My Love-Hate Relationship with Conlangs

Conlangs (constructed languages) are a mainstay of sci-fi and fantasy entertainment. The earliest conlanger most people (including me) have heard of is Ludwik Lazarus Zamenhof, the Polish doctor who gave Esperanto to the world in 1887. While not a sci-fi or fantasy author, he does seem to have believed some pretty fantastic things. Such as the utopian idea that having a language in common would keep humans from wanting to kill each other.

The most famous language inventor of all time is J. R. R. Tolkien, the creator of not only Bilbo, Frodo, and Gandalf, but also of Quenya and other languages. In fact, Tolkien himself has said that his first love was the languages he was creating. The stories were just excuses to use his inventions, to give them a place to live. (It was Tolkien's invented languages and words—so plausible, so real-sounding—that inspired and helped sustain my interest in linguistics when I was a teenager.)

I can't deny there's something inescapably silly about all the constructed languages littering the landscapes of fantasy and sci-fi literature and movies. And for every conlang made with care and an eye (and ear) toward believability and aesthetics, there are 730 (probably) that only make you cringe. From what I've seen, most conlangs look shoddy and unrealistic. I just don't buy them. And all that work—all that huffing and puffing—just to dress up some lamebrain costume drama! What a waste of imagination.

What appeals to me about inventing languages is not the idea that language shapes thoughts and that maybe with the "right" language we can mold the "right" thinking, or the hope that speaking this or that language can change the world, or the supposed majesty of fantasy franchises. I'm only in it for the words.

For me, an invented language of words that feel as real, as quintessentially themselves, as the lexicon of any natural language is—for reasons I've tried for a long time to understand—valuable. Such a system feels like a metaphor for language, a concept I just made up (and which I admit to not actually understanding). One thing I love about (natural) languages is their cohesiveness, the way they sound like themselves, the fact that their words all seem to have sprung from a single source, as though they share the same mysterious pedigree. Each one is a variation on one grand theme and has the authenticity that only a history of use can provide.

A conlang that mimics natural languages' suchness—presenting a refined, manageable simulacrum of reality—is as noble an artifact as any other work of art. Especially when you don't drag it through the mud of some epic realm or put it in the mouths of burly swordsmen or monsters from space. It's like a shadowbox or some finely wrought figure, a device that offers a glimpse of the lifelike, that evokes the Fascination of the Miniature. A created something that mirrors life so closely can have the power (somehow) to thrill and impress, beguile and please, even more than the natural. It gives us a way to take in the panorama in one glance, to enjoy a microcosm from our couches. And that's what's so compelling about conlangs, not all the dressing-up and monsters.

Full disclosure: I created the (not very extensive) version of the Sith language (Sith as in Star Wars? Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith?) that appears in Book of Sith (47North, 2012).

I like imagining those fictitious words—those unreal but realistic-enough-to-be-real words—in the mouths of gossips and poets, on billboards and street signs, on the radio and in newspaper headlines. All the places where real languages live. Give me a made-up language like that, as earthy and quirky and ingenious and ordinary as a real language, and I'll be happy.

When I look at a fantasy book—like, if I'm considering checking it out of the library for my son—the first thing I look at is the names of characters and (if there's a map) the countries and kingdoms. So often, the book loses me right there, at the names. I just don't believe that any parents anywhere—in the real world or in any imaginary one—would ever look at their newborn and, overcome with joy and hope, say, "I shall call him Brangbinax!" Sure, I made that example up, but it's no more unrealistic—no more untethered from the real word—than a million fantasy names I've seen before. Another way these books let me down is by diligently refusing to have any kind of consistent aesthetic, as though each name was conjured up by the characters from scratch, which isn't how we unmagic mortals usually do it. (Even novel names feel like they came from someplace. Because they do. We can usually place them within some larger societal scaffolding.) But a book with plausible names—names that just feel right, like they poured from some actual and particular wellspring of cultural genius—scores quick points with me.