New Language Tool: Invent and Improvise a Fantasy or Sci-Fi Language in Minutes

First, I just want to say, we aren’t all J.R.R. Tolkien. Creating a fully functional, learnable fantasy or sci-fi language isn’t going to be done easily or quickly. There are countless considerations to account for.

Reeclehsla satai zeh ray’ahcleh’ill sca.

If you want to really dive into it, there are some solid starting places which are immediately available to you. There are professionals making videos on youtube about constructed languages (or conlangs) that, if you dedicated yourself, could get you pretty far. It’s still going to take a lot of research and work.

Taiva rree’ek, zattahshre djavas lyr.

But we aren’t all looking to BECOME Tolkien either. So what I’m talking about today is a method that is going to be useful for the following:

• Develop a unique and consistent ‘sound’ for the language.
• Maintain consistent word and naming conventions from the language.
• Be able to improvise feasible but meaningless text and speech on the fly.
• Allow someone else to improvise speaking this language on the fly.
• Act as a basis and starting point for building an actual vocabulary and set of grammatical rules.

What this tool will not do:

• Create a fully functional language that can be fluently spoken.
• Give you detailed grammatical rules and a large vocabulary list.
• Bring in or help develop new non-english letters and characters.
• Allow two improvisors to actually communicate with the language. They could have the performative appearance of communication, but would need to exchange notes or type in a private chat to send their intended meanings.

Dah clehkree shirayi’illzar taheek tahzyr tah.

So to achieve this kind of performative speaking, you don’t actually need a real functioning language… you need maybe a small vocabulary and what I call a Sound Tree. All the examples so far came from one I put together in about 5 minutes last night.

Shalyrkeekree illshi vazaratai sca djareek. Irezeh sca.

There are three simple steps to creating your Sound Tree.

Step 1: Gather Root Words

Here you collect words that provide the right sound or feel for your language. Just regular common words. You want maybe ten or twenty to start with. You can choose words that have sounds you like for the language, or words that are simply relevant to the culture you’re creating the language for. You can alter and change it as you go, add what might be good, subtract what isn’t working.

Example: I am putting together a fantasy language for my lizardfolk race in the World of Eos setting. As such: I picked a list of root words that have a lot of resonant voiced consonants, (V, J, Z, and so on) and also sibilant and hissy sounding words. Beyond that, I’ve picked words that feel appropriate for a war-like nomadic culture.

Step 2: Isolate Syllables and Sounds

Now split each word apart into syllables. I’ve found that making sure you have at least one consonant and vowel sound together for each syllable makes the result a lot easier to work with. You don’t HAVE to remain specific or dedicated to exactly the syllables present in the root words, they are just an inspiration. Like I might break down “Chieftain” to “Chie”, “Eef”, and “Tuhn.”

Step 3: Prune and Refine

Now we have a collection of useful syllables, but unless we cultivate it in specific, rather than random ways, it won’t really sound like a specific language. So this important step is about making some decisions about that race. Too big a pool won’t be easy to use, either.

So take your syllable pool and begin striking or altering away sets of sounds that might not fit with your goal. I’m creating a reptilian sounding language, so I think a lot of lippy sounds are not ideal. So I’ll cut the Bs, Ps, and the Ws, and I think I want to cut most of the round vowels as well, such as O, Oo, and Aw sounds. Some I’ll cut just because they don’t fit with the rest of the selected syllables. I’m keeping the F sounds, but altering them to Sh sounds to better match the vocal positioning of the rest of the syllables.

So what remains is a collection of syllables that use a lot of back-of-the-throat vowels that don’t involve moving the lips too much, and many of those sibilant and resonant consonants.

The Sound Tree

What you are left with is essentially a list of sounds you can smash together randomly (as Christopher Ramshaw on the Dungeon master Resources faebook page put it) but a list that will create similar patterns no matter who is speaking it, and with large enough variation to feel like an authentic language being spoken. Does it communicate? No. But it serves as a kind of guided gibberish that, just with the list, can sound like someone working their way through a foreign language. With a little practice, it can sound fluent.

This also serves as a base for sounds you can put together when you DO need a specific word for the language, or names for the people who speak the language.

“I am called Rreesca, of the Ehktahvalyr River. I welcome you, and offer you this Zarill blade, a gift for visitors who are trusted. Do not abuse that trust, sahrreek, or you shall receive many such blades.”

Growing it Further

As a quick and handy reference, the Sound Tree I’ve made here is a great start, but I don’t have to stop there. I can continue to adjust and continue to refine, maybe at some point deciding that there is a syllable that just isn’t fitting, or one that is missing that would really help. I can add in new root words, and new syllables that feel right as I need to.

You can also be growing a vocabulary list of specific words that you can reference later on. In that little text example I came up with above, Sahrreek might mean something like “outsider” or it might be an insult. The players or readers will remember something like that, so you can build consistency as you become familiar with the language you are designing.

I really think that even if you want to develop your own conlang with fully functional rules, a Sound Tree like this could be a very helpful place to start.

Language Characteristics

Lastly, we can look at applying some linguistic characteristics that will make the culture stand out even more in both the written form, and also the speaker’s English accent. Here is a short list of such ideas you can roll on or choose from, though it is far from comprehensive.

1. Apostrophes for Days: Very popular in both fantasy and sci-fi, but it still looks really cool to represent a glottal stop/vowel shift, like Real = Reel, compared to Re’al = Ree-Ahl
2. Tonal Variance Symbols: Pinyin, the English character version of Mandarin uses these since Mandarin is a tonal language. The same syllable means something different if it is rising (like asking a question) falling, bouncing, or flat. A slash going up to the right is rising, a carrot is a bounce, flat is a flat line, etc.
3. Vowels as Punctuation: Tolkien’s elven languages may use specific almost punctuation-looking symbols to represent vowels. Instead of the vowels being in the sentence alongside the consonants, they float above or below those consonants looking like a small v, or three periods in a triangle for example.
4. Rolling Rs: This feels almost natural and too easy for a “foreign” sounding language, so make sure if you do this, it is consistent and intentional.
5. Ssibilant Esses: Again, a simple choice for a reptilian or insect-like race.
6. Contractions or Don’t Contractions: Again, a very common trick for expressing foreign-ness is taking away contractions. Contractions feel familiar and easy. Data from Star Trek never uses them, and so his lack of humanity is highlighted in his speech.
7. So Much Phlegm: This is a great way to make a language sound forceful. Though if you overdo it, it is hard for it not to sound like Klingon.
8. Isolated Vowels: A lot of south pacific island languages have vowels which are individually pronounced even when right next to each other, as opposed to being blended into a new sound the way they tend to be in english. Oahu, for example, is pronounced Oh-Ah-Hu, whereas following the rules of normal english that A would blend into the O and vanish.
9. The Green Glass Door: Another fun trick for making some words/syllables sound/look especially alien is to use repetitive letters in weird ways. Sometimes English has doubled letters like Free or Battle. But you could double up letters that don’t rarely get doubled, or even triple some letters, like the star wars planet Kashyyyk.
10. Staccato Syllables: You can give an impression of simplicity and gruffness by not having a lot of long flowing words. Or when you do have a word with numerous syllables, they can have pauses and stops in such a way as to make them a bit more barky. Rules like this can flow to any language, but it is always neat to be able to give an impression when the alien speaks one language, and have it carry over when they go to english.

Note on Real Accents: I also want to mention that while using foreign accents can be much simpler, it can sometimes lead to unintended associations. For a tabletop RPG, it is a shortcut, which is fine, but something unique could lead to a much more immersive experience. I would definitely not recommend it for a professionally produced work. Like, if you were making a star wars movie and made the evil aliens sound like weird out-of-breath japanese people, and another race sound like goofy jamaicans…

Note on Contextuality: This is just a little tidbit of cultural study that has helped me in the way I think of made-up cultures. Context can be more or less important to a culture, and this shapes their reality in different ways, and all their social cues. A Low-Context culture (think Germanic, or Norse) people tend to say what they mean. They tend to be louder, to wear their emotions on their sleeve, and they value that honesty. Someone who does not is often seen as deceitful and manipulative. Situations are usually what they appear to be. A High-context culture (think Japanese, and Chinese) relies on a lot of information that is not said. Things like social status are known, and don’t need to be mentioned aloud. There is a lot of concern about keeping face, and a lot of pretense where much may be spoken nonverbally in subtext. They value subtlety, politeness, and being able to read that subtext. To them, a low context culture seems boorish, rude, obnoxious and oblivious.

Converting to Alphabet: If you do want to create new characters for the language, you can connect each syllable on the sound tree directly to an invented symbol or character. This is a simple and pretty fast way to apply some meaning and begin treating it more like an actual language and not just gibberish.

Gendered Naming Conventions: You might choose a set of name ending syllables that are consistently masculine, consistently feminine, and/or relatively neutral. Like with Western names, most names ending in “a” tend to be feminine, Tina, Rebecca, Sara, Amanda, Susanna. It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but a general guideline that you can borrow for your language.

Elvish Impersonation

I’m going to try one more real quick Sound Tree to serve as another example of how the languages formed this way can have very different results. This time I’ll try something to be like an Elvish language, meant to sound more graceful.

Gather Root Words

Break into Syllables

Refine the List (Removing all resonant, hard, or plosive sounds)

Final Sound Tree

Example Sentences

• Scenfai Inslaness fer e’einair shenees.
• Ansaw misslay noscenlear osh ance menfai.
• Lear’eam slemearai raissly hanofer ein.

Example Names

• Ferscen
• Esrai
• Airno
• Shenness
• Arning
• Isseam
• Oshwai

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning, there are countless considerations for a fully realized constructed language, but I hope if you are looking for a place to start, or want something useable without having to delve deeply into conlang development, that this exercise can be a helpful tool for you.

If this helps you out, I’d love to see the results, or hear stories about your efforts! I am working on other tools as well such as my Alien Species Generator, and my Deity Generator! With a lot more such tools to come. So please stay a while, have a look around, leave a comment, and share with your friends, you’d be helping to motivate this work and doing me a service.

I’ll see you next world!

—Charles