Floop Wob Zibble?
Making up a language is more difficult than you might think
Oig wun zindle.
When my oldest granddaughter was about 8 to about 12, she and I would practice having conversations with entirely made-up words.
I was a college English and writing instructor for many years, but nothing prepared me for this.
It was my idea, but the pre-teen girl caught – and ran with – the vision.
We would practice in the car, with the intent to one day, sit in a public place, a café or coffee shop perhaps, and have an extended conversation in our own language.
We both realized, in our own way, that communication is far more than language and words.
A structure, a narrative connective tissue, if you will, is essential.
Words are, in an established language, the easy part.
Making up words, as you try to, at minimum, mimic the pauses and flows of a standard conversation – in any language – is real work.
When one is “fluent” in a language, that meant that your words literally “flow” and your focus is on the content or on the words of the other party and your most appropriate response to them.
A made-up language is exactly that – a language made-up on the spot – with no topic, no argument and no purpose. And no common ground of meaning, nuance, intent or subtlety.
My granddaughter aged into higher and more rewarding aspect of language and communication, but the experience left me wondering more about what words – and the surging infrastructure, if not eco-system of language really is.
The irony of language is that it is an agreed-upon set of sounds and symbols that we understand and absorb, mostly out of thousands of hours of shared practice.
We learn which words to use, how to emphasize different syllables, how to, in speaking intone a question or exclamation.
Languages are oddly unique and similar at the same time.
All languages have action words (verbs) and object words (nouns) and ways to describe the world- modifiers (also known as adjectives and adverbs).
Grammar could be considered the connective tissue which, it could be argued, sets the parts of speech into a motion that produces shared meaning.
And how each language absorbs, manifests and shares meaning is what sets it apart and makes it a unique form of expression in the world and the world’s ever developing history.
In other words, each one of us, as a language user, makes our imprint on the language itself, and makes it our own.
Language is more than words, more than recited vocabulary and the following of grammatical rules.
Language is something like a constant re-dredging of a shared and distant history dense with metaphors, folklore and continuous attempts to clarify, muddy or evade communication.
Language is used about as much to deny or exclude as it is to welcome or invite.
Consider jargon or slang from pop culture, from various industries or subcultures, or prison or religion – language is a barren, non-negotiable wall as often as it is a bridge.
Perhaps above all, languages show us who belongs – and who doesn’t.
Some languages have nouns with genders (male, female or neutral).
Some languages (like English) have absurdly complicated verb tenses (English has twelve).
Some languages use letters, others use characters.
Some have hundreds, if not thousands, of characters. Others, like English have only a few – 26 letters, to be exact.
Some languages have set rules about adapting, or, more often, rejecting foreign terms and words.
English, especially the American sub-dialect, has no such scruples. We steal, mangle, adapt, abbreviate, simplify or, again, steal, any word or piece of a word that we like or serves some kind of purpose.
And slang is our specialty. And irony. And absurdity. And more slang.
American English is, to a large degree, an amalgamated, surging stew of a language – not for the timid or pedantic.
It changes by the day.
People like me and my granddaughter, push and lean and mangle a perfectly good language.
But we are not the only ones; our language invites any jargon, slang or sound-bite that suits moment or the occasion.
Spoken words are something like sound-chunks that have a shared, mutually agreed-upon set of meanings and uses.
In most cases, when we learn a language, we learn names for nouns – for physical things – first.
We work on pronunciation and build on the basics – like how physical things – the nouns in the world interact and what we do with them, until we have something like a fluency in another language.
One problem is that the flow we develop is largely influenced by the flow of those around us.
Without thinking about it, we pick up sounds to emphasize – or de- emphasize – and we pick up accents.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, upper left corner of the USA. We are noted for our “flat” accent; which is a nice way of saying “boring”.
Our accents are not sophisticated, or even clearly defined.
Several years ago when I was teaching English and writing at the college level, I had many students from around the USA and the world.
We were near a major military base and had students from every corner of the world.
I was always intrigued by the accents students brought. And they picked up on my accent - and pronunciation.
One observation that they made was that we in the Pacific Northwest speak more “proper” English than some parts of the country. And we tend to use full words- like pronouncing the full “ing” on verb endings.
A few students noted that I pronounced the word “always” two different ways; either “all-ways” or “al-ways”.
We Americans may not have our own language, but we, for better or worse, have made what was once “the queen’s English” our own. We are notorious for upending standard rules of grammar, usage or spelling.
Slang, nuance and irony make a complicated language infinitely more complex. And responsive.
Here is a phonetic exercise that every American should know. If you struggle with it, just pronounce it slowly and out loud.
Ipe ledge allee-gee-ence too-thee flig antue thu reep ubllic ferwitchit stans
Language, it turns out, is far more than vocabulary and grammar.
After all is said and done, language, any language, is gwooling ziff ef wizzle.