help! Creating a Language

[JJDReffitt he/him]

Some of you may know I’m working on a novel, I’ve been very blatant in all my posts about it (I’m sorry for that btw, I just have no other creative ppl to talk to). Anyway, I’m creating a language for my book because from listening to writing excuses I realized I can’t outright use Japanese in my book for MANY reasons, no matter how much I know and study the language. I settled for using the alphabet to create a similar feel, but I’m not sure if using the same particles is wise. More over, I’m having trouble coming up with words that I feel fit. I’m even going so far as to create my own kanji.

If you fantastic folk have any tips, recommendations, or any advice at all, then I’d love to hear it. I have my first draft done and I’m looking to have my language done soon so I can get it in the second draft before August rolls around

[ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ he/him]

26 minutes ago, JJDReffitt said:

Some of you may know I’m working on a novel, I’ve been very blatant in all my posts about it (I’m sorry for that btw, I just have no other creative ppl to talk to). Anyway, I’m creating a language for my book because from listening to writing excuses I realized I can’t outright use Japanese in my book for MANY reasons, no matter how much I know and study the language. I settled for using the alphabet to create a similar feel, but I’m not sure if using the same particles is wise. More over, I’m having trouble coming up with words that I feel fit. I’m even going so far as to create my own kanji.

If you fantastic folk have any tips, recommendations, or any advice at all, then I’d love to hear it. I have my first draft done and I’m looking to have my language done soon so I can get it in the second draft before August rolls around

I love meaning languages. What languages have you studied?

[JJDReffitt he/him]

2 hours ago, ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ said:

I love meaning languages. What languages have you studied?

I had a couple of Spanish classes in high school. But I college I did 4 classes of Japanese language and 3 different Japanese history and culture classes. Yourself?

[ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ he/him]

19 minutes ago, JJDReffitt said:

I had a couple of Spanish classes in high school. But I college I did 4 classes of Japanese language and 3 different Japanese history and culture classes. Yourself?

I have studied Latin for five years.

 Dabble Writer . Com also has some resources to help with this. Mostly basics.

Edited March 10 by ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ

[JJDReffitt he/him]

16 minutes ago, ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ said:

I have studied Latin for five years.

 Dabble Writer . Com also has some resources to help with this. Mostly basics.

Anything is helpful, thank you! 

I had a friend who took Latin. I salute you, she told me it wasn’t easy 

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

i have been looking at doing latin for fun. if i have some spare time. i do french mostly. what phases or words do you want done first as that would be what i would do first if i wanted to make a new language. what you could do is just use english and create a new letter for each pre existing letter instead of creating new grammer.

[JJDReffitt he/him]

11 hours ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

i have been looking at doing latin for fun. if i have some spare time. i do french mostly. what phases or words do you want done first as that would be what i would do first if i wanted to make a new language. what you could do is just use english and create a new letter for each pre existing letter instead of creating new grammer.

I determined I need to create about 80 words I’ve come up with about 30 already, but 11 of those are numbers that won’t even appear in this novel

I’m definitely not going to create my own grammar, that’s just too much. I’m using Japanese grammar, and the alphabet with a few exclusions. Plus I have an intermediate Japanese grammar book from my college days for reference 

The larger issue is that I don’t like the sounds of words I make so it’s hard to settle on one for translation. It took me forever to decided to use ‘Yiji’ to mean mountain (the Japanese is ‘Yama’). ‘Tatsu’ for river (kawa/gawa)

Maybe the problem is my closeness to the Japanese language. My insecurity with my ability to create something that I feel doesn’t do it a disservice. Or maybe I’m just tripping lol

[JJDReffitt he/him]

UPDATE

I found an interesting solution… since generating literally any word using the Japanese Consonant-vowel pair alphabet was giving me so much trouble, I turned to technology. I had remembered there was a program that Mary-Robinettw Kowal had mentioned on an early episode of Writing Excuses that could come up with words, I can’t remember the name and I have looked previously and never found it. I would write one of these myself but my coding skills are basic at best. So, naturally, I asked an AI to right it for me.

Now… I realize this might be taboo, since there is a lot of uproar involving AI and its thieving people’s work, however I felt like having it write a program to make up fake words was acceptable since I made up the initial word set that it’s basing everything else on.

Well it worked. Sort of. I have some minor issues with their first incarnation of the program, but I’ve found ways to improve it drastically. It works so well in fact that I think if you replace the bits of code that specifically work to make the words generated more Japanese sounding, you could pretty much generate a language to sound however you want. Assuming you do the work to come up with a decent number of words it can feed off of first

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

31 minutes ago, JJDReffitt said:

UPDATE

I found an interesting solution… since generating literally any word using the Japanese Consonant-vowel pair alphabet was giving me so much trouble, I turned to technology. I had remembered there was a program that Mary-Robinettw Kowal had mentioned on an early episode of Writing Excuses that could come up with words, I can’t remember the name and I have looked previously and never found it. I would write one of these myself but my coding skills are basic at best. So, naturally, I asked an AI to right it for me.

Now… I realize this might be taboo, since there is a lot of uproar involving AI and its thieving people’s work, however I felt like having it write a program to make up fake words was acceptable since I made up the initial word set that it’s basing everything else on.

Well it worked. Sort of. I have some minor issues with their first incarnation of the program, but I’ve found ways to improve it drastically. It works so well in fact that I think if you replace the bits of code that specifically work to make the words generated more Japanese sounding, you could pretty much generate a language to sound however you want. Assuming you do the work to come up with a decent number of words it can feed off of first

that is a prity good idea. i might have a look in to it to see if it can create anything for my fantasy world. i need a divine tongue and an old tongue for it.

[JJDReffitt he/him]

16 minutes ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

that is a prity good idea. i might have a look in to it to see if it can create anything for my fantasy world. i need a divine tongue and an old tongue for it.

I used Microsoft Copilot to do mine, and I found you have to be very precise in your wording to get what you want. If you like, I can share the prompt that I fed it to give you and everyone else a head start. Otherwise once I finish fiddling with the program and polishing it up, I will probably share it regardless. If I can get it to where it will do multiple languages, I think it could help a lot of people