Thank You So Much For Answering! I Had No Idea What Wiktionary (though I Probably Should Since I Took

Thank you so much for answering! I had no idea what Wiktionary (though i probably should since i took german for 5 years and took linguistics as one of my college courses) and it looks so much better than google translate! Don’t worry, i didn’t think you were representing these languages in that way, i’m just amazed how you combine sorta real words to make your dialogue so interesting. i too would like to bastardize some languages for my own works, but wasn’t sure how to get the ball rolling on said bastardization! this has helped a lot! you’re the best, linny! :)

hello! quick question: how do you conduct your research regarding languages? Like which sources do you use to find accurate translations of different words in different languages? i so admire the way you use languages in your fics; it’s so impressive! please share your wisdom, linny, i would greatly appreciate it! :)

(aka a struggling writer that has found that googling just doesn’t cut it)

I am flattered by this ask but feel the need to emphasize that much of the language stuff in my fics is totally made up! Like, I do often use real words, and try to mimic the sounds of some real words sometimes but especially in the case of Suli I am imposing a pretty much entirely fictitious grammar. I also take real words and declare them to have alternate meanings. I am neither doing pure conlang nor representing authentic languages.

All that said! Wiktionary is my best friend. I often use an online dictionary (Cambridge has a good selection of languages and will often save you from, for example, wanting a translation of “give up” and unwittingly getting words that mean “[hand over] [opposite of down]” instead of “surrender” or “leave off”) to get either a word I want or a close relative. Then I take the word the dictionary gave me to Wiktionary to see things like its grammatical construction, its etymological root, or its cousin words, and then I fuck around until I get a sound I like.

(For example, the Dutch word “to fuck” is “neuken.” I didn’t like the sound of that, so I took it to Wiktionary and found the slang synonym “batsen,” which also means to bounce or slap. I wanted to mimic the hard sound of the English “fuck,” so I switched the s and the t, and so when Kaz is talking dirty in the Ballads fics, he uses a lot of words with the root “bast-” including “verbast” to mean “fucking” in the sense of a gerundive intensifier, though literally meaning something like “befucked.” (Actual Dutch doesn’t use profanities as English-speakers think of them as intensifiers.) The ver- prefix as a gerund is parallel to when Kaz asks Inej not to leave him— “jet kennet me verzaken,” with the last word breaking down literally to ver-zak-en, something like “do leaving to, make left.” But also cognate to the English “forsaken,” which is really why I did it.)

I hope this confession of my tangled and honestly somewhat whim-and-aesthetics-driven methodology doesn’t diminish me too much in your eyes! I am so, so serious about my apologies to languages.

I have now edited this twice for clarity; I am so bad at this; I’m sorry.