Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Earlier, the mainstream of ‘fantasy genre’ had always been literature. Since 1950s, a developing segment of the fantasy work has taken the form of movies, television shows, games, music, art work, and other media.
Stories, such as mysterious magic, supernatural, and horrible monsters had survived in the oral forms, before the advent of written literature. Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ is associated with the description of ‘fantasy work’ with adventures, magic, gods, heroes, and monsters. Fantasy literature is a kind of distinct in Victorian times, with the authors like William Morris, Lord Dunsany, and George MacDonald.
Fantasy literature was made popular by ‘J. R. R. Tolkien’ with his hugely successful books ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Tolkien was largely inspired by an ancient body of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ mythology, mostly Beowulf and modern works, like ‘The Worm Ouroboros’ by ‘E. R. Eddison’, and it was after his work that the genre began to receive the signature, “fantasy”. A close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien , ‘C. S. Lewis’, was the author of the book ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, an English professor, he is also involved with similar subjects related to popularizing fantasy as genre. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create ‘fantasy language’.
Instructions
- Choose what words you want, and how many of them you want. Decide whether you want to build an entire language or just the words you need to add to your story. Building an entire language that can be spoken, such as ‘Elvish’ or ‘Klingon’, will be very complicated and very time consuming. ‘Elvish’ was a dream project for J. R. R. Tolkien. Most authors build only the words they require for their stories.
- Research the various languages, and learn the structure of words, grammar and language rules. It will allow you to form a flow and grammar in the fantasy language.
- Pick your syntax and the ’sound theme’ of the words, if you have learnt the grammar and pronunciations of that specific language usage. You will have to attach this to the language, unless you want to go through the difficulty of forming dialects of the language.
- Choose your ‘vowels’ and what pronunciation they should have. Research the different manners in which vowels can be marked in various languages, and select the way that sounds best to you.
- Create a worksheet or any kind of graph to keep track of the words you made. Now you can start forming words and choosing their meanings. Keep doing this until you select all the words which you require for your story.
- Name your fantasy language, when you have come up with the words you wanted. Confirm that the name sounds similar to the words which you have picked. Now you can simply insert the words or language as required for your story.
Tips and Warnings
- If you have the time or the proclivity, you must play around with forming words or runes for the language. Then you can determine how many typescripts the language has and how they generally interpret to the English alphabet. This can help to insert some practicality into the language, because every alien or fantasy languages would not have 26 typescripts. It would be best, if you mention the history of your language
- Carefully use this language in your story or writing. Excessive use of an unknown language can be disturbing for readers. Try to keep the pronunciation of your language familiar.
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