Dear Macha, I am now addicted to your blog. I read the language post, and smiled at the coincidence, for yesterday, from 2:30 to 3:15 a.m., I sat on my bed with my notebook, and planned out the language development in my fantasy world.

Not just place names or character names (I like the Ford Ford Ford Ford, it is so true); I am a fourth-year linguistics student who loved historical linguistics more than any other kind, so I sketched out how the language of the dying empire turned into the common tongue by losing all of its case system and most of its verbs, how many tones the elven language has, and why an interspecies language would have no 'r', 'l' or 'y' sounds (the other species doesn't have the flexible tongue necessary to make those), which happened to annoy most of my main characters who have those sounds in their names. I don't just have maps; by the time I talked myself into going back to bed, I had a language family tree, with dates of separation from the proto-language. And it was fun.

A very important point is how different social classes would differentiate themselves through the way they speak; for example, in areas of the U.S. omitting the 'r' in words like 'door' is a lower-class feature, while in Britain it is a mark of the higher class Queen's English. My sociolinguistics professor said that in Barbados, the Canadian accent is considered a prestige accent. This leads me to think how warriors would speak differently from traders, from priests, from courtesans. That was one thing I admire Tolkien for: you can tell at once who was speaking, the hobbits or the elves, unlike certain novels, where they all seem to have come from the same university.

I better shut up now before writing an essay on "The Loss of Animate Subject Differentiation in the Subjunctive Verbal Paradigm of Pre-Cataclysm Dark Elvish"...

As for titanium (1) I want to read your book NOW; I love titanium and I love that idea (2) I would advise, if you don't have a good name already, to either name it after another mythology's giant race (which may be a little odd-sounding because why name almost the lightest practical metal after big hulkin' heavy guys? Sprite metal?) or name it after one of the titans. Rhea's iron

Oh, I'm now officially envious, because I'm...well...NOT a linguistics student. So I'm sort of bumbling through all this, piecing it together as I go along and sometimes retracing my steps and sometimes becoming completely lost in the phonetic woods. I have bought a few books: I need to take the time to READ them and use that knowledge. So I have now created the proto-language of the common origin of the four main races of my book, and now need to drift that for the four species in the "modern" day. Create the equivalent of the romance languages, if you will, with some words occassionally cropping up that have changed little over the years and some borrowing occuring.

I have tried, as much as is possible, to make class and race apparent. The lower classes should not talk the same way as the upper classes, which should not talk the same as the foreigners. But I never really thought of that as a linguistic constraint per se, just attentive writing and use of voice. (I have been known to slip up on this one though. Isn't re-writing grand? )

The race that uses titanium is one of few races in my world that is genuinely immortal, and would be akin to elves. I thought it likely that their own word for the metal would be pragmatic and descriptive — unfortunately the early mythologies of the regions do not include a proto-giant race like the Titans. Other races would likely call the metal something that's the equivalent of "elven iron" I suppose. Haven't quite decided yet. The Vané themselves would probably use something like "cloud metal."

Some interesting consequences came out of the decision to use real world metals in a fantasy setting, btw. For instance, knowing what titanium can and can't do had a rather large effect on the culture that uses it. Not a lot of titanium swords running around, for instance — but a whole lot of arrowheads, and chainmail (because of those gorgeously ductile properties titanium possesses.) Of course, it's unlikely the readers will ever realize what I'm talking about, but I like to know.

You did all that language development last night? SO jealous...

So I have now created the proto-language of the common origin of the four main races of my book, and now need to drift that for the four species in the "modern" day. Create the equivalent of the romance languages, if you will, with some words occassionally cropping up that have changed little over the years and some borrowing occuring.

I got enough language change crammed into my head last semester that a lot of it was almost reflex. Basically, languages are divided into (1) those that change their words a lot to change their meaning, such as using cases, a lot of verb conjugations, etc. e.g. Russian, Latin; (2) those that change their sentences a lot and their words little i.e English, Chinese; (3) those that string together bits to a word to change it (without changing the inside word) e.g Turkish, Hungarian; (4) those that string together bits of word to make one big word that has the meaning of an entire sentence, e.g. Inuktitut.

No. 1, 2, 3 change into each other, in that order. First people keep on saying "he walked"; then they get bored, the 'ed" gets absorbed and vanishes (see African American English dialect for example), but to keep on conveying the meaning of 'past' they have to put more stuff in the sentence: "he walk yesterday". Then they keep on saying "he walk yesterday" for a few centuries, and gradually the word that meant "yesterday" shrinks down and becomes this bit you stick on the ends of verbs to make them past. And then, under a few more changes, "stand+yesterday" > "stand+past" > "stood" > "standed" (all the other verbs have -ed, why not this one?) > "stand yesterday" again.

Type 4 is pretty rare, by the way, and was not accounted for on the "clock cycle." My elves speak Type 4; don't know why, but I know they do. Tolkien's elves speak Type 1 - 2-ish, if I recall (goes to dig out Silmarillion...)

Of course, this is supersimplified, but those are the things that drive language change - English used to be (1) and is now heading for (2) at breakneck speed. Languages that arise as linguafrancas or pidgins (mixing together two languages to make different peoples understand each other somehow) usually start out in (2). One fact that may be useful is that Type 2 languages would tend to have longer sentences, in writing, than Type 1 or 3. According to my prof, the only language for which the entire cycle has been observed is Ancient Egypt's. But the different child languages of the same parent could go through the cycle at different rates: English, Swedish, German and Icelandic all started out in Type 1, and a thousand years later Icelandic is pretty much what it used to be, snug in Type 1, Swedish is farther along, so is German, and English is, of course...

One funky thing you may like, that I touched on earlier, is that sometimes words that originally had their own meanings end up as grammatical parts: see "yesterday" becoming the past tense. The French recent-past tense literally means "I'm just coming from doing x", and I am sure a lot of plural markers began life as the word "many."

But I never really thought of that as a linguistic constraint per se, just attentive writing and use of voice. (I have been known to slip up on this one though. Isn't re-writing grand? )

I found myself almost instinctively changing my tone and voice with changes in viewpoint character. Had an argument with one of my editors over the phrase "whatever the ancient Greeks used as shoelaces": "You know perfectly well what they used for shoelaces, put it in!" "I know. She (the character who is on camera now) doesn't."

You did all that language development last night? SO jealous...

Don't be. I do not recommend insomnia to anyone, even when cute worlds come out. I couldn't get to sleep anyway, so I found myself thinking about my intuitions concerning the different languages, and decided I better write those intuitions down. I get my best ideas when trying to get to sleep, but my 8:30 a.m school, 9:00 a.m work, etc. have no sympathy whatsoever.

*I avoided technical terms, but Type 1 (change words) is "inflectional languages"; Type 2 (change sentences) = "isolating / analytic"; Type 3 (pile together bits of word) = "agglutinative"; inflectional and agglutinative are both referred to as "synthetic"; and Type 4 of the mega-long words is "polysynthetic."

Fantastic post, Indicolite. Thanks!

I had a bit of a brainstorm last night, so I'm currently in the process of classifying phonetic sounds by elemental type (a whole lot of things in my fantasy world are divided up by classical Greek elemental division: air, earth, fire, water.) So I had this idea that instead of a male/female division of noun gender, that I might have an elemental division. Still playing with the idea to see if it will work. Ideally, I want it to be there but not hit people over the head with it.

Fantastic post, Indicolite. Thanks!

I go around explaining the Great Language Change Clock to everyone I meet: Greek Orthodox seminarians, math geeks... Someone hold me in before I become a wandering preacher. "Languages change, ye sinners! Repent ere you lose your V-to-I movement*!"

I had a bit of a brainstorm last night, so I'm currently in the process of classifying phonetic sounds by elemental type (a whole lot of things in my fantasy world are divided up by classical Greek elemental division: air, earth, fire, water.) So I had this idea that instead of a male/female division of noun gender, that I might have an elemental division. Still playing with the idea to see if it will work. Ideally, I want it to be there but not hit people over the head with it.

Ooh, I love phonetics, how would that work, how would that work, how would that work?

PM me if you don't want to post your original ideas for everyone to see; I swear upon my imp of Dragon's Heart (few bigger things worth swearing by have arrived) that I do not steal people's ideas. Now taking them and running away with them and rolling them over and over until they are unrecognisable is different...everyone does that, but I will still put an acknowledgement in my first novel to my algebra professors who, not knowing it, gave me a nefarious idea to break a mathematical law. But stealing ideas requires acknowledging that I cannot do better, which is beyond the capacities of my ego.

I toyed with an element-based magic back when I was 13 and my world looked badly like Robert Jordan's, but the intervening years have transformed the Wild Magic into Bloodmagic, respectively, which works on very different underlying principles. If I ever do an elements-based fantasy motif, I would toss metal and stone in like the Chinese; more because I can't accept life without jewelry than anything else...you are giving me ideas...how do you want to be called in the acknowledgements section?

*The construction that makes "Go you to the movies?" a grammatical question, rather than "Are you going to the movies?"

You are free to steal my ideas as long as you steal them professionally, i.e. make sure to sell them to a nice fence who will melt them down, recast them, and sell them to an unsuspecting public as something that couldn't possible have been grabbed from MY house. I think that's just called "research" and "inspiration," right?

Have you ever read "The Roads of Heaven" series by Melissa Scott? Oh, now there's a glorious use of an elemental magic system — all sorts of symbolic Hermetic alchemy, and what made it so fun was that it was science-fiction! So all the tropes of space battles and stellar empires, but run by elite Hermetic orders and secret cabals. She made spell-casting, the actual act of creating magic, exciting and sexy when she could have just said "X casts a divination." Good stuff. And of course I can't steal it — I don't think there's any chance in hell that I could do it better.

I think the biggest influence on my magical system was a book...oh, I'm trying to remember the name....I have it at home. Language and Cerebral development, or something like. Not an occult book at all, and certainly not "elemental." So I completely understand what you mean about taking inspiration from non-traditional sources.

I'll PM you about the specifics. Oh, there IS jewelry.