The Tree Language, an Introduction

If you're one of my readers of The Mage's Apprentice on +Wattpad, you may have noticed that some of the names of characters and places, as well as some of the magical spells and chants in the book, are in a different language. A constructed language -- or conlang for short.

You may also have noticed that the cover of The Mage's Apprentice sports a symbol. That symbol is an ideograph in the Tree Language.

Conlang

Constructed languages, unlike their counterpart natural languages, are created by an individual or group for an imaginary place. Most of the time. There are some languages, such as Esperanto, that are like the adult versions of those made up languages you may have used with siblings or best friends when you were a kid. 

The Tree Language of Omorbia is one such language. It's one of many Omorbian languages, but it's also the first that I've fully realized. Making up languages is not as easy as one would imagine. Making up languages like Dothraki, for other humans, is hard. Making up languages like Klingon, for humanoid space aliens, is also hard. Making up languages for non-humanoid space aliens is extremely difficult.

But I decided to do the most difficult thing of all: I decided to make up a language for a class of plant life.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to explain this language to you, so that if you're so interested you can explore it. However, creating a language for beings without mouths is not an easy process, and I don't think I can explain how I did it in a single blog post. So hang on, conlang enthausists, linguists and language geeks. It's going to be a bumpy ride!

The Tree Language:

Phonetics
Phonology
Writing System
Word Building
Grammar - Verbs
Grammar - Pronouns etc.
Some Problems