You say tomato, I say bagayi

In the comments in the last post I felt somewhat chided by the notion that if you want to get serious about thinking about fantasy languages you are some sort of rabid elitist who wants to foist incomprehensible and unpronounceable gibberish on the unwary. I don't agree with this at all: it's generally a good thing within reason to think things through and I'm not sure why words should be any different.

A long time ago I wrote a post about the Yellow City Trade Tongue. (You may also recognise this from one of the Appendices to Yoon-Suin.) The basic idea behind this language is that it is a kind of simple lingua franca (like the Chinook Jargon or Tok Pisin) to allow slug-men and humans to communicate with each other. Since slug-men are the rulers of the Yellow City, the language primarily suits them; it does not recognise gender (because slug-men have both sexes) and it is designed to be pronounced by a mouth that does not have teeth or much of a palate, and very rubbery lips.

You can read about my conclusions as to how the language would operate in the previous post. The main thing is that the number of sounds or syllables available for use is fairly clearly defined, and is as follows:

pa	ba	qa	ga	fa	ya	xa	wa	la	ha
pi	bi	qi	gi	fi	yi	xi	wi	li	hi
pu	bu	qu	gu	fu	yu	xu	wu	lu	hu
pe	be	qe	ge	fe	ye	xe	we	le	he
po	bo	qo	go	fo	yo	xo	wo	lo	ho
pá	bá	qá	gá	fá	yá	xá	wá	lá	há
pí	bí	qí	gí	fí	yí	xí	wí	lí	hí
pú	bú	qú	gú	fú	yú	xú	wú	lú	hú
pé	bé	qé	gé	fé	yé	xé	wé	lé	hé
pó	bó	qó	gó	fó	yó	xó	wó	ló	hó

Most vowels are as they are in Spanish and consonant sounds are largely as they would sound in English; "f" has to be pronounced very lightly, just using the lips (no teeth); "x" is like the Spanish "j" or Scottish "ch" as in "loch"; "q" is like a "k". The only difficult one is "w" but just assume that is pronounced the normal English way for the sake of argument. Elongated vowels do not mutate (so "é" is an elongated "e" sound - pronounced like the English air rather than English feed). There is strict vowel harmony, so all vowels in a word are either all normal or all elongated. 

So you can see that once you have the sounds created you can very easily come up with whatever noun you want and it will sound roughly consistent. Tomato? That's a bagayi. Painting? That's a híxá. A giant squid? Yá means "big" and "squid" is bufala, so "giant squid" becomes yabufala (vowel harmony being enforced). You don't particularly need to use the Yellow City Trade Tongue words for "tomato" or "painting" in a game, but you get the point - you can create all sorts of consistent-seeming proper nouns with this sort of approach, no bother. You can also throw in weird sounding words to amuse and intrigue the players - isn't it more interesting and atmospheric if they are warned about the presence of a "yabufala" in the lagoon over there rather than a "giant squid"? What's a yabufala? Hope it's not dangerous! 

Try it - it isn't difficult. Get hold of a phonetic alphabet with sounds (like this one), choose about a dozen or so consonants and a few vowels, and then you have the soundscape of a made-up language. Think of a way of transcribing the sounds if necessary. (In the Yellow City Trade Tongue, the IPA symbols p, b, q, g, ɸ, ʝ, χ,ɰ, l, and h are transliterated into p, b, k, g, f, y, x, w, l and h.) Then think about who is speaking the language and what that might imply. Hey presto! Consistent-sounding proper nouns.