Finishing Up the Language Clinic Now

Sample of Written OsjiI’m done with everything but trying to get the file down to a managable size. While I’m working on that, I thought I’d post an example of what you’ll learn to do in the course, copied from the book. The sentence to the left says, “So kiudlingen geskiveet’ninim,” with directly translates into English as “I moonroaded from the fighter.” The full meaning, however, which is tough to translate, is “I escaped the enemy attacker by risking my life and sanity traveling through the deadly, monster-filled alternate dimension by means of moon magic,” with overtones of near-suicidal desperation.

In the Create a Language Clinic, you’ll learn to create concepts that don’t exist in English, invent logical vocabularies and working grammars, develop both spoken and written sentences, learn how to create a stylistically coherent written alphabet, and discover such neat tricks as how to make your world background seem bigger than it is, and how to make the words in your language sound really foreign while not scaring away your readers.

Oh, yes. And create original names for anything in your world in about fifteen minutes.

I’m tremendously excited by the way this book has turned out. Now if I can get the Word file size under 6 MB (really, six megs) I’ll do the Dance of Joy, Numfar.

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By Holly

Novelist, writing teacher, on a mission to reprint my out-of-print books and indie-publish my new ones.

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BJSteeves
BJSteeves
16 years ago

I can’t wait to get my copy!

Congrats!

Zoe
Zoe
16 years ago

The Language Clinic sounds excellent 🙂 And yay for Joss Whedon!

Rick
16 years ago

Well, Holly, I always knew you had impeccable taste.

Gabriele
16 years ago

Congrats on finishing the Language Clinic.

Love the concept of moonroading, lol. Is there a writer version of it, like “I managed to finish the manuscript in time despite having to work on three more and an edit, my kid had the measles, my garden was full of poisonous snakes and we had a tornado that led to a weeks power outage”?

Cuyler
16 years ago

Finally, yay!!! I am so excited. I have looked at your page almost everyday, just to see how far you came with the clinic. I was just as excited as when I waited for the next Lord of the Rings Movie, and the one after. Now you are done. I can’t wait until it’s up and ready to be sold.

Yippeeeeee!!!!!!

I can’t comment of the movie stuff, I don’t watch much T.V. I am Books, Writing, Music, and occasionly- not very often- a video Game.

Anyways, I am so excited.

heather
16 years ago

I am so excited about this language clinic. You just don’t even know.

And coincidentally I just watched the first 3 episodes of Firefly last night thanks to Netflix. Great show! I miss Buffy & Angel though.

Rick
16 years ago

You’re an Angel fan? Somehow this does not surprise me.

CLC sounds amazing. Can’t wait to read it.

“No longer do the dance of joy, Numfar!”

Jason Penney
16 years ago

And create original names for anything in your world in about fifteen minutes.

That’s what I’m most excited about. I suck at names, and I think it’s because I have no logic behind them.

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