TT: Learning the Conlang
ALAN: Last time you were telling me about your thoughts on constructing languages in your fiction. Now I have another question for you. If your protagonists arrive in a new place, how do you handle the problem of having them learn the local language?
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Language is a Gateway
JANE: Well, that varies from book to book, even within books. By the way, this problem applies not just to conlangs, but to any book in which the characters encounter a culture that speaks another language.
In the Firekeeper books, there’s usually someone with an incentive to teach the language. For example, poor Derian gets stuck with teaching Firekeeper Pellish. He’s very sympathetic to the people who have the job later on – and when it’s his turn to learn a new language, he’s eager to cooperate.
In the “Artemis Awakening” novels, Griffin Dane comes to Artemis believing that he’s prepared to speak to the inhabitants. The culture is conservative in regard to change, which helps, but he does have a pronounced accent and occasionally uses phrases the locals find archaic. Conversely, they’ve developed terms that weren’t in his primer or use terms that are in his vocabulary, but for which the meaning has shifted. So, although communication is possible, it does stumble from time to time.
Those are just two examples, but I hope they give you a sense of the way that languages can impact on the story, even in ways that have nothing to do with the languages themselves.
ALAN: In Real Life (TM) I’ve always found learning a new language to be a relatively painless experience if I am surrounded by the language all the time. I tend to just soak it up like a sponge. I worked for the United Nations for a time and I spent six months in Geneva where the lingua franca is French.
JANE: (chuckling) The lingua franca is French. Well, yeah… Uh, please, go on!
ALAN: By the end of my stay there I was quite fluent in French. I was even thinking in French. The language had become so second nature to me that when I flew home to England I spoke to the immigration official in French while proffering my British passport. Very embarrassing…
JANE: That’s a great anecdote! You really do have a gift for languages.
ALAN: Of course it helped that I’d studied French at school, so I had a firm foundation to build on. But that hasn’t always been the case. I once spent three weeks in Russia. I entered the country with no knowledge of Russian whatsoever. But after three weeks I could read the Cyrillic street signs and I could hold (very) simple conversations.
JANE: My dad spent some time in Russia. When he came back, he enjoyed showing us how familiar words would be spelled in Cyrillic, and how he’d managed to get by once he’d learned what letters were which.
I wish you two could compare notes on your experiences.
ALAN: That could be fun. Russia was a very surreal place – I once ordered drinks in a bar. I paid in American dollars and I was given change in Deutschmarks…
But my gift for languages doesn’t always work. I spent some time in China and got absolutely nowhere. I didn’t pick up any of either Mandarin or Cantonese. Perhaps that’s because they are tonal languages and I’m tone deaf. I also realised for the first time just what it means to be illiterate. I never learned to identify a single written character…
But I’ve gone Tangenting off the topic. Sorry. Let’s come back to it. It certainly sounds as if you’ve done a lot of thinking about conlangs.
JANE: I have. In fact, as I said when we were getting into this discussion, I may have thought too much about it. I find myself thinking, If these people really are speaking another language, why isn’t the entire book written in it?
ALAN: If I hadn’t already mentioned Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, now would be a good time to point out that the whole book is written in his made-up language. So it can definitely be made to work.
But the master of conlangs, J. R. R. Tolkien himself, had the best ever excuse for not writing the whole book in his made-up language. In the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien states explicitly that his earlier novel The Hobbit is simply a translation from sections of The Red Book of Westmarch. And, by implication, so is The Lord of the Rings itself:
Further information [about hobbits] will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has already been published, under the title of The Hobbit. That story was derived from the earlier chapters of the Red Book, composed by Bilbo himself…
About The Lord of the Rings itself, Tolkien goes on to say that:
This account of the end of the Third Age is drawn mainly from the Red Book of Westmarch. That most important source for the history of the War of the Ring… It was in origin Bilbo’s private diary, which he took with him to Rivendell. Frodo brought it back to the Shire… he nearly filled its pages with his account of the War.
JANE: I’ve always thought that was a great explanation. The hobbits speak English (therefore, their bits are translated from hobbitish), but they need to learn all the other cultures’ languages.
This is the foundation excuse in most Fantasy (and even far future SF, where logically the language would have drifted so that, even if the people still spoke English, it would be as incomprehensible to us, now, as is Old – or even Middle – English).
ALAN: Anthony Boucher’s short story “Barrier” has some interesting speculations about how language would evolve in the future. At one point someone says, “Eeyboy taws so fuy, but I nasta. Wy cachoo nasta me?”. And it (almost) makes sense in context.
JANE: Let’s see, is that “Oh, boy, that’s so funny, but I ask you. Why are you asking me?”
ALAN: Well done! However I think “Eeyboy” might actually be “Hey, boy”. But the point is moot.
JANE: Or a demonstration of exactly what we’ve been discussing. I’m American, so I “see” “Oh, boy,” which is a common American use.
Both the Burgess and the Boucher examples only work because they’re deriving from already familiar languages (Russian and English). If the language was completely made up—like Elvish – the readers would need to translate as they read.
But asking myself why I’m not writing my entire book in the conlang is only one of my problems.
ALAN: What other problems have you encountered?
JANE: Oh, several, many of which are just the snakes in my own brain. Can I save them for next time?
