Word! The Language Column
Constantly inventing new words: Private languages

Whether in a relationship, at the theatre or in gaming communities, social groups sometimes develop their own languages. Elias Hirschl has written about what fascinates him about this.

By Elias Hirschl

One of the fascinating things about language is that it always adapts to our needs. We invent new words when we need them, we add new grammatical rules when we need them, we discard old ones when they have become superfluous. Language is a social tool that is constantly changing. As a result, we automatically, almost unconsciously, create new languages that we only need for certain tasks, areas of life or periods of time, and then ignore completely. Secret languages that we invent with our partners, pet names, abbreviations for everyday tasks, routines, almost like our own dialects that we only use within a relationship. Whole branches of language that die out every time you break up. Someone should make a lexicon of the dead languages of break-ups, all those little branches of the language tree that stop growing.

When the noob spawns

Something similar happens in various fan cultures, especially in gaming communities, where whole vocabularies, whole dictionaries, form around individual games, remain active as long as the game is active, and then are left behind when you move on to the next game. Some terms become established across games. Some even become mainstream: 'noob', 'OP' for overpowered, 'spawn' for things that suddenly or repeatedly appear somewhere, and so on. Of course, every other hobby and profession inevitably develops its own language.

Spontaneous niche terms

I noticed an even faster moving language, for example, when I was helping to write plays for the Vienna Action Theatre Ensemble. I watched the rehearsals from the sidelines, taking notes as the actors improvised under the guidance of director Martin Gruber. In this way, I developed a kind of language of my own, some of it certainly words from general theatre jargon, but sometimes also smaller, more niche terms and phrases for phenomena that were only happening on stage at that moment. Phrases that would have no meaning or understanding outside of this rehearsal. A note I made to myself reads: We have to show aggression, but showing aggression with aggression is gaga, we have to show aggression through Cha Cha Cha! Another says that we must 'prevent the performance', that the characters must 'constantly self-sabotage' themselves. We have to find a new language for each new piece,' says Martin Gruber himself at one point. The nice thing is that this is basically the same concept that science generally follows. You study a subject and then invent new words when you need them to name a new phenomenon or to distinguish one object from another more precisely.

Obscure notes

The same thing happens when you write a novel. The characters you make up, the structure of the plot, the connections between the episodes in a system that you sometimes carry around with you for years, a small private language, a private science that is difficult to communicate to the outside world. The reason why I wake up at night and make a note: "The fallacy drugs are the antidotes to Tom Schmittisation! (Neutralisation reaction! Chemistry!)'. Sometimes, after a day of writing, the end of the day feels like coming back from another country. It's hard to talk normally to people for a few hours. But that's what makes it so exciting. Writing novels is like changing your studies, your discipline every few years, always being able to research something different.

New creations all the time

And all these little private languages put together are probably good reasons why there is no global, perfect, universal language, and why all attempts to create one artificially are doomed to failure. Because we all have an innate need to constantly invent new words, to create new niches, new secret languages and hip youth words. Language turns our everyday situations into their own little specialised scientific disciplines. You can explore anything. There is something to be discovered everywhere.