From 74774.157@compuserve.com Thu Jun 8 15:08:51 1995 Date: 08 Jun 95 13:06:10 EDT From: Jeffrey Henning <74774.157@compuserve.com> To: BlindCopyReceiver: ; Subject: Copy of: MODEL LANGUAGES, 6/1/95, 2 of 2 ------- CONTINUED ------ SPELLING When inventing your own language, you can go all out -- inventing your own alphabet or even hieroglyphs to accompany it. You can have spellings that represent scholarly thinking about how the word derived, so that the word sounding like [gramilt] is actually spelled 'kramillid', for instance, because lexicographers believe the word [gramilt] used to be pronounced [kramillid]. You can invent new symbols or use old symbols to represent sounds, so that 'pra@t!so>r' is pronounced... oh, never mind. Or, you can spare users of your language a lot of difficulty; you can strive for a system of spelling that is phonetic. Since learning a new language is difficult enough, this is the course I recommend. Yes, I'm hooked on phonics. Be warned, however, that even a phonetic representation can present difficulties, if you yourself are mistaking English spellings and conventions for actual pronunciations. For instance, if you were representing English phonetically, you might think that you could specify that the plural was regularly formed by adding [-s] to the end of a word. While this is true for [cat], it is not true for [dog], whose plural is actually pronounced [dogz]; [church], for its part, has a plural of [churchez]. So make sure your phonetic spelling really describes the sound you want. One problem with phonetic spelling is that words are pronounced differently in different circumstances: the word _a_ can be pronounced [ei] or as [@] (schwa), _and_ can be pronounced [@nd], [@n] or [n], depending on whether or not the speaker is placing emphasis on them. While you can use special characters for sounds, it will be easier on your readers if you transcribe them using conventional letters. The letter 'h' is great for forming digraphs; you might say that 'rh' represents a trilled [r] sound, or that 'mh' might be an aspirated [m] (sounding similar to [v]), or that 'dh' represents the voiced _th_ in _then_, while 'th' represents the unvoiced _th_ in _thin_. Your spelling may even reflect a regular sound change of the language. For instance, in German, the final 'b' in a word sounds like [p], the final 'd' like [t], and the final 'g' like [k], so 'Korb' is pronounced [korp], 'Band' [bant] and 'Tag' [tak]. WORDS Once you have created sounds, you can begin generating words. Words are nothing more than sounds arbitrarily linked to meanings. Onomatopoeia refers to sounds that are imitative, such as _arf_, _bark_ or _bow-wow_ for the sounds a dog makes. Most words are not onomatopoetic. Tolkien once remarked that he found _cellar door_ to be an incredibly beautiful series of sounds, though the meaning was not worthy of it. So don't slave over matching sounds to words. If you spend all your time thinking about the exact sound each word should have you'll never flesh out your vocabulary. GRAMMAR It can make learning new words somewhat easier if they have to follow specific patterns depending on parts of speech. Your language might require the root form of all verbs to end in [-r] and all nouns might end in a vowel. A naming language does not need a complex grammar. The only grammatical decision you really need to make is how to form compound words: should the modifier proceed or follow the word being modified. Assume you have a language with the word _kwan_ for "dog" and _kooz_ for "house". Does the phrase _kwan kooz_, then, mean "doghouse" or "house dog"? PROPER NAMES Many common names were formed from surprisingly few elements. If you coin just 150 words in a model language, you will be able to generate millions of distinct names. I analyzed about 300 common English and European names to come up with the following tables of common meanings underlying these names. ADJECTIVES FOR PROPER NAMES bear-like beloved bitter blessed brave chief compassionate constant desired divine eagle-like earnest falcon-like famous flowering fortunate fox-like free hallowed happy industrious laughing lion-like loyal manly mighty noble northern patriotic peaceful powerful praiseworthy prayerful protecting pure ready sharp shining small strong strong-willed swift valiant victorious war's wealthy wise wolf-like worthy young NOUNS FOR PROPER NAMES arrow battle bearer brightness counselor crown defender dweller earth farmer father fighter forest gate gift giver God guardian hammer harvester healer helper home horse keeper laurel leader lily lover maid man pearl people protector rock rose ruler runner smith son spear staff steward stranger stronghold sword traveler twin warrior wolf You can use these tables to generate names in the following ways: adjective1: "Pure" (_Katherine_) adjective1 + adjective2: "Noble and Shining" (_Alberta_) adjective1 + noun1: "Chief Protector" (_Howard_) noun1 + noun2: "Elf Ruler" (_Avery_) adjective1 + adjective2 + noun1: "Noble, Brave Warrior" (_Gunther_) adjective1 + noun1 + noun2: "Strong Warrior Twin" adjective1 + adjective2 + noun1 + noun2: "Young Bear-like Battle Hammer" You can use these tables to generate almost all the names you need. Theoretically you could use these tables to generate 6.3 million names. Feel free to use a few elements that you like in many different names; for example, "famous" in Anglo-Saxon was represented by _hroth_ and is contained in the following names: _Rodney_ ("famous"), _Robert_ ("famous brightness"), _Roland_ ("most famous of the land"), _Roderick_ ("famous ruler"), _Rudolph_ ("famous wolf") and _Roger_ ("famous spear"). _Roger_, incidentally, was spelled _Hrothgar_ in Old English, and is the name of the beleaguered king in _Beowulf_. You can easily flesh out the above tables to better represent the culture of the people who will speak your model language. For instance, islanders would not name people after wolves and foxes, but after predators peculiar to their locale, such as sharks and octopuses. Their names would reflect people's relationship to the sea: sailors, divers, swimmers and beachcombers. The tools they would refer to would not be swords and spears, but tridents and hooks. The adjectives they would use would likewise reflect their environment: unsinkable, seaworthy and foamy. If you want to add additional words to these tables, check out the etymologies of real names; one good source is _The Baby Boomer's Name Game_ by Christopher Andersen, which includes a basic etymological dictionary of 2,500 common names. PLACE NAMES The names of people and places are intimately related. For instance, _Winslow_ (a town in Buckinghamshire, England) is named after _Wine_ (an Old English name meaning "friend") and means something like "Wine's hill", "Wine's burial mound" or perhaps even "Wine's estate at the burial mound". In turn, _Winslow_ is a man's first name and means "from Winslow". Many place names become first or last names in this way, and these in turn might inspire new place names; some other town of Winslow might be named after a fellow named Winslow -- and so it goes. Most names refer to a natural feature, such as a river, a hill or a forest, or to a man-made construction, such as a fort, a road or a burial mound. Place names are very seldom taken from an event that may have happened there, such as a battle or a coronation, but do sometimes take names from recurring events -- a field where people are regularly executed or married (I'll refrain from comparing these activities!) might have a name like the Hangingfield or the Weddingfield. For instance, the village of "Kingstone" is not likely to be so named because some king drew a sword from a stone there, but rather because many monarchs have been coronated there (or stoned there, depending on the kingdom's traditions!). Place names in the British Isles tend to be formed from 50 basic root meanings, which are given below. These 50 meanings can be combined to give 2450 different names, and can be combined to form millions more when combined with names involving people (e.g., _Boston_, "Botwulf's stone"; the ending is not _-ton_, "town", but _-ston_). MEANING ENGLISH/IRISH/WELSH WORD ELEMENT -------------------- ------------------------------------------ abbey Abbey- bridge Pont-, -bridge castle Castle church Eccle(s)-, Kil(l)-, Kirk-, Llan-, -church cottage -cot dwelling -wich, -wick enclosure Lis-, -wardine, -worth estate -land farm -ton, -by field -field ford -ford fort Caer-, -b(o)rough, -burgh, -bury fort (old fort) -caster, -c(h)ester fort (ring fort) Rath- height Ard- highland Blaen-, -head hill Bryn-, Dun-, -don hilltop Pen- holy place -stead, -stede, -stow home farm -hampton homestead Bally-, -ham(stead), -hampstead island Ennis-, -ey lake Loch- meadow Clon- monastery -minster moor -more, -moor mountain peak Ben- new New- pass -gate people of -ing(s) place Stock-, Stoke- pond -mer(e) port Port-, -port resort -ville river mouth Aber-, Bel(la)-, Inver-, -mouth riverside -side rock Carrick- secondary settlement -stock, -stoke, -thorpe stone -ston(e) stream -b(o)urne, -well town Ballin(a)- tree -tree, -try upper Auchter- valley Glen-, Strath-, -dale valley (narrow) -combe valley (wooded) -den village Tre- wood Rhos-, Ros-, Ross-, -wood wooded angle of land -shot(t) woodland -ley, -le, -leigh Source: Adapted from _Dictionary of Place Names in the British Isles_, by Adrian Room Place names can be formed from combinations of the affixes listed above and from other place names and proper names: affix1 + affix2: "New Town" (_Newton_) affix1 + affix2 + affix3: "New Town on the Moor" (_Newtonmore_) affix1 + affix2 + placename: "New Town in Mearns [a county]" (_Newton Mearns_) placename1 + affix1: "Newton-of-the-Abbey" (_Newton Abbot_) placename + propername: _Newton Stewart_ [after William Stewart] propername + placename: "Hynca's Enclosure" (_Hinxworth_) Often when you analyze a place name, you will find that a river runs through it: _Exeter_ (from _Exchester_) means "fortification on the river Exe", _Exmoor_ is "moorland along Exe", _Exmouth_ is at the mouth of Exe, while _Exwick_ is a "farm by the Exe". _Exe_ itself means simply "water", from the British Celtic _isca_. (This may seem boring, but _isca_ is part of "the water of life" that entered English -- through Scottish Gaelic -- as _whiskey_!) Many names of rivers, mountains and other features of the landscape come from general words. Imagine an Englishman pointing to a river and asking, "What do you call that?" The native Celt might have simply said _teme_, "river", since to him or her it was "_the_ river", the prominent river in the area and hence not in need of its actual name in typical conversation. And thereby a noble river such as the Thames would have been christened. To create the name of a city on a river then, you'll have to name the river first -- and that name might derive from another language, as the Thames shows. Place names often incorporated terms from other languages. For instance, the Celtic city of _Eborakon_ -- meaning "place of Eburos (the yew man)" -- had its name Romanicized to _Eburacum_. This name was meaningless to the invading Saxons, who Anglicized it as _Eofor_ ("boar", which had a similar sound) and appended _wi_-c_ ("dwelling place"), to give it the name of _Eoforwi_-c_. When the Vikings invaded, they misconstrued _wic_ as _vi_-k_ (which meant "bay" and was inappropriate to the inland city but stuck anyway); since _Eofor_ was meaningless to them, there was no pressure to keep the first syllables recognizable, and the name was gradually shortened to _Jarvik_. This in turn was later shortened to _York_, the name as it stands today and as it may stand until the city is invaded again. York's name was not directly affected by the fall of England to the Normans, the only conquerors not to leave their mark on it. If the Normans' ancestors, the Vikings, had had as little effect on the city's name, York's modern name might very well be _Everwick_. The history of the name _York_ reveals five waves of occupation (Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Viking, English) and so tells a lot about the fortunes of the city. While you do not want to go into as much detail for each name in your own imaginary world, this history is worth creating for the most important place names. To rival the history of York, you'd have to invent five model languages! In the same way you're best prepared to write a poem if you studied a lot of poems, you're best prepared to coin a place name by studying how other people have coined place names. To this end, I definitely recommend reviewing an etymological dictionary like _Dictionary of Place Names in the British Isles_, which covers over 4,000 place names. Each name tells a story, as the name of York shows. EXAMPLE - QUICKLY CREATE YOUR OWN NAMING LANGUAGES The following quick sketch of three languages -- Nagada, Makata and Negasi -- will show you how you can quickly create your own naming systems. The consonants of Nagada are [b], [d], [g], [s], [m], [n], [l], [r] and [h]. The vowels are [a], [e] and [u]. The vowels differ greatly in frequency: [a] is used about twice as often as [e], which is used slightly more often than [u]. All syllables in Nagada follow the form CV (Consonant+Vowel). The language of Makata is descended from Nagada and showed the following sound changes: [b] > [p], [d] > [t], [g] > [k], [m] > [n] and [n] > [m]. The language of Negasi went through different changes from Nagada. The only consonantal change was that of [d] > [t] > [s]. Vowels changed depending on the syllable they appeared in: Vowel First syllable Final syllable (if more than 1 syllable) [a] [e] [i] [e] [u] [a] [u] [a] [o] For instance, the Nagada word _naba_ became _nebi_ in Negasi. All words in the three languages are spelled phonetically. All three languages put the modifier before the word being modified (e.g., "doghouse" means "the house for dogs"). Here are the root words of Nagada and how those words appear in Makata and Negasi. Nagada Makata Negasi "bearer" _ba_ _pa_ _be_ "beloved" _naba_ _mapa_ _nebi_ "blessed" _luma_ _peta_* _lami_ "divine" _luma_ _luna_ _luna_* "giver" _ge_ _ke_ _gu_ "healer" _dala_ _tala_ _seli_ "lily" _hama_ _hana_ _heni_ "pearl" _rele_ _rele_ _rula_ "shining" _dube_ _tupe_ _saba_ "swift" _sahu_ _sahu_ _seho_ There was not room in this short introduction to cover borrowing or meaning change or any of the other factors that can override direct descent from a parent language, and I will give only one example here: Negasi borrowed _luna_ from Makata to distinguish between the meanings of "divine" and "blessed", which were both reflected by the single word _luma_ in Nagada. Makata, for its part, coined the word _peta_ for "blessed" to distinguish between the two concepts. Based on these words, here are some common names in the three languages. Nagada Makata Negasi "blessed pearl" _Lumarele_ _Petarele_ _Lamirula_ "divine healer" _Lumadala_ _Lunatala_ _Lunaseli_ "swift healer" _Sahudala_ _Sahutala_ _Sehoseli_ "lily giver" _Hamage_ _Hanake_ _Henigu_ "pearl bearer" _Releba_ _Relepa_ _Rulabe_ The above table assumes the meanings of the names were kept current (like Indian names like "Dances With Wolves") rather than fossilized. If the meanings were instead forgotten, then the Makata and Negasi forms would have been shaped simply by changing the sounds of the words. So Nagada _Lumarele_ would be Makata _Lunarele_, rather than _Petarele_. If I was actually going to use these names in a story, I would spend much more time refining them to develop an affinity between the sound of a name and the character I wanted to represent. However, taking the words as they are can provide insights into the imagined people. I think _Lumarele_ is a great name for an island princess, and I can picture _Sahudala_, the impotent witch doctor who wants her hand in marriage, but the name of her jealous sister _Hamage_ carries with it the stench of lilies, rather than their sweet aroma... NAMING CONTEST! Please take this opportunity to create your own naming language. Submit it to 74774.157@compuserve.com by June 30, 1995. For each language, please specify the following: Sounds, Sound Changes, Vocabulary (With Etymology) and Common Names. I will select one example from all the language systems submitted to hold up as a model for others and will include it in next month's newsletter. The selected language system should uniquely represent one or more cultures. *** HELP! ACCESS TO LISTSERVER NEEDED Do you have access to a listserver, majordomo, mailbot, autoresponder, whatchamacallit? The newsletter has rapidly outgrown my ability to service from Compuserve, with the circulation now at 92 subscibers. If you have access to a listserver and are willing to set up and maintain the subscription list for _MODEL LANGUAGES_, please drop me an e-mail at 74774.157@compuserve.com. Thanks! I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers... *** COLLABORATOR WANTED FOR "NEO-ICELANDIC" Wanted: Collaborator to develop language for 23rd or 24th century descendants of Icelanders who have colonized a distant planet, "latter- day Vikings", so to speak, who have been there long enough to have their language changed by interaction with the previous inhabitants. Someone there would look back at the old writings and stories and see how they apply to his life. I want the language to have changed, but not so much that it is unrecognizable. As you can see, this could be a major undertaking. However, I am in no rush. There are two goals: 1) creating the language and 2) using it to generate both subject matter and embellishment for stories. I want to create a language that is beautiful and interesting in its grammatical categories. Some previous knowledge of Icelandic would be helpful, but not necessary. Interest in that language and its literature, however, is a must. Reply to Wayne Barnette at 71072.544@compuserve.com. *** You have just finished reading _Model Languages_, a regular on-line newsletter published monthly and provided free to all interested parties as part of the "gift economy" of the net. Feel free to post this newsletter or e-mail it to others, so long as you include this trailer. To subscribe, send a message with the text "SUBSCRIBE MODLANG WD [your name, not e-mail address]" in the subject header to 74774.157@compuserve.com. To cancel a subscription, send a message with the word UNSUBSCRIBE MODLANG in the header. I look forward to all comments, including the inevitable corrections, and am always interested in possible articles for inclusion in future issues. Contents copyright 1995 Jeffrey Henning. All rights reserved.