zompist bboard

I got bogged down with trying to come up with protolang after protolang when I really want to come up with character and place names for the most part. I already have English calques as placeholders for them. So can I get away with sets of naming languages and be done with it as far as what I want them for is concerned? As an extension to the title question, when do I really need a full-fledged conlang?

I'm not ready to pull the plug on conlanging even though I'm less active here than I used to be; it just feels like I bit off way more than I can chew.

Depends in part how things are named. For the most part, you'd probably be fine with just a phonology, phonotactics, and very basic structure, enough to tell what order compounds form in and things like that. If you want a little more detail, come up with some dialectical sound changes (/taihun/ in one dialect is /tɛɛfun/ in another) and an extremely basic grammar (linking morphemes [e.g. genitives], some derivational affixes). But if placenames can be things like "where the enemy was slain" enemy-die-CAUS-PRES-PASS-LOC and "the water flows quickly" quickly-LK-water-run-PRES, well then you're going to need a lot more detail.

Both question and vokzhen's answer seem to make a false, or at least confusing, assumption.


You say "can I get away with..." - but this raises the question who do you think is chasing you? We say 'get away with' to imply escape from some intimidating opposing force (sentient or otherwise) - if I leave my doors unlocked but get away with it, i mean that no burglars took advantage of my lapse... if I lie to somebody but get away with it, it means that they failed to detect my lie, or else noticed it yet inflicted no devastating punishment on me for it... if I get away with murder, the cops have not worked out it was me... if I get away with handling anthrax in an unsafe way, the anthrax has not killed me, or perhaps luck or fate have not chosen to teach me a lesson by means of the anthrax. If there are no burglars, if nobody cares if I lie, if murder is not illegal, in anthrax is not dangerous, then I would not say I got away with these things. The expression implies hazard.

Likewise, "when do I really need..." - this question is confusing to me, because need implies, again, hazard. I need water to not dehydrate. I need money so as not to suffer penury. I need to work hard so as not to be fired. I need painkillers or else I will suffer. There is a threat I will succum to if I do not get what I need.

Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but the problem with your question is embedded in the language of the question, which betrays a certain perspective that I think, at the very least, needs to be more fully explicated before a meaningful answer can be provided.

Do you 'need' a 'full' conlang or can you 'get away with' a 'naming language'? It depends what hazard you are trying to avoid. It is not one of the obvious hazards we normally talk about when we see we need something - you will not starve or hurt or be homeless, nobody is demanding something off you at gunpoint. So what are you trying to avoid?

The only thing I can think is that you're imagining being a published author or the like, and want to avoid your audience being displeased by your conlanging. But in that case the answer is clear: you don't even need a naming language, you just need to randomly throw some syllables together and there you go. Readers don't give a monkey's about conlangs anyway, and complete incapability in that area certainly never hurt the careers of men like Robert Jordan, Christopher Paolini, or George RR Martin, or the legions of fantasy and sci-fi authors who don't even go as far as those do. When did you last find a mainstream review of a book say "unfortunately, the book was seriously let down by the lack of diachronic verisimilitude in its toponymies..."?

Conversely, if it's "so that nobody could ever possibly complain about it", then the goal is unmeetable. There will be perfectionists who will criticise any conlang you create as not complete enough... and many more people who will hate the very suggestion of a conlang being there, even just in the form of names and places, no matter how much work you put into it.

So... why do you feel that conlanging is necessary at all? What are you afraid will happen if your conlang isn't good enough to 'get away with'?

I for one am not going to let you get away with a set of naming languages.

Salmoneus wrote:Do you 'need' a 'full' conlang or can you 'get away with' a 'naming language'? It depends what hazard you are trying to avoid. It is not one of the obvious hazards we normally talk about when we see we need something - you will not starve or hurt or be homeless, nobody is demanding something off you at gunpoint. So what are you trying to avoid?

I feel like I'm letting conlanging, sound changes, and the works burn me out. I know better than to try to pass off a random string of letters as a plausible alien language (which these really are); what I believe the problem is is the opposite—wasting time with drivel.

Salmoneus wrote:The only thing I can think is that you're imagining being a published author or the like, and want to avoid your audience being displeased by your conlanging.

I was not convinced most of the audience would give a damn how well my conlanging skills are before you made your post. If anyone's going to be displeased, it will probably be the case of me being my own worst critic from my own point of view.

Salmoneus wrote:So... why do you feel that conlanging is necessary at all? What are you afraid will happen if your conlang isn't good enough to 'get away with'?

The universe is supposed to be set in a conworld that has not had contact with Earth (in fact, from their point of view, we're not even supposed to be confirmed to exist), so I feel that some level of conlanging is necessary to keep that plausible. One of the things I can't "get away with" from my point of view is passing off, say, a mangled version of Spanish as my setting's conlang.

I hear you. I'm simultaneously working on two different fantasy settings, both with diverse inhabitants. For the one I'm about ready to throw my hands up and use a mixture of calques and what I already have.

I know my reviewers and most of my readers aren't going to care, but as the type of person who cocks my eyebrow at obviously bad conlanging (D'ni and especially "Dovah" spring to mind) I know I won't be able to accept anything that's blatantly horrible from myself when I know I can do better.

Would you feel Ok with a "just so" language where you makje a bunvch of words and then build the language around that ? e.g. with me the word "Baeba" is eight years older than the language it currently belongs to, because I created the name long before I created the language and then just retconned it. It helps if your language is mostly CV, since basically anything can "look natural", and if it has simple grammar. Also remember that a lot of placenames are inherited from previous inhabitants and therefore don't make sense in the current native language anyway.

StrangerCoug wrote:The universe is supposed to be set in a conworld that has not had contact with Earth (in fact, from their point of view, we're not even supposed to be confirmed to exist), so I feel that some level of conlanging is necessary to keep that plausible.

The problem being that you should first do serious conworlding before even thinking about conlanging. I mean, what speech aparatus do your aliens have? For all we know (well, you know) they wistle their way all the time, or they use sign language. Good luck transliterating that. If they're really humanoid humans, well, you're already throwing away all credibility with regards to conbiology, so a mock Spanish is the least of your worries.

One of the things I can't "get away with" from my point of view is passing off, say, a mangled version of Spanish as my setting's conlang.

You could also opt not to use the conlang at all. Look at Tolkien: he went through great length to avoid his conlangs in most of his writing, only using some short sentences here and there that would've been impossible to say anything about with regards to the level of the conlang. Do your aliens use compounding to describe places? Do that in English, so you capture the way they speak (so rather than "Let's go to A'tokgr'ä"* you write "Let's go to Willowsmarsh"). Do they use synchronically unanalyzable terms? Do that in English, but make them sound like our synchronically unanalyzable terms (so rather than "Let's go to Mü'nkh*" you write "Let's go to Marwick**"). Imho that's a lot less distracting for the average reader.

*Use of apostroph and Heave Metal ümlaut intentional.
**I know -wick is perfectly analyzable diachronically, I'm talking about synchronically analyzability.


JAL

I already have that they like to use compounding a lot for personal names, so...

StrangerCoug wrote:I already have that they like to use compounding a lot for personal names, so...

Hey don't I know you from another forum?

StrangerCoug wrote:I already have that they like to use compounding a lot for personal names, so...

Then translate the names.


JAL

sirdanilot wrote:

StrangerCoug wrote:I already have that they like to use compounding a lot for personal names, so...

Hey don't I know you from another forum?

You do.

jal wrote:

StrangerCoug wrote:I already have that they like to use compounding a lot for personal names, so...

Then translate the names.

In a way, I already have the "translated" versions.

Salmoneus wrote: Readers don't give a monkey's about conlangs anyway

I completely agree on this point. Indeed, I would go further: too much conlanging risks putting people off. When I'm reading, I might put up with very occasionally coming across two or three words in a made-up language, but anything more than that I'm at best going to skim over without paying much attention and at worst start to get frustrated at what from my perspective is little more than a random string of characters inserted for no real reason.

I would say you really should try to make sure the linguistic situation as revealed by names and things is "realistic", but as Salmoneus points out, many successful authors don't.

StrangerCoug wrote:In a way, I already have the "translated" versions.

Then you're all set and done :).

Curlyjimsam wrote: I would go further: too much conlanging risks putting people off. When I'm reading, I might put up with very occasionally coming across two or three words in a made-up language, but anything more than that I'm at best going to skim over without paying much attention and at worst start to get frustrated at what from my perspective is little more than a random string of characters inserted for no real reason.

Indeed. Even though I really like conlangs, without a gloss I'm pretty quickly bored by them (or languages in general). And your readers wouldn't know how to pronounce it correctly anyway. Minimization of use is the best.


JAL

don't do any conlanging at all if you do not enjoy the process. it's a nichey nichey hobby, it's never actually 'finished', and its products will likely be of no interest to anyone but yourself. so if you don't enjoy the actual doing of it, fuck it. kludge up some passable names and get on to the bits of your writing project that you do enjoy.

Kereb wrote:don't do any conlanging at all if you do not enjoy the process.

But even if you do enjoy it, don't pour it out onto your readers :). You can always add an appendix with the cool stuff.


JAL