#popelangs

[impishdullahan]

I'm staying with a friend this weekend who plays the accordion. We agreed to see if we can speak some of the dootlang tomorrow after I infodumped how it works. This is very exciting.

Getchu friends with different skillsets who still match your freak

[impishdullahan]

I have been called a mad scientist when it comes to (con)linguistics...

Reply to or reblog this post with a supervillain theme you'd like to see more of - whether it's underutilized, could be executed better than it has been, or just hasn't been used at all to your knowledge.

[impishdullahan]

What has been your recent development with your conlangs in general? Whether it be a change, addition, or subtraction.

I mostly operate in a cycle of hyperfocused sketching and then slowly adding words over time. There's very little active development outside those hyperfocuses. That being said, there's still tiny bits of development when I codify new things translating sentences or adding words. I think most recent bits of development, besides a speedlang last month, has been adding a few pieces of derivational morphology to Boreal Tokétok, and sorting out how a year is measured in Varamm. This year, now that I'm just about done with my undergrad, I'm hoping to turn all my Littoral Tokétok notes into a real grammar, though, properly writing down what's all still in my head and cleaning up the mess that comes with keeping haphazard notes for 10 years.

[impishdullahan]

I took a look on your Reddit today, what is this "Vuṛỳṣ"?

My entry for speedlang 20! Viverraviss in the long orthography. I've got a decently sized write up for the showcase if you wanna keep an eye for that.

[impishdullahan]

What would you say is your favorite part when it comes to making languages?

Genuinely, the serendipity of when it all comes together into something that feels cohesive. This can be at any level, honestly. Maybe the weird phonology is giving a tough time but then you finally make a tweak and the analysis just slots into place really easily. Finding that perfect degree of irregularity thats underlyingly predictable but not on the surface and becomes an import part of the phonaesthetic. Drawing a grammatical distinction that feels really clunky at first but after enough forcing it wherever you can it eventually becomes the backbone of the entire grammar and you can't imagine it without. Setting up neat bits of morphology that make the phonology shine. Repurposing old morphosyntax to handle new types of information structure.

I guess, in short, making all the weird quirks the star of the show rather relegated to the peripheries.

[impishdullahan]

I usually give myself creative limitations based on the non-human speakers and then make an otherwise human capable language. Agyharo, for instance, my azhdarchid conlang, only has peripheral consonants and no coronals or high front vowels and lacks any sort of labialisation.

I did go a few steps further for ATxK0PT, my tunicate conlang, which does fall into the mostly written language category, but I do have a few ways to approximate for humans, none of which are at all like the actual speech mechanisms for the non-humans with them nkt even being vertebrates and all.

One of the things I struggle most with my conlanging hobby is wanting to create weird languages for non-human species but then wondering how to approach depicting its "phonology" if the above is true.

I could make up a situation in which certain parts of the language's weird non-human sounds are mapped onto human-pronounceable constructs. Or, and this is easier yet harder for me, I could just have the language be written only and accept that it can't be human-pronounceable.

The former is tricky but fun to work with while the latter feels like it should be the logical path to take. I don't know.

If you're a conlanger who is reading this, have you had this crisis like what I described above. If so, what was your own conclusion?

[impishdullahan]

What can you tell us about this conworld that your conlangs are spoken in?

Where do I start? There's been a lot of iterations.

At present, it's a very hand-wavy spec-evo eocene Earth analog. There's the one major continent about the size of North America, I think, and it's populated by maybe 10 sapient species, all of which have been ascribed a conlang or have plans for one. In the west on islands and coastal plains, and in temperate rainforests, as well as further North in the tundra, there're derived oxyaenids which speak Tokétok. In the mountains that help form these temperate rainforests is a group of derived early ungulates which speak Varamm. East still in a massive river basin a group of derived testudines speak a sign language still in it's infancy. On the drier east coast there's both a group of derived neornithischians, for which I have a 9yo sketch I'll someday revisit, and a group of derived early carnivorans that speak my current speedlang project Viverraviss. In the south there's highlands with a group of derived scansoriopterygians, which I have 2 old sketches and plans to derive a daughter from N!odzäsä for. With a more global distribution, I have Agyharo for the derived azhdarchids that form insular communities across the continent, and in the surrounding seas ATxK0PT is spoken by derived tunicates. From across the sea comes Tsantuk for the token humanoids, and they have a robust coastal trade network across the continent, though their largest port of call is in the Southern Tokétok lands. There's also an island far to the Northwest where I might put some temnospondyl dragons or something; I have friend who wants to build such a language with me.

I'd share a map, but the only one I have thus far outside my head is in the margins of some old math homework and it's difficult to read.

Techwise the speakers of Tsantuk are somewhere in the age of exploration, and everyone else is very where the rest of the non-European world was at the time varying from loose fission-fusion hunter-gatherer societies to robust civilizations. There's also a touch of magic, but it's still very loose. The spark notes are that climatic events and other natural disasters, whether ephemeral or persistent, have at their core a rift in space. This rift leads to a sort of void filled with unformed energy, kinda like the stem cells of force and matter, that fuels these climatic events. If someone encounters such a rift, they may gain the power to open and close rifts themselves and use that formless energy to power magic that reflects the original rift they encountered. For instance, sailing into and surviving a hurricane might grant storm magic.

It's been a while since I've written anything set in this world, but it's all centred on a presumably Tsantuk speaking fire mage (I'll leave it to your imagine how she came about that) lost in Tokétok lands with no memory how she got there.

[impishdullahan]

What is your opinion on writing systems, specifically, creating them to further flesh out a conlang?

In other words, do you wish to create one or more for your conlangs or do you feel satisfied with what you have created so far?

I used to dabble a lot in writing systems; I actually started with writing systems before I got into conlanging proper. In the early days years ago I definitely developed writing systems pretty much as soon as I had a phonology ready to go, but they always felt flat to me. I think that was because they were constructed 1:1 for the conlang for super straightforward surface transcription. This isn't a bad thing, not by any means, but it felt too one note after a while. I've since scrapped most of those old scripts and I'd prefer to develop writing systems more diagetically in future, that is, within the context of conworld, but I haven't gotten round to that for any truly novel writing systems.

That being said, I have adapted Ogham to Tokétok and I have an oghamisation for all 3 varieties. Originally I did this just for funsies (I wrote a Segments article all about how I adapted Ogham for what's now known as Littoral Tokétok), but I think I've decided that something resembling Ogham actually did develop in-universe. Not that I have it at all sorted how that happened, but I'm thinking that the point-seam alphabetic letters developed from simplified and then later reanalysed rebus characters of older pictograms. In-universe it wouldn't be exactly identical to Ogham—in-universe a vertical bar / underline would be used next to specific characters rather than using óir as a modifiying diacritic as I do now because of unicode and markup limitations, and there'd be more punctiation, and I'd use something a little less loud than eamhancholl for the extra vowel in Boreal Tokétok, probably just a 6 point vowel—but it'd certainly look very similar.

[impishdullahan]

What got you into conlanging? What inspired your "style" for lack of a better term? What do you hope to achieve with your hobby? What is your favorite project so far?

Ooh, these are some fun questions!

My brain's always been wired for languages: I started speaking at a really young age, always read well above my grade level, I can be a bit of sponge for picking up language and dialect, and I've my BA in linguistics now. This to say I feel like I sorts fell into conlanging; it was kinda just a matter of time? The oldest iteration of my conworld is from when I was 10, I think, and around that time I started playing with fonts and codes before graduating to ciphers and relexes a few years later. Eventually those turned into conlangs.

If by style you mean process, and think it's just a by-product of how I taught myself linguistics: I used to read the wiki pages for different languages for funsies, googling all the words I didn't know, and that's still how I start any project, only now I make notes for what features I want to research to inform my conlanging decisions. This to say most of my conlangs are all rooted in a set of a half dozen or so natlangs. I've found the most joy in marrying together disparate features from unrelated languages to create something unique.

I've been meaning to look into conlanging professionally, now that my process is becoming more practiced and I can slap together a strong foundation in a matter of days rather than months or years. I'd also like to someday publish some of the fiction I write set in my conworld. I go way harder than naming languages, but it pleases me to know the cultural names and idioms all have a root in a robust conlang of my own design.

My favourite project is probably Tokétok, but that's mostly because it has seniority pver all the rest by a few years, at least the one dialect and because I have a small degree of fluency in it. Varamm is also fun, and ATxK0PT will always a special place in my heart, too. Honestly I think most of my projects are to enrich the world to which Tokétok belongs.

[impishdullahan]

What can you tell us about Naŧoš and Tongue of the Cactus?

Naŧoš was a conlang I put together based on the dynasties in my favourite CK2 runs and was intended to be a bit of a love letter to a few different natlangs, namely Irish, West Flemish, Northern Sami, Gujarati, and Phoenecian. In so doing it became a bit of a kitchen sink and I lost interest in it. I do still like the phonaesthetic, though, it just needs to go way less hard on the morphophonology. I had also ascribed it to a conculture across the sea on another continent from the rest of my conlangs, and I've scrapped a lot of the world beyond the main continent, so I'm even less inclined to work on it now. That being said it's still very usable so maybe far in the future I'll resurrect it.

TotC, though, that's a story! My first crack at what I could actually call a conlang and not a cipher or relex was in high school, but I didn't actually make anything at all usable till my first year of post-secondary with TotC. It started as an inside joke with my classmates about this pantheon of characters based on all of us, and we needed a divine language for them, so I took to making TotC. Part of the lore was that the Hera or Frig figure was someone whose profile picture was a cactus, and they gave the language to rest of the pantheon, hence Tongue of the Cactus. At least I think that was the case; this was like 7 years ago. I don't remember much about the conlang itself, but it stole some stuff from Quechua, and I developed this neat "writing" system for it based on Quipu with different knot types, cactus spines, and colours encoding segmental information.

[impishdullahan]

So... how many conlangs have you made and/or partook in making?

How do I quantify this? Em...

I have a family of 3, Tokétok, one of which is my primary and most developed conlang, and the other 2 are quite young. Then there's Varamm and Agyharo, both a couple years in the making now, and more than usable. Then I have ATxK0PT, which is a usable speedlang from a year ago I still add words to. At present I have another speedlang in the foreground, but it remains to be seen if I'll continue working on it. Then, of course, Ŋ!odzäsä, the speedlang I co-created a few years ago but haven't touched since. I've also got a couple defunct projects like Naŧoš and Tongue of the Cactus, and then a bunch of sketches, I think 2-4 of which I still have plans to flesh out.

So I guess that's 10-14+ depending how you wanna count? Is that a lot? That feels like too many.

[impishdullahan]

Éta mé kécaka. Tteri Kéyas fik mé. Masésatte lis mé até téffe mé kke.

[impishdullahan]

We're you the guy that co-constructed that one language with the clicks for that one speedlang challenge?

Ŋ!odzäsä? Indeed I was! I haven't touched it much since, but my co-creator has been doing some great work on it!

I have fixings to derive a daughter some day.

[impishdullahan]

I've just reminded myself of the time I got recognised for my conlangs in public.

There was a function in the linguistics department at my school and I swung by to pinch some lunch. By the end, maybe a half dozen of us remained and someone brought up conlangs. He said he knew there was at least one conlanger in the linguistic student association discord server, "[Pope], I think their name is..." I turned around and butted in saying "Yes, they is I!"

We got chatting and eventually r/conlangs came up. He said he was a prolific lurker and asked if I was active there, too. I said I'm the mind behind Tokétok. My guy froze for a moment before recollecting himself to exclaim "You're the Tokétok person???" He proceeded to fanboy to the other clueless student linguists much like Sokka would.

It was wild and I still can't get over it after like 9 months. Like, there's probably only 2 or 3 dozen people to whom the name Tokétok means anything at all, and one of them just so happens to be an underclassman at my school.

[impishdullahan]

Success!

Went for a poem I wrote last summer. Breakdown below the cut.

The clip is an interpretation of the following:

ATx0P0 ATxK0T0 UTx0T ATx0K UTx0T0 AKx0PT OKxT0T0 AKx0T UKx0K UKx0TT

This glosses as:

1d tell story as community play child joy before egg-raider

And this translates as:

“We’ll tell stories together. “Children playing, happiness despite hardship.”

The theme of building a family with one's partner is reinforced by the the drones in each word: the first line only contains words with a Tx or mid-register drone, and the last line only words with a Kx or low-register drone. Together, the poem spells a xTK melody. This xTK melody can represent the following words:

OTxTK, the continuous auxiliary 'to stay'

UPxTK, a form of the 1st person dual pronoun.

UPxTK, the classifier for nests and courtship displays.

I'm staying with a friend this weekend who plays the accordion. We agreed to see if we can speak some of the dootlang tomorrow after I infodumped how it works. This is very exciting.

Getchu friends with different skillsets who still match your freak