Fictional Magic Language - creation

[Chas Kramer]

Hello there, fellow language NERDs,

I have been thinking for a while about creating a fictional "Magic" language (you know, the abracadabras that spellcasters use to manifest their power), to use for another future experiment.

I am not sure this is the right section for it, but I think so. I wondered if any of you:

- would be willing to share some of their real-life knowledge of languages, so that we could take inspiration from real-life examples (ACTUAL grammar forms) to build up our own language
- would know some tools / software, already existing, that would help in the process
- would like to collaborate in this probably pointless but potentially fun little project


If I get some interest, I'll share the "ideas" that I have about the language.

Cheers

[Lacco]

Okay, I'm in.

I can volunteer my knowledge of Slovak, some German and just random vocabulary I collected while travelling around!

So... where do we start?

I think somebody mentioned a webpage that has a forum for languages, but I'll have to look for the specific thread.

[Chas Kramer]

Ahoj !

Well, a good starting point would be the knowledge of tools ans spaces that (supposedly) already exist. Maybe people who will join this conversation might bring some info.

In the meantime, I think I can share the "flavor" that I'd like to give to this fictional language.

Spoiler: inflection (cases)

Show

I Love highly inflected languages (modern-day Slavic languages, old Latin, Hungarian...). They have such an "antique" touch to it. By inflection I mean that names have cases (Nominative - Genitive - Dative -Accusative...) and a different ending according to the "role" they have in the speech.

I'd like our language to be somehow inflected, but NOT with the standard cases that you'll find in Indo-european languages (e.g. Slovak). The reason is: to convey all possible "roles" for a words, you need a combination of cases AND preposition (like in Slovak)... this would make it needlessly complicated (for an artificial language), because you could achieve the same result with prepositions alone.
Like: if I say "vareniky so smotanA" rather than "vareniky so smotanOU", you would detect the error, it would sound weird, but you would still understand what I mean.

Therefore, in our language the role in the sentence will be done by prepositions alone (like in English, Italian), to keep it simpler. So I propose
- We use a very simple case system, basically Nominative - Accusative
- The words will have a "gender" and a "number", which I will clarify later, that will generate variations on the endings of the word

Spoiler: Affixes

Show

I'd like the words of our language to basically be a pure "root", to which you can assign prefixes and post-fixes. Those affixes will express the the "nature" of the world. Specifically, prefixes will express how the object IS, and post-fixes how the object is BECOMING.

Suppose that the world for "fire" is:
Smaldh
and that you have a set of affixes
-dur- : raging
-ama- : calm, soothing
-wher- : wild, chaotic, out of control
-lum- : diminishing
...

then:
Ama-smaldh means "calm, warm fire", like from a fireplace
Ama-smaldh-e-dur means "the calm fire becomes aggressive and dangerous"

This is just a poor example that I came up with, but it's just to clarify the concept. Notice the -e- in the second word, that is meant to facilitate pronunciation when putting together similar sounds.

Spoiler: Gender

Show

For the gender, I'd like to divert from the standard Masculine - Feminine - Neutral of many Indo-European languages. I'd like a different type of "Mood", or "Polarity".
How about the words, instead of being male and female, are North and South, or Yin and Yang, or Sun and Moon, or Active and Reactive...
I imagine that every word can be either Neutral (pure root) or gain one of the two "poles" that we define
Smaldh: fire, neutral
Smaldhon: fire, pole 1
Smaldhuin: fire, pole 2

Spoiler: Number (singular/plural)

Show

I imagine the language of magic needs to identify with precision what things it targets and how many of them. This, given with the fact that I don't wont to use any "articles" (same as Slovak), would lead to having more than two possible numbers.

Uncountable concept: Mousin - Tree, as a concept
Singular, a specific item in sight: Mousiniu - That tree, the one that I see there
Plural, non specific: Mousino - Many trees, all trees around
Plural, specific group: Mousinor - That group of trees, more than one tree but not all trees, those trees except those others.

Spoiler: Personal pronouns

Show

We need to define the various "I, YOU, HE, WE, SHE...".
I'd like to take inspiration from the Polynesian languages, here. I think they have more pronouns than we have. They identify with more precision the "persons" that are referred. I'd like to have something similar, but not as complicated. For example

ioi - We, all of us
ion - We all, except the one I am talking to
ijin - Me and you, the two of us, except the others

ojo - They, all of them
ojor - They, that group specifically, they except the others.

This is to begin with. Then I'll add some info about the verbs and the adjectives.

As for the sound that we want to give to the language...well, I honestly don't know. Do we want to go for "lovecraftian" guttural sounds? Do we want a "sweet", "elvish" type of speech? A bit of both? I was also thinking to make it sound a bit like old Greek, to preserve that "antique" charm... I am open to suggestions.

I guess, for now, we can evaluate these ideas, brainstorm over them, see what is feasible and what not, and propose new things