World Building 101: Arroz con Pescado

One of the more curious fables I’ve come across is the one known as “the Tower of Babel.” Found in the book of Genesis, it weaves a myth intended to explain the foundation of the world’s languages. The story goes, mankind was united in the construction of a great tower whose height was intended to reach God. God, apparently concerned about the diminishing housing market if those damned humans ever tried to move in, confounded them by suddenly changing everyone to speak a different language. Because the workers could no longer understand one another, the construction hit a major obstacle, the tower was never completed, and everyone wandered off to the corners (not corners) of the world to come to grips with the lack of mutual comprehension (this was a lovely reference in one of the episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 2 where a virus in the main computer corrupted the universal translator and made everyone speak, hear and read different languages, creating, as one might imagine, amusing and deadly chaos). Obviously, that’s not really how it happened, but it does address a functional reality in our world: between us all – nations, lands and cultures – we have grown to communicate in myriad ways.

Language is a really funny thing – it’s so much more than just words, letters, sounds and structure. When I spent a few years in Mexico in my younger days, I’d had a pretty robust crash course in Spanish, and was bordering on smug confidence as I arrived in the Mexico City airport. As far as I could tell in that moment, my plane had somehow opted to take me to Russia or Japan, or… well, someplace other than Mexico, because what I was hearing was – I was certain – not Spanish. At least, it didn’t seem to resemble what I’d been taught. And of course, it was really just the difference between learning a thing and knowing a thing. It would be a few more months before I actually began learning something similar to Spanish, and even years later I am continuing to learn the nuance and details of this wonderful language.

See, words aren’t just words, right? They’re noises, yes, which we have come to associate with other things – actions, items, people, places, descriptors and so on. Say the word “Apple” out loud. Yes, you know what it means, and “manzana” means roughly the same thing, though they sound different and come from radically different linguistic ancestries. Germanic roots, latin roots, and so forth. For example, why is the plural of “moose” still “moose”, but the plural of “goose” is “geese”, or “mouse” is “mice”? All good questions (and all easily answered with a simple Google search, so I won’t do that here).

But it also goes beyond the ancestry. Much like the people who speak them, words carry with them the experiences associated to them and pair up distinctly with the individual. As an example, when you hear the word “mouse”, what do you think of? Tom and Jerry? Mickey? The pet mouse you had to take care of for two weeks and who almost died because you left the cage in the sunlight and didn’t give him enough water? Or does the word’s utterance make you think of the rhyme to mouse – house (audible rhyming characteristics, by the way, is a form of subtext applied to many linguistic traditions, meaning that sometimes the word that rhymes with the word chosen is just as applicable as the word itself – now go back and re-read your Dr Seuss, and prepare to have your mind blown).

Words trigger memories, just like any other melodic or audio device. Songs transport us to our memories, fill our hearts with the context generated – intentionally or otherwise – to other places, other times, other lives. Languages are living, breathing, evolving things. You’ve probably heard that the definition of the word “literally” has been changed to include the meaning “not literally”. Which means, yes, I can say “I will literally smack that smug little grin off your stupid face”, and you’re not really going to be sure if I actually mean that or not.

And speaking of stealing phrases from other writings (thank you, Aaron Sorkin, for stealing the saying: “good writers borrow from other authors; great authors steal.”), it’s part of our expectations now, to be given little winks and nods from our shared experiences, and the use of common language offers us many opportunities to draw phrases and references which build on the commonalities of experiences and memories. For example, I’m a Star Wars fan (yes, still, a pesar de todo) and also a fan of a few hundred or thousand other creative projects, and am not ashamed to include little referential bits throughout my own work. I’ve included lines from my favorite songs, bands (I’m waving at you, Steam Powered Giraffe), movies, books, and so on. I actually included the number 3263827 in one of my books, a subtle reference to the garbage compactor unit in Star Wars: A New Hope. I’m shameless and I don’t care. If nobody ever read my books, at least I amused myself, right?

The point here is that when you’re building a world, you have to remember that their language didn’t appear overnight. It’s a living thing. It becomes what it needs to be, and is colored in by what its people want it to be. And even within a single continent, the language can vary. When I was living in the DF (Mexico City, Distrito Federal), one of the common meals I had was arroz con pescado (rice and fish). But when I was living on the coast a while later, I realized that they dropped the Z and … well, most of the other letters as well, making it sound more like “arro con pecao”. Not enough to redefine it as a dialect, but certainly giving a bit of local flavor to the lengua.

Oh! That reminds me of a (bad) joke. “Que hace un pez?” (what does a fish do?) Answer: “Nada.” (swim/nothing)

The punch line is derived from the use of the word pez meaning both shorthand for pescado (fish), but also specifically being associated to the fish you’re gonna eventually eat. Meanwhile, “nada” is the conjugated form of “to swim” which means “it swims”, while also being the word for “nothing.” So, what does a (dead) fish do? (nothing) it swims. And don’t worry, it’s not even funny in Spanish, it’s just a joke to tell gueros who are learning a little bit of the language.

So for the people in your books, language can’t just be a static functionary, used as a bland descriptor between characters. It can’t just be a tool for exposition. Every word carries with it the inheritance of the world, the context, the applied vernacular emerging from a hundred generations of evolutionary brilliance and artistic expression.

And it shouldn’t stop there. Think of all the things our language accomplishes. Think back on why languages were even relevant way back when. Numbers were the first big translation between groups, because for trade negotiations to exist, some manner of commonality has to exist. Units of measure, weights, distances, passage of time (minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years) as well as references to the divine, science, tools, and technology. And specifically for the purposes of trade, what about money and monetary units? We don’t all just exchange a cow and a certain quantity of chickens for two reed-woven baskets and a forged plow. All these things had to be told, shared and communicated, because in order for any two people to work together, they need this basic form of making noises in order to be understood.

And, not to go too far off topic here, but isn’t communication the key to solving all problems? Because I have noticed that a failure to communicate certainly seems to be at the root of most problems. Just imagine how much better our world problems might be if we all focused more on both sides of communication? Just ruminating. :)

But of course communication is not a perfect science. Intent, tone, subtext, slang, context – all these things can get in the way towards the confounding of comprehension. Or even humor – this can be a useful device, but done wrong can certainly run a sharing of information off the rails. I can think of more than a few contemporary comedians who didn’t read the audience well and lost their whole career as a result.

Here are a couple suggestions for helping expand your application of language – let me know in the comments below how it’s worked for you!

·       Launch a language app (I use Duolingo to help stay on top of my Spanish) for a week and really focus yourself on building a mental library of new words. You can pick a language you’re already familiar with or pick a new one entirely – learning a new language is a GREAT way to keep your mind active!

·       Pick a book you’ve already read but find a copy in a different language, preferably a language that’s an etymological cousin to your native language (like, English/German, Spanish(or French or Italian or Portuguese/Latin, etc) – study the word choices and see how the language vary.

·       Watch a movie you’ve already seen, but with a different language audio (keep the subtitles on so you can follow along). Also, be amazed at how the different voice actors sound so different from the voices you’re used to. (I watched Star Trek (OST) and Thundercats in Spanish when I lived there, and, I gotta say, those are TOTALLY different shows in Spanish)

We’re coming up near the end of this series, folks. Thank you for reading along, and I hope some of these chapters have been at least entertaining, if not slightly informative. As always, I love your feedback, so keep it coming!

Next week, we’re going to look at some of the differences to consider when world building in Fiction or Non-fiction, in a little article I’m calling “Red Pill, Blue Pill”. See you then!