Languages and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

In order to communicate, we first have to know the language being used and with the number of those in world, it isn’t always easy.

I’m reminded of an incident years ago with my husband. He was watching his World War II movie “The Dirty Dozen” and at one point he remembered that I had taken one year of French in college, so he turned to me and asked me what the staff at the hotel were saying in those final scenes. I told him I only remembered a little bit, but that I’d try, so he backed the video up just a little and I started translating, what I could of it, because some of what they said was so garbled I couldn’t pick out any words, then one lady said two very clear and distinct words. I turned to Tom and said, “I’m not translating that.”

“Why? Because you don’t know it?”

“No. Because she just took the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Oh.”

The translation was, “My blank!” Fill in that word yourself.

Another time we were watching “Father Goose” which has three characters who speak French, two of those don’t speak any English. And of course, Tom asked me to translate; half the time I didn’t get what they said because they said it too fast. Though the funniest scene is when Leslie Caron’s character takes down a message for Cary Grant’s character in French, so of course, Grant (i.e. Father Goose) asks her to translate, which she does, but she is intentionally stalling for time, so she asks him how to say parachute in English. Makes me laugh every time.

Language is important. It helps get across ideas and information to other people. Language is the building block of writing. But what do you do when what you’re writing is in a language other than your native tongue?

I occasionally use a bit of French in my writing, not a string of words, and nothing that needs translated, just a word here or there that is actually commonly used in America. The one I use most often is fiancée, but hey, I mostly write romance. I’ve also used touché a time or two and even en masse. That’s easy; I know the words, and they are well known; I don’t have to translate them. Then again, French does exist. It is a real language.

This last week Konnie and I have been dealing with languages that don’t exist except in our sci-fi worlds. For me, my hero speaks the heroine’s native tongue quite well, but the heroine doesn’t speak his native tongue all that well, and I have both of them switching back and forth between the languages to communicate. Only, there isn’t two languages, just the names of those languages, and a few made up words.

With Konnie, there are a lot more languages, and some social rules about when you can use which one. She has characters switching what tongue they are speaking probably more than I have mine switching. And she was complaining the other day about how hard it was. I couldn’t help but point out she was one that made up the rules.

And we’ve both made up some words. After all we need the name of the language in order to tell the reader what language they are using. But I’ve made up a few words which are in my heroine’s native tongue. And I’m talking about words other than the ones I made up for devices and such in my made-up world.

I’ve another story where I confined certain words to a specific meaning. The most notable was the word join. In that novel join only refers to intimate relations (including a simple kiss) between and a male and a female. The people in my story don’t use that word to mean anything else. Which made for fun scene when my heroine, who isn’t one of that group, uses join, and she wasn’t talking about intimate relations.

It really got the hero’s heartrate going. 😊

But all this brings up the question what is the best way to deal with foreign languages in a story?

And what is the best way to deal with made up languages in a story?

Do you ever make up words? Or do you ever make up rules for the society in your story about the use of certain words, or like the Konnie did, the use of language?

Happy writing everyone! 😊