Hello! I am writing a fantasy novel/story (it's likely to be more than one book)and I'm not sure how to go about language creation for some of the races. Like all good fantasy I have elves and dwarves, but I'd like them to have their own languages, not just 'the common tongue'. I don't want to steal a language from Tolkien or anyone, but I'm having trouble coming up with something decent. Could anyone give advice?

Well, just a suggestion, but you could radomly assign letters of the alphabet to different letters and translate. For instance-----A could.....Y for instance and so on.

Then do that for the next language and so on. This may be a terrilbe idea or it may need tinkering.

I have the feeling that letter shuffling will result in an unpronouncable mess. Might be worth a shot though, but I would suggest making vowels say vowels. So e=a is OK, but e=x is out. Even then, I dunno.

Try making up new words for the basics of the language - "a", "the" and so on and so forth, and then make up new words as you need them. Make sure to include homonyms, synonyms and other grammatical nightmares. You should change the grammar slightly - make the elves speak like yoda, for example.

Its going to be a fair amount of work however you do it.

try not to change A to Y or B to K thing. squaresoft did this in FFX and it sounds horrible.

how about using another non english language? like spanish or chinese?

Well for speaking the language all you do is write down things that sound cool
Example:
Molanteth Nehroun,woah that does sound cool

Or, you could read an essay by one who is a fairly dab hand at it: J.R.R. Tolkein. He wrote an essay on the creation of new languages called "A Secret Vice." It is included in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. (Houghton Miflin, Boston, 1984) Christopher Tolkein, ed.

Rearrange normal words...

ie bear=reba ;)

[ 03-08-2003, 05:02 PM: Message edited by: Horatio ]

Make a new version of pig latin called.................... PENGUIN LATIN!!! Or just name it cow latin. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Get a two year old to write something, then use that as a saying.

Make a different alphabet and write stuff in english wioth those letters
ur readeers wont understand it anyway ;)

Change grammer
chine for example doesnt change it's verbs and doest have a plural
the place in a sentence is extreemly important in chinese

Latin is the opposite
eacht form gets it's own verbdestraction and each word has its own form
place in sentence is of no importance in latin