2y ago

Trying to build a world for the first time. Overwhelmed.

Hi all.

I'm making great progress on a language I'm constructing, and it occurred to me that I should build a sort of fictional world, for the language to "grow" in, if that makes sense. I have the name of the language, the name of the "country", the flag design... but I'm having trouble with everything else haha. Any help appreciated!

8 comments

If I was approaching something from a language-first style, I'd probably try to figure out what kind of cultural and geographic features would influence the language in it's current form. Just some mind vomit without giving hardly any thought to it:
language slow and sing songy could indicate a more leisure focused society, and that would mean either nearby natural resources, or a robust engineering that handles base needs
Or it could be a culture that tries to embrace peace and uses song and dance to put guests at ease
guttural or short language could be a battlng society, where info needs to be communicated efficiently
Or it could be a culture that uses spoken language as only part of their method of communication.
Just spitballing here. Hope there's a nugget of something in there.
- Along those lines, this language might have some loan words that don't really fit in. What would've caused that to happen? Did some king get an arrow through the eye like Harold II and the language got loan words from the conquerors? Taking inspiration from historical events worked pretty well for GRRM.
- Yes I'm trying to do that but I don't know where to start. My strengths are linguistics and music, not storytelling. It's a skill I have to find a way to develop. Maybe it just takes time.
  
  Okay. So start smaller. What's the coolest aspect of the language? Or the part that you're most proud of?
I cannot give a general advice, but what worked for me is to put 'my' world's history in a chronological order using a time line. What started when, which incidence is the root cause for the other and so on. Climbing this ladder year by year was and still is great fun. And If you ask for a software, I'd straight away would answer 'Obsidian'. It's link/ backlink feature is just awesome to keep your ideas structured. Have fun and good luck!

8 comments