Creating a Language for Vile & Blessed

Hey, Worldhoppers!

Today, I invited The Reluctant Overlord, A H Serrano on to talk about the creation of the language spoken in her debut dark fantasy, Vile & Blessed.

Take it away, AHS!

Creating the language for Vile & Blessed began with simple naming conventions that spread to a larger scale. Before I decided I wanted an alphabet and language, I played a game of mash-up with words from different languages. It worked for naming, but I realized there would be major inconsistencies if I tried to use the same methods on an entire language. 

So we hired someone with a linguistics background to create the first language for Eszailha—Anmerilian’s! 

Anmerilian’s old tongue language is based on Spanish and Portuguese. A major difference you might find when you read the Glossary is that those familiar accents don’t serve the same purpose they do on Earth. In Anmerilian’s language, accents don’t necessarily indicate a stressed sound. They indicate a change of sound. That sound might be stressed in one word but not in another—it all depends on the overall pronunciation. 

There is something important to note about Anmerilian’s old tongue, though. As the name suggests…it’s old. Anmerilians are bilingual. They speak a mixture of the common tongue of Eszailha and their old tongue. Speaking in the old tongue is limited to titles of respect and terms. The full language still exists in the ancient and spiritual texts, and it is still studied in schools, but almost no one speaks it exclusively.

Here’s a peek at some of the common words you might see when you’re reading Vile & Blessed:

Anmaes 

Brumas

Eszéha

Izerel

Léocas

Vanzæ

Vêspiranz

Take your best guess at pronunciation and meanings and see if you were right when you pick up your copy of Vile & Blessed on October 30th!