I think the comments that suggest constructed language based on linguistic research are the right direction, if you want to indicate anything. The unfortunate fact is that a lot of science fiction and fantasy attempts at looking a bit like language evolution in the past that were not based on knowledge of how languages actually work, but more sort of just the author's speculation, have unfortunately given rise to widespread sentiments that they were awful because they risk being recognizably not how language works as well as the baseline of just being distracting from the text that any new and unfamiliar jargon added to fiction does.
It's also worth considering that since your story is going to be written for speakers of modern English, everything in it can be conceived as a translation into modern English from whatever language they're using. Using modern English with the addition of a few made-up words might provide a flavor to the interactions but isn't going to be a realistic representation of anything, anymore than making a movie in English that's set in France and having the characters speak English with a French accent.
Perhaps rather than trying to portray the dialect itself, you would be more successful by describing the effect on the listeners - the kinds of difficulties they have interacting with the other dialects, that is - you likely need some made-up words still this way, because when you don't know what a word means you tend to ask about it - but for the most part, it probably comes off like a weird accent.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 3/29/22 10:34 am (UTC)It's also worth considering that since your story is going to be written for speakers of modern English, everything in it can be conceived as a translation into modern English from whatever language they're using. Using modern English with the addition of a few made-up words might provide a flavor to the interactions but isn't going to be a realistic representation of anything, anymore than making a movie in English that's set in France and having the characters speak English with a French accent.
Perhaps rather than trying to portray the dialect itself, you would be more successful by describing the effect on the listeners - the kinds of difficulties they have interacting with the other dialects, that is - you likely need some made-up words still this way, because when you don't know what a word means you tend to ask about it - but for the most part, it probably comes off like a weird accent.