March 2023
Building the Language of Your World
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: 1.38;"><span style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">From Elvish to Dothraki, from Newspeak to Nadsat, from Valley English to U’ivu*, constructed languages (“conlangs”) add depth, plausibility, and substance to the world of a story.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: 1.38;"><span style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: 1.38;"><span style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">But you don’t have to go full-on Tolkien to imbue your writing with made-up language. With a small conlang of your own, you can give your characters unique speech traits, create perfect names for people and places, or subtly evoke abstract ideas. Writers wishing to do more can invent inscriptions for an ancient artifact, create sets of speculative slang terms, or even write full-scale dialogue in a language that has never existed. </span></p>
Lecture replays are available after the free trial ends. To end your trial early, email brooke@inkedvoices.com .
About Crandall Hicks
Crandall Hicks has been inventing his own languages since he was a teenager. Today, he holds a doctorate in linguistics from the University of North Carolina. His academic work runs a long gauntlet, including rhyming schemes in hip-hop, code-switching among Millennials from India, linguistic features of indigenous North America, whistle speech, language taboos, and the social justice of language. He lives with his family in the Twin Cities area, where he teaches linguistics and writes fiction in his free time.