Hello again!

I officially reached the 75% mark in Book 2 of the Elixir of Power trilogy!

Things have been proceeding well, and I haven't made any major screw-ups (that I'm aware of ...) While I haven't exactly been possessed by the spirit of Hemingway in terms of inspiration, I've definitely had a good time writing the last few chapters. The creative juices are flowing well, and I quite like the way the book is shaping up.

Thankfully, I have managed to stick reasonably close to my original outline, and editing shouldn't be too major of a task.

While we wait for my to finish the thing, I thought it would be neat to share a little bit of information about the language of the Elarím elves. As a massive language nerd that speaks a tiny bit of French, Dutch, Italian, and Chinese, creating a language for these books has been a real pleasure.

Elvish Phonetics

Three of the main things you need to consider when creating a language are: lexicon (the words), grammar (the rules), and phonetics (the sounds.)

Right now, as a true language nerd who minored in linguistics, I am going to bombard you with the phonetic rules of elvish at some length. I apologise in advance—when I get onto a topic I'm passionate about, there's no stopping me!

One feature that jumps out right away is the elvish 'i' which has an accent: í

As I have mentioned previously, this just means that the 'i' has a long 'ee' sound. So these words are pronounced like this:

Sidarí - [sid - ar - ee]

Elarím - [el - ar - eem]

(The bolded parts are the emphasized syllable)

The above words also have 'r's in them, which in elvish are pronounced as a cool little thing called an 'alveolar tap.' The symbol for that is: ɾ

Basically, all that means is that when you pronounce 'r's in elvish, it is the same as a Japanese 'r'. It's almost like rolling your 'r's as you do in Spanish, but you only do one 'touch' on your gums with your tongue — hence the name 'alveolar tap.' Neat huh?

Now, let's move on to the 'th.' This one is a bit of a different sound that English speakers might not be as familiar with. It's not pronounced like the 'th' in 'this' or 'that'. It's actually pronounced as a slightly different kind of 't' — a dental t! The symbol is: t̪

A dental 't' is just like the one you're familiar with except it's, well, dental. Usually in English we pronounce 't' by touching our tongue to our gums. Pronounce it in the exact same way, but touch your tongue to your teeth. Don't hit the consonant too hard, either—it's pronounced quite softly. So these words are pronounced like this:

Uthuín - [oo - t̪ oo - een]

Telethían - [te - le - t̪ ee - en]

Notice in 'Telethían,' there is a 'normal t' as well as the dental one. In a lot of real-life languages, sounds that might seem very similar to non-speakers are clearly different to fluent speakers. To keep things true to life, I like to privately imagine in my own head that the humans who try to say elvish words don't quite get them right. This would be an example of something that trips them up.

I quite like this one, and I only included it because I am a big enough language nerd that I didn't want to have things be too straightforward. When people read the actual books, I'm sure they will just pronounce things in a way that comes naturally to them. This hardcore pronunciation stuff is just a fun little thing for me. And, one day, hopefully, it will be a massive source of frustration for whoever I hire to narrate the audiobook.

Just two more little examples and I'll wrap up this language nerd session!

One weird little one is that the elvish 'oe' is actually pronounced 'weh.' So the following words are pronounced like this:

Oe - [weh]

Oenan - [weh - nan]

Who said vowels couldn't sometimes be consonants? If anyone's going to break the rules and blur the lines, it's going to be the Elarím.

The last little one is a rather direct influence from another real-life language: Scots Gaelic.

In elvish, the 'gh' sound is pronounced just like the 'ch' in the Scottish pronunciation of 'loch.' It's what we in 'the biz' call a voiceless velar fricative. A very basic way of describing it is that you lift up the back of your tongue a little until you are making a bit of a harsh 'h' noise in the back of your mouth. The symbol is 'x'.

So this word is pronounced like this:

Díalogh - [dee - a - lox]

That about does it for the elvish pronunciation guide! I hope you found it interesting, and it helps make things a bit clearer when Book 2 finally comes out!

In the meantime, happy reading, and I hope you'll enjoy some of the books below from authors like me.

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Until next time!