understand it. But you can invent some new words, and it may be necessary
to do this anyway to allude to concepts which only exist in this new world.
Alternatively, a small number of passages may be written in a new language,
allowing most of the narrative to occur in standard language.
Some of the ways in which you might form a new language are:
- Make up new words to create or allude to new concepts. In The Left Hand
of Darkness , Ursula LeGuin (1981) constructs the word ‘shifgrethor’ for
a concept which is very important on the planet Winter and seems
to be closely related to the idea of honour. Similarly, the novel The
Wanderground (Gearhart 1979) uses new words, such as ‘listenspread’,
to describe objects which do not exist in our world (the listenspread is
a device for communicating). - Use words from different or early forms of English or from other languages.
Riddley Walker is set in a post-nuclear holocaust England which has
regressed to the iron age. British novelist, Russell Hoban, partly uses
words and spellings which suggest England’s Anglo-Saxon heritage,
and have become lost from the language. But he also constructs words
which create a rich sense of a bygone language and era. The language is
a mix of the oral and written: sometimes words are spelt the way they
sound. Here is a sample:
Example 7.6
On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld
boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how
there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking
to see non agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that
when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit
poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef
and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the
spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy.
I said, ‘Your tern now my tern later.’ The other spears gone in then
and he wer dead and the steam coming up off him in the rain and
we all yelt, ‘Offert!’From Riddley Walker (Hoban 1982, p. 1)You can create a futuristic language by:
- creating a language which is a hybrid of different languages and varying
kinds of language use - adding a prefix or a suffix to a pre-existent word
- slightly changing pre-existent words or putting them to a different usage.
Postmodern f(r)ictions 151