Its dystopian and about 200 years from our present day time period. Basically the U.S. as we know it is destroyed by environmental disasters and people in specific locations are left standing due to their not being on a coast or fault line or something like that. I center in on one oasis type city thats escaped most of the damage. In my book these people just speak english I guess, they've grown up in a mostly intact urban setting, still dystopia with government and all that, but there is at least a third group of people they know of (the city is divided into two groups). This group has grown up in a harsher, nomadic, rural environment. They are more violent and aggressive. Should I give them their own language since this story takes place about 100 years after the apocalyptic events? Would giving them a new language be plausible? I'm mostly thinking of "the 100" on netflix right now since the grounders are still from the same place but because of their circumstances have formed their own language. Is this unnecessary in my storyline? What makes forming a new language necessary or useful in a dystopian story?
Through constructing a whole new language from scratch might be as difficult for the society as it might be annoying for you to try and do, for the most part I'd imagine, your characters will be speaking a different version of English then we do today no matter what. Just think of the differences between how we speak now compared to how we did in 1818, due to new technologies and merging cultures we've invented a plethora of new words and we've also stopped using many of them. We've dropped the thees and thous and thing like referring to our close acquaintances as Master or Madame so and so. My point is languages change over time, and changing the version of English your characters speak will likely be easier than making a new one and also will make your world seem so much more in depth and immersive then if it sounds the same as ours. Hope that helps
That's a great idea! I'm not 100 percent sure where to start evolving the english, but I think this will be easier than making up a whole new one.
Haha yeah I figured it would be. Evolving English will be tricky no doubt but at least one idea that comes to mind is to try shortening words and expressions, it certainly seems like language is striving to less elaborate by using few or less stefic adjectives at least. My greatest advice really would be to look at a few things written in an older form of English and see how it differs from how we speak today then expand on those same things your your story.
