Conlang guide

Is there a right way to speak?

Disclaimer: as always I'd like to remind you that I'm not a linguist or a professional conlanger, I'm just a hobbyist talking about the things I've learned from conlanging and consuming pop linguistics content over the years, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

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(Picture of a man looking through a telescope from Wikimedia commons)

Table of contents

Preamble

Content warning for discussions of anti-black racism and inequality, plus a mention of plane accidents, if you're not feeling up to hearing about that right now feel free to read this later.

I think it's important to understand this topic if you're going to do conlanging not only because it will affect the way you write about your languages in your fiction and it will give you some fuel for worldbuilding but also because this is something that's important to understand in the real world, it has a big impact on people's lives and so being familiar with the topic is generally useful, even outside of conlanging.

Prescriptivism

Some people view language in a prescriptive way, that is, they think we ought to prescribe how people should and shouldn't speak, like how a doctor would prescribe you medicine, and this sounds reasonable, in fact this may be the way you think, so let's look at some advantages of prescriptivism.

In many cases it is actually preferable to control or standardize language, for example when it comes to air traffic control people have to use very specific phrases and words, they can't just casually say "yeah sure" or "hold on a minute" because misunderstandings can happen, and when you're dealing with flying metallic vessels full of people these misunderstandings could end up in tragedy, I believe that's why current air traffic terminology was invented actually, a plane crash was caused by a misunderstanding and they decided they needed a way to prevent that from happening again. So for any situations where maximum clarity is important you may need a more strict and confined way of communicating.

To a certain extent I think this also applies to language instruction, it is perfectly reasonable for your Japanese teacher to tell you to pronounce or spell words a certain way or even tell you how to speak in general, what phrases you have to say in order to ask a question or what greetings to use inside the classroom, after all your goal when learning a language is to learn an entirely new system of communication and cultural norms so you're bound to make many mistakes that should be corrected in order for you to be understood once you go outside the classroom and use the language in the wild.

In academic practices like science it also makes perfect sense to have standardized language, if definitions are more strict and precise then it will be easier to read scientific papers regardless of where or when they were made, having an agreed upon standard gets rid of the problem of having to learn how each individual scientist thinks in order to decipher what they're trying to say, so scientific and technical definitions tend to be a lot more precise than colloquial definitions out of necessity.

In fact I would also argue it makes sense for moral and ethical reasons, when there's people using language in a way that is degrading, prejudiced or hateful it is important to recognize it and call it out, we don't want to live in a hateful and hostile world after all, so it's good to take care of our fellow human beings and nip hateful movements in the bud, and that can sometimes involve noticing the way people weave their intolerance into the way they speak.

(Collection of old books by Thomas Kelley from Unsplash)

However, it is important to recognize that this way of thinking has its limits, it's not always useful to look at language through a prescriptive lense, and often people use prescriptivism in a way that carries some hateful and prejudiced ideas, even when they don't mean any harm, let's explore that a bit.

Many people hold the view that there is a correct way to speak any given language, after all if you see an English sentence, you - as a native English speaker - can tell if it is a valid sentence based on if you're able to understand what it means, or if it sounds off, if the word choice is odd, I mean if a sentence is not really understandable to its target audience then it is not actually a very helpful sentence, perhaps it should be paraphrased or get its spelling corrected, but something that people don't often keep in mind is the existence of language evolution, and it plays a very important role in this whole situation.

Language evolution will have its own Deep Dive article written about it but I bring it up to point out that languages are in a constant state of change, if you compare how people speak today vs how they used to speak a century ago you're going to find plenty of differences, not only in the slang that is popular during different ages but sometimes even in pronunciation and grammar as well, languages love to change, and it is not something we can avoid even if we wanted to, it's perfectly natural.

Languages aren't typically just spoken by one or two people though, they're spoken by entire communities, and larger ones like English can even be spoken in different regions and different continents, here's the thing: language evolution doesn't happen the same in all communities, so the English of New York will shift in different ways to the English of London, and what's more, even within the same city, if a cultural divide exists between a community of marginalized people and a community of privileged people their English will shift in different ways, this is part of why you may hear black people speaking in a way you're not used to hearing, it's not slang or even a difference in formality, it's because their English evolved in a different way to yours.

(Samuel Dunn Wall Map of the World in Hemispheres from Wikimedia Commons)

SIDE NOTE: there is more nuance to how African-American English came to be, it's not a simple scenario of people speaking the same way at first and then their language diverging, a big part of how this dialect came to be was unfortunately due to slavery, but what I'm trying to highlight here is that a cultural divide can be reflected on the way people speak because of language evolution, so even in a situation without slavery marginalized groups can end up speaking differently, ever heard of "the gay voice"? Yep, comes from a cultural divide.

Something that you will notice in hardcore prescriptivists is that their perception of "the correct way to speak" is based on the way one privileged community of people speaks, and so you often see that the accents and dialects of marginalized groups are seen as "inferior", "rude", "laughable", "slang", or even "broken English" when in reality they're as complex and legitimate as any other dialect of English, the origin of these dialects is not that different to the dialects of privileged people, both are a result of linguistic evolution, because that's just what language does, at the end of the day it's important to acknowledge that there is no superior dialect or singular way of speaking any language.

Now, if you came into this with a prescriptive mindset and you're worried after hearing that last part I understand, it is fairly normalized in society to think that there is one correct way to speak so I don't believe you're evil if you picked up this belief at some point in your life, but it is important to recognize that you hold this view so you can do some introspection and undo any prejudice you may have within you, that's how we grow as people and as a society.

Ultimately the point is that language naturally keeps evolving, and as a result different communities will slowly start to speak more and more differently, that is normal, it's how things have always been, trying to use linguistic prescriptivism to say that this is somehow bad or that there is a more "pure" or "correct" form of any given language leads to prejudice against marginalized groups, so it is best to drop this idea of "purity" entirely, the way we all speak is not only interesting and complex but also diverse, and that is something that should be celebrated, not lamented.

If you're finding yourself feeling defensive or trying to cling on to the idea that there is a singular correct way of speaking I may not be able to change your mind but I can say that linguists generally disagree, linguistics is a descriptive endeavor, so now let's look at descriptivism.

Descriptivism

The other way to look at language is in a descriptive manner, that is to say, trying to describe what we can observe. I am not a scientist so correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it science is an inherently descriptive process, scientists don't seek to determine what the laws of physics should be, they study what they are, a biologist doesn't try to decide what body parts an owl subjectively should have, they study actual owls to figure out which body parts they objectively have, so linguists, in much the same way, seek to study the way languages are in the real world, observing, formulating hypotheses and using peer review to gather as much factual data as they can.

(Picture of a microscope by Logan Gutierrez from Unsplash)

Sure, it's possible to practice prescriptivism using scientific knowledge, for example a doctor would take the knowledge gathered by biologists and chemists to figure out what should be prescribed in order to treat a certain ailment, and an engineer would look at the knowledge gathered by physicists to figure out how they should construct things like vehicles or machinery so that they get the results that they want, but the people doing the science are not trying to make a value judgement on anything, they aren't prescriptive, they're simply observing and describing things as they are, and correcting their descriptions when they don't match with reality.

In fact, dictionaries are often seen as authorities on language, when people get into arguments or debates they often try to use a dictionary to back up their point, or they use it to try to defend their view of "the correct way to speak", but dictionaries are like maps, they're meant to accurately represent what we see in the real world so we can navigate things more easily, if a map is so old that the terrain looks different it ceases to be useful, perhaps it is an interesting piece of history that can show us how things looked like in the past but it will no longer help us navigate the area, and in the same way if a dictionary no longer reflects the way people are speaking then it needs to be updated.

Linguists (and linguistics enthusiasts) look at language in a non-judgemental way, simply observing the diversity that exists in the ways that people speak. When you encounter someone who uses language in a way that seems off or weird to you it's important to stop and ask yourself if they're "speaking wrong" or if they simply come from a different background than you do, and even if you think they are "speaking wrong" were you able to understand what they were trying to get across? Are you sure they aren't a native speaker from a region or community you're unfamiliar with? If they're not native speakers do you know if they welcome feedback on the way they speak? These are important things to consider before jumping to correcting them when they may not even need correcting.

At the end of the day if you're able to make yourself understood to the people you're trying to communicate with that is more than good enough. Of course it's perfectly fine to correct someone if you know they're not a native speaker and they welcome corrections, as a language learner it can be very valuable to get feedback from native speakers, but be careful not to assume that they're not a native speaker when in reality they're speaking a dialect you're less familiar with (or a creole or pidgin language, I'll write about those another day).

You may be thinking "but what about all of those cases when you said prescriptivism is useful?" So here's the thing that I want you to notice, those were situations where having a more prescriptive approach solved some sort of specific issue, it was never about linguistic "purity" it's about finding solutions, let's look at the examples again.

In the case of air traffic control it's not that people were "speaking wrong" or using "bad grammar", it's that for safety reasons it's important for these people to be more precise than you would normally be in your day to day life. Typically a simple misunderstanding is not a big deal so there's nothing wrong with less precise, casual speech, it's perfectly fit for a normal day, but when there is so much at risk you may need to use codes and set phrases to minimize the chance of a misunderstanding, it's about safety.

In the case of a language class the problem isn't about language "purity", when you "speak wrong" or use "bad grammar" in class the issue is not that you aren't following "the one true way to speak", after all the way people speak any given language will be very diverse and varied, language learners will be the first to let you know that nobody speaks like language textbooks say they do, but when you're learning a whole new system of communication it can be good (and even necessary) to have some guidance on how you should use it, without that guidance things would be a lot more difficult, and you may not be able to use the language effectively, it's not about "purity", it's about making sure you're understood once you're outside the classroom.

(Picture of people studying German by Annika Gordon from Unsplash)

In the case of scientific and technical terminology the reason why it's more precise is not because having strict definitions is inherently superior to colloquial definitions, or because scientists are trying to dictate a "proper" usage of language as a whole, but because it would be much harder to communicate granular information if there was no general agreement regarding the exact definitions of words, it's about facilitating communication in academia.

In the case of morality, when people are calling out prejudiced or hateful ways of speaking the issue isn't about "bad grammar", grammar is entirely beside the point, a hateful word or phrase may be entirely grammatical and spelled properly and everything, but if it's harming people then we should stop it, it's about compassion and respect.

And sure you can still have pet peeves, for example I personally still find it a bit annoying when people write "of" when the typical spelling is "have" or "'ve" as in "I should of known" instead of the more standard "I should've known", but I don't point it out or complain when I see it because at the end of the day I understood what was meant, and linguistically the misspelling makes a lot of sense and is even kind of interesting from an intellectual level, I've come to understand that these types of things are not wrong, they just are.

It is also important to point out that many things that start out being perceived as mistakes end up becoming a standard part of the language, for example in English we had the word "nuncle" but people kept mishearing "a nuncle" as "an uncle" and so after some time we ended up dropping the "n" at the beginning of "nuncle", this is not a rare occurence and you can find examples of stuff like this in basically every language, so I don't doubt that there's a possibility of the phrase "I should've known" being more commonly written as "I should of known" in the future.

So hopefully you can see why descriptivism is the way linguists look at language and why it's better to have a descriptive mindset in most cases, once you learn to embrace the diversity that exists within each language the world become a way more colorful place, and it even becomes less embarrassing when you make any "mistakes", you're just participating in linguistic evolution after all.

One thing I want you to walk away with regarding this topic is that speakers are the essence of language, there is no authority or institution that could possibly control how people speak, no matter how badly they want to, the speakers are the ones who ultimately make a language what it is, in fact, when an institution tries to impose a certain way of speaking it often doesn't even work because we, as the speakers of the language, are the ones with the power, the French Academy can say that "courrier électronique" is the correct way to say "email" in French, but no one actually uses that phrase.

The speakers are the ones who ultimately control the language, so looking at languages descriptively helps us to appreciate the beauty that comes with evolution and diversity, and while there are certain situations where prescribing how to speak is helpful there is no one true way to speak any language.

In conlanging and worldbuilding

So how is any of this useful for conlanging or worldbuilding? Well there's a few ways in which we can use this knowledge.

(Picture of the Hobbiton movie set by Andres Iga from Unsplash)

Firstly, how do we use the knowledge that languages are shaped by the natural evolution process? Well it means that our fictional language was probably different a century ago from how it is now, and different communities of fictional speakers will probably speak differently from each other, but you can play around with this, we're dealing with fiction after all, so let's get a bit creative.

Maybe you have a race of vampires who live for hundreds of years so their language evolves a lot slower than a human language would, their generations are a lot longer after all so it makes sense that their linguistic evolution would be slower.

Maybe you're creating a hivemind alien species so they don't have different dialects, everyone speaks the exact same way because they share one consciousness, or maybe your language is supernatural or magical in some way so it simply doesn't follow the natural tendency to evolve or diverge into dialects for whatever reason, perhaps it's because a god willed it to be that way, perhaps it's a curse.

Even when you're dealing with a more normal language it's ok if you don't want to go through the effort of creating multiple different dialects for it, it can be a lot of work, but even if you only create one dialect simply keeping in mind that there's likely to be multiple varieties of your language can help you when you're writing your fiction, perhaps a character is able to recognize where someone is from just by the way they pronounce their vowels or the way they spell certain words, maybe people from the same city speak differently due to some sort of cultural divide, maybe the elves speak your language a bit differently than the dwarves do because elves and dwarves are in conflict.

Ok, how do we use the knowledge that prescriptivism can be useful for solving certain issues? Well maybe in our fantasy world spell casters are taught to recite spells in one very specific way because not doing so could have certain risks to it, perhaps the magic would still work without the prescribed pronunciation but it's easier to mispronounce some sounds if you do it too casually or fast, so magic schools teach their students to speak very slowly and carefully when casting spells.

Knowing that language textbooks can't perfectly reflect the way native speakers actually use the language could be useful for your writing, maybe you have a character who studied elven tongue in school, but was taught mostly through textbooks, and so when they actually meet an elf they get told that they speak in a very stiff or formal way, and maybe the character has trouble keeping up with all the casual speech and slang they hear coming from the elves.

I've also noticed that in the real world it looks like different cultures will have different levels of prescriptivism in them, for example Spanish speaking academics will have this perception of "a correct way to speak" more often than English speaking academics do, even if the mindset is present in both cultures (that's my subjective observation though, I could be wrong), so perhaps when you're doing your worldbuilding you could decide if a certain society leans more towards prescriptive beliefs or descriptive ones, and how much their academics and linguists try to control how people use language, but of course cultures are not a monolith, so just because something is more common doesn't mean everyone will believe it.

(Photo of a Welsh castle by Lance Reis from Unsplash)

Of course you are the language creator and so you have the power to make the language work in any way you want, you could make the language be straightforward enough that a language textbook would be able to capture all of its complexity without much trouble, but if you want to add a touch of realism you could consider adding a few common misspellings or informal speech patterns (maybe the "proper" spelling for a word is very complex and full of silent letters, but in reality people don't tend to spell it like that), or adding little hints of different dialects (like maybe the people from the west drop their "h" sounds all the time).

Let me give you a brief example of one way I incorporated this into one of my languages:

In this language there's a type of word called a "vocative" that is used when you want to address someone directly, and to turn regular words into vocatives you can add a specific syllable at the start of the word, so for example you could add it to the word "tsiyafük" (meaning interpreter or translator) and it would show that you're addressing the interpreter directly, kind of like saying "hey, interpreter" in English, but not quite the same.

This little mark is typically "klhu-" but in some words it shows up as "klhü-" instead, with a slightly different vowel, and there are some rules that can help you determine which vowel to use depending on the first syllable of the base word, but it's not always consistent and besides, this "vocative" thing is not used very often, it only comes up in very select circumstances anyway, so many people won't bother to learn the rules for when to use which vowel and the words are infrequent enough that many people won't pick up the pattern intuitively either.

This results in a lot of younger speakers of the language simply using the default form "klhu-" on all words, they never ever use "klhü-", and at the end of the day people are able to tell what they're saying so it works out, but the older folk and the grammarians complain about "the youth these days not speaking properly" and whatever, because they're coming from a more prescriptive mindset and don't appreciate that this is an instance of language evolution in action. So my knowledge on this topic helped me add that little bit of worldbuilding detail into my language which helps things to come together and feel a bit more alive and believable.

I think just being aware of how the prescriptive mindset differs from the descriptive mindset and knowing that they both have their place can be pretty eye opening, it colors the way that you write your fiction and the way that you talk about your languages, so I thought it would be a good topic to make a Deep Dives article about, especially for those of you who may know less about linguistics and may not have come across this concept of "prescriptivism" vs "descriptivism" before.

Here's a few videos and podcasts you can check to learn more about the topic:

11:39 - posted on 16 June 2021

In this video they go over how African-American English came to be and many misconceptions people have about it, it's very important to be aware of these things so we can get rid of prejudice.

7:58 - posted on 24 May 2017

In this video Xidnaf talks about how language evolution is a perfectly normal process, and they specifically go over examples of English and Latin evolution.

36:02 - posted on 20 April 2017

This episode also talks about how language evolution is normal, the hosts of the podcast (Gretchen and Lauren) go more in depth about other areas like perception bias and power dynamics, giving examples from Socrates to modern day texting.

37:31 - posted on 18 October 2018

Some people say that some words are not "real words" but this is yet again a case of prescriptivism being used in a way that isn't actually helpful, and Gretchen and Lauren go over the different things that people mean when they say "that's not a real word".

I also recommend other episodes of the Lingthusiasm podcast, every episode is both entertaining and very informative and I learned a lot from it.

4:10 - posted on 6 September 2013

While the video is pretty old and it mostly repeats points I made in this article I wanted to include it in this list because it basically conveys most of what I wanted to write about here but in a pretty concise and clear manner that is perhaps a bit more shareable or digestible.

Conclusion

Ultimately the idea of there being a "right" way to speak doesn't really make sense and often comes from a place of ignorance or prejudice, language can look different in different places so while there's certain situations where it makes sense to have a more prescriptive approach, generally having a descriptive one is more fitting for everyday life and allows us to appreciate the diversity that naturally emerges from language evolution.

Understanding this topic is not only good in the real world (since it affects our lives), but can even be good to keep in mind when conlanging or worldbuilding, it's an aspect of language that linguists and linguistics enthusiasts would be more familiar with but the average person might not spend too much time thinking about, so being aware of it can help you flesh out your work.

Don’t forget to stay hydrated and have a good timezone ✨