So yeah, I'm a huge huge nerd for language. I love sounds, text, grammar, all of it. I've been exposed to a fair bit, have studied a fair bit, and I also love to write—and you pretty much need to know language at that point, ya know? All the same, it's one of my favourite things, and when the prompt showed up I just knew I needed to create one for Steve and Loki to use.

The thing is, I'm also terribly terribly lazy.

Okay, that's not the only reason I went with hospital and brain damage. But it's part of it. (The other reason is I could not settle on a movie!verse Loki and Steve plot arc that would work with the prompt and not make me hate myself for just fluffing it up for no reason.)

See, because this Loki speaks English, and Steve does, any language they came up would simply use an English grammar. They both now the structure of English—being native speakers—and so would naturally adapt their vocabulary to it. This is not unusual; you can find live copies of languages developing their own lexicon and using another's grammar in all sorts of places (Creole is one of them, for example).

So right there about half of my struggle is taken care of. I don't have to make an internally consistent grammar for a story I already knew was going to be both short and a one shot.

The sound, though, would naturally be critical. I spent about an hour researching and refreshing myself on stories of people who've suffered accidents like Loki does; how it affects speech (if it does), what bits of the brain speech and reading are connected to, that sort of thing. Once I had a decent grasp on it (I had started knowing that people could be affected like Loki and just wanted to verify all that and know the details really), I sat around in front of my computer making noise.

Yup.

I'm so freaking cool guys.

But no, really. I did. I decided which sounds would be within Loki's range to speak, and to know that I had to pay attention to how air flows through the mouth. I had already decided certain things he would have difficulty with while he recovered—like 't.' I started with my consonants—vowels are incredibly nice in that they rely less on where your tongue is touching in your mouth so I was less worried. (It's a linguistics thing, and I'm trying to stay high-level, so we're glossing over that)

I knew right away there would be no back-throat noises (g, k, h—all of these happen with the back of the mouth, velar and glottal sounds). I also knew I didn't want plosives or stops (b, p, t, k, d, g).

However, that's not a whole lot of consonants left for me to use. I went in planning on l, m, n, and s for the musicality; language is most interesting in it's contrasts though, so I also allowed for v and z. They met my requirements of being forward sounds, and since I was already using s I was using what are called fricatives. F is a fricative and forward noise, but I left it out because I was avoiding voiceless letters—I thought that it was easier to pronounce a voiced consonant instead. (An example of voiced vs. voiceless is 'v' versus 'f' and 'k' versus 'g'.

So now we have the following borrowed from English:

L, M, N, S, V, Z

Then I turned to other languages. I mean, I probably could have written the whole language using just those languages plus my selected vowels (more on those later), but I didn't. See, I really wanted it to be very soft as well, and while most those letters create a sort of soft sound they didn't create the particular sigh quality I desired.

No, for that I turned to Russian.

Specifically, three sounds that, when spoken quietly, are very 'breathy' or 'airy.' One of them is middle mouth while the rest are forward, so I didn't even feel like I was cheating, plus I was adding more of that lovely variety. They are

Ж Ц Ш

Which I'll be romanizing as:

Zhe, Ts, and Sh.

They are a single letter though, so do try not to forget that.

So when we see Loki say 'onts', that last 'ts' is one letter, and it's the sound of the Russian Ts. The one of those that's a middle sound, Zhe, actually works—it's Loki struggling to speak farther back in his mouth and it not, well, working. It's why we only ever see it as that very first word he creates, 'stop,'—he's not exactly gung-ho to strangle on it again.

So there's all our consonants:

Zhe Ts Sh

Next is vowels. Vowels have some interesting properties—they are in no way 'stopped' or buzzed in the mouth (all consonants are reliant on where your tongue is in your mouth; not so vowels). So where we describe consonants in terms of tongue placement and friction, vowels are height and frontness. Vowels are actually trick to describe in linguistics, so I'm not gonna go too much farther there.

When I started what I really wanted was just to use 'a' and 'o.' But that's boring. No, really. It is, I was bored, and vowels aren't as affected by tongue stuff so I said screw it.

The only vowel I threw out entirely was 'u.' It's a back vowel—actually farthest back—and I figured that it would blend accidentally with 'o' when I played with it in my mouth; the air flow structure was very similiar. I also changed the default of 'i.' So my vowel sounds are all actually one particular noise and I can chart it:

A = 'ah'

E = 'eh'

O = 'oh'

I is a special case, and again I'm drawing on my Russian. I used it to make the somewhat breathy 'i' noise Ы (Yery). I don't know a good way to describe it to you; it's sort of back and soft, very breathy. Occasionally, when I is used in a borrowed word (not one Loki has to recreate), it takes on the sound of the word he's borrowing from (ie, 'lien', which is based off French.)

Okay, so there's all my noises. All together, they are:

Zhe Ts S Yery/I

WHEW.

Okay.

Now what?

Oh right our lexicon.

So in the story, you'll note that most the time words are intuitive accidental noises or Loki replacing bits he cannot say. In the first category, we have 'zh' and 'tst' — flicks of tongue that are easy, strangling on sounds he can't reproduce readily in word. Each are both indicative of 'hey!' of some form; the former is 'stop!' and the latter is 'behind you.'

The second category makes up much more of our lexicon, which makes sense. There's a thoughtfulness going into this, as it needs to be easily remembered and easily replace the word it's fitting for. I had to make some pretty snap calls; I decided both Steve and Loki would be familiar with French, Loki more so than Steve, but both familiar enough they'd catch words that mirrored it. I also wanted lots of single-syllable words (sighs are not double-syllable dudes). I also wanted numbers, because a lot of languages and easy way of replacing days/months use numbers appended with the appropriate term.

So I did numbers first.

On Zo Le Ve Iv Ses Sev Et Nine Zen

So where he can, Loki uses the original. Nothing to say he can't use 'seven' other than preference—single syllables are much easier for him when they first begin to create this language, and it stuck. So 'on' is actually just 'on' as well as being the number 'one.' (Context is king)

To create larger numbers, say… thirty-six, you do this:

3-10 6, or lezen ses

Pretty easy.

Days, in turn, become easy. Count, with Sunday as one, then add 'a' for day.

Friday becomes Ses-a — 6-day. So Ve-a is Wednesday.

After that I would pick words as I went really. I've already established the general sounds I have and after that it's a matter of figuring out the best way to shift it over, which, I felt, needed to have an element of on-the-spot choice in order to sound natural. This is something that someone is using, and if it took longer than 2 seconds for me to make that conversion then it wasn't very much use, was it? You likely notice 'z' in a lot of places that 't' shows up, which makes sense; some letters will naturally replace certain sounds more often and 'z' is the closest to 't' that Loki has that isn't 'ts'. He wouldn't use 'ts' to replace 't' because it sounds like a plural and also, hello, he doesn't have a lisp (I think it comes across Loki still has some pride. I hope so anyway).

Now, the French.

Merci is a lot easier to translate over than 'thank you.' Just. Saying.

So 'mesi' is thank you based off of 'merci' and 'no lien' is based of 'de rien.' (welcome/no problem)

I think that there would be lots of incidental easy French words adapted and interspersed in the language because it's one they both share, and allows for some easy where sometimes there isn't any. Loki knows it because he totally would know French; Steve knows it because he probably went there one summer with Peggy and we aaaaall know he's the kind of dutiful tourist that would spend months learning basic language before the trip.

So there you go.

That's how I came up with the language.

I do hope you —

OH RIGHT.

Saa.

Well, see, I have this weird thing for this fic where I was pretty sure that Loki would say 'ta' to people he was comfortable around or when he was in a particularly good mood. So, uh, 'saa' is really just an extension of that, a translating of it and probably one of the first words he came up with after 'zh.'

So there.

Saa!