Does it kick you out of the story?
Do you re-read because you've stumbled over foreign words?
Instead of
quote:would you rather see
"Grtch bringu trg torng yadda," he said.
quote:and leave all the language out of it.
He said something to Snoopy in a language Woodstock didn't understand.
[This message has been edited by KathiS (edited August 05, 2011).]
It helps that I've always been interested in language. I took a bit of Arabic and Spanish and a few linguistics classes. It's really interesting to learn some of the aspects of language.
[This message has been edited by Natej11 (edited August 05, 2011).]
For example: khaleesi, muad'dib, or ka'plah!
Song of Ice and Fire, Dune, and Star Trek wouldn't be the same without these words.
So now if I use foreign words, I try to find a way to queue to the reader what the word means through some action or reaction of other characters who know what the word means. Sometimes there are objects that exist in other cultures and have no analog in English-speaking cultures, and in such cases I find it necessary to use the foreign language word.
On the other hand, too much of anything is a bad thing. If you have to write the language and then explain what was said, you're wasting space.
I've been working on a piece where there is a lost language for the old nobles. One character is recognized by his use of a word I made up that is the love child of hombre and the Irish oibrí. One word and its meaning is explained and has signficance to the story. It wasn't just there for scenery.
I often have alien characters attempting to speak an Earther language, or an Earther speaking an alien language, and that's where I have my fun with dialog. One of my species' primary language does not make use of interrogatives as we understand them, so the dialog when my characters are speaking that language (as translated into English for the benefit of my readers) is inherently different than when my characters are speaking an Earther language.
I have, by the way, created my own pronoun for the English language, which appears in a few of my SF stories. One of the editors at Leading Edge suggested the original idea, and I ran with it.
Of course...I'm in the middle of writing stories for my young adult series, and Teen-speak is the most fictional language of them all.
S!
S!
I'd say that if an alien language is spoken, a transliterated example is better than telling that it happened, *provided you can make it sound like language instead of the gibberish it is*. It takes a kind of poetic ear, I think, to carry this off. Some writers have a gift for riffing off of what foreign languages sound to their ears, like H. Beam Piper's Japanese sounding Fuzzy language. But if you go that route, if you have more than one or two scattered instances you're going to have to invent a phonology, lexicon and grammar.
It probably comes as no surprise there's an Internet subculture to help you through this task (conlang -- CONstructed Languages), but that way may well lie madness.
Here's a thought. If you knew somebody who spoke a fairly exotic language, say Khmer or Navaho, have them translate your dialog into that language. Then you could *transliterate* what it sounds like to you according to the rules of English orthography. That's bound to cover your tracks. I wonder how many writers who use pseudo-Welsh names have any idea that "Cymru" is pronounced roughly "Kemree"? Or that "Dafydd" is pronounced "Dahvith?" "Kemree" and "Dahvith" would not be recognizable as Welsh except to a Welshman who sounded them out.
In any case, true alien languages might not sound like language to us at all, having no features in common. What if instead of the sequence of phonemes (sounds) that make up a word, the aliens mixed musical tones so that words were chords? Or if speech were a sequence of clicks the speed of which broke the stream of sound into words? That's one of the things that people who don't know a language can't do, is identify word boundaries.
What if their language didn't have words at all?
(Some of the rules for, say, Welsh or Gaelic, seem to amount to "Let's stick it to the English," attempting to be deliberately unpronounceable...)
On Tolkien and his languages and the effort he put into them...Tolkien spent his entire adult life, some sixty years, working on these, while simultaneously building a base of knowledge that made him, maybe, the greatest philologist of his time. His level of scholarship showed in his invented languages---and hardly anyone who's attempted such things since, in emulation or otherwise, operates at his level.
quote:
What if their language didn't have words at all?
Yes! Once again, I can only recommend THE SCIENCE OF ALIENS by Clifford Pickover. It covers the diverse possibilities of alien communication.
The aliens in my WIP novel have a two levels of communication; through bioluminescent organs for distance communication with the limitation that nothing too complex can be communicated this way, or incredibly complex communication that borders on hive-mind telepathy through direct contact. Neither method involves sound. In fact, they have no hearing, though they can 'feel' the pressure waves sound creates.
[This message has been edited by Osiris (edited August 05, 2011).]
I think you also have to keep in mind your target audience. That may determine if they would tolerate an alien language (or any language other then English).
Language is also so much more then English, Spanish, French, Alien, ect. Language is also may include technical language, job specific language and age specific language. All those would also be depended on your target audience.
Another thing you may want to consider is your story pacing. If you want your reader to slow down a minute and think about the scene coming up, I would put in an Alien language to get them to slow down. Especially if you just finished a fast paced scene.
However, if you want your reader to continue at the same pace, I would leave is out or minimize the use of another language.
Last, you might try something like this:
quote:
"Grtch bringu trg torng yadda," He continued to speak to Snoopy in a language Woodstock didn't understand.
In about 3-5 business days, I will be familiar with Science of Aliens as well.
S!
S!
I use the "foreign" language in a scene with two of the main characters and one minor character. The minor and one of the mains have known each other a very long time and it is the language they would use normally. In deference to the other main, who wouldn't understand, the minor character is speaking what would amount to English but slips into her native tongue for one exchange with the other main that is just between them.
Huh. Now that was a convoluted explanation if ever there was one!
There is no reason beyond world building that I *need* to have it. I felt it added something and never gave it another thought so it's always good to get other people's take on it.
kls
Similarly when HBO developed GRR Martin's A GAME OF THRONES for television this year, they hired David Peterson of the Language Creation Society [ http://www.conlang.org/ ]to fully develop the Dothraki language [ http://www.dothraki.org/ ].
Thus, creating a few simple language rules, a vocabulary of about 100 words (especially articles, prepositions, and conjunctions) and using them consistently can make your invented language believable.
The issue you raise also applies to using foreign (i.e. non-English) language in a story or novel. In my writing, I have a fair amount of transliterated Yiddish and Hebrew (mostly Biblical Hebrew) and occasionally other languages (most recently ancient Egyptian). Everything I include is actual language.
A related issue is making a "foreign" language relevant as well as understandable to the reader. There are many ways. Two I employ include translation and, whenever possible, recognized implication.
Interesting subject.
Respectfully,
Dr. Bob