- Invitation Status
- Look for groups
- Looking for partners
- Posting Speed
- Multiple posts per day
- 1-3 posts per day
- One post per day
- 1-3 posts per week
- One post per week
- Slow As Molasses
- Online Availability
- My times are pretty erratic, but I try to avoid being on EST 11pm-9am.
- Writing Levels
- Intermediate
- Adept
- Advanced
- Adaptable
- Preferred Character Gender
- Male
- Female
- Genres
- Fantasy, Modern, Historical Romance.
It's commonly accepted that our man JRR to the Tolkien was the father of not just modern fantasy, but specifically a little thing we like to call worldbuilding. Most people know that he developed several languages for the different peoples of his world, but before an author, Tolkien was a professional studier of how languages relate to history and culture, who began inventing languages since he was literally a kid (he started Elvish when he was 18, and there are suggestions he'd invented others well before he was 13). Tolkien considered his languages inextricable from his world if not the motivation for his worldbuilding in the first place, yet language is one of the least considered elements of most modern worldbuilding.
There is a good reason for this. Brandon Sanderson says at one point in his lectures on creative writing that "every genre has a worldbuilding points limit like a Warhammer army, and usually languages are so far down the priority tree for your story that you've run out of points you can use by the time you think languages so most authors ignore them." And he is not wrong. Detailed worldbuilding is a huge endeavor, and language in particular is one of those things that most of your audience is going to accept your logic on. Have a world where everybody speaks the same language in exactly the same way despite being oceans away and sometimes even of entirely different species? Nobody's gonna blink. But just thinking about the languages in your world is a beautiful, and honestly simple way to add depth to your world and make it feel more alive.
In this guide, I'm going to explain 4 ways in which you can weave linguistic thought into your worldbuilding without ever attempting to make a language of your own.
Language and Geography
A lot of worldbuilders don't realize that language is alive, in a way, and it evolves just as species do. It changes gradually, but constantly, and given enough time, that change can become significant. Perhaps the simplest and most obvious thing to consider in thinking about a world with multiple languages is ease of communication. Just as you're not going to put a trade city in the middle of an impassable mountain, people on either side of an impassable mountain are more likely to be very isolated from each other, and their languages are bound to be very different from one another, even if they originally shared the same ancestor. This obviously changes if you've got a world with magic that allows people to pass the mountain easily. The key point here is, again, how easy it is to communicate, so think about how your magic and technology impacts the geographical relationship. Don't forget that distance is its own kind of geographical barrier unless you've got some sort of easily accessible teleportation that's been around for thousands of years.
Just as technology can overcome geographical barriers, consider non-geographical barriers to communication. A country's isolation policy would encourage its culture and language to diverge from its surroundings, as would a 100-year-long magical barrier that limits people coming and going. Even if the languages of surrounding areas used to be quite similar to a country now isolated, you should expect that at the very least phrases and pronunciations would have changed, as well as how certain words are defined.
Languages also heavily influence one another when they come into contact. An island with good naval communication with a nearby mainland, for instance, will often take strong influences from the language of the mainland. If your PoV character is a native of the island, maybe the overall language of the mainland is very different and difficult to learn, but they recognize certain words from a mainlander. Trade will also facilitate a lot of language exchange, especially as trade REQUIRES communication to occur. If peoples with two, entirely different languages are forced to communicate, it's not uncommon for an extremely simplified mashing of the two languages called a pidgin to occur. Given enough time, children can take on the pidgin as their native language, and it can develop into a full language of its own, known as a creole.
Language and Class
Language has always had a relationship with class and image. Foreign languages are often symbols particularly of wealth, intelligence, or both. In the Georgian era in Britain, men of the gentry were required to learn French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek. High class women were also meant to know the contemporary languages (French, German, and Italian) as a symbol of sophistication, but were generally not supposed to learn Latin or Greek, as this indicated a woman with too much education. Speaking multiple languages is still something of a status symbol, as it's difficult to acquire more than two languages to proficiency unless you have the money for courses, time to dedicate to learning, exposure to other countries through travel, or have really high inherent intelligence. Being unable to comfortably speak the language of your surrounding, in turn, is punished severely. Native English speakers in America often look down on immigrants who speak broken English as stupid or lesser, as though these people don't already have their own native language they're perfectly fluent and intelligible in. Perhaps being able to speak a lot of languages in your world is a mark that you're either extremely wealthy or a high level magician, because being able to travel far is only really conducted through difficult magic. Or maybe only royalty learn a certain foreign language because it is considered especially difficult to learn. Do translators and interpreters have special status in your country? They certainly don't have to, but maybe in your fictional country the lines of access to education and political necessity intersect.
Status markers can also develop WITHIN a language. Regional accents are not unique to English, and it can actually be quite common in other languages as well for a certain accent to be labeled as the "standard" or even the most proper or sophisticated. Other accents often end up being treated as unsophisticated, haughty, or embarrassing in some way, and many speakers will learn to hide their accent outside of their home region. High use of slang (informal, largely colloquial speech) among certain communities can have a similar effect, and affect the community's reputation, usually exclusively in the "barbarian" direction. As I've mentioned before, language evolves as time passes and the people who speak it change. A singular "correct" version of any widely spoken language simply doesn't exist. So when someone complains that you're using the phrase "when worst comes to worse" or "Houston, we've had a problem" wrong, they are participating in a form of gatekeeping we've almost all been subconsciously taught to do in the name of "correctness."
This is, in fact, also a subtle way to use language to ENFORCE class. Insisting that certain dialects of language or accents indicate that the NATIVE speakers who use that dialect or accent are somehow less intelligent or sophisticated is a mild way to encourage bias and dehumanization of those people, make it difficult to rise up the social ladder, and even affect access to highly skilled jobs (whether directly or education) or decent clientele, thus impacting financial prospects. Speakers of African American Vernacular English, which is a linguistically recognized native variant of English today, have been treated as less credible witnesses in legal cases, and may struggle with the English aptitude tests that lead into higher education. My Fair Lady, while a fictional account, illustrates well how the ability to conform to a "better" accent opens doors that would otherwise be unavailable to someone of Eliza's background. The "official" or "formal" language a country or region has is typically the most socially acceptable form of the language, even if it's not the form a majority of the population necessarily speaks. Inability to comfortably speak this form of the language may even make it difficult to deal with the formal government in place. And this is just the subconscious ways language impacts class.
Language can also actively be used to enforce class. It's incredibly common for teaching another language to be a part of the colonization process, which can even extend to active attempts to eradicate the indigenous language. The indigenous language can sometimes be seen as savage, and replacing their native language with a more "civilized" language can actually be seen as a charitable act to improve their lives. This can manifest in not just social difficulties navigating with the indigenous language, but also direct prohibitions to speak it, or an intentional removal of access to essential things in the indigenous language, such as street and location names being changed to something in the colonizing power's language. Note that even as this happens, the indigenous language will likely start to influence the colonizing power's language, though in smaller ways than if the two languages collide on equal terms.
Particularly the ability to write and read has strongly been tied to access to education, as it's much more difficult to pick up without direction from one's surroundings, and actually has few correct forms of spelling. In turn, access to education has always been tied to wealth. The Académie Française is an official part of the French government one of whose responsibilities include the regulation of the French spelling. Many of the reforms have been made ostensibly to make French writing more accessible, but the constant changes arguably serve the opposite function, making reading and writing unusually inconsistent, and therefore reinforcing the barrier to learning it.
The Korean writing system is one of my all-time favorite examples of class's relationship to writing. The shortest version I can think of is that a very long time ago, Korean was written exclusively in Chinese characters. Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn reading and writing for, because it's basically the only language where every character has a different meaning, and aristocrats were the only ones with the time and resources to learn. So, one of the kings decided to develop a phonetic script for Korean so that peasants would be able to read and write (called Hangul). One of its primary functions was to break down the current giant wall of class barrier, by allowing peasants a way to petition the government and protest unfair treatment, but it also gained its own meaning and connotation. At the time, the only way to get positions in government was to pass a test not only held in written Chinese, but largely based on Chinese writings, which was an extremely easy way to make sure no non-aristocrats ever even got close. Once it started to catch on, Hangul was largely looked down upon by most aristocrats as the language of peasants, but it was really prolifically taken up by women and illegitimate sons of aristocrats - people with minimal rights, but high education. It was never fully accepted until Japanese occupation almost 500 years later, but because of its history, it symbolically became the written language of protest, particularly against systemic oppression.
Language, History, and Culture
Language is impacted by the history of those who speak it. Ever heard the phrase "Close but no cigar?" I'd heard it for years without ever thinking about why in the hell we bring cigars into it. The phrase is specifically American because it originates from the 20th century when carnivals would give out cigars as prizes. Your language evolves from your country's history, and will hold pieces of the past in it that even the native speakers might not know or use for its intended purpose (becoming what a biologist like me would call "vestigial"). Chinese uses pithy, 4-character idioms to represent certain morals, one of which is "point [at a] deer, call [it a] horse." The phrase means essentially "to deliberately misrepresent something for ulterior motives," but it harkens back to a historical minister who brought a deer into court one day and called it a horse. He used it as a test of loyalty, weeding out anyone who insisted it was actually a deer. This is also likely the reason that "baka" (the word for "fool") in Japanese is notated with the Chinese characters for deer and horse, despite the fact that the original Chinese meaning involves malicious intent, not stupidity.
Sayings or word usage may also reference common folklore or stories in your culture. A similar Chinese idiom translates to "old man [at the] frontier loses [his] horse." Its more proper meaning is something along the lines of "you never know when something will be a blessing or a curse." It comes from a parable about an old man living at the border whose horse runs away to barbarian territory. Then his horse came back with a second horse. The man's son loved the second horse and rode it often, then fell off and broke his leg, but when the barbarians invaded next year, all the men geared up to go fight and almost all of them died, but the son stayed alive because his broken leg didn't allow him to go. The point being good fortune turned into bad fortune and vice versa. I'm sure this all sounds mystical and cool, but what do you think we're doing when we say someone "cried wolf."
Words themselves can have their own history that affects their usage and interpretation. My husband's grandmother, who speaks relatively little English, recently used the N word because she thought he was getting darker. I'm quite certain she didn't mean to even be insulting to him in using it. But that word, along with all the other racial slurs, are taboo to say because of the way these words were historically used to dehumanize, belittle, and even insult the people they were used to describe. To my husband's grandmother, that word most likely has no such connotation, because she most likely doesn't know any of the history of its use. Similarly, when I was in high school I used "jap" as a shorthand for Japanese when discussing my language class until someone told me about how it was used as a slur in WWII. For a less heavy example, four is an unlucky number in Chinese just because it sounds similar to the word for death.
Language and Cultural Identity
Speakers of the same language can also have different uses and interpretations of language based on their own history and culture. The recent uproar over one of Jamie Foxx's posts essentially saying "they killed Jesus, what would they do to you" also shows how different subgroups who speak the same language can also have different uses and interpretations of the same words and phrases. From what I've read on the subject, the black American Christian community don't consider the Jews at fault for Jesus' execution, and "they" is meant to be a more generalized term, in this case for fake friends. Whereas for Jews, this phrase or things similar to it is among the many things used to justify their persecution throughout history. Jamie Foxx was likely not even thinking about Jews when he posted that, but it still elicited a perfectly valid trauma response for a community that the same phrase meant something entirely different for. Recall that languages, particularly widely spoken languages in your world, do not themselves define a single culture. Multiple different cultures can speak the same language, and that will change their particular version of it.
Don't feel restricted by country lines. The concept of countries is a relatively modern one, and even within them today, people speak a range of languages, or at the very least dialects of their language. Communities at the borders between two countries may speak and understand both languages, or even the opposite language from that of their designated country. They may even consider themselves members of the other country, regardless of where the borders are officially drawn. Countries may also include unique embedded cultures. Whether it be an immigrant culture or an indigenous peoples around which the rest of the country developed, especially persecuted and extremely insulated cultures may even have their own, entirely separate language. The Romani have their own language, which they broadly share, despite communities having settled in different countries.
Language itself is often a marker of a cultural identity. The Korean alphabet actually has a holiday celebrating it, because - despite its complicated history - during Japanese occupation, having their own distinct script was a marker of their unique culture. A main facet of Japanese occupation of Korea right before and around WWII was a push for assimilation. Japan wanted Korea to submit fully to being an extension of Japan. While they initially supported the education of Korean literature, eventually even speaking in Korean was outlawed in the interest of assimilation. The day celebrating the Korean alphabet was established in the hopes of resisting the Japanization of Korea, and the attitude towards the alphabet entirely changed as it became an unofficial part of the "Koreanness" the Japanese people could not take away from them.
Language and Personality
One of the most interesting reasons to think about languages in your worldbuilding is that it can affect how characters from different areas relate to each other. Of course there's the obvious "do they need an interpreter" and "what words do they recognize" but it extends beyond that. We all have specific ways of using language that reveal our character and beliefs, which is why everyone loves writing dialogue. It's long been a pet peeve of mine, for instance, when people use "racist" as just a dogwhistle slur, because it implies that racism is a matter of individual bias and malice. Or one youtube review of Fifty Shades I enjoy watching notes that Christian Grey characterizes Ana leaving him as "running" which gives a perfectly rational decision to leave a relationship that's bad for you a negative connotation.
But how we interact with FOREIGN languages can reveal things about us, too. In one of the novels I'm working on, my main character (a girl named Veralisse) meets a foreign princess who has come to stay with them for a bit. She speaks Veralisse's home language fluently, but pronounces her name strangely, and although I didn't realize it at the time, this highlights Veralisse's sense of discomfort with the situation; it places emphasis on how the introduction of this polished, intelligent foreign princess who people keep gossiping might end up with the crown prince (Veralisse's fiance) threatens the status quo for her. It's such a little thing, but it adds to the emotional landscape of the scene without my even originally intending it to.
There is a well-supported theory that language subtly affects how we think. My dad speaks fluent English and it has been his primary spoken language for four decades, but he still becomes way more expressive and animated in Korean. My sister knew a girl who was bilingual, with English and Spanish, and she once told me that this friend of hers would add "pero" (the Spanish "but") at the end of sentences as kind of an "uhm" noise. One of my colleagues is also bilingual with the same languages, and she's great and highly intelligent, but she struggles with formal writing in English. Do you have any bilingual characters in your fictional setting? If not, why not? If you do, that's going to color their interaction with the main language around them. We as human beings tend to see people who speak a different language as particularly inaccessible, strange, and foreign, so it's natural that your main character feel out of place when interacting with someone exclusively speaking a language they don't understand. However, it's important when writing from the perspective of that foreign character, that you remember that the language is normal to them, and they are also normal people. To them, your main character is the foreigner. Do not exotify them. To bilingual characters, neither language is super foreign to them, so treating one language they speak natively as particularly exotic would be rather odd.
Disclaimer: note when I refer to Chinese here, my understanding comes largely from Mandarin. Some things I'm talking about ALSO apply to Cantonese, which is why I didn't specify just Mandarin, but not necessarily all of it will apply to other Chinese languages. Also just to be clear, I reference East Asian languages a lot because I'm most familiar with them, as a Korean who lived in China as a child, and then attempted to learn Japanese as a stepping stone for the language my grandparents speak. I do not have Asian fetish. T-T
There is a good reason for this. Brandon Sanderson says at one point in his lectures on creative writing that "every genre has a worldbuilding points limit like a Warhammer army, and usually languages are so far down the priority tree for your story that you've run out of points you can use by the time you think languages so most authors ignore them." And he is not wrong. Detailed worldbuilding is a huge endeavor, and language in particular is one of those things that most of your audience is going to accept your logic on. Have a world where everybody speaks the same language in exactly the same way despite being oceans away and sometimes even of entirely different species? Nobody's gonna blink. But just thinking about the languages in your world is a beautiful, and honestly simple way to add depth to your world and make it feel more alive.
In this guide, I'm going to explain 4 ways in which you can weave linguistic thought into your worldbuilding without ever attempting to make a language of your own.
Language and Geography
A lot of worldbuilders don't realize that language is alive, in a way, and it evolves just as species do. It changes gradually, but constantly, and given enough time, that change can become significant. Perhaps the simplest and most obvious thing to consider in thinking about a world with multiple languages is ease of communication. Just as you're not going to put a trade city in the middle of an impassable mountain, people on either side of an impassable mountain are more likely to be very isolated from each other, and their languages are bound to be very different from one another, even if they originally shared the same ancestor. This obviously changes if you've got a world with magic that allows people to pass the mountain easily. The key point here is, again, how easy it is to communicate, so think about how your magic and technology impacts the geographical relationship. Don't forget that distance is its own kind of geographical barrier unless you've got some sort of easily accessible teleportation that's been around for thousands of years.
Just as technology can overcome geographical barriers, consider non-geographical barriers to communication. A country's isolation policy would encourage its culture and language to diverge from its surroundings, as would a 100-year-long magical barrier that limits people coming and going. Even if the languages of surrounding areas used to be quite similar to a country now isolated, you should expect that at the very least phrases and pronunciations would have changed, as well as how certain words are defined.
Languages also heavily influence one another when they come into contact. An island with good naval communication with a nearby mainland, for instance, will often take strong influences from the language of the mainland. If your PoV character is a native of the island, maybe the overall language of the mainland is very different and difficult to learn, but they recognize certain words from a mainlander. Trade will also facilitate a lot of language exchange, especially as trade REQUIRES communication to occur. If peoples with two, entirely different languages are forced to communicate, it's not uncommon for an extremely simplified mashing of the two languages called a pidgin to occur. Given enough time, children can take on the pidgin as their native language, and it can develop into a full language of its own, known as a creole.
Language and Class
Language has always had a relationship with class and image. Foreign languages are often symbols particularly of wealth, intelligence, or both. In the Georgian era in Britain, men of the gentry were required to learn French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek. High class women were also meant to know the contemporary languages (French, German, and Italian) as a symbol of sophistication, but were generally not supposed to learn Latin or Greek, as this indicated a woman with too much education. Speaking multiple languages is still something of a status symbol, as it's difficult to acquire more than two languages to proficiency unless you have the money for courses, time to dedicate to learning, exposure to other countries through travel, or have really high inherent intelligence. Being unable to comfortably speak the language of your surrounding, in turn, is punished severely. Native English speakers in America often look down on immigrants who speak broken English as stupid or lesser, as though these people don't already have their own native language they're perfectly fluent and intelligible in. Perhaps being able to speak a lot of languages in your world is a mark that you're either extremely wealthy or a high level magician, because being able to travel far is only really conducted through difficult magic. Or maybe only royalty learn a certain foreign language because it is considered especially difficult to learn. Do translators and interpreters have special status in your country? They certainly don't have to, but maybe in your fictional country the lines of access to education and political necessity intersect.
Status markers can also develop WITHIN a language. Regional accents are not unique to English, and it can actually be quite common in other languages as well for a certain accent to be labeled as the "standard" or even the most proper or sophisticated. Other accents often end up being treated as unsophisticated, haughty, or embarrassing in some way, and many speakers will learn to hide their accent outside of their home region. High use of slang (informal, largely colloquial speech) among certain communities can have a similar effect, and affect the community's reputation, usually exclusively in the "barbarian" direction. As I've mentioned before, language evolves as time passes and the people who speak it change. A singular "correct" version of any widely spoken language simply doesn't exist. So when someone complains that you're using the phrase "when worst comes to worse" or "Houston, we've had a problem" wrong, they are participating in a form of gatekeeping we've almost all been subconsciously taught to do in the name of "correctness."
This is, in fact, also a subtle way to use language to ENFORCE class. Insisting that certain dialects of language or accents indicate that the NATIVE speakers who use that dialect or accent are somehow less intelligent or sophisticated is a mild way to encourage bias and dehumanization of those people, make it difficult to rise up the social ladder, and even affect access to highly skilled jobs (whether directly or education) or decent clientele, thus impacting financial prospects. Speakers of African American Vernacular English, which is a linguistically recognized native variant of English today, have been treated as less credible witnesses in legal cases, and may struggle with the English aptitude tests that lead into higher education. My Fair Lady, while a fictional account, illustrates well how the ability to conform to a "better" accent opens doors that would otherwise be unavailable to someone of Eliza's background. The "official" or "formal" language a country or region has is typically the most socially acceptable form of the language, even if it's not the form a majority of the population necessarily speaks. Inability to comfortably speak this form of the language may even make it difficult to deal with the formal government in place. And this is just the subconscious ways language impacts class.
Language can also actively be used to enforce class. It's incredibly common for teaching another language to be a part of the colonization process, which can even extend to active attempts to eradicate the indigenous language. The indigenous language can sometimes be seen as savage, and replacing their native language with a more "civilized" language can actually be seen as a charitable act to improve their lives. This can manifest in not just social difficulties navigating with the indigenous language, but also direct prohibitions to speak it, or an intentional removal of access to essential things in the indigenous language, such as street and location names being changed to something in the colonizing power's language. Note that even as this happens, the indigenous language will likely start to influence the colonizing power's language, though in smaller ways than if the two languages collide on equal terms.
Particularly the ability to write and read has strongly been tied to access to education, as it's much more difficult to pick up without direction from one's surroundings, and actually has few correct forms of spelling. In turn, access to education has always been tied to wealth. The Académie Française is an official part of the French government one of whose responsibilities include the regulation of the French spelling. Many of the reforms have been made ostensibly to make French writing more accessible, but the constant changes arguably serve the opposite function, making reading and writing unusually inconsistent, and therefore reinforcing the barrier to learning it.
The Korean writing system is one of my all-time favorite examples of class's relationship to writing. The shortest version I can think of is that a very long time ago, Korean was written exclusively in Chinese characters. Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn reading and writing for, because it's basically the only language where every character has a different meaning, and aristocrats were the only ones with the time and resources to learn. So, one of the kings decided to develop a phonetic script for Korean so that peasants would be able to read and write (called Hangul). One of its primary functions was to break down the current giant wall of class barrier, by allowing peasants a way to petition the government and protest unfair treatment, but it also gained its own meaning and connotation. At the time, the only way to get positions in government was to pass a test not only held in written Chinese, but largely based on Chinese writings, which was an extremely easy way to make sure no non-aristocrats ever even got close. Once it started to catch on, Hangul was largely looked down upon by most aristocrats as the language of peasants, but it was really prolifically taken up by women and illegitimate sons of aristocrats - people with minimal rights, but high education. It was never fully accepted until Japanese occupation almost 500 years later, but because of its history, it symbolically became the written language of protest, particularly against systemic oppression.
Language, History, and Culture
Language is impacted by the history of those who speak it. Ever heard the phrase "Close but no cigar?" I'd heard it for years without ever thinking about why in the hell we bring cigars into it. The phrase is specifically American because it originates from the 20th century when carnivals would give out cigars as prizes. Your language evolves from your country's history, and will hold pieces of the past in it that even the native speakers might not know or use for its intended purpose (becoming what a biologist like me would call "vestigial"). Chinese uses pithy, 4-character idioms to represent certain morals, one of which is "point [at a] deer, call [it a] horse." The phrase means essentially "to deliberately misrepresent something for ulterior motives," but it harkens back to a historical minister who brought a deer into court one day and called it a horse. He used it as a test of loyalty, weeding out anyone who insisted it was actually a deer. This is also likely the reason that "baka" (the word for "fool") in Japanese is notated with the Chinese characters for deer and horse, despite the fact that the original Chinese meaning involves malicious intent, not stupidity.
Sayings or word usage may also reference common folklore or stories in your culture. A similar Chinese idiom translates to "old man [at the] frontier loses [his] horse." Its more proper meaning is something along the lines of "you never know when something will be a blessing or a curse." It comes from a parable about an old man living at the border whose horse runs away to barbarian territory. Then his horse came back with a second horse. The man's son loved the second horse and rode it often, then fell off and broke his leg, but when the barbarians invaded next year, all the men geared up to go fight and almost all of them died, but the son stayed alive because his broken leg didn't allow him to go. The point being good fortune turned into bad fortune and vice versa. I'm sure this all sounds mystical and cool, but what do you think we're doing when we say someone "cried wolf."
Words themselves can have their own history that affects their usage and interpretation. My husband's grandmother, who speaks relatively little English, recently used the N word because she thought he was getting darker. I'm quite certain she didn't mean to even be insulting to him in using it. But that word, along with all the other racial slurs, are taboo to say because of the way these words were historically used to dehumanize, belittle, and even insult the people they were used to describe. To my husband's grandmother, that word most likely has no such connotation, because she most likely doesn't know any of the history of its use. Similarly, when I was in high school I used "jap" as a shorthand for Japanese when discussing my language class until someone told me about how it was used as a slur in WWII. For a less heavy example, four is an unlucky number in Chinese just because it sounds similar to the word for death.
Language and Cultural Identity
Speakers of the same language can also have different uses and interpretations of language based on their own history and culture. The recent uproar over one of Jamie Foxx's posts essentially saying "they killed Jesus, what would they do to you" also shows how different subgroups who speak the same language can also have different uses and interpretations of the same words and phrases. From what I've read on the subject, the black American Christian community don't consider the Jews at fault for Jesus' execution, and "they" is meant to be a more generalized term, in this case for fake friends. Whereas for Jews, this phrase or things similar to it is among the many things used to justify their persecution throughout history. Jamie Foxx was likely not even thinking about Jews when he posted that, but it still elicited a perfectly valid trauma response for a community that the same phrase meant something entirely different for. Recall that languages, particularly widely spoken languages in your world, do not themselves define a single culture. Multiple different cultures can speak the same language, and that will change their particular version of it.
Don't feel restricted by country lines. The concept of countries is a relatively modern one, and even within them today, people speak a range of languages, or at the very least dialects of their language. Communities at the borders between two countries may speak and understand both languages, or even the opposite language from that of their designated country. They may even consider themselves members of the other country, regardless of where the borders are officially drawn. Countries may also include unique embedded cultures. Whether it be an immigrant culture or an indigenous peoples around which the rest of the country developed, especially persecuted and extremely insulated cultures may even have their own, entirely separate language. The Romani have their own language, which they broadly share, despite communities having settled in different countries.
Language itself is often a marker of a cultural identity. The Korean alphabet actually has a holiday celebrating it, because - despite its complicated history - during Japanese occupation, having their own distinct script was a marker of their unique culture. A main facet of Japanese occupation of Korea right before and around WWII was a push for assimilation. Japan wanted Korea to submit fully to being an extension of Japan. While they initially supported the education of Korean literature, eventually even speaking in Korean was outlawed in the interest of assimilation. The day celebrating the Korean alphabet was established in the hopes of resisting the Japanization of Korea, and the attitude towards the alphabet entirely changed as it became an unofficial part of the "Koreanness" the Japanese people could not take away from them.
Language and Personality
One of the most interesting reasons to think about languages in your worldbuilding is that it can affect how characters from different areas relate to each other. Of course there's the obvious "do they need an interpreter" and "what words do they recognize" but it extends beyond that. We all have specific ways of using language that reveal our character and beliefs, which is why everyone loves writing dialogue. It's long been a pet peeve of mine, for instance, when people use "racist" as just a dogwhistle slur, because it implies that racism is a matter of individual bias and malice. Or one youtube review of Fifty Shades I enjoy watching notes that Christian Grey characterizes Ana leaving him as "running" which gives a perfectly rational decision to leave a relationship that's bad for you a negative connotation.
But how we interact with FOREIGN languages can reveal things about us, too. In one of the novels I'm working on, my main character (a girl named Veralisse) meets a foreign princess who has come to stay with them for a bit. She speaks Veralisse's home language fluently, but pronounces her name strangely, and although I didn't realize it at the time, this highlights Veralisse's sense of discomfort with the situation; it places emphasis on how the introduction of this polished, intelligent foreign princess who people keep gossiping might end up with the crown prince (Veralisse's fiance) threatens the status quo for her. It's such a little thing, but it adds to the emotional landscape of the scene without my even originally intending it to.
There is a well-supported theory that language subtly affects how we think. My dad speaks fluent English and it has been his primary spoken language for four decades, but he still becomes way more expressive and animated in Korean. My sister knew a girl who was bilingual, with English and Spanish, and she once told me that this friend of hers would add "pero" (the Spanish "but") at the end of sentences as kind of an "uhm" noise. One of my colleagues is also bilingual with the same languages, and she's great and highly intelligent, but she struggles with formal writing in English. Do you have any bilingual characters in your fictional setting? If not, why not? If you do, that's going to color their interaction with the main language around them. We as human beings tend to see people who speak a different language as particularly inaccessible, strange, and foreign, so it's natural that your main character feel out of place when interacting with someone exclusively speaking a language they don't understand. However, it's important when writing from the perspective of that foreign character, that you remember that the language is normal to them, and they are also normal people. To them, your main character is the foreigner. Do not exotify them. To bilingual characters, neither language is super foreign to them, so treating one language they speak natively as particularly exotic would be rather odd.
Disclaimer: note when I refer to Chinese here, my understanding comes largely from Mandarin. Some things I'm talking about ALSO apply to Cantonese, which is why I didn't specify just Mandarin, but not necessarily all of it will apply to other Chinese languages. Also just to be clear, I reference East Asian languages a lot because I'm most familiar with them, as a Korean who lived in China as a child, and then attempted to learn Japanese as a stepping stone for the language my grandparents speak. I do not have Asian fetish. T-T
