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Fictional Language
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I'm sure you will manage to offend someone somehow!Seriously, there aren't many stories where you actually have people speaking other languages anyway more than the occasional few words or phrase, if the story is written in English - maybe the occasional Latin or French, but if a whole sentence or phrase, it is usually directly explained. You maybe be better making up single words for say house, canoe, river , friend etc. and throw them in. They could follow some sort of realistic theme - be short and sharp sounding, or long and rhymey.
A few thoughts anyway.
It would seem silly to add 'in her native tongue' if you are writing it as direct speech. Any reader would realise that simply by seeing that her words are not English.Reported or indirect speech would seem wired if not automatically translated. ("Xara warned her friends to signa corpontie waght before they tried it themselves" just doesn't make sense.)
Perhaps you intend to report direct speech, and then have someone translate for you. That would become tedious if done often, and is unnecessary anyway. Why not simply report that she said something without bothering with reporting the phonemes?
No doubt you have a specific purpose in mind for even considering this, and I'm speaking from my ignorance. But I wonder whether your purpose can be achieved in a more conventional way.
I have used genuine non-English language in three places in my writings. Once, in "Pope Barnabas", the protagonist offers to help a fellow student by speaking to him in Latin. The friend agrees, so the protagonist says "then so be it!" in Latin, and the friend replies "Thank you" in Latin; but it is obvious from the context what is being said. In another novel it is a conventional "Bon jour!", which most non-French speakers would understand.
In the third, I have a character whose native tongue is German has a quasi-religious insight that determines how he will live his life henceforth. He says "Hier stehe ich" in a deliberate allusion to Luther at Worms. Even that was pushing the boundaries, but the plot demanded something that made his statement pivotal.
So I would generally stick to English except for well-known conventional sentences, or where the meaning is obvious and the different language is used for a specific emphasis.
Bob wrote: "It would seem silly to add 'in her native tongue' if you are writing it as direct speech. Any reader would realise that simply by seeing that her words are not English.Reported or indirect speech..."
I was thinking more like having the character say a sentence and one word was in their native language due to no direct English equivalent existing like the word in question that would be written in the native language would roughly translate to community or family.
Like, "He was part of my ohana," (using ohana here as an example of how it would work in the sentence, even though that's not the word it would actually be or even the same culture since ohana does mean a similar sentiment).
David wrote: "I'm sure you will manage to offend someone somehow!Seriously, there aren't many stories where you actually have people speaking other languages anyway more than the occasional few words or phrase..."
Yeah, one word or two in a fictional language might work. I just hope it doesn't come across as offensive to the majority of native/indigenous people who might read it.
But if your tribe is made up then how can it offend anybody? Because you say that you are not basing on a real-life tribe. So who is going to be offended? The fictional can't and there is no real-life equivalent.The only reason for offence I can think of is that there is an actual tribe you could have used, but chose not to. In such a case they might be offended that you didn't do your research and depict them realistically. Now, if your tribe is really clever/kind/supreme, there still shouldn't be an issue. If you are slagging them off and showing them really stupid/evil/vile, I suppose it can be offencive to people native to the area. But then it's not a language issue.
Megan wrote: "Bob wrote: "It would seem silly to add 'in her native tongue' if you are writing it as direct speech. Any reader would realise that simply by seeing that her words are not English.Reported or ind..."
My apologies, Megan. I misunderstood. I thought you were thinking about a whole language (or at least sentences of it), not just a few words of vocabulary.
In your case, perhaps you might check out what languages are/were indigenous to the area you have in mind and then track down the appropriate words in one of those languages. I think that would be the least offensive approach, and perhaps even be regarded as a demonstration of your respect.
Piku wrote: "But if your tribe is made up then how can it offend anybody? Because you say that you are not basing on a real-life tribe. So who is going to be offended? The fictional can't and there is no real-l..."My concern is that it might come across as mocking how real native people talk, like how some people will be offensive to Asian people by saying random gibberish and pretending it's Chinese or something.
I would try to make the fictional language a realistic language and not just a string of gibberish, but I'm still worried it might be seen as mocking just because it is made up.
I'm also not showing the tribe as evil or anything like that, they're actually allies of the main characters (one of the MCs is even from that tribe). There might not be a real world equivalent trine to my fictional one but there are real life native and indigenous people in general who could be offended by how I portray a fictional tribe.
Bob wrote: "Megan wrote: "Bob wrote: "It would seem silly to add 'in her native tongue' if you are writing it as direct speech. Any reader would realise that simply by seeing that her words are not English.R..."
That could work, but then it's like I'm directly basing this fictional tribe off of a real life one and then any differences between the two would be seen as inaccuracies or ignorance/lack of research even though the tribe is intended to be fully fictional. Plus the fictional tribe is fairly secluded, hiding their technological advancements from the rest of the world, while real native languages in South America might've evolved and taken on some aspects of Spanish or Portuguese that the fictional tribe wouldn't have, having avoided colonization.
Megan wrote: "Piku wrote: "But if your tribe is made up then how can it offend anybody? Because you say that you are not basing on a real-life tribe. So who is going to be offended? The fictional can't and there..."I think you might be overanalysing it. Your tribe is fictional. If anyone read your work, who decided to take offence at a fictional character of a fictional tribe, no matter where they are in the world, then perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to buy fiction in the first place. And, as stated above by others, you are never going to please everyone, and some people go looking for offence anyway.
Really, it's not worth worrying about, and you will only stunt your own creativity if you censor yourself for people you have never met, who might someday, somewhere, get hurt feelings.
Best of luck.
Jessica wrote: "Megan wrote: "Piku wrote: "But if your tribe is made up then how can it offend anybody? Because you say that you are not basing on a real-life tribe. So who is going to be offended? The fictional c...""Perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to buy fiction in the first place" & "for people you have never met, who might someday, somewhere, get hurt feelings" see that just sounds so dismissive of minority people's feelings. Me overanalyzing it? Maybe that's the case but I guarantee that BIPOC would rather I overanalyze than not give a shit about how I portray them in fiction.
I applaud your overanalysis. It's the better way to go. To level with you, my native language is one that's spoken by about 1.3 million people worldwide. It's not really a "tribe", but it's tiny. So I'm trying to think how I could possibly be offended by your fictional tribe that has no relevance to mine (even if they live on the same land that my people do) speaking a language you made up.
Bob suggested research. It's seems like a better way to go. But... you can't do half a research. Because that would be offencive. If you used my language but described people I'm not, I'd be offended. if you described my people but used a differenet langauge, I'd be offended. But if you make up the people and the language, I can't be offended. (Same thing about true people, true language, although in that case there is always somebody who claims something has been depicted wrongly.)
So, my suggestion: stick to your gut feeling, be respectful of your tribe and make everything up. To clear your consciousness, make sure it's clear to the reader that both your people and their language are fully made up.
Good luck in your writing!
Piku wrote: "I applaud your overanalysis. It's the better way to go. To level with you, my native language is one that's spoken by about 1.3 million people worldwide. It's not really a "tribe", but it's tiny. ..."
That makes sense. Thanks for the feedback! It really helps!
Hi Megan,I'm Aboriginal. Your concerns are sensible. It is a bit awkward to write about an Amazon tribe if you don't know enough or have enough connection to be specific about a real tribe.
Aboriginal people in Australia aren't impressed when writers do that about us. 'Mutant Message from Downunder' comes to mind, which I've never read, partly because so many Countrymen were furious about it when it came out in 1990. (Other friends tell me it's a good book).
I agree with Piku's comments.
You might consider writing 'A note to Indigenous readers' at the beginning of your book, acknowledging that this fictional story was inspired by your own ideas of what is magical about where they come from, with no disrespect intended.
It's worth being aware that Indigenous people, including people from the Amazon (or their relations), will read your book.
I'm just finishing my first novel. My second is set in a real Aboriginal community. Different tribe than me, different languages. So, I've thought about these things a lot.
All the best with your journey of discovery.
Janelle wrote: "Hi Megan,I'm Aboriginal. Your concerns are sensible. It is a bit awkward to write about an Amazon tribe if you don't know enough or have enough connection to be specific about a real tribe.
Abori..."
Thank you for the advice! I really appreciate the input and think that everything you've said makes sense and would be a good way for me to approach the story moving forward.
My question is, would it unintentionally come across as mocking or offensive to just make up a fictional language for this fictional tribe or would it be okay for me to invent some words in this fictional language?
The last thing I want is for my writing to offend anyone so I've avoided making up words for this fictional tribe thus far, mostly just using "she said in her native tongue" as a workaround but in this most recent scene I've been working on I'm worried trying to use this workaround for the presence of a single word might be a bit awkward in writing. So should I create a fictional language to fill in blanks like this or would it just come across as offensive for me, a white woman, to create a made up language for fictional indigenous people?