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After several months of working on my more visual creative side, I've decided to pick up my novel.

I watched the film 'King Arthur' last night, and subsequently looked it up on Wikipedia. After an hour or so of reading I realised I'd fallen into the same trap I fall into regularly; I'd opened a couple of links from the first page, then another set from these new pages, and so on. I realised that there was such a background of folk-tales that could be changed to fit with my story.
I'm half Irish and half English, so I feel quite strongly about my Celtic/Saxon/Briton/Irish roots. There's little chance that I'll be able to research the entire history of the languages and cuture (I assume a degree or two in anthropology and linguistics would be required to do it properly).

What do you think? My plan at this moment is to sort of condense the folktales and mythology, pick out characters, ideas and stories that fit with my story (regardless of their era) and subtley incorporate them.

Language is another tricky one. Without a degree I'm not sure I'd have the patience at this present time to sit down and design a language for my world. I'm considering taking words from one or several of the early Irish and English languages and changing them slightly, giving them all similar characterisitics and sounds. I could even split my world into areas and designate an early Irish/English language to each area. The problem here is the words I use being to similar to the original language. I don't think it would be too hard to sort out a couple of language-rules (gender-based nouns, end certain words or types of words in certain vowels, etc) to make each language seem constant.


What are your thoughts? Obviously I don't plan to have many full sentences spoken in other languages; usually only names would be translated into anything other than English, although inscriptions and/or poems included in the novel might seem more 'authentic' to the world if they were in other languages.

It really depends on the story you're trying to tell as to the exact path with respect to culture, characters and languages.

Do remember that much of your research and background will not grace the pages of your novel. It will be support and allow you to add depth and consistency.

Unless you're writing historical fiction, the exact context for the characters, language, myths and actions being accurate/precise are not as important. But do remember that playing too loose with some of the mythological characters and such, not because it fits the novel and storyline, but more because of lack of research and preparation can bleed through and annoy, if not turn off, readers.

R-Tech

Languages: I'm not really sure about the exact structure of the celtic languages, but you might pick up some "proto-celtic" vocabulary and grammar and base your own language on that. Mix some ideas from other celtic languages, Breton for example has some very interesting angles to view things. If you write it like Welsh, it is exotic enough without being unreadable. After all, you are not planning to write the whole book in a made up language, I hope.
It is a lot more different from our English than the Saxon language, so I wouldn't use that

As for the mythology: There isn't one. There are a lot. Usually, each region has its own version of a myth. So you can do your own version, just use the detailed ingredients you like on the frame of the story of the myth.

I read the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in jr. high school (I'm now 50 years old). I tried to read "Dune" in jr. high but was too overwhelmed with the language and culture/politics.

In both cases, the minute alternate languages appeared I glossed over them.

Can readers even tell if a langue is "accurate"? Won't most readers treat them as they would a picture and "look at it" and then go on?

You could have a character say, "Cluppnus, gulich."

So what if you just made up the words? Are readers that smart?

Isn't it true that J.K. Rowling made EVERYTHING up? She did no research when she wrote "Harry Potter." All those spell names are dredged from thin air.

Just my two trucglits (oh, "trucglits" means "cents" on planet Uurtrgog. See? Is it possible for readers to verify this?)

The woman has an academic degree in French, if I recall correctly. All spellnames are, as far as I can remember, Latin, or based on it, which is only a tad away from French (and I'm pretty sure Rowling knows some Latin after all, because it is a fundamental thing to French). So no thin air there.