Yzabel / September 5, 2005

Onto the second part of my article about Languages in Fiction Stories. Now that I’ve developed my point about the creation of the new language, this will deal with its use (or the one of any language, for that matter, whether it is imaginary or an existing one).

• If your characters come from different countries, find a reason for them to be able to speak together, whether it is a “common language” such as English in our world or any other solution. It can seem like a hack at first sight, yet it’ll prove very useful later on. If half your novel is filled with explanations about how the protagonists can barely understand each other and need to find tricks to get their points across, the reader will surely be bored pretty quickly. On the other hand, one thing that irks me a lot is when universes or planets collide, and all the characters “magically” speak the same language; it’s just not believable. Hence the need for a quickly explanaible reason, so that both writer and reader can then jump to something else.
• Related to the previous point, here’s a second one, worth in science-fiction (contacts with aliens much, anyone?), but probably in fantasy even more: every time your stories involve travellers, think of our own history here. For instance, take the French kingdom of old: people speaking the oïl language in the north couldn’t understand those who spoke oc in the south. Travelling 300 or 400 kilometers could very well mean meeting people whose provincial dialect was very much different from your own, people who had never travelled further than the nearest town to attend the fair, or who had never even left their villages. See why a “common language” can be a good solution here?
• Don’t make the mistake of “showing off”. Your language is created, it has a logical structure, it even follows specifically developed grammar rules, and now you want every character and their dog to display the mastery they have of it. The golden rule, in my opinion, is: don’t give in to such a desire, even if your fingers are itching to do it. A few words or sentences here and there are fine, if they add color to your world, but entire poems, songs, conversations? Any reader would immediately be thrown out of the story flow, forced to wonder what on earth it can mean, or look for a translation at the end of the book. I sure have a few problems with this (yes, even in The Lord of the Rings).
• If you include sentences from existing languages, make sure that you know how to write and build them! As a French speaking person, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed out loud—or cringed—at badly writen French in English books, put there because “it was cool”; it makes me feel like screaming “it’s C’est la vie, and not Ce la vee or any other funny spelling, for God’s sake!”. Granted, this kind of mistakes are more often found in online texts than in published ones, but there are always exceptions. Whatever the country in which a book is published, there’ll probably be someone who fluently speaks said language, and this person will stop taking the author seriously as soon as she spots him/her making improper use of her mother tongue.As a sidenote, if you don’t know the spelling of a word or sentence, don’t include it until you get to learn it or find someone to write it for you. Waiting is always better than taking the risk of looking ridiculous.
• Provide translations, preferrably right after using the imaginary language. Of course, this should be well integrated into the flow of dialogue and sentences, not appearing out of nowhere. You could for instance use the invented language in the dialog line, then provide an explanation about it in the shape of a “thought” right after.

The balance in this use of foreign and created languages can be very fragile at times: the feeling of immersion an author wants to create must never go past the point where the reader could be bored or left clueless. Like many of the traditional elements of a fiction story, you’ll probably do much more preparatory work than what you can actually include in your book. However, I feel that this is a necessary step, or at a least very useful one, to craft a whole universe.Perhaps the readers will never grasp all the hard work that lies behind, but having it ready will allow you, the novelist, to make your story flow and your world seem logical and believable.fantasy, fiction, language, science_fiction, writing