From Shakespeare to Dr Seuss: What invented words reveal about languages
We’ve all made a word up at least once in our lives.
It possibly emerged from a language game that annihilated all vowels. Or an affectionate term for a lover, making it incomprehensible to the untrained listener. Perhaps it was a secret shared between siblings to ward off intruding ears, particularly those of prying adults.
Why do we create words?
It’s not surprising that we conjure new words, either out of fond memories, mischievous disguise or pure imagination and fun.
Sometimes, we do so because we want to be exclusive, or we are electrified by our imagined worlds and fascinating stories. Other times, we may feel that a common phrase is simply not efficient enough to encapsulate what we are truly feeling. Roald Dahl’s novels are filled with examples to show how this might be the case. Doesn’t “giganticus” add a certain extravagance that its nondescript synonym, “gigantic” could not?
This is also seen with emerging words and phrases on our digital devices, like “totes”, “noob” or “troll”. Some might argue that these new ways of communicating online will lead towards a catastrophic and destructive end to all languages. But the ever-changing Internet language may even connect people globally, overcoming the barriers of race, class, age, gender and education background. The invention of words isn’t new and may even help us communicate better.
Creating new words, also known as neologism, is what enriches languages and makes conversing a creative affair. While most languages develop and change naturally, some languages are completely constructed with an agenda.
Artist Hildegard von Bingen, was an Abbess of a convent in Germany who invented Lingua Ignota (“Unknown Language” in Latin). With over a thousand words, this was constructed for mystical and religious reasons.
More recent constructed languages have also been invented with entertainment and artistic aims in mind, such as Dothraki in David Peterson’s Game of Thrones series — which essentially drew inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien’s famously constructed Elvish languages. In his essay, A Secret Vice, Tolkien shared how “the making of language and mythology are related in functions” where language was an important device to give a voice to people in the story world.
New words also emerge as we seek to find ways to describe specific meanings in our daily parlance. In fact, many new words are invented by well-known writers. These words are sometimes (and predictably) termed as authorisms. This isn’t surprising when we think about how William Shakespeare created over 400 words that have since entered the common English vernacular.
Here are just a few examples of invented words/phrases by famous writers in fiction:
· “Green-eyed monster”
– William Shakespeare in Othello
Meaning: Jealousy, imagined as a monster that attacks people. In his play, Shakespeare used it in the sentence “Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy!/ It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/ The meat it feeds on”.
· “The creeps”
– Charles Dickens in David Copperfield
Meaning: Feeling of revulsion, horror or fear. This word may have been influenced by “creepy”, also invented in the 1830s.
· “Jabberwocky”
– Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass
Meaning: Nonsensical, gibberish or meaningless language. This was from Carroll’s poem in the book that contained several neologisms.
· “Nerd”
– Dr Seuss in If I Ran the Zoo
Meaning: A dull or boring person. Another spelling was “knurd” (“drunk”, backwards) — however its original meaning in Dr Seuss’ story is still debatable.
· “Tween”
– J.R.R. Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring
Meaning: A contraction of “between”, this word describes youths between the ages of 10 and 12 years. In Tolkien’s original text, it referred to hobbits between the ages 20 and 33 years.
What do invented words tell us about languages?
There is a science and concerted effort involved behind these creations. New linguistic inventions draw us closer to look at grammatical words (the, be, a) and nouns or verbs of what we’re talking about (move, apple, love). Sometimes it allows us to see how various “real” languages use grammars differently and yet have a common pattern. This goes to show that writers did not always pull words out from thin air.
For example, in English, sentences may appear longer (“I would like some rice”) while it takes a shorter time in other languages to get to the point (Malay where its English equivalent would be “I want rice”). Yet in both examples, the pronoun (“I”) begins the sentences, followed by the verb (“would like”/“want”) and the object (“rice”).
New languages work on similar grammar and language structures. It also pushes us to conclude how grammar works in a language — as long as we are able to spot a pattern. It works in similar ways when we learn languages effectively, through knowledge of basic words, pattern rules and recognising words and sounds with their meanings.
Researchers Iga Nowak and Giosuè Baggio carried out an experiment to see if children and adults could learn constructed languages with frequent words that were strictly fixed within sentences. This goes against freer movements of words that happen in real languages. The result? Adults appeared better at learning the invented languages as they could rely on prior knowledge and experiences with languages, despite having the rules go against how real languages work. In this way, new languages can provide a gateway towards understanding how we learn languages.
Can we translate new words?
Often, there are words specific to a culture which are untranslatable elsewhere, and translators find themselves in a similar dilemma when it comes to translating new words.
Some translators leave the words as they are, the way untranslatable words are usually translated. In other cases where its original word has a grammatical error (e.g. “worst-est”), a similar grammar mistake is also made in its translation. Ways of translating, well, untranslatable words, will always be hotly debated as new words continue to emerge and enter our lexicon, as it always has. It might be confusing, but translators can and will seize the opportunity to exercise their creativity as they grapple with new words.
In the meantime, there is nothing that can stop humans from crafting new words and ways of communicating in storytelling. As intelligent beings, we are creatively seeking out the unexplored even in the ways we express. And as we approach World Book Day, I invite all of you to celebrate words, whether recently invented or not.
For without words, I would not be here writing today, and life would be less exciting without literature and worlds filled with stories, myths and jabberwockies.
Written by Liani MK
