Let's Build a World: Day 9 - Language

[ladyseishou]

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.

- Benjamin Lee Whorf



It's Day 9 for Nano Writers's Let's Build a World. Read over Day 9: Language from Stephanie Bryant's 30 Days of Worldbuilding. Open up those notebooks and try out today's exercise:

Listen to how different syllables sound to you. Do they excite you? Do you associate a particular sound with an emotion or place or memory? Write down some generic preferences for your languages-- "I want the language spoken by the elves to sound like water, and the language spoken by the dwarves to sound like gravel rubbing together" and then go listen to what those things sound like. Write down the syllables you hear when you run a faucet or sit by a stream, for instance. Those sounds will be your "root" syllables when making up your names for places and people and things.

There's also a bonus exercise on Ms. Bryant's website! Try it out if you have some spare time today.

Here are some sound sites that may be helpful:

Conlangs - a wide variety of links to sites about conlangs from the Omniglot website.

Vowels and Consonants - from the UCLA Phonetics Lab Data website.

BabyNames.com - one of many baby names sites! Good international section.


What do you say, Nano Writer? Will your characters talk it out or will your dialogue be all babel? See you tomorrow for part 10!