Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing by David Farland Read Free Book Online Page A

practically unpronounceable to native English speakers .
     
    Then of course you can go to the click languages of Africa , and to whistling languages of certain South American Indians, which use sounds that aren’t spoken in the traditional way at all, and you have new sets of “phonemes.”
     
    The problem of course for a linguist like Tolkien is that he recognizes that languages aren’t really made of phonemes any more than matter is made of atoms. There is a smaller unit of sound—the ceneme —from which languages are composed. The cenemes can be subtly different from the phonemes. For example, the “ st ” in “fist” is subtly different both in sound and pronunciation from the “ st ” in “strong.” If you say both sounds, you’ll notice that in “fist” you put more emphasis on the “t.” In “strong” you emphasize the “s.”
     
    As a linguist seeking the roots of words, Tolkien had to become adept at listening to cenemes for clues to a word’s origination rather than the larger, clumsier phoneme.
     
    And of course in trying to create his own languages, this became very important. He had to pay attention to even these smallest units of sound when creating his languages.
     
    Tolkien went back and did something quite amusing linguistically. One of his conceits for his world was that Elves, Gnomes, Orcs, Dwarves, and such were all real, and that their languages—and our language—all evolved from a common tongue spoken by the first elves.
     
    So Tolkien had to deal with language creation at the smallest possible unit—the ceneme .
     
    To try to create a unified language that takes into account all other languages is something that a couple of linguists have idly talked about doing, but no one that I know of besides Tolkien has really tried it. How would you account for click languages, and so on?
     
    To tell the truth, I understand Tolkien’s impulse. If you’ve been to England , particularly the area where he was born and raised, every hill, every trail, every old stack of bricks has a name. The name might be an Old English name, a Latin name, a Welsh name, a Norse name, and so on. Of course many of the towns have names that were once spoken in Latin, but got changed by the Welsh, and then became pronounced differently by the English, etc. So names of things in his area can be very confusing, and when you hear a name, if you’re a word lover, you just have to try to make sense of it.
     
    In the same way, Tolkien became interested in trying to make sense of language as a whole. Sure, he knew that he couldn’t reconstruct it. But he found joy in playing with it.
     
    So Tolkien was exploring language in a way that no writer before or since has ever done. He focused on it even to the level of the ceneme .

In Conclusion
     
    As a writer, Tolkien was keenly interested in using resonance both to inspire his creation and to ensnare an audience. In his exploration of language, he went deeper than any author before him .
     
    I feel almost as if he is an explorer who went to a distant land and returned with great treasures.
     
    Of course, there are certainly many people who aren’t interested in using resonance on that level. You probably won’t spend the rest of your life learning ancient languages so that you can duplicate Tolkien ’s effects . But at the same time, I find what he did to be both intriguing and enlightening.
     

Resonance within a Genre
     
    Earlier I discussed how authors use resonance within a genre . For many pages now, I’ve been discussing Tolkien . I recall as a teen feeling that his works were unique and original, yet somehow haunting . I wasn’t familiar then with many of the precursors to Tolkien’s works.
     
    It may not be obvious to a new writer, but resonance is the single greatest draw that you can try to invest into your work. When most people choose to buy a book or go to a movie, it is because it resonates with things that they have seen and