“Aldifneif’sfds isazdfs,” said the Elf.

… or a wee ramble on languages.

At the moment, I’m writing in the fantasy genre. I also love languages and find them absolutely fascinating to study – but to make up one of my own? Without randomly bashing at the keyboard?

Yikes!

Um, no. No, I can’t.

My characters talk in plain ol’English. However, this doesn’t stop me having a little fun with the idea that these characters aren’t speaking/writing/reading in English …

Behind her, over shadowing the Halli lands, were the great peaks of the Mal a’La. There is a controversy amidst the scribes of the Great Country as to whether the translation of Mal a’La is “the mountains which are most steep” or “the Mountains of Steepness”. Either way, t’is no great matter, a Halli would merely shrug his shoulders – for him, they were mountains and they were steep: the Mal a’La.

A Halli was not one to dabble in such convoluted matters. The girl, for example, was named B’aa. The Great Country scribes would have, should they have learned of her name, agonized over whether the name meant “the most sufficient” or “that which is full of sufficiency”.

They would never have dreamt that her father was a shepherd and her mother, full with child, had been walking with her husband amidst the flock when the child had come. The father had  – untroubled by a lack of inspiration – named his child after the noise which encircled her when she first met the world – B’aa.

I don’t have the ability to make up a language but I can still give the impression that English isn’t their mother tongue.

OR … I could bypass all the verbs and adjectives and grammar and a thousand other Important Things and write a language with beautiful simplicity – like this:

Simples!

“Hiflsfjaldsij,” said I (that’s Nesskingsleyian for “Thank you for reading this post. May you be blessed with noodles, flying pigs and a flat screen tel-” er … on second thoughts … I think I’m mistranslating it).

Oh! I have a question … you see that splendid comic up there – I found it on Pinterest … however what I would like to know if it’s perfectly fine to take a pin off-site and use it in a blog post? I’m unsure and if anyone could help me on this it would be gratefully appreciated.