Foundational Monologue: Language and Dialects

"Linguistics" is defined as the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. All of my life I have been completely fascinated by the workings and communication of language. I distinctly recall learning the basics of the English language at a particularly young age. There was a time where several themes for birthdays of mine were purely orthographical in nature, themed around items like the English Alphabet. That passion only developed for me as I grew older. Vocabulary and eventually writing as well grew into a massive inspiration of mine. Nowadays I find myself often studying languages, especially those defined in a Romantic or Semitic sense.

This linguistic passion still continues greatly to the day, and as I have begun to develop the world of Meridian, I have begun to develop a structure as I sit in thought. As I have sat down and built the world of my thoughts, I have come to realize that my work is fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. Before establishing the details of any other item or aspect of Meridian, I began developing languages, syntaxes, and dialects. As I put my pen to the paper, I realized the uniqueness of this method. I had never heard of this method being used in worldbuilding before. After some research I came to realize that J. R. Tolkien's, "Lord of the Rings," trilogy is practically the only piece of authorship I could find with that similar mindset. This of course led me to research the methodologies of the creation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy fairly in-depth, and uncover some principles and ideas to guide the creation of Meridian.

As I was sitting and thinking, the thought suddenly hit me on how I was going to develop Meridian as a whole. The invention and composition of languages would be the foundation; the beating heart of Meridian one might say. The accounts and stories set on Meridian would aim to provide a world for the languages, rather than the languages aiming to provide a world for the accounts and stories. This has since been solidified as the framework from which the world of Meridian will be built.

Because of this development, I began thinking of ways to creates languages similar in concept to the various languages inn different corners of the world today. There would be a sense of equivalency between our languages and the languages discovered in Meridian. I quickly ran into the problem where I would then need to write a bunch of languages, a task that is very daunting to put it lightly. Attempting that feat would focus too much of my energy on simply the languages and nothing else that matters to the world I want to build. Through the construction of languages, I can communicate many different topics to build a rich world, such as politics, culture, and geography, and the change of these items over time. I had been attempting to figure out a way around this problem where I discovered a method to begin to develop. Instead of writing a language(s), I could write a series of regional lexicons.

As opposed to creating an entire series of complex languages, collecting a series of common words in English and developing those into new words for the new languages and dialects. That is the purpose of this page. This is the foundational location for exploring the different languages, dialects, and lexicons.

One of he main reasons I have decided to go this route, diving deep into language development, is for the development of locations. The place-name a location is given reveals a lot about itself. Place names most often tell us something about a central geographical feature, but they can also refer to important historical events, or the people living there themselves. Which geographical features, historical events, and the descriptors given also tell us about what the people value culturally. Place names are born when language meets topography: overwhelmingly place-names refer to natural or man-made landscape features.

How does one go about creating unique and meaningful place names? The method of creating a lexicon for individual languages, I believe is a great first step.