The types of languages that can be developed for a people in a story are innumerable, many of which can’t be written (or can’t easily be written, anyway). Such systems might not be worth sketching out in very much detail (for a written work), but still, notes of such systems might be useful to help keep your descriptions of such communication specific, unique, and consistent.

Sign Language

Sign language has existed as long as Deaf people have existed (although you don’t need to be Deaf to learn to learn or use sign). No natural orthography on earth has ever developed for a sign language; most Deaf speakers just learn the written form of whatever language is most prevalent where they live, making them bilingual. As a result, signed communication might be best conveyed through description or by directly translating what is being said but writing it in italics (or using some other tool to convey the unique nature of the conversation).

Inventing a signed language provides you with interesting tools to consider when writing your story. Signed language can silently convey complex information, but is limited by the “hearer” needing to see the speaker. Characters without voices can easily communicate using sign, but characters missing both hands (or arms) would be muted. (Signed languages can often be signed with one hand, so characters with one hand or arm wouldn’t necessarily be muted.) In addition, blind-Deaf signers can still communicate by signing, and then can understand the signing of someone else by holding their hands while they sign and feeling their hand shapes and movements, giving them a greater degree of communication than a comparable person in a hearing-only world would have. (This is not something I made up—real blind-Deaf signers have been communicating comfortably for quite some time!)

Choosing to use sign language over spoken language, in humans, also requires you to ask interesting world-building questions. For example, if a group of hearing people chose to primarily communicate in sign, there must be an explanation for that; on the other hand, if most (or all) of the people in your world are Deaf, there must be an explanation for that as well.

I’ve mostly been limiting my considerations to what has happened on earth, but you could find other ways to incorporate invented signed language in a story if it interests you. For example, some stories make use of languages that require both spoken words and signs to be used simultaneously for complete communication. Or perhaps you could have a fantastical (or alien) species that communicates through “sign” by causing colorful symbols on their skins to appear. Both would still be difficult to create a written language for and might be better just described, but perhaps you’ll think of a solution that I have not.

(I do want to note that a form of orthography, a linguistic notation, does exist for sign language, which you could use as inspiration if you ever want to attempt to create a true written form for an invented sign language. I still chose to include sign as an “unwritable” language because no Deaf person I’m aware of uses linguistic notation for writing unless they are a linguist studying sign. That said, the sign linguistic notations I’m aware of would be difficult to type anyway; most use capital letters to represent the shape of the hand, and then arrows, lines, and other symbols to represent the placement and movement of hands, arms, and other body parts to complete the sign.)

Other Ideas

There are any number of linguistic systems you could invent to create non-human sounds (or sound combinations humans wouldn’t realistically use). Robots beeping and booping in specific combinations; aliens creating unique noises with organs humans don’t have; eldritch entities communicating with each other via melting the minds of mortals in specific patterns. These systems, and others, for the purpose of a novel, don’t need language sketches of the detail I’ve provided above, just basic descriptions to help keep you consistent with how you use them. (My “Guller” language, Method 0, is an example of this.)

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