Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

[Sriseru]

I've been working on a campaign, but I've encountered something of an obstacle.

I want my aliens to have a somewhat realistic language, as such it won't sound anything like ours. The problem is that I don't know how to pull it off. Especially when it comes to things like names.

 

Do any of you have any suggestions?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

It'll probably include elements that can't be sensed or reproduced by humans without machinery. As such, anything you're able to write down or type up will be inadequate to represent the actual name. You could go the route used in Alien Wars and use additional symbols (! and ') to represent some of these sounds, but even then you won't be able to truly capture the language. Even on Earth, many languages are very difficult to transcribe in non-native writing systems...hence all the arguments about whether it's spelled Usama or Osama (and neither actually being more correct than the other).

 

Short answer: Do whatever looks good to you, and understand that it's only an approximation of the actual alien language.

[austenandrews]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

For sounds, maybe find a related collection of noises and approximate them with speech sounds/letters. Bird calls, mechanical sounds, musical instruments; some collection that you can intuitively relate as a set but are at different angles from normal human speech.

 

Kind depends on the aliens, I suppose, but what if alien "names" don't work like ours? Maybe each alien has a collection of names, each to be used only in its proper context?

[dmjalund]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

they may not have the equivalent of vowels and consonants. Also, vital parts of their speach may be either ultrasonic (particularly true of smaller aliens) or subsonic (more likely true of large aliens)

 

also - the possibility of larger non-verbal components (depending on body language for larger parts of the language inclusing perhaps context)

 

another idea - octopuses can change the color and pattern of their skins at will, which could be a form of communication.

[clsage]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

also - the possibility of larger non-verbal components (depending on body language for larger parts of the language including perhaps context)

 

I'm reminded (sort of obliquely) of the "Hivers" from Classic Traveler. They had a language that was all based on gesture and body movement. To properly communicate with other species they required a high tech set of gadgets: one for them, to convert their gestures into audio, and one for the other party, to convert audio into a simplified video display (akin to semaphore) of the appropriate gesture(s).

 

Long ago, in a SciFi campaign using the "Espionage!" ruleset (this was before either "Danger International" or the "unification of the genres and rules" ) we worked out a sort of "pidgin" artificial language the GM referred to as "Tradespeak". As I recall, it could only be bought at the 8 or less/familiarity level, given that its function was not to engage in lengthy conversations or to discuss advanced matters but simply to buy, sell, etc..... In my as of yet unplayed Star Hero section/alternate of my Team Norfolk universe I have stolen directly from the Stainless Steel Rat novels and plan to use an Esperanto-like language as a "unifying tongue" for most of my interstellar community, the Comsentient Alliance.

 

-Carl-

[Curufea]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

Use any non-Romance language. Chances are your players will have no clue. For added alien-ness change the alphabet to a non-Roman one as well.

[Drhoz]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

Musical notation for chimes and semitones used in the alien tongue. The human larynx is not nearly as versatile as the avian syrinx, for example

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

Also harking back to Traveller, the Alien Modules included special tables for randomly rolling up words in the languages of said aliens - Vargr, Aslan, K'Kree, Droyne, Vilani, Zhodani, etc..

 

If the GM needed a suitable name for someone / something, or to throw in a word in that language at some point, it was just a few minutes work to create a word either randomly or via personal selection.

 

Most followed similar principles. Each language had tables to determine actual word length - might be Consonant-Vowel-Consonant, or vice versa, or considerably longer (VCVCVC?). Then there would be other tables for randomly / non-randomly selecting what each Vowel or Consonant actually was. Worked well, I used them frequently for naming people, places and things when GMing Traveller.

[dmjalund]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

most of these sound like "foreign" languages rather than alien languages - which is fine if your aliens are "race equivalents" like in startrek

[austenandrews]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

It's the standard SF consideration - the more alien you make something, the less intuitively applicable it is to various situations. Where you draw the line depends on how your setting works.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

Depends on the physical nature of your aliens.

 

We have vocal chords, lungs, teeth, lips, and a tongue. Using these in concert we create sounds, which we then refined into languages by the natural progression of etymology. This is why "Hmmmm" is almost a universally understood word

 

Do your aliens have vocal chords? A 2-part jaw? Lips? Tongue?

 

Crickets make their noises by rubbing their legs together. Many animals speak more with pheromones than with sounds.

 

An insectoid race might not use names at all, instead identifying each other solely by pheromones. A reptilian race might not have vocal chords, instead communicating via body language, or changes to the color and pattern of their skin. At best, they would have a rasping language with lots of "ssss" and "hhhh" sounds and clicks.

 

A species with a 4-part Jaw, like say the Predators, would be as incapable of making some of the phonetic sounds humans can make as we would be to reproduce the sounds they make. Probably lots of "schloop" and "oorp" type sounds.

 

A species with no tongue, or a very dry or coarse or thick tongue, would not have nearly the range of sounds available to them as we make.

 

An example - one of the species in my setting is derogatorily referred to as "babblers." Their voices are high pitched, they have no tongue and no real lip structure... so their language is a lot of "bebebe" type sounds. So a typical name for them would be something like Be'abep'ha.

[薔薇語]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

kraven has covered most of the initial important points. What is the biology of the race in question? That alone determines most everything about what is possible. Unless you really want to invest a lot of time and energy into developing a truly non-human language that still counts as language and not just simple communication, then I would stick with human traits. Once you accept Human phonetics as a base, then you can make a language very foreign to other humans by choosing some very obscure language as a baseline for the phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax. You'd just need to generate a relevant lexicon. This is still a lot of work, though.

 

Best of Luck,

 

La Rose.

[Chimera 12]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

While a lot of good points have been brought up above...if this is for a campaign (rather than, say, a novel or such), sticking to sounds that the presumably human GM can produce in a reasonably painless fashion might be wise.

 

Just saying.

[dmjalund]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

the GM really only has to mimic the sound the alien makes (and the synthetic translation) after all the players (rather than the PCs) are probably not going to want to learn it

[Chimera 12]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

Some further thoughts: As far as alien names at least go, humans would probably end up sorting them into three distinct groups.

 

Pronouncable: These you do your best to use as is.

 

Not pronouncable, but translatable: Use your best available translation to refer to the alien in question. If the alien's real name is some impossible cadence beyond the unaided human hearing range but translates roughly to "Speaker-to-Peppermints", that'll do.

 

Neither pronouncable nor translatable: These aliens will just have to live with nicknames that humans can handle. If they're lucky, we'll let them choose their own.

 

Recognizing which case currently applies and handling it appropriately is going to be another nice challenge for mechanical translation devices, of course.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

And again sometimes just a description of it is fine. I don't "act" very well. I can come up with some basic dialog, and even occasionally pull off an accent, but by and large my "role play" is more a description of what is being said than it is flowing dialog. Especially alien or foreign languages - I might put some thought into what they sound like, but not into specific phonetics or anything. At best I'll come up with a word or phrase that the players keep hearing, or names for important characters.

[Sriseru]

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language

 

Okay, thanks to everyone for the various ideas.