Bogged With Language

Is Holly right? Does every culture need their own language and do I have to create it?

Gah, but I am slogging and flailing in development hell right now. Language clinic is driving me nuts with the details. I do not want to become an expert in linguistics and to do what I am supposed to do in this clinic, I have to at least have a good working knowledge. This clinic is not working so good for me. So I decided to do a little cheating..

I worked out a few rudimentary rules and substitutions and will fudge the rest with the help of my online dictionaries for Sanskrit and Turkic. Problem solved for this culture, but that leaves a whole lot of others to worry about. I need a quick and dirty language clinic and I am going to have to manufacture one fast. Some cultures I can just sketch in language ideas. But the three important ones (that would be Iskir, Sundi's yet unnamed people, and the glottal of the Archipelago) I really can't skimp on.

The silver lining is that, as much as I struggle, I am learning some important things about the story. Iskir, for example--sounds like iz + curr--is a language that evolved from an older, archaic version. The Iskirdani are not indigenous to this hemisphere, but migrated long ago from a different continent. Their society was very top heavy and ornate and, well, byzantine. In the process of emigration and the relative shakeup of the new challenges in the new world, a simplified version became tacked on top of the old version. So both simple and complex are mixed up together in horrible ways. The end result is, Iskir is a language that has a zillion ways of saying something without ever coming to the point and being specific. Being short and to the point is considered the very height of rudeness and ensures your lifespan is extremely short. Did I mention they are ruthless politikers? My initial inspiration for them was a people who have two dozen words for betrayel and lack a single word for truth. Now at least I know WHY and have a well thought out foundation.

Cultural framework flows out of this nicely, so at least I will have less to do there. Just have to get a few last details down and then I can move on to my other two important cultures. Archipelago next.

Now if only Thorn will stop waving me off and start *talking* to me. We haven't reached the stage where I threaten to kill him off but we could get there, I totally predict we could, if he doesn't start behaving soon.