Worldbuilding 101
By: Mare aka Sunandshadow
Contents:
Building Culture and Sociobiology
Building Language
Building Ecology (Monsters)
Building Planetary Systems and
Alternatives
Building Language
To create ignored assumptions and flesh out your culture in other ways, it may be necessary to invent some vocabulary. There are many acceptable ways to create a new English word:
Foreign Borrowing “taco”
Standard use is if your culture is or is descended from a real culture other than the reader’s. Words created in other ways, especially arbitrary coinages portrayed as words of an alien language, may pretend to be this kind. E.g. many Russian words are used in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010, Odyssey II, because one of the astronauts is Russian. In this book the author also repeatedly portmanteaus one Russian word and one English word to get a “Russlish” word.
Evolved Coinage “catch-22”
This is a neat thing to find in a book- a word the reader already knows whose meaning has been overloaded (made more specific and complex, or more sweeping and general). For example, in Nancy Kress’ Brainrose the phrase “purple martins flying”, while meaningless in reality, is given all sorts of catastrophic overtones by the characters in the book.
Combination/Portmanteau “feminazis”
Very standard way to make all sorts of new words.
Prefixes/Suffixes “microprocessor”
Ditto.
Acronyms “FUBAR”
These aren’t very useful because it’s hard to think of ones that are both funny and relevant.
Part of Speech Migration “to eyeball something”
This is done in English every day. Making your culture do this consistently can say interesting things about how your culture looks at the world.
Named for a Person “Halley’s Comet”
Nothing spells narcissism like a planet named after oneself. Some authors have been known to give their names to their main characters or inventions in their stories.
Abbreviation “fax” from “facsimilie”
Usually only useful when writing about the future of a real culture. These can be used as futuristic street slang or technical jargon, less often as a political term
Figurative Language “eyeballs”=“viewers”
Same uses as above, but suitable for any culture.
Onomatapoeia “coo”, “chirp”
Ditto.
Arbitrary Coinage “hobbit”, “Jabberwocky”
There’s a whole art/science to doing this, but if you’re generating a small set of words you should do ok if you follow these general guidelines:
· Words that are supposed to be related should sound similar.
· Sets of words that are supposed to be from different sources should each have a distinct sound (e.g. one might be full of ‘e’s and ‘s’s, and the other might feature lots of ‘k’s and ‘th’s).
· For clarity and ease of remembering, limit these words to three syllables or fewer, especially for names.
· Too many new words and it’ll all be Greek to your audience.
· A new word should be used at least three times in a context from which it’s meaning can be interpreted before you expect the reader to know it.
· K.I.S.S.! If there’s already a good English word for something, use it unless the alien term is essential to the plot or a joke.
While it’s a neat idea to write a book in ‘alien’, and the finished object would make an interesting coffee table piece, you’ll make more money if you write it in English and put a note in the introduction saying, “Translated from the original ‘alien’.” However, there are situations where having an alien language characters can speak and write in can really add richness to your world.
Every one of us is, of necessity, a student of language. But some people find language such an intriguing toy that they build one of their own. Languages created for different purposes have different characteristics. One subset of created languages is a model language, a language never intended to be well-developed enough for anyone to conduct their daily business in it. Model languages are only useful if the language’s purpose is to encode personal writings or to flesh out a fictional society. Fully created languages may take the form of a logical language or loglan, built to contain certain concepts but not others, and this shapes the way native speakers of this language speak. The most successful variant of a loglan is the Dewey Decimal System, which attempts to organize all of human knowledge into a linear structure. Regularizing a language means eliminating all irregular conjugations, declensions, gender assignments, and preposition uses, among other things. (E.g. regularized English would have all past-tense verbs ending in –ed: swinged, ringed, swimmed, cutted, etc.) Lingua francas are almost always regularized, while model languages, loglans, and most other created languages may be either regularized or created to appear naturally irregular, depending on their crafter’s whim. Created languages can also be either a priori (made out of whole cloth) or a posteriori (built on (an) existing language(s)).
The following steps are necessary to the creation of a full language:
· Decide on the sounds of the language
· Create the lexicon
· Create the grammar
· Design an alphabet
· Translate the desired text (Rosenfelder, p. 1)
In designing the phonology of your artificial language you have several choices:
· Choose phonemes that you are most familiar with.
· Choose phonemes that appeal to you aesthetically.
· Choose phonemes to maximize your phonemic inventory. (This requires a chart and pronunciation tape of the international phonetic alphabet. The tape is available at: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/cassette.htm .)
· Choose phonemes that most people in the world already know or can learn to pronounce easily.
· Choose phonemes based on morphological, syntactic, semantic or other requirements. (This is if you want to get complicated and have 2 or 3 versions of some phoneme type because the language’s philosophy calls for this type of symmetry, or have the number of phonemes of each type fit some kind of numerology system.)
Now that you have your phonemes, you need to build syllables out of them. The syllable structure of every language on Earth is included in the formula: {C}V{V}{C} where {} indicates zero or more of the enclosed item, C indicates a consonant, and V indicates a vowel or semivowel. All existing languages limit this structure in some way to prevent very-hard-to-pronounce syllables. A shareware program is available from www.langmaker.com to generate acceptable syllables and track the pieces of lexicon the linguistic craftsman creates.
This program also comes with a file of dictionary entries of 3,000 core terms to help you create your lexicon. Creating a lexicon is accomplished by assigning the acceptable syllables generated in the previous stage to these core terms. This is a much more complicated process if you are creating a loglan than if you are creating a naturalistically random language. On the other hand, a loglan’s grammar is much easier to create than that of a naturalistic language. Either way, it helps if before this step you’ve earmarked any phonemes you want to use as inflectives; that is, if you want your language to inflect for person, tense, number, or anything else.
Now you need some grammar rules. Do you want any inflectives? Does your language use articles? Pronouns? Maybe any word in your language can be used interchangeably as any part of speech? If you’re creating a naturalistic language you also need to decide what’s going to be an exception to the rules, and how this is going to be an exception. All the decisions you make need to be documented, or you’re going to forget them.
The remaining two steps are simple by comparison. If you want a non-roman alphabet to write in, make one up – if you want a cursive version of this, make up a modified set of letters for that. A tip: practice drawing each letter, and if it’s too annoying to draw, simplify it or make up a new one. Finally, compose whatever you want to say in English, then translate it phonetically into your language (making up more lexical entries as needed), then write that with your new alphabet. Hurray, you’ve created your own language! Have fun with it.
For lots more information, please see:
The Language Construction Kit http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
Invent Your Own Language http://www.langmaker.com/
Language Appendix: Two examples of standardized English
Language Appendix: Two examples of standardizing English
A PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF ENGLISH SPELLING
For example, in year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c,y and x -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais ch,sh, and th rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (Author unknown)
MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM
Because we are still bearing some of the scars of our brief skirmish with II-B English, it is natural that we should be enchanted by Mr. George Bernard Shaw''s current campaign for a simplified alphabet.
Obviously, as Mr. Shaw points out, English spelling is in much need of a general overhauling and streamlining. However, our own resistance to any changes requiring a large expenditure of mental effort in the near future would cause us to view with some apprehension the possibility of some day receiving a morning paper printed in - to us - Greek.
Our own plan would achieve the same end as the legislation proposed by Mr. Shaw, but in a much less shocking manner, as it consists of merely an acceleration of the normal process by which the language is continually modernized.
As a catalytic agent, we would propose that a National Easy Language Week be proclaimed, which the President would inaugurate, outlining some short cut to concentrate during the week, and to be adopted during the ensuing year. All school children would be given a holiday, the lost time being the equivalent of that gained by the spelling short cut.
In 1946, for example, we would urge the elimination of the soft "c", for which we would substitute "s". Sertainly, such an improvement would be selebrated in all sivic-minded sircles as being suffisiently worth the trouble, and students in all sities in the land would be reseptive toward any change eliminating the nesessity of learning the differense between the two letters.
In 1947, sinse only the hard "c" would be left, it would be possible to substitute "k" for it, both letters being pronounsed identikally. Imagine how greatly only two years of this prosess would klarify the konfusion in the minds of students. Already we would have eliminated an entire letter from the alphabet. Typewriters and linotypes kould all be built with one less letter, and all the manpower and materials previously devoted to making "c''s" kould be turned toward raising the national standard of living.
In the fase of so many notable improvements, it is easy to foresee that by 1948, "National Easy Language Week" would be a pronounsed sukses. All skhool tshildren would be looking forward with konsiderable exsitement to the holiday, and in a blaze of national publisity it would be announsed that the double konsonant "ph" no longer existed, and that the sound would henseforth be written with "f" in all words. This would make sutsh words as "fonograf" twenty persent shorter in print.
By 1949, publik interest in a fonetik alfabet kan be expekted to have inkreased to the point where a more radikal step forward kan be taken without fear of undue kritisism We would therefore urge the elimination at that time of al unesesary double leters, whitsh, although quite harmles, have always ben a nuisanse in the language and a desided deterent to akurate speling. Try it yourself in the next leter you write, and se if both writing and reading are not fasilitated.
With so mutsh progrs already made, it might be posible in 1950 to delve further into the posibilities of fonetik speling. After due konsideration of the reseption aforded the previous steps, it should be expedient by this time to spel al difthongs fonetikaly. Most students do not realize that the long "i" and "y," as in "time" and "by," are aktualy the difthong "ai," as it is writen in "aisle," and that the long "a" in "fate" is in reality the difthong "ei" as in "rein". Although perhaps not imediately aparent, the seiving in taime and efort wil be tremendous when we leiter elimineite the sailent "e," as meide posible bai this last tsheinge.
For, as is wel known, the horible mes of "e''s" apearing in our writen language is kaused prinsipaly bai the present nesesity of indekeiting whether a vowel is long or short. Therefore, in 1951 we kould simply elimineite al sailent "e''s" and kontinu to read and wrait merily along as though we wer in an atomik ag of edukation.
In 1951 we would urg a greit step forward. Sins bai this taim it would hav ben four years sins anywun had usd the leter "c", we would sugest that the "National Easy Languag Wek" for 1951 be devoted to substitution of "c" for "Th". To be sur it would be som taim befor peopl would bekom akustomd to reading ceir newspapers and buks wic sutsh sentenses in cem as "Ceodor caught he had cre cousand cistls crust crough ce cik of his cumb."
In ce seim maner, bai meiking eatsh leter hav its own sound and cat sound only, we kould shorten ce languag stil mor. In 1952 we would eliminait ce "y"; cen in 1953 we kould us ce leter to indekeit ce "sh" sound, cerbai klarifaiing words laik yugar and yur, as wel as redusing bai wun mor leter al words laik "yut," "yore," and so forc. Cink, cen, of al ce benefits to be geined bai ce distinktion whitsh wil cen be meid between words laik:
ocean now writen oyean
machine " " mayin
racial " " reyial
Al sutsh divers weis of wraiting wun sound would no longer exist, and whenever wun keim akros a "y" sound he would know exaktli what to wrait.
Kontinuing cis proses, ier after ier, we would eventuali hav a reali sensibl writen langug. By 1975, wi ventyur tu sei, cer wud bi no mor uv ces teribli trublsum difikultis, wic no tu leters usd to indikeit ce seim nois, and laikwais no tui noises riten wic ce seim leter. Even Mr. Yaw, wi beliv, wud be hapi in ce nog cat his drims fainali keim tru.
Dolton Edwards
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Worldbuilding 101
Author
I''m writing an article for gamedev writers titled "Worldbuilding 101". Here''s the table of contents and the first completed section. Please tell me if I forgot anything or if I need to define any words or if you disagree with anything I said.
Worldbuilding 101
By: Mare aka Sunandshadow
Contents:
Building Culture and Sociobiology
Building Language
Building Ecology (Monsters)
Building Planetary Systems and
Alternatives
Building Language
To create ignored assumptions and flesh out your culture in other ways, it may be necessary to invent some vocabulary. There are many acceptable ways to create a new English word:
Foreign Borrowing “taco”
Standard use is if your culture is or is descended from a real culture other than the reader’s. Words created in other ways, especially arbitrary coinages portrayed as words of an alien language, may pretend to be this kind. E.g. many Russian words are used in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010, Odyssey II, because one of the astronauts is Russian. In this book the author also repeatedly portmanteaus one Russian word and one English word to get a “Russlish” word.
Evolved Coinage “catch-22”
This is a neat thing to find in a book- a word the reader already knows whose meaning has been overloaded (made more specific and complex, or more sweeping and general). For example, in Nancy Kress’ Brainrose the phrase “purple martins flying”, while meaningless in reality, is given all sorts of catastrophic overtones by the characters in the book.
Combination/Portmanteau “feminazis”
Very standard way to make all sorts of new words.
Prefixes/Suffixes “microprocessor”
Ditto.
Acronyms “FUBAR”
These aren’t very useful because it’s hard to think of ones that are both funny and relevant.
Part of Speech Migration “to eyeball something”
This is done in English every day. Making your culture do this consistently can say interesting things about how your culture looks at the world.
Named for a Person “Halley’s Comet”
Nothing spells narcissism like a planet named after oneself. Some authors have been known to give their names to their main characters or inventions in their stories.
Abbreviation “fax” from “facsimilie”
Usually only useful when writing about the future of a real culture. These can be used as futuristic street slang or technical jargon, less often as a political term
Figurative Language “eyeballs”=“viewers”
Same uses as above, but suitable for any culture.
Onomatapoeia “coo”, “chirp”
Ditto.
Arbitrary Coinage “hobbit”, “Jabberwocky”
There’s a whole art/science to doing this, but if you’re generating a small set of words you should do ok if you follow these general guidelines:
· Words that are supposed to be related should sound similar.
· Sets of words that are supposed to be from different sources should each have a distinct sound (e.g. one might be full of ‘e’s and ‘s’s, and the other might feature lots of ‘k’s and ‘th’s).
· For clarity and ease of remembering, limit these words to three syllables or fewer, especially for names.
· Too many new words and it’ll all be Greek to your audience.
· A new word should be used at least three times in a context from which it’s meaning can be interpreted before you expect the reader to know it.
· K.I.S.S.! If there’s already a good English word for something, use it unless the alien term is essential to the plot or a joke.
While it’s a neat idea to write a book in ‘alien’, and the finished object would make an interesting coffee table piece, you’ll make more money if you write it in English and put a note in the introduction saying, “Translated from the original ‘alien’.” However, there are situations where having an alien language characters can speak and write in can really add richness to your world.
Every one of us is, of necessity, a student of language. But some people find language such an intriguing toy that they build one of their own. Languages created for different purposes have different characteristics. One subset of created languages is a model language, a language never intended to be well-developed enough for anyone to conduct their daily business in it. Model languages are only useful if the language’s purpose is to encode personal writings or to flesh out a fictional society. Fully created languages may take the form of a logical language or loglan, built to contain certain concepts but not others, and this shapes the way native speakers of this language speak. The most successful variant of a loglan is the Dewey Decimal System, which attempts to organize all of human knowledge into a linear structure. Regularizing a language means eliminating all irregular conjugations, declensions, gender assignments, and preposition uses, among other things. (E.g. regularized English would have all past-tense verbs ending in –ed: swinged, ringed, swimmed, cutted, etc.) Lingua francas are almost always regularized, while model languages, loglans, and most other created languages may be either regularized or created to appear naturally irregular, depending on their crafter’s whim. Created languages can also be either a priori (made out of whole cloth) or a posteriori (built on (an) existing language(s)).
The following steps are necessary to the creation of a full language:
· Decide on the sounds of the language
· Create the lexicon
· Create the grammar
· Design an alphabet
· Translate the desired text (Rosenfelder, p. 1)
In designing the phonology of your artificial language you have several choices:
· Choose phonemes that you are most familiar with.
· Choose phonemes that appeal to you aesthetically.
· Choose phonemes to maximize your phonemic inventory. (This requires a chart and pronunciation tape of the international phonetic alphabet. The tape is available at: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/cassette.htm .)
· Choose phonemes that most people in the world already know or can learn to pronounce easily.
· Choose phonemes based on morphological, syntactic, semantic or other requirements. (This is if you want to get complicated and have 2 or 3 versions of some phoneme type because the language’s philosophy calls for this type of symmetry, or have the number of phonemes of each type fit some kind of numerology system.)
Now that you have your phonemes, you need to build syllables out of them. The syllable structure of every language on Earth is included in the formula: {C}V{V}{C} where {} indicates zero or more of the enclosed item, C indicates a consonant, and V indicates a vowel or semivowel. All existing languages limit this structure in some way to prevent very-hard-to-pronounce syllables. A shareware program is available from www.langmaker.com to generate acceptable syllables and track the pieces of lexicon the linguistic craftsman creates.
This program also comes with a file of dictionary entries of 3,000 core terms to help you create your lexicon. Creating a lexicon is accomplished by assigning the acceptable syllables generated in the previous stage to these core terms. This is a much more complicated process if you are creating a loglan than if you are creating a naturalistically random language. On the other hand, a loglan’s grammar is much easier to create than that of a naturalistic language. Either way, it helps if before this step you’ve earmarked any phonemes you want to use as inflectives; that is, if you want your language to inflect for person, tense, number, or anything else.
Now you need some grammar rules. Do you want any inflectives? Does your language use articles? Pronouns? Maybe any word in your language can be used interchangeably as any part of speech? If you’re creating a naturalistic language you also need to decide what’s going to be an exception to the rules, and how this is going to be an exception. All the decisions you make need to be documented, or you’re going to forget them.
The remaining two steps are simple by comparison. If you want a non-roman alphabet to write in, make one up – if you want a cursive version of this, make up a modified set of letters for that. A tip: practice drawing each letter, and if it’s too annoying to draw, simplify it or make up a new one. Finally, compose whatever you want to say in English, then translate it phonetically into your language (making up more lexical entries as needed), then write that with your new alphabet. Hurray, you’ve created your own language! Have fun with it.
For lots more information, please see:
The Language Construction Kit http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
Invent Your Own Language http://www.langmaker.com/
Language Appendix: Two examples of standardized English
Language Appendix: Two examples of standardizing English
A PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF ENGLISH SPELLING
For example, in year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c,y and x -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais ch,sh, and th rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (Author unknown)
MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM
Because we are still bearing some of the scars of our brief skirmish with II-B English, it is natural that we should be enchanted by Mr. George Bernard Shaw''s current campaign for a simplified alphabet.
Obviously, as Mr. Shaw points out, English spelling is in much need of a general overhauling and streamlining. However, our own resistance to any changes requiring a large expenditure of mental effort in the near future would cause us to view with some apprehension the possibility of some day receiving a morning paper printed in - to us - Greek.
Our own plan would achieve the same end as the legislation proposed by Mr. Shaw, but in a much less shocking manner, as it consists of merely an acceleration of the normal process by which the language is continually modernized.
As a catalytic agent, we would propose that a National Easy Language Week be proclaimed, which the President would inaugurate, outlining some short cut to concentrate during the week, and to be adopted during the ensuing year. All school children would be given a holiday, the lost time being the equivalent of that gained by the spelling short cut.
In 1946, for example, we would urge the elimination of the soft "c", for which we would substitute "s". Sertainly, such an improvement would be selebrated in all sivic-minded sircles as being suffisiently worth the trouble, and students in all sities in the land would be reseptive toward any change eliminating the nesessity of learning the differense between the two letters.
In 1947, sinse only the hard "c" would be left, it would be possible to substitute "k" for it, both letters being pronounsed identikally. Imagine how greatly only two years of this prosess would klarify the konfusion in the minds of students. Already we would have eliminated an entire letter from the alphabet. Typewriters and linotypes kould all be built with one less letter, and all the manpower and materials previously devoted to making "c''s" kould be turned toward raising the national standard of living.
In the fase of so many notable improvements, it is easy to foresee that by 1948, "National Easy Language Week" would be a pronounsed sukses. All skhool tshildren would be looking forward with konsiderable exsitement to the holiday, and in a blaze of national publisity it would be announsed that the double konsonant "ph" no longer existed, and that the sound would henseforth be written with "f" in all words. This would make sutsh words as "fonograf" twenty persent shorter in print.
By 1949, publik interest in a fonetik alfabet kan be expekted to have inkreased to the point where a more radikal step forward kan be taken without fear of undue kritisism We would therefore urge the elimination at that time of al unesesary double leters, whitsh, although quite harmles, have always ben a nuisanse in the language and a desided deterent to akurate speling. Try it yourself in the next leter you write, and se if both writing and reading are not fasilitated.
With so mutsh progrs already made, it might be posible in 1950 to delve further into the posibilities of fonetik speling. After due konsideration of the reseption aforded the previous steps, it should be expedient by this time to spel al difthongs fonetikaly. Most students do not realize that the long "i" and "y," as in "time" and "by," are aktualy the difthong "ai," as it is writen in "aisle," and that the long "a" in "fate" is in reality the difthong "ei" as in "rein". Although perhaps not imediately aparent, the seiving in taime and efort wil be tremendous when we leiter elimineite the sailent "e," as meide posible bai this last tsheinge.
For, as is wel known, the horible mes of "e''s" apearing in our writen language is kaused prinsipaly bai the present nesesity of indekeiting whether a vowel is long or short. Therefore, in 1951 we kould simply elimineite al sailent "e''s" and kontinu to read and wrait merily along as though we wer in an atomik ag of edukation.
In 1951 we would urg a greit step forward. Sins bai this taim it would hav ben four years sins anywun had usd the leter "c", we would sugest that the "National Easy Languag Wek" for 1951 be devoted to substitution of "c" for "Th". To be sur it would be som taim befor peopl would bekom akustomd to reading ceir newspapers and buks wic sutsh sentenses in cem as "Ceodor caught he had cre cousand cistls crust crough ce cik of his cumb."
In ce seim maner, bai meiking eatsh leter hav its own sound and cat sound only, we kould shorten ce languag stil mor. In 1952 we would eliminait ce "y"; cen in 1953 we kould us ce leter to indekeit ce "sh" sound, cerbai klarifaiing words laik yugar and yur, as wel as redusing bai wun mor leter al words laik "yut," "yore," and so forc. Cink, cen, of al ce benefits to be geined bai ce distinktion whitsh wil cen be meid between words laik:
ocean now writen oyean
machine " " mayin
racial " " reyial
Al sutsh divers weis of wraiting wun sound would no longer exist, and whenever wun keim akros a "y" sound he would know exaktli what to wrait.
Kontinuing cis proses, ier after ier, we would eventuali hav a reali sensibl writen langug. By 1975, wi ventyur tu sei, cer wud bi no mor uv ces teribli trublsum difikultis, wic no tu leters usd to indikeit ce seim nois, and laikwais no tui noises riten wic ce seim leter. Even Mr. Yaw, wi beliv, wud be hapi in ce nog cat his drims fainali keim tru.
Dolton Edwards
Worldbuilding 101
By: Mare aka Sunandshadow
Contents:
Building Culture and Sociobiology
Building Language
Building Ecology (Monsters)
Building Planetary Systems and
Alternatives
Building Language
To create ignored assumptions and flesh out your culture in other ways, it may be necessary to invent some vocabulary. There are many acceptable ways to create a new English word:
Foreign Borrowing “taco”
Standard use is if your culture is or is descended from a real culture other than the reader’s. Words created in other ways, especially arbitrary coinages portrayed as words of an alien language, may pretend to be this kind. E.g. many Russian words are used in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010, Odyssey II, because one of the astronauts is Russian. In this book the author also repeatedly portmanteaus one Russian word and one English word to get a “Russlish” word.
Evolved Coinage “catch-22”
This is a neat thing to find in a book- a word the reader already knows whose meaning has been overloaded (made more specific and complex, or more sweeping and general). For example, in Nancy Kress’ Brainrose the phrase “purple martins flying”, while meaningless in reality, is given all sorts of catastrophic overtones by the characters in the book.
Combination/Portmanteau “feminazis”
Very standard way to make all sorts of new words.
Prefixes/Suffixes “microprocessor”
Ditto.
Acronyms “FUBAR”
These aren’t very useful because it’s hard to think of ones that are both funny and relevant.
Part of Speech Migration “to eyeball something”
This is done in English every day. Making your culture do this consistently can say interesting things about how your culture looks at the world.
Named for a Person “Halley’s Comet”
Nothing spells narcissism like a planet named after oneself. Some authors have been known to give their names to their main characters or inventions in their stories.
Abbreviation “fax” from “facsimilie”
Usually only useful when writing about the future of a real culture. These can be used as futuristic street slang or technical jargon, less often as a political term
Figurative Language “eyeballs”=“viewers”
Same uses as above, but suitable for any culture.
Onomatapoeia “coo”, “chirp”
Ditto.
Arbitrary Coinage “hobbit”, “Jabberwocky”
There’s a whole art/science to doing this, but if you’re generating a small set of words you should do ok if you follow these general guidelines:
· Words that are supposed to be related should sound similar.
· Sets of words that are supposed to be from different sources should each have a distinct sound (e.g. one might be full of ‘e’s and ‘s’s, and the other might feature lots of ‘k’s and ‘th’s).
· For clarity and ease of remembering, limit these words to three syllables or fewer, especially for names.
· Too many new words and it’ll all be Greek to your audience.
· A new word should be used at least three times in a context from which it’s meaning can be interpreted before you expect the reader to know it.
· K.I.S.S.! If there’s already a good English word for something, use it unless the alien term is essential to the plot or a joke.
While it’s a neat idea to write a book in ‘alien’, and the finished object would make an interesting coffee table piece, you’ll make more money if you write it in English and put a note in the introduction saying, “Translated from the original ‘alien’.” However, there are situations where having an alien language characters can speak and write in can really add richness to your world.
Every one of us is, of necessity, a student of language. But some people find language such an intriguing toy that they build one of their own. Languages created for different purposes have different characteristics. One subset of created languages is a model language, a language never intended to be well-developed enough for anyone to conduct their daily business in it. Model languages are only useful if the language’s purpose is to encode personal writings or to flesh out a fictional society. Fully created languages may take the form of a logical language or loglan, built to contain certain concepts but not others, and this shapes the way native speakers of this language speak. The most successful variant of a loglan is the Dewey Decimal System, which attempts to organize all of human knowledge into a linear structure. Regularizing a language means eliminating all irregular conjugations, declensions, gender assignments, and preposition uses, among other things. (E.g. regularized English would have all past-tense verbs ending in –ed: swinged, ringed, swimmed, cutted, etc.) Lingua francas are almost always regularized, while model languages, loglans, and most other created languages may be either regularized or created to appear naturally irregular, depending on their crafter’s whim. Created languages can also be either a priori (made out of whole cloth) or a posteriori (built on (an) existing language(s)).
The following steps are necessary to the creation of a full language:
· Decide on the sounds of the language
· Create the lexicon
· Create the grammar
· Design an alphabet
· Translate the desired text (Rosenfelder, p. 1)
In designing the phonology of your artificial language you have several choices:
· Choose phonemes that you are most familiar with.
· Choose phonemes that appeal to you aesthetically.
· Choose phonemes to maximize your phonemic inventory. (This requires a chart and pronunciation tape of the international phonetic alphabet. The tape is available at: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/cassette.htm .)
· Choose phonemes that most people in the world already know or can learn to pronounce easily.
· Choose phonemes based on morphological, syntactic, semantic or other requirements. (This is if you want to get complicated and have 2 or 3 versions of some phoneme type because the language’s philosophy calls for this type of symmetry, or have the number of phonemes of each type fit some kind of numerology system.)
Now that you have your phonemes, you need to build syllables out of them. The syllable structure of every language on Earth is included in the formula: {C}V{V}{C} where {} indicates zero or more of the enclosed item, C indicates a consonant, and V indicates a vowel or semivowel. All existing languages limit this structure in some way to prevent very-hard-to-pronounce syllables. A shareware program is available from www.langmaker.com to generate acceptable syllables and track the pieces of lexicon the linguistic craftsman creates.
This program also comes with a file of dictionary entries of 3,000 core terms to help you create your lexicon. Creating a lexicon is accomplished by assigning the acceptable syllables generated in the previous stage to these core terms. This is a much more complicated process if you are creating a loglan than if you are creating a naturalistically random language. On the other hand, a loglan’s grammar is much easier to create than that of a naturalistic language. Either way, it helps if before this step you’ve earmarked any phonemes you want to use as inflectives; that is, if you want your language to inflect for person, tense, number, or anything else.
Now you need some grammar rules. Do you want any inflectives? Does your language use articles? Pronouns? Maybe any word in your language can be used interchangeably as any part of speech? If you’re creating a naturalistic language you also need to decide what’s going to be an exception to the rules, and how this is going to be an exception. All the decisions you make need to be documented, or you’re going to forget them.
The remaining two steps are simple by comparison. If you want a non-roman alphabet to write in, make one up – if you want a cursive version of this, make up a modified set of letters for that. A tip: practice drawing each letter, and if it’s too annoying to draw, simplify it or make up a new one. Finally, compose whatever you want to say in English, then translate it phonetically into your language (making up more lexical entries as needed), then write that with your new alphabet. Hurray, you’ve created your own language! Have fun with it.
For lots more information, please see:
The Language Construction Kit http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
Invent Your Own Language http://www.langmaker.com/
Language Appendix: Two examples of standardized English
Language Appendix: Two examples of standardizing English
A PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF ENGLISH SPELLING
For example, in year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c,y and x -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais ch,sh, and th rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (Author unknown)
MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM
Because we are still bearing some of the scars of our brief skirmish with II-B English, it is natural that we should be enchanted by Mr. George Bernard Shaw''s current campaign for a simplified alphabet.
Obviously, as Mr. Shaw points out, English spelling is in much need of a general overhauling and streamlining. However, our own resistance to any changes requiring a large expenditure of mental effort in the near future would cause us to view with some apprehension the possibility of some day receiving a morning paper printed in - to us - Greek.
Our own plan would achieve the same end as the legislation proposed by Mr. Shaw, but in a much less shocking manner, as it consists of merely an acceleration of the normal process by which the language is continually modernized.
As a catalytic agent, we would propose that a National Easy Language Week be proclaimed, which the President would inaugurate, outlining some short cut to concentrate during the week, and to be adopted during the ensuing year. All school children would be given a holiday, the lost time being the equivalent of that gained by the spelling short cut.
In 1946, for example, we would urge the elimination of the soft "c", for which we would substitute "s". Sertainly, such an improvement would be selebrated in all sivic-minded sircles as being suffisiently worth the trouble, and students in all sities in the land would be reseptive toward any change eliminating the nesessity of learning the differense between the two letters.
In 1947, sinse only the hard "c" would be left, it would be possible to substitute "k" for it, both letters being pronounsed identikally. Imagine how greatly only two years of this prosess would klarify the konfusion in the minds of students. Already we would have eliminated an entire letter from the alphabet. Typewriters and linotypes kould all be built with one less letter, and all the manpower and materials previously devoted to making "c''s" kould be turned toward raising the national standard of living.
In the fase of so many notable improvements, it is easy to foresee that by 1948, "National Easy Language Week" would be a pronounsed sukses. All skhool tshildren would be looking forward with konsiderable exsitement to the holiday, and in a blaze of national publisity it would be announsed that the double konsonant "ph" no longer existed, and that the sound would henseforth be written with "f" in all words. This would make sutsh words as "fonograf" twenty persent shorter in print.
By 1949, publik interest in a fonetik alfabet kan be expekted to have inkreased to the point where a more radikal step forward kan be taken without fear of undue kritisism We would therefore urge the elimination at that time of al unesesary double leters, whitsh, although quite harmles, have always ben a nuisanse in the language and a desided deterent to akurate speling. Try it yourself in the next leter you write, and se if both writing and reading are not fasilitated.
With so mutsh progrs already made, it might be posible in 1950 to delve further into the posibilities of fonetik speling. After due konsideration of the reseption aforded the previous steps, it should be expedient by this time to spel al difthongs fonetikaly. Most students do not realize that the long "i" and "y," as in "time" and "by," are aktualy the difthong "ai," as it is writen in "aisle," and that the long "a" in "fate" is in reality the difthong "ei" as in "rein". Although perhaps not imediately aparent, the seiving in taime and efort wil be tremendous when we leiter elimineite the sailent "e," as meide posible bai this last tsheinge.
For, as is wel known, the horible mes of "e''s" apearing in our writen language is kaused prinsipaly bai the present nesesity of indekeiting whether a vowel is long or short. Therefore, in 1951 we kould simply elimineite al sailent "e''s" and kontinu to read and wrait merily along as though we wer in an atomik ag of edukation.
In 1951 we would urg a greit step forward. Sins bai this taim it would hav ben four years sins anywun had usd the leter "c", we would sugest that the "National Easy Languag Wek" for 1951 be devoted to substitution of "c" for "Th". To be sur it would be som taim befor peopl would bekom akustomd to reading ceir newspapers and buks wic sutsh sentenses in cem as "Ceodor caught he had cre cousand cistls crust crough ce cik of his cumb."
In ce seim maner, bai meiking eatsh leter hav its own sound and cat sound only, we kould shorten ce languag stil mor. In 1952 we would eliminait ce "y"; cen in 1953 we kould us ce leter to indekeit ce "sh" sound, cerbai klarifaiing words laik yugar and yur, as wel as redusing bai wun mor leter al words laik "yut," "yore," and so forc. Cink, cen, of al ce benefits to be geined bai ce distinktion whitsh wil cen be meid between words laik:
ocean now writen oyean
machine " " mayin
racial " " reyial
Al sutsh divers weis of wraiting wun sound would no longer exist, and whenever wun keim akros a "y" sound he would know exaktli what to wrait.
Kontinuing cis proses, ier after ier, we would eventuali hav a reali sensibl writen langug. By 1975, wi ventyur tu sei, cer wud bi no mor uv ces teribli trublsum difikultis, wic no tu leters usd to indikeit ce seim nois, and laikwais no tui noises riten wic ce seim leter. Even Mr. Yaw, wi beliv, wud be hapi in ce nog cat his drims fainali keim tru.
Dolton Edwards
Okay, I didn''t read all of it, but a few suggestions:
- "Named for someone" should be renamed "Namesakes"
- Words that are related should *have the same or similar root*, not nescesarilly "sound siliar."
- I don''t think many people will follow you "K.I.S.S." rule of using words that already exist in their language. Have you ever seen the Oxford English Dictionary {OED} in print? It''s larger than most encyclopedias. On top of that, English is loaded with both multiple meanings per word and multiple works per meaning. It''s a bit much to presume anyone would go through the trouble of researching so many words, expecially since they''re already ''making'' a language.
- "Named for someone" should be renamed "Namesakes"
- Words that are related should *have the same or similar root*, not nescesarilly "sound siliar."
- I don''t think many people will follow you "K.I.S.S." rule of using words that already exist in their language. Have you ever seen the Oxford English Dictionary {OED} in print? It''s larger than most encyclopedias. On top of that, English is loaded with both multiple meanings per word and multiple works per meaning. It''s a bit much to presume anyone would go through the trouble of researching so many words, expecially since they''re already ''making'' a language.
quote: Original post by Landfish
Can opened. Worms everywhere...
Why, is someone going fishing?
This sounds like Fantasy and sci-fi world building, down and dirty, Not 101.
As Mr Cup always says,
''I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.''
As Mr Cup always says,
''I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.''
Mr Cup : I think it''s because she jsut talked about new languages ... let''s wait for the rest.
Sunadnshadow : I''d like to jsut make an annoying point on the index. Why don''t you start by the beginning ??? I mean, first the planet, then the vegetals, then the animals, then the study of those forms of life (culture, sociology, etc).
But of course, you might want to show something by doing it the other way around ?
I like most of the article, but you are preaching a converted (though I didn''t know those links, thanks ! )
BTW, I know of a text similar to the two you describe, but thought it was even better, because as the transformations were added, the english turned into ... german ! Do you know about that one ? I hav been looking for it for ages ...
Sunadnshadow : I''d like to jsut make an annoying point on the index. Why don''t you start by the beginning ??? I mean, first the planet, then the vegetals, then the animals, then the study of those forms of life (culture, sociology, etc).
But of course, you might want to show something by doing it the other way around ?
I like most of the article, but you are preaching a converted (though I didn''t know those links, thanks !
)BTW, I know of a text similar to the two you describe, but thought it was even better, because as the transformations were added, the english turned into ... german !
Do you know about that one ? I hav been looking for it for ages ...
Author
SonicSilicon: what I meant by that K.I.S.S. thing is not to translate everyday words like "blue" or "star" into alien just for the fun of it. I''ll rephrase to make that more clear. And the reason the OED is monstrous is because it has complete etymologies for every word. A normal unabridged dictionary (approx 250,000 words, 4 in. thick) should be all anyone but an etymologist needs.
Thanks for your other corrections.
Mr. Cup: I focused on science fiction and fantasy because historical or modern-day or what-have-you are pretty much included within science fiction/fantasy. You may be more satisified when you see the subsections of Building Culture and Sociobiology. I was intending to include:
Mendelian Inheritance
Cultural Evolution
Kin Group Structures
Genders and Gender Roles
Technology Level
Economics
But anyway, any suggestions you have for improving the ''101-ness'' of this section are welcome.
Ahw: About the index, I put it in that order because when people think of making a game they usually think "It would be cool to make a game where characters get special ability X and they save the world from Y. The X and Y are usually part of Culture and Sociobiology, so you can chose what you want for those, then justify it through how you set up your astronomy and ecology.
No I haven''t seen the English into German one; it sounds funny. Have you seen the one that goes "Achtung! Diese machinen are not for gefingerpoken or mittengrabben! etc."
By converted, do you mean you play with model languages too? That''s cool! So you would be an excellent person to tell me if I forgot anything.
Thanks for your other corrections.
Mr. Cup: I focused on science fiction and fantasy because historical or modern-day or what-have-you are pretty much included within science fiction/fantasy. You may be more satisified when you see the subsections of Building Culture and Sociobiology. I was intending to include:
Mendelian Inheritance
Cultural Evolution
Kin Group Structures
Genders and Gender Roles
Technology Level
Economics
But anyway, any suggestions you have for improving the ''101-ness'' of this section are welcome.
Ahw: About the index, I put it in that order because when people think of making a game they usually think "It would be cool to make a game where characters get special ability X and they save the world from Y. The X and Y are usually part of Culture and Sociobiology, so you can chose what you want for those, then justify it through how you set up your astronomy and ecology.
No I haven''t seen the English into German one; it sounds funny. Have you seen the one that goes "Achtung! Diese machinen are not for gefingerpoken or mittengrabben! etc."
By converted, do you mean you play with model languages too? That''s cool!
So you would be an excellent person to tell me if I forgot anything.
Well, actually I had never heard of this site about creating new languages from scratch. And I wanted to add a point from this discover, as well.
It''s all nice and well to be able to create a new language, but to do so you must have some basics of your own language first, at least know the grammar of your mother language ...
So maybe you should give some poitners to that, first.
And since I can''t help promoting the sites I discover, here the mother of all dictionaries : A web of dictionaries.
I discovered this site last year and was amazed at the number of things I learnt through it. They even have some ancient languages dictionaries. Well, these are mainly translations dictionaries than true etymologies, but it''s uselful nonetheless, and the sections about grammar, and general linguistic are invaluable.
I don''t think though, that my little experience made me notice any big mistake in your text. If you plan to let us proof read other parts, though, I''ll be glad to help.
I just love to bath in big amount of knowledge, even when I barely understand parts of it. It''s a good excuse to learn.
Oh, before I forget I''ll backup sonicsilicon on the "related words" thingie. English is a bitch/beach for words absolutely non related and yet sound awfully similar (homophones in french).
(it''s funny not to be able to find any convincing example when you need them...)
youpla :-P
It''s all nice and well to be able to create a new language, but to do so you must have some basics of your own language first, at least know the grammar of your mother language ...
So maybe you should give some poitners to that, first.
And since I can''t help promoting the sites I discover, here the mother of all dictionaries : A web of dictionaries.
I discovered this site last year and was amazed at the number of things I learnt through it. They even have some ancient languages dictionaries. Well, these are mainly translations dictionaries than true etymologies, but it''s uselful nonetheless, and the sections about grammar, and general linguistic are invaluable.
I don''t think though, that my little experience made me notice any big mistake in your text. If you plan to let us proof read other parts, though, I''ll be glad to help.
I just love to bath in big amount of knowledge, even when I barely understand parts of it. It''s a good excuse to learn.
Oh, before I forget I''ll backup sonicsilicon on the "related words" thingie. English is a bitch/beach
for words absolutely non related and yet sound awfully similar (homophones in french).(it''s funny not to be able to find any convincing example when you need them...)
youpla :-P
You have a rather large scope you are targetting. As a single article, it will be hard to make it specific enough to be more than just an over view. How about breaking down the article into several parts so that you can pay more attention to each piece?
Author
Another finished part:
Building Ecology (can you tell I'm writing the short ones first? )
Hopefully everyone knows what a food chain/food web is. If your game takes place on a fictional planet, each climactic area of your planet must have one. Even if the life that evolved on your planet is silicon-based (rather than Earth’s carbon-based life) you still need some sort of autotroph to capture the sun’s energy and metabolize it into the sugars (or whatever) which can power the rest of your ecology. Your autotrophs should generally be a different color from your sun because the color an object is is the color it absorbs least efficiently. Then you need autotrophivores (aka herbivores) to eat the autotrophies, and heterotrophivores (aka carnivores) to eat the autotrophivores. Ecosystems on earth very rarely have more than 5 trophic levels including autotrophs. (e.g. of 5 trophic levels: decomposing bacteria eat the corpse of a lion that ate a warthog that ate a slug that ate a plant.) The higher trophic level the species is, the fewer of them there should be, because it takes a zillion plants to feed a million slugs to feed a thousand warthogs to feed one pride of lions.
Now, how was your world created? Did it evolve spontaneously, or did a deity create it? In an evolved world every obvious ecological niche will be filled and animals usually won’t be immortal, or almost sterile, or an obvious chimera of two other animals, or randomly able to breathe fire. There will be species that look related, but the difference between them won’t usually be that it is just a different color (e.g. red slime, green slime, blue slime). The way divergent evolution work is this: A species (lions) can utilize two types of food sources (elephants and antelopes). Elephants can be more efficiently killed by a big muscular lion and antelopes can be more efficiently killed by a slim fast lion. So these two types of lion survive better than in-the-middle ones. After a while instead of two breeds of lion you have tigers and cheetahs, which are merely related species.
One species of a related group should not have a fully-formed ability (e.g. mimic) if other species of the group don’t have that ability at all. Similarly, one species of a group should not have an extra body part (e.g. wings) that others of the group don’t have at all.
Big bugs. These are a no-no because insects, having no skeleton or powered circulatory system, would die of too much gravity and lack of circulation if they were rabbit-sized or larger. It can look like a bug if you want, but it can’t actually be a giant praying mantis that got mutated by radiation .
Things with wings. It takes a 7 feet of wing-span to lift a 40 lb. eagle against Earth-normal gravity. A horse-sized pegasus would not work here. Possible solutions to this are using a low-gravity planet or having your playable races be relatively small so that everything looks bigger to them.
If a deity created your world via directed evolution you can use the above guidelines. However, if a deity created your world from scratch you might want to have some patched-together looking species and/or some pretty-but-ineffectual species and/or some deadly-but-rare-because-they-don’t-reproduce-well species. Even these, though, need to be adapted to the climates they live in (e.g. no polar bears on a tropical island).
More about reproduction. If you’ve ever played Harvest moon, you may have wondered “Why do these chickens keep laying fertile eggs if I don’t have a rooster?” You can certainly have hermaphroditic or parthenogenic animals in your game world. You can have animals with three sexes, you can have animals where sexual dimorphism accounts for the difference in fighting ability between them. Be creative.
If you look at a Gigasaur in Chrono-trigger you will notice that it has a belly button. Animals that hatch from eggs do not have belly buttons!
So do I need to go into a lot more detail with this, or what? Should I separate out the do's and don't's into a list? Do I need to explain evolution more? What?
added breaks between paragraps for readability.
Edited by - sunandshadow on September 8, 2000 4:08:37 PM
Building Ecology (can you tell I'm writing the short ones first?
)Hopefully everyone knows what a food chain/food web is. If your game takes place on a fictional planet, each climactic area of your planet must have one. Even if the life that evolved on your planet is silicon-based (rather than Earth’s carbon-based life) you still need some sort of autotroph to capture the sun’s energy and metabolize it into the sugars (or whatever) which can power the rest of your ecology. Your autotrophs should generally be a different color from your sun because the color an object is is the color it absorbs least efficiently. Then you need autotrophivores (aka herbivores) to eat the autotrophies, and heterotrophivores (aka carnivores) to eat the autotrophivores. Ecosystems on earth very rarely have more than 5 trophic levels including autotrophs. (e.g. of 5 trophic levels: decomposing bacteria eat the corpse of a lion that ate a warthog that ate a slug that ate a plant.) The higher trophic level the species is, the fewer of them there should be, because it takes a zillion plants to feed a million slugs to feed a thousand warthogs to feed one pride of lions.
Now, how was your world created? Did it evolve spontaneously, or did a deity create it? In an evolved world every obvious ecological niche will be filled and animals usually won’t be immortal, or almost sterile, or an obvious chimera of two other animals, or randomly able to breathe fire. There will be species that look related, but the difference between them won’t usually be that it is just a different color (e.g. red slime, green slime, blue slime). The way divergent evolution work is this: A species (lions) can utilize two types of food sources (elephants and antelopes). Elephants can be more efficiently killed by a big muscular lion and antelopes can be more efficiently killed by a slim fast lion. So these two types of lion survive better than in-the-middle ones. After a while instead of two breeds of lion you have tigers and cheetahs, which are merely related species.
One species of a related group should not have a fully-formed ability (e.g. mimic) if other species of the group don’t have that ability at all. Similarly, one species of a group should not have an extra body part (e.g. wings) that others of the group don’t have at all.
Big bugs. These are a no-no because insects, having no skeleton or powered circulatory system, would die of too much gravity and lack of circulation if they were rabbit-sized or larger. It can look like a bug if you want, but it can’t actually be a giant praying mantis that got mutated by radiation
.Things with wings. It takes a 7 feet of wing-span to lift a 40 lb. eagle against Earth-normal gravity. A horse-sized pegasus would not work here. Possible solutions to this are using a low-gravity planet or having your playable races be relatively small so that everything looks bigger to them.
If a deity created your world via directed evolution you can use the above guidelines. However, if a deity created your world from scratch you might want to have some patched-together looking species and/or some pretty-but-ineffectual species and/or some deadly-but-rare-because-they-don’t-reproduce-well species. Even these, though, need to be adapted to the climates they live in (e.g. no polar bears on a tropical island).
More about reproduction. If you’ve ever played Harvest moon, you may have wondered “Why do these chickens keep laying fertile eggs if I don’t have a rooster?” You can certainly have hermaphroditic or parthenogenic animals in your game world. You can have animals with three sexes, you can have animals where sexual dimorphism accounts for the difference in fighting ability between them. Be creative.
If you look at a Gigasaur in Chrono-trigger you will notice that it has a belly button. Animals that hatch from eggs do not have belly buttons!
So do I need to go into a lot more detail with this, or what? Should I separate out the do's and don't's into a list? Do I need to explain evolution more? What?
added breaks between paragraps for readability.
Edited by - sunandshadow on September 8, 2000 4:08:37 PM
This topic is closed to new replies.
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