — a few vowels changed here or there, word final consonants fell off sometimes, throaty sounds became more and more prevalent, etc., etc.
After the speakers of the Early Ancient Tongue went through a massive upheaval, another group rose in the shadows and generated their own languages based off the Early Ancient Tongue due to similar processes that formed the High Tongue. Eventually, their civilization crumbled and they were told to go to special refuges where their languages combined to form two macro-creoles that eventually diverged from one another and developed small dialectal differences based on geography — like the languages of Italy before the standardization of Modern Italian. These, I’ll tentatively call the Ancient Northern Tongue, and the Ancient Southern Tongue.
After the slow, trickling collapse of the aforementioned people, the speakers of Early Ancient reemerged and created the forefathers of the “gods” relevant to my stories after eons. Slowly, their language changed into what I’ll call the Ancient Tongue, which broke in two major branches that consist of all the important languages that actually appear in my novels — the Outer Branch, and the Godly Branch.
I could continue on down to each individual language in these branches, but that would make for a much longer post than I planned on . . . or that I want to type, haha.
So, as you can see, I’ve got my work cut out for me. HOWEVER, when do I ever do anything small? This is a lot to do, but it’s what I love to do, and it’ll make my languages seem all the more real and make my world come to life.
With that, I’m back to work. See y’all next time!