#if you want to think about linguistic differences by building all the languages in your setting

[scribefindegil]

As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.

#imperial radch #also a great example of the 'you don't have to be Tolkien' phenomenon #if you want to think about linguistic differences by building all the languages in your setting #and being able to explain what those differences are through actual texts in the language in question #that's AWESOME #but it's not the only way to do it #it's also interesting because of course this style only works in book form #everyone's speaking different languages but in a written account they're all 'translated' for you #but of course if it was a TV series they would all have to be speaking a language the audience understands #(or you *would* have to go wild with conlangs) #and i think that's really cool as well-- #how for a series where song is so central we don't actually hear any of the actual in-universe words or any of the music #it's all been filtered #and again you know this is happening but seeing the examples of how real songs--the shape hymns and 'L'homme Arme'--are presented #makes you a lot more viscerally aware of how limited your perspective is #it's good #ann leckie i love you

[tanadrin]

Sogant Raha is gorgeous. Do you have any recommended resources for worldbuilders who might want to do something similar?

no, because i did sogant raha all wrong.

it started as a Generic (albeit extremely low-magic) Fantasyland setting for a conlang when I was a teenager, which gradually accreted details at the edges until it was a whole world. but i didn't know what i was doing when it came to conlanging or worldbuilding, and as i got older and read more about historical linguistics, and history in general, i became dissatisfied with it and rebuilt it from the ground up a few times.

sometimes when you build a setting from the bottom up like that you miss the consequences of major decisions. when i started trying to map the whole planet for the first time, years ago, i realized i had put the Lende Empire on the wrong coast--for it to have a big forest to the east rather than be a massive desert, it needed to be upwind of the mountains, i.e., on their eastern side. so i had to either flip all the maps, on paper and in my head, or make the rotation of the planet retrograde. i opted for the second one, because reorienting my mental map of the Lende Empire would have been terribly confusing.

another example: i didn't realize how dramatic the consequences for the climate for having a low axial tilt would be until roughly, uh, yesterday. i just wanted to rough out some climate details and maybe calculate day lengths at different latitudes and seasons, and it wasn't until i started googling around to find formulas for average daily and annual insolation at different points on Earth that i realized low axial tilt produces a markedly different polar environment than what we're used to. the result is certainly more interesting, but it means there's some notes i have that are now just, well, wrong.

if you are starting a project like this as a big worldbuilding project, and you know a little bit about climate and astronomy and stuff, i think working top-down can save you from a lot of errors like this. damon wayans' worlds on Planetocopia are like this: but then, he seems to typically start with one High-Concept Worldbuilding Idea, and then see what the results are. i just had stories i wanted to write, that turned out to be connected, and gradually built the world up from them.

in some respects, this means as a world, Sogant Raha is not particularly exotic. the stories i wanted to tell are stories about humans, in societies not too dissimilar from ours, so the world is not too dissimilar. if i had known at 15 or w/e everything i know now (and had access to similar resources), i might have intentionally complicated certain parameters more, so that i could play with the results. but the stories are what has kept me coming back to this world year after year--and while an ice planet of methane breathers would be more interesting from a high-level view, i don't know what being a methane-breathing being on an ice plant is like, and i don't think it would have had the same perennial narrative appeal that has kept me interested all these years.

i guess my actual advice would be some or all of the following: be omnivorous in your interests. the fun thing about conworlding is that literally every domain of human knowledge is relevant to it. be willing to make weird choices, and equally willing to force yourself to justify them. sometimes you make an artistic choice, and you come back to it a little while later and go "what the fuck was i thinking?" you're tempted to erase it. but figuring out how to make that choice work often produces a much more interesting result. pay attention to what projection you're drawing your map in. try not to think in standard fantasy archetypes. no matter how original your spin on the ISO Standard Fantasy Races, they're still ISO Standard Fantasy Races. full blown conlangs are optional, but constructing even simple naming languages can make worlds feel much richer. don't use apostrophes in the names of things unless that apostrophe actually has a phonetic effect on the pronunciation. read a lot of history. real-world history is bigger and weirder and more interesting than you can possibly imagine. it's good fodder for worldbuilding.

#still thinking about slapping a big fat landmass in the ehyran ocean at some point #all that space is just going to waste! #sogant raha #worldbuilding #conworlding

[kafkaoftherubble]

MAURICE TEACHER LORE

Also Maurice has two younger sisters

Felipe

History

Foreign language/linguistics

Foreign cultures

Jasmin

Math

Science

Nadine

Biology

Natural history

Lysander

Art

Music

Felipe

He's from a nomadic culture so he's spent most of his life on the road, only recently deciding to settle down in Odeda. Because he's traveled a lot, he knows several languages and a lot about many different cultures, including the damages caused by Odeda when they colonized them.

Jasmin

Half Odedan and half former colony. She grew up in Odeda but was taught of her father's home country and can speak the language. She excelled in school from a young age and was accepted in a prestigious college. Has taught in private schools for most of her career, jumping at the change to teach the young prince and princesses.

Nadine

An immigrant who studied the dragons of the north western islands and the people living there in her early adulthood. After writing a well received paper on them, she moved to Odeda to continue her study on lizards and lizard-like animals. She worked at a college and received funding from them for her research prior to becoming a tutor for the royal family.

Lysander

Well respected artist in Odeda who painted several public buildings. Caught the eye of the royal family and was offered a position as a tutor. He's not an immigrant or mixed race, but has spoken a lot with immigrants and their beliefs have rubbed off on him.

Story

Felipe was the first to suggest teaching the prince and princesses about foreign cultures and politics. Nadine and Lysander jumped at the change to teach someone of such high status their beliefs and opinions, but Jasmin was more hesitant. She didn't want to jeopardize this amazing job opportunity but agreed to say nothing when the others went ahead with it.

After some years, Maurice started talking about "foreigner political ideas". Priscilla didn't say anything because she wasn't really against suggesting new ideas, but when she passed away Volker soon had the teachers fired for spreading their "harmful" ideas. They all died under mysterious circumstances over the next few years and were replaced by teachers handpicked by Volker. Jasmin was spared because she only taught math.

This caused a rift in Maurice's and Volker's relationship, but Maurice was old enough to understand that he shouldn't speak against Volker.

Oohhhh, hmm hmm!

So is the timeline thus?

Priscilla is the empress. Maurice gets his education.

Teachers were sought after to teach Maurice.

Teachers had leeways during Priscilla's rule.

Volker is ready to snatch that throne. Murders Priscilla and her husband (L-Lucario? Wait that can't be right).

Volker jails teachers and subsequently assassinate/execute them. Maurice is now old enough to know he should shut up to not provoke Volker too much.

Extra questions that pop up in my head!

How old was Maurice when Priscilla died?

What did Maurice learn from his teachers right before his teachers' deaths?

Is he old enough to really understand the thoughts and opinions of his teachers, or is he really just being a willing recipient? Is he being indoctrinated—even if it's "good" indoctrination? When he talks about his opinions back then, is he really just parroting what his teachers think?

What I like about this angle ^ is that you can then explore a bit about the role and philosophy of education.

Even if you're teaching good things, isn't it still indoctrination if you're trying to make a kid see things in your specific, opinionated way? Kids do take after the thoughts of the adults/society around them for a long time because... that's kinda what children (and even some adults) do. Social creatures and all. Usually we argue that it's not a problem if the worldview we are trying to impart on a kid is a beneficent one (like how some would argue that it's fine to teach children religion at a young age, because religion advocates for goodness), but it doesn't actually answer the question about the nature of education itself.

What form of education is not indoctrination?

And, given that we deliver knowledge through specific narratives (for example, the narrative of evolution; the narrative of string theory; the narrative of physicalism in neuroscience etc.), then education itself is basically a mass narrative-spreading system. Hence Volker's use of propaganda and indoctrination in Odedan universal education syllabus... and ironically, Maurice's private education via his tutors. The machinery is the same: shape the child(ren) into a specific way. The difference is: "what specific way?"

I think these two examples of education (Volker-led education vs. Maurice's private education) could make for a very good contrast! It could also eventually lead to the "education status quo" stance espoused by Ira vs. "education reform" advocacy espoused by Edith.

-----

Apropos to this "education and tutor" lore,

Has Edith considered the logistics of training teachers under the new, reformed syllabus + system while she advocated for her reform?

What I mean is this: no matter how great your education ideal is, you need qualified people to carry them out, yea? I know this all too well because Malaysian Education Department loves revamping our education policies in quick successions (it's beyond rewriting/updating textbooks) that neither the teachers nor the students ever reaped whatever "benefits" these dumbasses tout. Hence, you need to train the educators before the students get to enjoy this reform. But how long will you allocate that time of training? How much resources? What new qualifications will you be seeking in your new teachers?

And the more sweeping your reform (I assume Edith's idea is very sweeping and revolutionary!), the thornier the logistics!

I think this could become one of Ira's arguments! I basically imagine Ira's reform is just textbook rewrites and stripping away "overt" monarchist overtone at most. There is very little re-training of educators under this sort of change.

Edith's though would need a lot more work. Resources. Time.

We need Ira to have more supporters, right? Hahhaha dude is so isolated at the moment 😝 Well, maybe this could earn Ira some points and allies!

----

So after we talked about Volker needing a Benedict (but before she ended up being Lyndis 😏), I was wondering what sort of person would become Volker's advisor. Why would someone stand behind a shithead like that? Why offer their intellect to someone like that?

Love for the royal family?

Love for the ideal of the country/love for Odeda?

Love for a specific political ideal?

Love for Volker? (this is probably the most cliche reason, haha!)

Love for power and further ambitions?

Love for social experiments? (This one seems kinda chaotic. It's basically a Mad Scientist in a position of power.)

Or no love—pragmatic alliance because of how much this person's fortunes is tied to Volker?

I thought the last possibility is pretty intriguing to imagine, so I tried to come up with plausible backstory for this. And since we were also talking about Maurice's backstory including his tutor way back at Monday...

The scenario was this: Lyndis (in my head at the time the name was "Blanknedict" 😂) joined the royal family first as a governess/tutor. She was to teach either Maurice or his siblings (you filled in the blank for me in this ask, hehe! So it's "Maurice's sisters.") on magic??? Or science ???

But Lyndis wasn't being a teacher for teaching's sake, per se. Before becoming a governess/tutor, she had been engaging in Machiavellian proclivities back in her town. They range from good things all the way to assholery. Maybe it was to manipulate the town folk to treat a solitary old woman more nicely just because the granny was nice to her that one time. Maybe it was to screw with the local pastor because he criticized her harshly that one time. Or to cause an expulsion of a neighbor because she hated how inefficient they were at providing the village some produce. Maybe it was to cause another person to lose their livelihood because this person offended Lyn before.

The corrupt town mayor had a habit of employing urchins to do some of his petty crimes, which he then "solved," to bolster his reputation among them townfolks. Lyndis was one of his employees, which gave her the first environment to exercise her schemes and be praised + rewarded for it.

The idea isn't that she's a manipulative monster from the get-go. It's that she lacked people who could help her channel these gifts for good. And the environment she was raised in had limited her into becoming something better.

Anyway, as she grew up, the sort of things she found objectionable became less and less. She found people too easy to fool and manipulate—at this point, the mayor had become so reliant on her, she was the real mayor this whole time—that she became deeply suspicious of collective intellect. This, I thought, would explain why she was against the sort of ideals Brandi and the rest advocated, for democracy rests on one's faith in the people's collective ability to rule.

She was really a shadow dictator, and under her rule, the town did prosper. This, I thought, would help her develop this idea that the best way of governance is one very wise, very powerful person ruling them all.

Her ambitions grew. Seeing the failures of Odeda (the same ones that tormented Volker, for that matter) pissed her off, and soon she decided to aim for the royal court where she believed her talent could be exercised. She would remake Odeda in her vision from the shadow. To do that, she decided to join in through the cover of an employment. She chose teaching, but originally, she wasn't even the governess going for the royal family's interview. She killed the real one, assumed her identity, and steadily sabotaged other people's chances so she could get there.

Then once she became a tutor, she began to look for the medium she could latch on—the same way the old mayor was her medium for power. She found Volker's ideals and character to be the best for her after they met each other in some... event, whatever. I don't know what aristocrats and royals do. She bribed servants and children into becoming her spies, collect secrets to blackmail those she could not bribe, and basically tried to construct her own spy network. She even dabbled in some murder if she needed to advance her schemes.

On the outside, though, she played the role of an affable, intelligence, reasonable woman who was simply a bit pragmatic in her decisions. Cosmetics may be most people's way of dressing up, but Lyndis' cosmetics are her reputation and impression.

Volker got wind of it all, though! He had evidence of her schemes and shits—which could get her executed. Lyndis, not content to die before her ambitions came to fruition + not disliking Volker's own appetite for power, agreed to formally work for him. From then on, she amassed even more power and control over the country through her alliance with Volker, and she provided counsel and schemes for him. It was a win-win partnership of equal footing, and they looked out for each other. Lyndis supported Volker's megalomaniacal quest to become god because she found immortality a useful asset. But she was smart enough not to be the guinea pig of her own experiment, and so Volker was her "test trial." Ultimately, she wanted an eternal dictator of whom she could support from the shadow.

I thought it was pretty interesting a dynamic, so here you go! Something my daydream made up because Dear Emperor is just that fun.

----

What did you come up for Lyndis, though?

#Dear Emperor and Lyndis

[max1461]

You said that "some phonologists deny the utility of syllables at all"? That seems uh... manifestly absurd. While I understand that syllable boundaries are ambiguous sometimes, it seems crazy to simply discard the concept... like, I don't know whether to analyze "reason" as /ˈɹiː.zən/ or /ˈɹiːz.ən/, but I strongly feel that it has "two beats" even absent the idea of "syllables". What, then, is the argument to "deny the utility of syllables"?

I don't really know, it's not the mainstream position and I haven't really read up on it at all. The thing about syllables is that they're characterized by a bunch of different phonetic factors, often varying by language. In English, for instance, the rules for voicing and aspirations of stops are different in syllable coda and onset, and there's presumably voicing phenomena affecting other consonants as well, etc. There's no nothing inherently distinguishing one syllable from the next, syllables are just clusters of other phonetic features. And there's no way to easily define "syllable" in a language-independent way. However, it is a robust observation that in most (if not all) languages, phonetic features cluster together in such a way as to lead people to perceive speech as a series of beats, as you say. This is probably why the notion of a "syllable" has been invented over and over again across cultures.

But if you're a modern phonologist, you're trying to explain this observation. And you're probably interested in a least gesturing at cognition in your explanation. And there are roughly two ways to do this: one is to built a model where syllables are a primitive, and the various phonetic features that cluster around them are induced by phonological processes that reference syllable parsing. The other is to build a model where syllables aren't a primitive, where those various phonetic correlates are induced by other factors, and where the evident beat-like nature of language is just an emergent property. And most people will attempt to argue for their preferred model on the grounds that it accords better with cognition, but these arguments are often bad because people are not rigorous about what it means for a model to "accord with cognition". But you can in principle make an accurate model of the purely linguistic data under either paradigm, so that's why some phonologists do it.

As far as it goes, I think this is one of those questions that will just never be settled on linguistic data alone. I can't imagine a language ever being documented that truly can't be modeled with syllables, or that truly must be modeled with syllables. I'm sure it's always mathematically possible to do either. So the only way to resolve this will be with appeals to cognition. And we actually have a lot of data about cognition, and more is coming in constantly! The problem is that linguists are, as yet, not especially rigorous about how their theories interface with the cognitive data. As a rule, current (generative) theories are falsifiable by pure linguistic data but unfalsifiable by cognitive data. Which isn't a priori surprising—theories about genetics aren't falsifiable by astronomical data, etc., because they make no predictions about astronomy! But if linguists want to appeal to cognition to argue for their theories, then they need to augment their theories with a predictive apparatus about cognition. And right now that's, well, not being done especially well. But my impression is that we only very recently have good enough cognition data for it to matter, so hopefully it will get off the ground in the coming decades.

#linguistics #long answer that turned into a ramble on the state of the field...

[baeddel]

oh yeah, since i like, if i'm talking about things, talking about how i'm learning things: (long and extremely boring if you don't care about me)

at the moment i've been trying out some new stuff. as you know i typically just read whatever interested me without very much discipline. then for the last year or so i tried kind of a flexible schedule that involved setting weekly goals for myself, mostly 1ch of my OE book every week. i also started doing 15m of anki every day. well 2022 was a fucking nightmare for me so i wasn't as good at it as i think i coulda been, but when i was 'on' it was pretty good. but i've been trying something new again, which is to work on small daily goals instead.

because i divide my days by meals (cuz my weird diabetes leaves me with an inflexible meal schedule, it's very reliable), i must eat 4 hours apart and must have a snack in the middle. so my day naturally comes in 2hr chunks. so my ideal schedule is something like this:

breakfast meditate 7m [心斋法 'heart purification method'] (building it up) LANGUAGES BLOCK do my daily language chores snack break TEXTBOOK BLOCK pick 2-4 books & study 15m of each lunch LITERATURES BLOCK just read something i picked snack CORRESPONDENCE BLOCK reply to emails & IMs i have to reply to dinner free time snack free time supper brush teeth meditate 7m [心斋法 again] sleep

currently the language chores are:

15m Chinese Assimil book/tapes 10m Old English reading 15m Anki (both OE and Chinese)

the textbooks i'm using are

the OE grammar book still Hock & Joseph Intro to Historical and Comparative Linguistics Hayes Phonology a Lacan essay i'm reading cuz a friend's reading it

the literature part is currently Dante's Divine Comedy

the reason i'm doing it this way is three reasons:

1. learning two languages means i have to do a certain amount of stuff every day no matter what. plus grinding OE every day for over a year really trained my discipline in that respect so it's a lot easier for me now than it used to be.

2. i'm at a point in my learning where i'm kind of starting all over again at something new, re: studying linguistics, so i need to get through a bunch of textbooks and stuff. i needed something more consistent for going through a ton of material.

3. going by chapters or page numbers has a disadvantage, which is that you don't feel like you can skip pages or else you're cheating, and you also don't want to 'read around the subject' and dig into things you find that are interesting because it doesn't help your page number goal. and that's the opposite of what you want, because you want to skip around and do different levels of reading, and you want to follow up on things you're curious about. so going by time rather than page numbers is much better.

the reason for the literatures & emails portions was that i felt so good about the scheduling that i realized i could use it to work on other stuff too. so i'm hoping it helps me reply to stuff on a better schedule and also actually get to read poetry & fiction and stuff more often.

the only one i actually have to do daily is the lanɡuaɡes one. everythinɡ else can be skipped or swapped around dependinɡ on my enerɡy level / interest.

the languages component i've been faithful to for about three weeks, except this weekend when i had a huge fatigue crash & skipped two days. the other stuff i've added later. i've only managed to meet this ideal schedule twice in the week or so i've had it in mind. my hope is that i can work up to being more consistent with it, but it's also not that important that i really do it all every day. it's just an orientation thing. i've still been doing way more, way better than i have done for a long time, so i think it's been helpful. but i'll check back in on it later.

the meditation is interesting. my only reason for it is curiosity. it's part of what i'm studying, so i wanted to try it for myself. 心斋法 is based on a passage of Zhuangzi. i'm following the explanation of it in Wu Jyh Cherng's 'Daoist Meditation.' i've done the best with it out of any technique i ever tried. my problem with meditation is the opposite of most beginners; it tends to produce in me extremely intense experiences extremely quickly. this was also true this time, but starting with a short timer (5m) and being able to focus on the sound of the breath, as is part of this method, was helpful in getting through it. once i got through the initial hurdle i would get very intense blissful feeling and a tingling sensation all over. it's crazy that it really works... but now after a about a week i'm not getting it, and i'm getting distracted by thoughts and fidgeting like a normal person! who knows where it's going...

anyway for linguistics i'm working through those textbooks (which i nabbed from a Harvard historical linguistics class, and constitute my 'intro to historical linguistics block'), then i'm going to do a Writing Systems workout: Rogers' Writing Systems, Page's Intro to English Runes, and Boltz' Chinese Writing System. when i finish my introductory OE grammar i have a kind of 'bridge' text called Old English Historical Linguistic Companion by Roger Lass which is supposed to take you from the introductory grammars to Campbell &c. then Campbell's Grammar > Mitchell's Syntax > Hogg's Grammar. i have a general morphosyntax workout to pair with them at various stages: Payne Morphosyntax, Akajemi & Heny Intro to Transformational Grammar, Haegaman Intro to Government & Binding. at that point i think i can be done with textbooks. obviously i'm not bound to stick to this plan exactly, it's just orientation.

the historical linguistics & phonology textbook are a ton of fucking fun btw. the phonetics chapter of the phonology textbook is amazing because you can make all the sounds yourself, & its like doing a bunch of little experiments on your own body. now i know what i'm doing when i'm making all those sounds. and i inflict this knowledge on my girlfriend who thankfully loves me.

sometime before 2024 i'll start on Latin and work it into the language dailies part. the plan is to ideally get to where i can drop the textbooks & anki vocab grinding & just get where i need w/ extensive reading (and, in the case of Chinese, listening). then i'll change my schedule to have something like: 40m OE reading, 40m ZH reading, 40m Lat reading. and once i work that up enough i can fill that time with the kind of stuff that i'm learning the languages to read, so that my language practice is also actually study/research, and i'm starting to consolidate the different branches a bit and actually freeinɡ up time for other areas. that's the lonɡ term ɡoal, like, 'up to when i'm 35' kind of timeframe. thanks for reading!

[cd-covington]

Linguistics worldbuilding question for you!

I'm planning a webcomic set in an embassy where various magical races meet up to do business. The races I've planned so far are humans, fae, dwarves, goblins, sea-people, dragon-people, and gryphons.

Do you have any thoughts on ways to distinguish the speech patterns of the different races so they don't all end up sounding alike, especially the non-humanoid ones like the gryphons? I think some of them have nonverbal elements to their languages as well, which the visual webcomic format will help with.

By the way, there's going to be a translation spell either on the building itself or on some sort of amulet that everyone carries with them, so they can communicate with reasonable ease (and yes, I know about some of the problems with the universal translator trope).

Hello enchantress-emily!

This sounds like a fun idea for a webcomic 🙂 Speech patterns can be interesting to play with, and I think you can utilize the magic universal translator to help you with that.

The first thing you can do is figure out what types of metaphors and proverbs and idioms each of these species would have. What’s important in their culture? What would common touch-points be for the sea-people – what would their equivalent proverb be for, say, “we have bigger fish to fry” (there are bigger problems)? (Because frying doesn’t work well under water, right??)

Another thing you can think about is sentence structure. For example, German sentence structure is different from English, and nearly half of German sentences don’t start with the verb. German also allows you to construct massively long nested sentences that REALLY don’t work in English unless you separate them into 2 or more sentences. So maybe one of the species will have more complex sentence structure (even translated) because that’s how their language works, and maybe one of them will be more like English. (Not all languages in the world allow you to have dependent clauses (your which or who ones)! You can’t say I saw the man who lives next door at the supermarket; you have to break it down into I saw the man at the supermarket. He lives next door to me. (Or just I saw my neighbor, of course.))

There’s also formality. Maybe the fae have Court Language that’s more formal, and this formality gets carried over in translation. (But how? You decide if you want them all to sound like Jane Austen characters or like Aragorn son of Arathorn or whatever 😉)

Since you’re using magical translation, you can have the sea-people’s idiom for “we have bigger problems” come out as a literal translation of whatever they actually say. Think about The Little Mermaid a second – Sebastian sings to Ariel, “The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.” This is obviously a nod to “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence,” but grass doesn’t exist under the sea, and lawns and fences don’t either. So they use seaweed (like grass but in the sea) and lake.

You could do fun things like have the translation spell get hung up on a nested sentence (maybe the fae like to go on like the Germans), then everything comes screeching to a halt and the speaker has to start over but speak straightforwardly.

Speaking of straightforwardly… how does the spell handle lies, falsehoods, half-truths, white lies, and other forms of obfuscation? Is it impossible to lie because of some part of the magic that detects speaker’s intent? Are some species better at lying than others because they can say (for example) “I didn’t hate it” (a true statement, but omits “but I didn’t like it either”)? This would be a TON of fun to play around with, especially for people who like writing twisty political stories.

You mentioned body language and other nonverbal communication, so I want to touch on that briefly. Nonverbal communication varies around the real world, and you can have different species with different NVC (and maybe it gets mis-read! Maybe a normal gesture in one culture is offensive in another! Maybe the magic doesn’t cover NVC!) There are so many things you can play with here. Good luck with your project! It sounds fun.

If you think this is interesting, consider backing my Kickstarter, where I’ll be writing a book about how to use linguistics in your worldbuilding process. Or if tumblr ever sorts out tipping for my account, leave me a tip.

#enchantress-emily #linguistics #linguistic worldbuilding #fantasy linguistics

[adamsvanrhijn]

do you have any advice for writing period dialogue? i always think your fics sound so much like the characters and idk how to do it. i'm fine with the prose part, but as soon as a character opens their mouth i feel like they sound like they've got a smart phone and a twitter account.

well thank you first of all!! i'm not sure how helpful i can be but i will say what works for me :'-)

i would say i think the thing to focus on first is not if you're creating dialogue that is true to the period, but that is true to the character

that is more important to me than linguistic historical accuracy, which is generally not actually attainable but can be fun to try for, and it is the starting point for diving into "hey how did they use this word or phrase or sentence structure in the 1920s (or whenever)" - does it sound like that guy? if yes, but you're not sure it sounds right to That Guy's era, proceed to etymology online or whatever and fuck around until you get something you like

getting acquainted with your character's voice comes from reading/watching and rereading/rewatching your source material. I also have spreadsheets for my shows with all of the dialogue so that i can easily go find something and double check if something feels right or doesn't feel right which is maybe autism behavior

but while the source material imo should always be Home, it can only get you so far - when you aim to replicate how a character speaks, it is helpful to understand how they Don't speak, which you get from exposure to other writing and developing an understanding of the language in question if not language in general

my linguistics background is helpful because i have a mental framework for parts and structure of language, so i can recognize things in a character's speech patterns, which makes me more aware of them, and i know What i am trying to replicate and the linguistic environment i expect it to be in, rather than just trying to get at it without actually knowing what it is. this also then helps me extrapolate to things the character never said but that i want them to say in my fanfiction.

example. there are like three minimum variants of english in play in any given episode of downton abbey. but there is no downton abbey character who exhibits every single feature associated with, say, northern [england] english, because that is a very broad group of language variants, and it is conspicuous to me when i see fanfic where a character is using language that is typical of northern english but Not of the character. so having that understanding of the building blocks of language helps me avoid, like, what i see as almost a shortcut of trying to get character voice correct but that can actually put you further from where you want to be

that said. obviously not everyone can get a linguistics degree lol so i don't think that's helpful. though i would encourage anyone who wants to find new ways to match up today language with past language to do a little bit of looking into functional grammar. but i think the general advice is to pay attention to how your characters talk and think about how/when they say what they do and where that might change in canon.

and of course, this is a really methodical approach because i am a very methodical writer, and it is an approach i have developed over many years of writing, and not everyone jives with that and the best method for you might be different - but i do think this is how i think about it !!

oh i also spend a LOT of time with a thesaurus... i try to make sure i'm considering words i don't tend to use because they might be more true to the character than the one my mind goes to for the meaning

and to add on to that, sometimes characters use words that mean things to mean something a word generally does not mean, or more commonly will use a variant of a common phrase that is not my preference and so i try to accept this with an open heart and not change it to what my brain wants it to be. see thomas "could care less" barrow. i usually instinctively write it the other way and then have to go back and change it!!

[unkillable-gays]

Mexican-American!Eddie Munson

Okay so I'm becoming less in denial about being in the Steddie fandom. (I don't think I have to cop to being in the ST fandom given that I haven't watched the show since whatever year it was that s2 came out.)

Anyway I wanted to ask why Latino!Eddie Munson hasn't gained more traction? Or have I just not been able to find the content? I found several posts from people expressing excitement at the idea, but then never mentioning it again.

Is it because people think they're not allowed to use that hc bc it'd be racist because he's poor and/or because he deals? I guess I can't exactly say from every possible perspective, but from mine (Mexican-American but grew up thoroughly middle class) it seems fine? Like, it seems like you could easily weave all those elements into his story in a way that's respectful.

Anyway, in the spirit of furthering that agenda, here's some Mexican-American!Eddie hcs that I've been rolling around in my hands like marbles:

I figure he is probably, like, second generation or so? And his dad is regular not-latino white. (Hence the last name.) I'm going with what is either canon or the most widely accepted hc, that his mother died when he was elementary school-aged. I think he knew his Mexican extended family, but only barely; like, saw them every four years or so, kind of deal. Within that family, there's a large variation of levels of assimilation, Spanish language fluency, political views, etc. They are, just about, all poor/working class, though. (It's not stereotypical to acknowledge the systemic structures put in place to keep our people disenfranchised 🙂) and maybe they all live really far from Indiana? I guess I'm putting them in Texas bc that's where I am. They are all excited to see Eddie whenever the occasion rises, and they love him, for as much as that is worth, given they have really no way of knowing him at all. (This leaves open the potential for cousin ocs, if desired.)

(alternately, his mother could have completely split from her family before or soon after his birth, and his ties to that side of his family are completely severed. If we wanna be lonely and angsty about it. Maybe she did it for a good reason, though?)

(also his dad doesn't HAVE to be white, of course. There are infinite ways to be Mexican-American, and one of those ways is an asshole with a white-sounding last name.)

I don't think Eddie speaks Spanish. Even if he knows it. I think he probably understands it at a basic level, and he probably has several handfuls of slang/cuss/diminutive-type words in his vocab. (idk quite how to explain this rn bc I'm tired, but in my tex-mex community, there are certain words that even exclusive English speakers will often sub out, like the words for underwear, hair ties, boogers.) Though I think even Spanish words that are very natural to him, he'd probably keep close to his chest, because:

Being Mexican is a big part of what makes him a Freak. White people LOVE to act like there's just ~something~ weird or off-putting about us while pretending like they don't notice we're a different race than them. If we're pale, they can even pretend they have plausible deniability. Even if Eddie is white-passing, (which he doesn't have to be; it's my hc and I can picture him how I want) the Hawkinsites are obviously gonna know, and be racist dicks about it. It's true that Eddie tends to own his differences and shove them in people's faces, but I don't think he'd do that with Spanish, because it's such a loaded topic for us, and he's been cut off from it. You're either getting shamed by your relatives for not being able to keep up, or by the rest of the world for having an accent or being worse at English. Especially in the 80's, bilingual people speaking Spanish around English speakers (including their own relatives) just wasn't done. Given that Eddie's not fluent and doesn't have anyone to practice with, I don't think the linguistic difference is one that he'd build his identity around. He'd feel the loss of not having community to share that with. I think he wouldn't have confidence in what Spanish he does have, and would avoid speaking it in front of others whenever possible.

I was gonna talk about how he probably has a connection to his culture through food, at least a couple favorite childhood dishes, but I honestly don't think he'd be able to get the necessary ingredients in rural Indiana in the eighties, and, like, I can't see him making tortillas by hand on his own in the trailer, so. Maybe scratch that lol. (I think my mom actually WAS in rural Indiana briefly in the eighties, I should ask her about that.)

I do think he got exposed to your usual roaring heterosexual Mexican machismo growing up, and he is consciously rebelling against that. If we're making his dad Mexican, that'd definitely be a source of friction between them.

Also, in my, admittedly biased and limited, experience, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are pretty into metal. It'd be cool if his connections to the metal scene outside of Hawkins extended to metalheads of color.

Okay, this one might be stereotypical. But he's loud, chaotic, goofy, and celebratory!! which is what we're like lol. 🇲🇽 Also musically inclined!!

He learned to play guitar from his family pretty young. Maybe not proficiently, but was encouraged to jam along with everyone else at parties. I do think he'd love pulling out mariachi tunes to annoy those he's closest to. Gritos are quicker and more general use than a whole song, but no less effective. (annoying) Like, I think he'd enjoy throwing in some "ay"s, tongue clicks, and rolled rs to embellish his already superfluous way of speaking. And when Gareth groans and tells him to cut it out, Eddie smugly asks him if he's gasp! Insulting his heritage? Gareth tries to tell him, "no, you're just fucking loud", but Eddie just tells him that's also part of his heritage. I think Eddie would be very willing to sing in Spanish to be funny or obnoxious, but rarely does it in other contexts. (I think he probably knows a lot of songs no one else ever hears, though.)

Actually, what if he could also play trumpet, (mariachi style) and would pull that out occasionally just to enjoy the sheer volume of it? Like, he doesn't even own one, he can just play a couple bars if one happens to be nearby. Logically I realize this doesn't make any sense, he'd have no way to maintain an embouchure, but imagine the comedic potential!?!???! Imagine the horror dawning on the faces of Steve and the Corroded Coffin boys when Robin smugly slides her horn over to Eddie, and they realize they're not backing down from the bit. Maybe once he and Robin start getting close, he can start practicing with her in secret? That could be fun. I know this boy's gotta have mad lung capacity. Aww, imagine him teaching Robin to play mariachi-style??!? 🥺

I like imagining his name is Eduardo, just cause I love Hispanic names in any context, and I like the idea of all his white friends getting confused by someone calling him Wardo or Lalo! But he could definitely still be Edward, or whatever Ed- variation y'all prefer. As I said before, there's an infinite number of ways to be Mexican-American! It's super common to give your kids anglicized names in an effort to assimilate. He might also choose to use Edward, even if it's not "actually" his name, for reason of navigating racism. Also, Spanish speakers may give him those nicknames even if his name doesn't quite correspond correctly. Really, everything is on the table here.

Okay, my stance on him speaking Spanish might be evolving, because I think it'd be funny if he cusses people or situations out under his breath when he's frustrated. Not to them; if he's talking shit to someone, he fully intends for them to understand it. But, like, when all his audio cables get tangled together, or when he gets told he has to go fight demons in a hell dimension, or when the cute rich white boy does something completely enticing without even realizing it. For example. 😶 But he still won't speak to people.

I don't think Wayne is Latino, just because he and Eddie already have this dynamic of coexisting on completely different wavelengths, and I think this would add to that.

Spanish lessons with Robin? There might be a non white-savior-y way to do that... Like, he teaches her more colloquial vocab and syntax, and she teaches him more formal stuff?

As he becomes more comfortable with Steve and the party, he does eventually start using Spanish around them more casually; mostly endearments and jokes. Calling Dustin, "pobrecito" when he's complaining, or "mijo" in a loving but condescending tone. (Not to be stereotypical but I LIVE for Mexican endearments; English speakers have nothing on us. And we already know Eddie is a verbally affectionate guy!)

ARGYLE. I saw a post hcing Argyle speaks fluent Spanish, which I can definitely get behind. I don't think he'd push Eddie to speak with him, but I think he'd notice when he understands things he mutters to himself, because Eddie's eyes will quickly flick over to him. So then Argyle will mutter knowing Eddie might understand him, and let Eddie respond however he chooses. That escalates to jokes just for Eddie, or digs at Eddie that the others won't risk overhearing. At first Eddie responds with huffs, chuckles, or eye rolls, but as he gets more comfortable it becomes common for him to snark back in English. Eventually, however, the teasing escalates enough that Eddie bursts out, "Oye! ¿de verdad, guey? Porque recuerdo specificamente una vez cuando tu--" Argyle just breaks down into hysterical giggles, and he never points out when Eddie has to switch back to English to continue their teasing. Sometimes he calls Eddie primo or hermano.

Eddie is delighted to be able to complain about white people and the Midwest to Argyle. Argyle is genuinely baffled as to how he's surviving. Eddie laughs and says, "only barely." Argyle's no instrumentalist, but he's thrilled to sing Mexican folk songs with Eddie, and refresh his memory of lyrics he's forgotten or gotten mixed up. (Alternately: Argyle kicks ass on the accordion, and has had one in his van this whole time.) Argyle starts bringing up whatever food that can make the drive whenever he visits, along with the good California weed.

(if anyone WANTS to talk about racial stereotypes, we can get into how Argyle is giving "token brown comedic relief character with no emotional depth whatsoever, but don't we get credit for not killing him off?!?! 😀" but...I don't wanna get angry about all that, so I usually just try not think about it, and just look at Argyle and say, "what a nice young man! 😊")

(*deep breaths* 😤 this is why we stopped watching the show...)

I do absolutely believe Nancy is the kind of white girl who would put her foot in her mouth and stumble all over her words if she tries to address matters of race/ethnicity. ("Oh, but don't you... Because, you're.... um.") But only, like, once, maybe twice. She catches on fast. Steve generally manages not to embarrass himself just by virtue of the kind of directness borne of not knowing you're supposed to be being delicate. Robin's normal and relatively cultured so she's not a problem. Jonathan knows better from hanging with Argyle, who was probably the only vato patient enough to put up with his white ass in CA.

Huge thanks if you read this, and sorry it's so rambling and inconsistent! 😅 I'd love to know what you think, if this prompted any hc's or ideas, or if I've managed to accidentally say something embarrassing lol. Sorry there wasn't really any Steddie in this; I'm not used to writing romance! And it feels like it'd be super easy to slip into Latin Lover bullshit in that context. Is that why I haven't seen more people embrace this concept? I guess that would make sense... 🤷🏻‍♀️

#steddie #eddie munson #latino!eddie munson #mexican!eddie munson #Latino Eddie munson #Mexican Eddie Munson #argyle stranger things #I've seen one or two mentions of Latino! Dustin which i am fully behind! #he just hasn't really sparked hcs for me...idk he doesn't feel Mexican? #which puts me in unfamiliar waters #by elise #sorry if this is incoherent i wrote it on two different nights when i was halfway asleep

[newsmutproject]

I was in the process of writing a piece and I wanted to ask about what sorts of language and profanity were allowed. obviously, I don't want anything that could be seen as a slur, or something offensive, but I want to know where the line is to avoid making something that seems either too crude, or undeveloped.

Good morning! Co-editor T.C. Mill here.

So initially I admit I was surprised by this question. We are the New Smut Project, after all. Our target audience is not those busybodies who rate books 1 star on Goodreads because a character says "Jesus fucking Christ!" at some point.

But as I woke up more and considered it, I see where you're coming from, Anon. There is such a thing, for our purposes (not everyone's! Sexy is subjective. But we're cultivating particular kinds of sexiness here), as "too crude." It's a matter of more than word choice, though.

In previous guidelines we noted a preference for "tasteful" word choice and specified liking "come" over "cum". That last bit's still our preference - and our house style - but we can always change "cum" to "come" in copyedits, along with adding serial commas (and in all honesty, we can be argued out of either change in individual cases to fit an author's artistic vision. Maybe the characters are sexting and there's no way they're typing four letters when they can type three. Etc.)

"Tasteful," I realize now, is too vague. I love the word "cunt" much more than "pussy." Other people feel the exact opposite and to them, that's tasteful. Mood matters too. What's tasteful in the heat of the moment can feel crude on the first page of the story (not always, though! A first page that opens with something really raw and passionate will get my attention!). If the story's a piece of IKEA erotica with flat(-pack) characters going through the motions, just about any word choice will sound cringe.

Also for a combination of reasons "fuck" doesn't even parse as profanity to me anymore, so there's that.

If you look at our tag for Terms and Language you'll see a range of people's ideas, opinions, and favorite vocabulary - everything from discussions of identity labels to synonyms for "cock."

In our author interviews for Cunning Linguists (to some people, that title is probably too crude), we asked about people's favorite and least favorite words in sex writing, and received some fascinating, funny, and steamy answers!

Finding the right word to fit the moment is always one of the writer's challenges and privileges, whether writing sex or anything else. That said, some advice that I think could be helpful here: NSP Co-Editor Alex Freeman's article "Sex Writing 101."

It breaks down a sex scene into different 'ingredients' - action, reaction, dialogue, sensory details, and so on. If that sounds a bit technical, I'd encourage you to look at it as descriptive rather than prescriptive -- it's possible to write a great sex scene without any dialogue, for instance! But looking at where dialogue appears in the example sex scene and what it adds can spark some ideas that help any story to feel more vivid and interesting. That help to build an erotic mood.

The same word might feel "too crude" if it appears in an underdeveloped scene and, in a piece where intimacy and erotic tension have been built, it might feel absolutely fucking perfect.

It's not tastefulness we're looking for so much as the right combination of juicy flavors.

As a closing thought: the deeper you get into your character's POV throughout the story, the more freedom you have to use whatever language they would use.

Wait, I lied, one more closing thought: If your story has a title like "I Had Sex With My 18-Year-Old Babysitter Last Night," we are going to be turned off by it before we read the first page, even if none of those words are individually crude. Though the fact is the people sending us those stories probably haven't bothered to read any part of our site except the email address to send their stories in to. If you're making an effort, you'll come in ahead of them. (Note: this is not a reference to any one submission we've received, but rather a whole number of them - pieces that are very artless, cliche, and often make use of power dynamics in a way we really aren't about.)

#terms and language

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 72: What If Linguistics - Absurd hypothetical questions with Randall Munroe of xkcd

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘What If Linguistics - Absurd hypothetical questions with Randall Munroe of xkcd’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about absurd, hypothetical linguistics questions. But first, our most recent bonus episode was a chat about the design of IPA charts and how the International Phonetic Alphabet is arranged.

Gretchen: We talked to Lingthusiasm’s resident artist, Lucy Maddox, about designing a different take on the IPA chart that is gonna be available for you on posters and lens cleaning cloths and various other items.

Lauren: Those lens cleaning cloths are a special offer for our patrons, so head to patreon.com/lingthusiasm by October 5th to participate in that special offer.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, I’ve been reading What If? 2 by Randall Munroe, who does xkcd, and I’m delighted there are a couple of linguistics-related chapters in that book.

Gretchen: There’s this fun one about how long it would take to read all of the laws, which it seems like a massive task.

Lauren: Including a fun digression as to whether a Poké Ball is an egg.

Gretchen: This very much reminds me of the is-a-hotdog-a-sandwich type question.

Lauren: Hmm, legal minds will debate, I’m sure. If only there was more linguistics content in that book, though.

Gretchen: Well, you know, Lauren, as it happens, I have Randall Munroe right here. He has some linguistics questions to ask us as if we were starring characters in What If? 2.

Lauren: Amazing. Welcome, Randall!

Randall: Hi! Thanks so much for having me on. I know I’ve met you, Gretchen, in the outside world, but it’s really exciting to meet you here for real inside this podcast.

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm headquarters, as it were.

Lauren: We are delighted to answer your hypothetical linguistics questions.

Randall: There’re a lot of things that’ve confused me about language. English has some weird features. I was wondering, if I’m in a government hearing after this where they’re questioning me, and if they ask me, "Are you now or have you ever been a guest on Lingthusiasm?”–

Gretchen: To which you would have to answer, “Yes,” at this point.

Randall: Right. But my question is why the awkward repetition? Like, why does English make us specify whether the thing happened now or in the past? Why can’t they just say, “Are you/were you a guest on Lingthusiasm”?

Gretchen: I mean, there’re definitely some languages that do things like this. In Chinese, for example, you don’t have to specify the time in a statement. You can say the time, but you don’t have to say it, which is one of the parameters on which language varies, but the specific legal question also has stuff going on in it.

Lauren: It’s partly because legalese is a technical variety of English, but it doesn’t always just use technical vocabulary that makes it seem opaque. It also uses everyday words in a way that have really technical and specific meanings. Some of that is because legalese is about this process of building laws on top of each other and historically layering them. So, a word that has a really common meaning in general develops this really specific meaning in the legal context.

Gretchen: I also think it’s because lawyers have this very pedantic approach to language and looking at every single comma and potential for ambiguity. Because in realistic language we tolerate a lot of ambiguity, and we figure it out from context. But the whole thing with laws and trying to get it exactly on your side is not really allowing space for context and trying to pin everything down really precisely.

Randall: Well, I was thinking about it. If I wanted to create that ambiguity – like, if I wanted to ask, “Are you in Nova Scotia now, or have you been there in the past?” – how would I do that? I couldn’t figure it out.

Gretchen: I think in ordinary English you might just ask one version of the question – “Have you ever been to Nova Scotia?” “Have you ever been on Lingthusiasm?” And then someone would just answer that with a “Yes, in fact, I am there right now.”

Lauren: We’re trying to be helpful to each other in conversation in a way that law doesn’t necessarily start from the same premise of being helpful. It’s starting from the premise of being complete.

Gretchen: And starting from the premise of being, actually, kind of antagonistic.

Lauren: Deliberately unhelpful.

Gretchen: It’s like an adversarial approach to language rather than the cooperative approach we normally have.

Randall: That makes sense – making it clear from context that you are asking about both the past and present even if you’re only specifically referring to one of them.

Gretchen: Yeah. Because if I say like, “Have you ever been interested in linguistics?” “Yes, I still am.” Like, it’s still sort of true, but in this legal sense you might be like, “No, it’s not that I was before, it’s that I am now.” It’s just sort of trying to catch people out in being incredibly pedantic.

Randall: If you wanted to add a way in English to make that explicitly ambiguous – like if I wanted a way to say, “You something something Lingthusiasm guest” – is there a natural structure that you would add if you were in charge of revising English?

Gretchen: Well, I mean, one option you could do – so English technically has only two tenses, past and non-past. Because you can say something like, “Tomorrow I go to the airport, and I fly to this place.” So, you can use what’s often called the “present” to refer to future events. If non-past is the more versatile English tense, you could just make a special rule that’s like, you don’t change it. I think probably the most realistic English way would be to try to add an auxiliary. So, the future in English is often formed with “will” or “gonna.” You could have a new one of those. Like, “Are you sort of Lingthusiasm guest?”

Randall: Or like, “You ever a Lingthusiasm guest?” Yeah.

Gretchen: Yeah. You could maybe use “ever” into – like dropping the verb would help. Entirely. Or making some new version of “would” or “sort of” or something.

Lauren: Just a new, tense-less version of English.

Gretchen: Just delete all the tenses in general.

Lauren: I feel like that would keep the lawyers even busier.

Randall: I’m curious about the sounds of English. I know there’re some sounds that are merging together, like the distinction between “caught” and “cot” in some dialects. Are there any sounds or phonemes that are currently in the process of coming into English or disappearing from it entirely?

Lauren: There’s one that is disappearing and becoming a ghost before our very ears, which has millennia of history, which is what is known as the “wine/whine” merger.

Gretchen: The /waɪn-hwaɪn/ merger.

Lauren: That W-H /w/ that is pronounced by some older speakers or speakers of very fancy registers like RP as /hw/ – so /hwɪt͡ʃ/, “Having a bit of /hwaɪn/ over my /waɪn/.”

Gretchen: As you can hear from both me and Lauren, we both have the merger.

Lauren: We have absolutely merged these. They are indistinct for us. /wɪt͡ʃ/ and /hwɪt͡ʃ/ is a very forced distinction I have to make. But for maybe, like, grandparent to great-grandparent generations at the moment, you do find it for some speakers which is a form of a sound that goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European.

Randall: Wow. It made it all this time, and now, we’re the ones killing it off.

Lauren: We’re killing it off right now.

Randall: Wow!

Gretchen: It’s kind of neat because in Proto-Indo-European, there was a /kw/ sound – a sort of K-W – which in modern Romance languages has become Q-U but still pronounced /kw/ or /k/. This is like in “quando” or “quoi” or some of these words you might know from French or Spanish or Italian. All these words that have K in it became H in the Germanic set of words. You get things like “cornu-,” as in “cornucopia,” became “horn,” as in “horn of plenty.” There’s all these words that have a K sound – which is sometimes written with a C, sometimes with a Q – and those all became H. This is why we have all these words that begin with W-H – “Who, what, where, when, why” and the exceptional “how.” Those are the same as the /kw/ words in those other languages because that K became an H. Then the H and the W swapped positions at some point because people decided they liked it better. Then, not quite the H stopped getting pronounced, but the H influenced the pronunciation of the W becoming /hw/ rather than – I don’t even know how you’d do it. Now, it’s just sort of merged back with that W that we have – /w/.

Lauren: It’s so widespread that the W-H set of question words in English are all /k/ words even in languages like Hindi and Nepali, which are over in the Indo-Aryan side of that language family. You get “kina”, “ko,” “kahile.”

Randall: Oh, so it’s really old.

Gretchen: That’s why that H is there even though most people don’t pronounce it. I think you’re more likely to get sounds enter one variety of English, or disappear from one variety of English, and then that change spreads for a long time, and it takes a while to get to all of them.

Lauren: You still occasionally find “wine” and “whine” as distinct, or more often, you find it distinct in Scotland, a lot of Ireland, and apparently older speakers in New Zealand have been slower than Australians and Canadians and Brits in dropping this.

Randall: That makes sense. I know a few people who have that distinction, too, but like you said, it does tend to be older people. Although, I always find it funny. I always answered those dialect quizzes saying that I pronounced C-O-T and C-A-U-G-H-T the same. Then I was describing this merger to someone, and they said, “No, you don’t. Say it in a sentence.” I said it out loud, and I realised I am inside me. I didn’t hear how it sounded from the outside.

Gretchen: Okay. Say the words.

Randall: Like, “I /kɑt/ him sleeping on the /kat/.” “I /kɑt/ him sleeping on the /kat/.”

Gretchen: Oh, you absolutely say those differently.

Lauren: They are very different.

Gretchen: I would say, “I /kat/ him sleeping on the /kat/.”

Randall: I was born in that pocket of Pennsylvania where, when I looked on those dialect maps, that area is one of the unmerged areas.

Gretchen: And all of these sorts of splits – like dropped “for whom” or added “for whom.” Indian English has a bunch of retroflex sounds. All their Ts and Ds are produced with the tongue curled back onto the tip of the mouth. That’s entered one variety of English, but it seems probably unlikely it will spread to all of the other varieties, but who knows.

Lauren: One can hope. Because I would love to be able to distinguish between a retroflex and a non-retroflex. Too late for the plasticity of my phonemic inventory, but for future Englishes, it could be exciting.

Gretchen: They’re cool sounds.

Randall: Can you practice the sound enough that you can convincingly convey it to other people who then learn it from you? And then it becomes natural for them?

Lauren: Deliberately raise a family of people who have these distinctions.

Gretchen: I mean, I’ve always thought it would be cool to come up with some sort of, I dunno, conlang or something you could teach a kid or some sort of array of here’s, like, three languages you could teach a kid that would give them the maximal number of phonemic distinctions based on those languages. Because Germanic languages actually have tons of vowels cross-linguistically. A lot of languages have five vowels or three vowels or maybe seven, and English has fourteen-ish, depending on the dialect. German, I think Norwegian, Dutch, also, all the Germanic languages have tons of vowels. It would be like, okay, you wanna include one Germanic language for the vowels, and then you want a language that has tons of consonants like maybe Ubykh.

Lauren: Something around the Caucasus, for sure.

Gretchen: Something around the Caucasus for consonants. And then maybe a language with lots of tones – like Cantonese has more tones than Mandarin, so maybe give them Cantonese so they get tone. Then you have this nice array of this will make it easier for you to learn any other language because you’ve got most of the major sound distinctions.

Lauren: It’s also really good because you also have a really good spread of a language that’s isolating and doesn’t have a lot of morphology through to one with middling – English is very underwhelmingly average – and then those Caucasian languages do tend to have really good morphology, so it would be typologically satisfying on multiple fronts.

Gretchen: Yeah. So, raise your kid to be Cantonese-Ubykh-English trilingual, and they’ll be all set for their future language learning.

Lauren: [Laughs] I think we’ve said everything un-useful to say about that question.

Gretchen: [Laughs]

Randall: Say we’re playing a game. I’m gonna pick a random North American English speaker and ask them a spoken or written usage question. Like, “How would you say this?” “How do you pronounce this?” “How do you write this?” Now, you get to pick someone else to ask them same question to without knowing what it’s gonna be. If your person gives the same answer as my person, then you win. Now, who would you pick if you wanted the best chance of matching a random person? Would you pick, like, a news anchor, a kid, or a nondescript middle-aged person, or like a writer or something?

Lauren: I think I have an answer. Gretchen, who would you pick?

Gretchen: I think this is really complicated because I wanna know what’s the spoken or written usage question that you’re asking them because I think it would depend what are the parameters this varies on. Because if it’s an age-based usage question that I’m asking, then I wanna pick based on age, but if maybe it’s geography that’s more relevant or urban status – I think you’d probably want somebody in a mid-sized city because language change tends to happen faster in urban centres and slower in rural areas. You wanna split the difference. But not one of the mid-sized cities that has distinctive stuff going on. Like, Pittsburgh has got a whole bunch of stuff that’s been documented for it. So, yeah, I’m like, what are you gonna do for gender? I guess you sort of want somebody who’s around the middle for a lot of statistics, sort of middling in age – not too old, not too young – middling in terms of city. I dunno. Lauren, do you have a more specific answer?

Lauren: Oh, yeah, I’d pick a lexicographer. [Laughter]

Randall: And you’d tell them what the game is?

Lauren: Well, I think because of all of the people who have to think about and understand language usage, I always find lexicographers have a really solid appreciation for what is in the mind of the average language user. They’d be the first group of people that come to mind for me. I guess we want someone who’s at the intersection of being a lexicographer and all of those demographic details that Gretchen was suggesting.

Gretchen: I mean, I think that’s probably Kory Stamper, right, because she’s one of the youngest lexicographers. But “young” for lexicographer is like, I dunno, probably 40s. I think she lives in a mid-size American city.

Lauren: Okay, our answer is Kory Stamper. Done.

Gretchen: There we go.

Randall: Nice. You know, Gretchen, I realised as you were answering that, there was a project in a Midwestern newspaper ran a contest to try to find the most average person in the country. They did exactly the procedure you’re describing where they picked a city that was the most mid-size that was in the middle on a whole bunch of variables, and then they had the town vote on who the most representative average person in the town was. They picked this one guy. He owned a hat store, I think. Then they were like, “We found America’s average man.” Then they took him around to show him a bunch of stuff and get the average man’s opinion on this and that.

Gretchen: Sort of proto-Joe-the-plumber experience.

Lauren: It must be really good to track down the most average person because they must be a wealth of marketing insights.

Gretchen: Well, I was also trying to answer the question for gender because you can sort of pick an average age, you can pick an average location, but for gender, I do actually think that there might be benefits in choosing a non-binary person, not necessarily because non-binary is the average of men and women, but there was a really interesting study by Chantal Gratton on how non-binary people talk in different types of circumstances and how they can adopt features that are associated with multiple genders from that axis. I think, again, if we’re looking for versatility, which is a reason for picking a lexicographer.

Lauren: If you’re a non-binary person working in lexicography –

Gretchen: We wanna hear from you.

Lauren: We’ve got a great game to play.

Gretchen: [Laughs]

Randall: So, if I say, “It’s 3:00 p.m. and hot out,” what is “it” in that sentence? Because the more I think about it, the more it hurts my head.

Gretchen: That’s a fun question because this “it” is doing something that’s, as you may have noticed, semantically meaningless. That’s not the same thing as “I ate it,” where “it” refers to maybe some cake, maybe an apple, a physical object that you can point to. The “it” in “It’s 3:00 p.m.,” “It’s hot,” “It’s raining” is just there because English really hates it when sentences don’t have a subject – like a real, physical subject that’s there that you’ve said even if it doesn’t mean anything. English is not okay with that.

Lauren: There’s lots of languages that will happily say something that would translate into English literally as “Is 3:00 p.m. Is hot.” Or “Is 3:00 p.m. and hot.” And therefore, there’s no “it” there. Because it’s not there for its meaning, it’s just there to fill this spot in a sentence, it doesn’t matter that it is filling the role for being 3:00 p.m. and hot. “It” is just there to tick a box. In fact, this is so odd in English and such a quirk of English that it has a name which is “dummy it.”

Randall: So, wait. You could attach that “it” both to the “3:00 p.m.” and to another verb. I could say, “It’s 3:00 p.m. and was eaten.”

Gretchen: I don’t think you can. [Laughter] Do you think that’s grammatical?

Randall: What just got eaten?

Gretchen: “It’s 3:00 p.m. and eaten” is like a Lewis Carroll story or something.

Lauren: The “it” being eaten is suddenly meaningful, and so it can’t coordinate as an empty dummy it and a meaningful-subject it.

Gretchen: I think that’s actually a nice test because you can say, “It’s 3:00 p.m. and hot and raining,” and all of those are doing the same “it.” But when you start combining them – I mean, I guess if you say, “It’s hot and eaten,” now you’re just referring to a specific item and not the general state of affairs. Some people think the “it” in “It’s hot” or “It’s raining” refers to the weather or the sky. But we don’t generally go around saying, “The sky is raining.”

Randall: Well, now I’m gonna start.

Gretchen: I mean, you can change things.

Lauren: “It’s raining” is an interesting construction across languages because a lot of languages require you to say something like, “Rain is raining” or “Water is raining.” They don’t have that dummy construction. They’ve solved it in a different way.

Gretchen: I should say this is the dummy as in a dressmaker’s dummy or like a mannequin in a store window. It’s just propping up the clothes. You can think of this “it” as propping up the rest of the sentence.

Lauren: I also like to think of it as because English is so stressed about not having a subject, like a distressed baby, it needs a pacifier, and that’s why you give it a dummy.

Randall: Then I think “It’s 3:00 p.m. and eaten” is gonna stress out English just a little too much.

Gretchen: Yeah. If you want another piece of technical vocabulary, this construction like, “It’s 3:00 p.m. and eaten,” is known as zeugma. This is something like, “She put out the light and the cat.”

Randall: Oh, I like that.

Lauren: You like it, but the lawyers would be having a meltdown.

Gretchen: Let’s see if there are any other fun examples. “You held your breath and the door for me.” “I took the podium and my second trophy of the evening.” “The boy swallowed milk and kisses.” You can use it for multiple functions. But I think normally when zeugma works, it’s – I mean, you can do it in the abstract like “Put out the light and the cat” because one’s a figurative use and one’s a physical use. But I think, yeah, “It’s 3:00 p.m. and eaten” I have trouble with. It’s definitely deliberately playful. I don’t even know if it’s even ungrammatical. It’s deliberately playful.

Lauren: “What’s afternoon tea?” “It’s 3:00 p.m. and eaten.”

Randall: Yeah, it seems like there’s an omitted “at,” like, “It’s at 3:00 p.m. and ready.”

Lauren: It’s because “ready” is definitely more of an adjective, whereas “eaten” is a more nominalised-but-still-verb.

Gretchen: Yeah, I think “It’s at 3:00 p.m.” – that can refer to, like, the event is at 3:00 p.m. That’s changing it into a literal “it” again.

Randall: Well, and the reason I couldn’t say, “It’s 3:00 p.m., and I’m eating it,” is then you’re like, “It’s a different ‘it’.”

Gretchen: Yeah, each of them has its own subject, so that’s fine.

Randall: Yeah, and it’s like, “Oh, you didn’t say what he’s eating, but he’s eating it,” you know.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Randall: So, as I understand it, you can use the International Phonetic Alphabet to transcribe all the sounds that people use in language.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Randall: How you do you write a cough in IPA? I was looking through the chart, and I couldn’t figure out, is there a symbol that would go with that sound?

Lauren: A general, full-throated cough is not something that is specifically a speech sound in any human language, so there’s not a –

Gretchen: That we know of yet.

Lauren: That we know of yet or that someone has not created to raise their child to attempt to turn it into normal phonology. So, we don’t have a specific symbol for a cough in the standard International Phonetic Alphabet as set forward by the International Phonetic Association.

Gretchen: However, you have now unlocked – congratulations – the extended IPA.

Randall: I’ve never heard of the extended IPA.

Gretchen: I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it on an episode.

Lauren: Oh, how excellent!

Gretchen: This is yet more IPA for your fun and enjoyment.

Lauren: Also, for useful technical reasons.

Gretchen: Also, useful technical reasons.

Randall: Are you allowed to tell everyone about this? Or is this a secret held among linguists?

Gretchen: The classic IPA is devised for linguists to talk about sounds that are in the regular speech repertoire of spoken languages. The extended IPA is generally used by speech pathologists to transcribe other sounds that people sometimes make when they’re learning to or producing speech differently from how the typical user of their language does it.

Lauren: Speech pathology covers a really wide range. It could be anything from working with children who have lisps and stutters through to helping people post-stroke or with aphasia regain the ability to speak.

Gretchen: Some sounds – the one that’s really memorable for me is that they have gnashing of teeth in extIPA and also smacking lips and other types of whistled version of S, which I’m not gonna demonstrate because a.) I don’t think I can, and b.) it might be kind of painful if you’re on headphones. There’s also some sounds in extIPA that are, I think, very difficult to pronounce unless you have a cleft palate because they’re bringing the air through the palate in your mouth where most people don’t have a hole there or through your nose and mouth at the same time, if you have a cleft palate. That’s where I would look if I was looking for coughing because it seems like the kind of thing they might have done.

Randall: Okay. Do they have a whole new set of symbols, or is it mostly the Latin letters turned upside-down and stuff?

Lauren: There’s a lot of Latin letters turned upside-down or back-to-front. Or sometimes they’ll use something from the IPA with some additional diacritics and decoration.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s a lot of diacritics. Like, things above and below the original letters. Unfortunately, it’s very unglamourous having hyped up the extIPA. There’s a whole section for unidentified or indeterminate sounds, which are a bunch of symbols in a circle. So, if you’re not sure what consonant is said, you can write C in a circle, which is kind of neat. But cough is written as – do you wanna get a pencil and write this down?

Randall: Okay.

Gretchen: Open bracket, open bracket, “cough,” close bracket, close bracket. [Laughter]

Randall: All right. I guess we’ve already got a way to write that.

Gretchen: I wish there was some sort of more interesting symbol. But there is this whole thing. They use music notation for loud speech and soft speech. They have “forte” and “pianissimo” and these sorts of things.

Lauren: This is outside of the extIPA, but if you want a linguist-approved convention for writing laughter in a conversation analysis, they use the @ sign.

Gretchen: Oh, that’s true.

Lauren: I do have a handful of friends who will text me with “@@@” instead of “lol.”

Gretchen: Amazing.

Lauren: It’s handy.

Randall: That reminds me of a comics problem which is, as far as I know, there’s no good written onomatopoeia or sound effect for the sound of applause. So, if you wanna show applause offscreen – off-panel in a comic – if there was an explosion, you would write, “boom,” you know.

Gretchen: Or “bang” or something.

Randall: There’re sounds for splashing – like “psh.” But there’s nothing for the sound of applauding. I don’t even know how to suggest it. Usually what cartoonists do is cheat, and they’ll write, “woo,” to imply people cheering.

Lauren: As someone who studies language and gesture, I don’t think that’s cheating. I think that’s cooping the multimodality of human expression to advantage in a graphic novel format.

Randall: The other thing you’ll sometimes see is people will just write, “clap clap clap clap.” So, it’s not cheating. It’s, you know, one of the many ways you can use language. But I feel like it would be so helpful if there were some way to write that sound. Since you’re both linguists, can you make one? [Gretchen laughs] How would you represent that? Like, okay, if “@@@” is laughing?

Lauren: Representing a sound as a conventionalised spoken form is onomatopoeia. Some languages do this kind of thing far more frequently and more conventionally than English does. We might want to take a look at a language that does that. I think Japanese is one of those languages that has a lot of ideophones and onomatopoeia.

Gretchen: Japanese does this a ton. The Japanese ideophone, onomatopoeia, for clapping is “pachi pachi.”

Randall: “Pachi pachi.” That seems about right.

Gretchen: Yeah, it seems about right. But the fun thing is also that “pachi” can also refer to the number eight in Japanese, which is more commonly “hachi,” but it can also be “pachi.” If you’re texting or you’re on social media, and you wanna indicate applause or clapping, you can also write a bunch of eights. At least Japanese speakers will know what you mean by that. I mean, I guess there’s also the emoji these days. People do that as well.

Lauren: The emoji does have those little action lines. But to get those action lines into English, we just made a big deal about Japanese having this onomatopoeic form, but I think “clap” is also a form of onomatopoeia. We just don’t look at it that way.

Randall: Huh, “clap.”

Gretchen: Oh, no, wait. So, the etymology of “clap.”

Randall: I’ve never been on tenterhooks waiting for an Etymonline definition.

Gretchen: Yeah. So, the Etymonline entry for “clap” has “a common Germanic echoic verb,” which is also found in Old Frisian, Old High German, Old Saxon “klapunga,” and it – yeah, “unknown origin, probably onomatopoeic.”

Lauren: I think the obvious thing to do is to put “clap clap clap,” footnote, down the bottom of the comic, because good comics should have footnotes, you just link to the Etymonline entry. Everyone’s happy. [Laughter]

Randall: Yes, oh man.

Gretchen: The answer was inside you all along.

Randall: It’s like you start saying “clap” so fast that you stumble over the sounds, and there you’ve got it.

Gretchen: From a physical, articulatory perspective, you’re sort of doing a teeny-tiny clap with your tongue, inside your mouth, against the rest of your mouth.

Randall: Yeah. I mean, because, well, the /k/ is the clapping at the back, and then the /p/ is the front, and the /l/ is the labiodental –

Gretchen: It’s a lateral.

Lauren: Your whole mouth is clapping.

Randall: Yeah.

Gretchen: Three or four different parts of your tongue are all doing little taps against the roof of your mouth.

Randall: Your whole mouth is applauding. That is so cool. Okay. Thank you for that.

Gretchen: You’re very welcome.

Randall: This might be almost a question for a singer, but you mentioned these sounds that are outside the speech register. What’s up with the piercing sound of a horror movie scream? Is that falsetto? Is that a normal speech sound but louder? Or is that your throat doing something weird?

Gretchen: There’s a great paper about screaming, which is brilliantly titled, “Human Screams Occupy a Privileged Niche in the Communication Soundscape,” which I think begins to answer your question. It suggests that screams are universal and acoustically unique so that they’ll alert us to danger and ensure, and I quote, “biological and ultimately social efficiency.” I guess the hope being that, like, if someone’s screaming, even if you don’t speak their language, you can still tell this is a human distress signal. We normally write a scream from an onomatopoeia perspective as “Aaahhhhhh!” with a lot of As and maybe Hs because /a/ is the most open of the vowels. The Jaw is just fully dropped. It’s the least restricted. If you tried to scream something like, “Eeeeeee!”, you’d have to have your mouth be a lot more closed.

Randall: Yeah, you never write I-I-I-I-I.

Lauren: I guess that’s why the /i/ in “shriek” is trying to – because it’s closed, but it also then tends to correlate with perceptually higher-pitched things. That’s trying to give you that perception of it being really high-pitched, which /a/ doesn’t necessarily do.

Lauren: Yes. Because some comics will do A-I-E-E-E-E-E, like “Aieeeee!”

Lauren: Trying to get the best of both.

Gretchen: Yeah. Trying to give the high-pitched-ness of it. The other thing about this paper is that it says that screams are “acoustically well segregated from other communication signals,” as in, they’re higher-pitched than other communication signals, and that this is also partly to avoid false alarms. Because, like, imagine if a third of your words just had the scream bit in them, and then you’d kind of be like the “boy who cries wolf” of like, “Oh, well, if you’re screaming all the time, nothing’s ever urgent.”

Randall: You know what. There are a few animals that make sounds that I think are in that scream register because people get freaked out by them. I think foxes and then elk do a weird noise.

Gretchen: There’s some animals that make sounds like crying babies, which I dunno if that’s also in the same range, but the scream cluster is in 30-150 Hz. So, animals – probably some of them are in that range, and you could measure that. And that there’s also a perceptual attribute called “roughness” that screams tend to have. I really don’t wanna demonstrate a scream and really freak people out listening to the podcast, but if you think about your latest horror movie scream style, it’s got this sort of back-and-forth modulation, that sort of roughness.

Randall: I’m curious – it was interesting to realise that I learned from you about how emojis, a lot of them represent gestures, and how some of them are things we have words for, but some of them aren’t. What are some gestures that people do without realising this is a type of communication or without having a word for it?

Lauren: I’m gonna tell you the answer. But once I do, you will never unsee this. I just have to prepare you for that fact. There is something that everyone who gestures does all the time. It has a specific technical name. That is the repetition in a gesture to indicate duration or emphasis. This kind of repetition is known as a “beat” gesture. You will absolutely see it in the most clearest manifestation if you watch a politician give a speech because they love to use them to give a sense of coherence to what they’re saying. It’s this magic thing. If you’re giving a speech, here’s a pro tip. You can use beat gestures. If you continue to use the same repetition on your stressed syllables – I’m doing it now, but you can’t see it.

Gretchen: Lauren, I feel like you’re really emphasising the beat gestures in a very auditory way.

Lauren: I’m emphasising the beat gestures auditorily. But if you continue to do this gesture repetition, you can actually give the sense that everything you’re saying alongside those gestures is the same topic or it’s coherent even though it may not actually be so.

Randall: Huh. So, this is like when you’re shaking your hand up and down as you talk, and the up and down motion goes with the syllables, and then suddenly, when you do that, I have this urge to vote for you.

Gretchen: Vote for Lauren. She can’t be beat.

Lauren: [Laughs] There’s my slogan. So, you can combine it with a thumbs up if you wanna be like, “That was a really great job,” or a pointing gesture. It combines with other gestures. That’s part of why you see it everywhere. But sometimes, a person’s hands won’t be indicating, like, a pointing gesture, or they won’t be giving any information about the size or the shape of something. They’re just doing this repetition. The analogy in emoji is that we use a lot of repetition in our emoji to do the same kind of emphasis or duration – so a string of clapping hands to show applause in emoji or a string of hearts to say, “I really love that idea.”

Randall: Is it true that if you make someone hold their hands still when they’re talking, they’re less coherent or have a harder time forming sentences? I feel like I heard that somewhere.

Lauren: The general suggestion is yes. I think we’ve talked about it before, and I’ve said that’s the case. I’ve been returning to this literature and will probably revisit it in an episode, but it turns out that there is a lot of variation in what people mean when they say that they’ve stopped people from gesturing. And so, there’s a lot of variation in just how much it really does change how people speak. Possibly, sometimes it’s just because they come up with these really fantastically bizarre experiments.

Gretchen: There’s some where they tie them down so they can’t gesture, right. Maybe being tied down is a bit distracting.

Lauren: Oh, yeah, there are some fascinating study designs.

Randall: I mean, any time you have to have anyone do anything in an MRI, their circumstances are not gonna be natural. Well, what you really need to do is just raise someone in, like, have all the furniture in their house to be shaped like an MRI.

Gretchen: And then they’d be totally comfortable with it.

Randall: So, they go to sleep, and it’s in an MRI. And their couch where they watch TV is an MRI.

Lauren: Adding it to my long list of study design ideas that are terrible. A lot in this area are fascinatingly bad.

Randall: So, a lot of the time, I’ll read fiction or watch a movie where there’s a fictional language. If I come across a sample of a language, and I’m trying to figure out, “Is this a real, natural human language, or is it something that was created by a language enthusiast to seem real,” if you were hired as detectives to try to figure it out, what do you look for? What would be the hallmarks of an invented language?

Gretchen: This sounds like a great linguist job.

Randall: What would be the hallmarks that give away, you know, it’s someone who’s trying to make it seem like a natural language. If you were trying to figure out if you’re looking at a real language or one by someone who’s trying to fool you, what would you look for?

Lauren: I would go straight to trying to find the irregularities. If there are no irregularities, that’s an immediate sign that you have something that is too neat to have been slowly evolved collectively as a communal agreement by a collection of speakers.

Gretchen: Especially if there’re some people who do this and some people that do that. Because one of the things with artificial languages is they’ll tend to make one language. But as we were talking about with “wine” and “whine,” or trying to find the averagest English speaker, everyone’s slightly different with the language. If you don’t have any of that representation of “Different people are doing this slightly differently, and we don’t fully know exactly how all of this stuff works, but here’s a bunch of ways that it could be” –

Lauren: I think I would go, probably, straight to the pronoun system or how they do copulas – so in English “is, are, be, am” are all copula verbs, but they’re all a bit of a hot mess because, over time, we’ve created this really unbalanced paradigm. Or we’ve taken two different verbs and turned them into the past and the present of the current one. Or with pronouns – we just borrowed “they” from one of the Scandinavian languages, and you can’t actually find a robust explanation for where “she” came from in the English paradigm. “I” and “me” are incredibly ill-balanced. If you have a completely neat, like, “I have all these pronouns, and they’re perfectly clear which one is ‘me’ and which one is ‘you’ and which one’s single and which one’s plural,” I’m like, ugh, that is suspiciously regular. And language is very good at being irregular in these high-use areas.

Gretchen: It’s like a house that no one lives in because it’s suspiciously tidy. I think also the high-use areas, like in a house that you live in, tend to have more irregularity going on. I think it’s the difference between a stair rail or something that’s been polished by generations of people walking by it and having their hand on it. Some areas will be smoother than others. It’s hard to get that patina of use without lots of people doing it.

Lauren: I find the best way to do that when I’m constructing languages for fictional worlds is just to bring a degree of absentmindedness to my work. I might just generate the pronoun paradigm twice, and then take the bits I like of both of them, but then randomly forget sometime and use another form so there’s one completely irregular one in there.

Randall: That makes sense. Now and then I see people complain about like, “Oh, this show is unrealistic because the characters pronounce this one character’s name two different ways.” Like in Star Wars, some of them say /han/ Solo and some of them say /hæn/ Solo. “That’s because they haven’t prepared well enough.”

Lauren: It’s just two different parts of the galaxy.

Randall: Yeah.

Gretchen: As somebody named Lauren /gan/ – or as you say it –

Lauren: Lauren /gɑn/.

Gretchen: Yes. People never pronounce real people’s names differently depending on their accent.

Lauren: People would never have a /gɑn/gan/ merger. That would be completely unrealistic for my co-host to use the incorrect vowel in pronouncing my name.

Gretchen: Because I don’t have your /gɑn/ vowel.

Lauren: So, yeah, that kind of irregularity. I do have to say, sometimes there is implausible irregularity. In Game of Thrones, I found it comedically implausible that every single member of Arya Stark’s family would pronounce her first name differently. But I can totally believe there is an entire galaxy where there are two different ways to pronounce /hɑn/ or /hæn/.

Randall: So, it’s like the difference between there being, oh, a couple of different accents – some people say this name this way, some people say /hɑn/, some people say /hæn/ – versus, like, these people have clearly not met Arya because they all say it differently.

Lauren: Her own family members don’t seem to know.

Gretchen: And the reasons are often motivated in some sort of factor. If you have characters – okay, people who are in this group do this; people who are in that group do this – but like, why do these characters who all grew up together in the same environment, why do they talk so differently if they all grew up together? Maybe there’s some sort of other reason, right? But what sort of factors are influencing how people are talking differently or like, “Oh, we just happened to hire a bunch of actors from different places. Whatever.” Sometimes, you get a show that does that sort of accent neutral casting or accent indifferent casting, but if you wanna create within-world story reasons for people – you know, “Oh, we’re gonna give all the good guys British accents.”

Lauren: Yeah, a bit of randomness and whimsy definitely helps bring a language to life.

Randall: That’s a really clever thing to look for. It’s nice to know that you could just be a little bit less fastidious and actually make it seem more real. Let’s just suppose, optimistically, that this podcast recording survives for 50 or 100 years. I always think it’s funny. We’re sitting here recording this at a specific time and place, but it’s gonna be listened to in the future. And we don’t actually know how far in the future. People will listen when it’s posted, but then it’ll sit around. I thought it would be fun, keeping in mind those people 50 or 100 years in the future that if we try to make guesses about features of English that seem unusual to us but will seem like normal usage to the listeners in 2072 or 2122, we could make our guesses about what we think usage is gonna look like. And then, in 100 years, the listeners can grade us on who got closest to correct. It’s like a contest. We wouldn’t get our scores for 100 years.

Gretchen: Please, if you’re listening to this in 100 years, you know, maybe human life expectancy will have gone up, and we’ll still be around.

Randall: Be sure to post this episode on the “intergalactic hollow-sphere.”

Gretchen: Share it with your friends via your brain implant. Okay.

Randall: Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and merge the podcast with your consciousness at the “galactic core.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: I actually have a suggestion that might even work on a shorter timeframe. We might be around in, say, 20 years or 30 years to hear the answers to some of these, which would be kind of exciting. One of the fastest changing areas of language is that there’s a new word for “cool” about every decade or so – sometimes less. I was writing another article where I had to project the future of English, and I thought, you know, if we go back, and we look at a list of words for “cool,” do they have any sort of features in common so we could predict what the new, cool word for “cool” might be? Some words for “cool” that may not be cool anymore, things like, “sick,” “hot,” “lit,” “rad,” “sweet,” “tight,” “nice,” “neat.” There’s also another subset like –

Randall: “Keen.”

Gretchen: “Keen,” “nifty,” “groovy.” Apart from “nifty” and “groovy,” which both have this /i/ sound at the end, all of these other words are very consonant-vowel-consonant from a pronunciation perspective. Sometimes with an extra consonant at the beginning or end. Sometimes, there’s two. Like, “sick,��� “lit,” “rad,” “sweet,” “nice,” “neat,” they’ve all got these bookended consonants on either side. If we can come up with some other words that are monosyllables with consonants on either side, maybe one of these words will eventually turn into the word for “cool.” This would be the first time that I’ve ever been cool in my life. We can come up with some of them. I think the current word that “the kids” are using these days is “based,” which is the opposite of “cringe.” It’s like “based in fact,” sometimes used meta-ironically. Attributed to the rapper Lil B. I’m getting this from Urban Dictionary because, again, I don’t think we’re particularly cool here. I came up with some additional candidates. If you wish to contribute any, you also can, of words that have the right phonetic form that could turn into a word for “cool” maybe. But maybe there are more. They don’t have to mean something that sounds good, right. Because “sick” or something doesn’t sound good.

Lauren: Okay, what have you got?

Gretchen: So, “sop” seems like it’s got potential. “Numb.” I dunno, I just feel like “numb” could mean “cool.” “Left.” I dunno, maybe it’s kind of “out from left field” or sort of bizarre. As a left-handed person, I kind of like this one.

Lauren: I was gonna say, I feel like this is your left-handed affirmation coming through here.

Gretchen: Thank you. “Sunk.” I dunno, “sunk” could mean “cool.” These have got some good acoustics to them.

Randall: Oh, getting a new meaning for, like, the sunk cost fallacy becomes the sunk cost positive thing.

Gretchen: Yeah. Like, “Wow! That’s so sunk, man. I can’t believe it.”

Lauren: I have a very long bow to draw here. I don’t think I’m gonna win with this. But I would like to propose “whale,” as in the ocean-going mammal, because there are some people who still pronounce that as /hwɛɪl/, and then I’ll have a really obvious token to check if we fully reduce the wine/whine merger.

Gretchen: “/hwaʊ/ that’s so /hwɛɪl/ of you!”

Lauren: I just wanna make sure we have a lot of tokens for something that has a W-H pronunciation for some people to make sure that we’ve definitely closed that merger. Or it’s been de-merged.

Gretchen: Hmm. I mean, some people are using the Beowulf “hwaet” ironically now.

Lauren: Oh, yeah, maybe we could get that going.

Gretchen: Bring some of this stuff back.

Randall: Or, hey, this can be my opening. If America has finished merging “caught” and “cot,” then we could bring back “caught” to mean “cool.”

Gretchen: Oh, yeah, “That’s so cot of you.”

Randall: No, no, no, you got to unmerge it.

Gretchen: “That’s so /kɑt/ of you.”

Randall: You know, the weird thing is when you’re describing this, you’re using the word “cool” a lot. It strikes me that that word has hung on for a weirdly long time and means the same thing. There’re all these other synonyms that come and go, but that one – like, when I read old newspapers going back at least five or six decades – has basically the same connotation.

Gretchen: It’s interesting that “cool” retains its meaning as the meta-term for this category, whereas if I say something’s “groovy” now, I’m implying it’s dated. I’m not saying it’s still cool. I mean, like, I dunno if there’re gonna be more temperature words. I think that mine has been pretty much exhausted. I mean, unless you’re gonna start saying something’s “warm.” Like, “cool,” “chill,” “hot.”

Randall: “Tepid, man.”

Gretchen: I think that’s the wrong phonetic profile.

Lauren: Actually, “luke” fits. And it’s now only in the context of “lukewarm.”

Gretchen: Yeah, “That’s so luke.”

Lauren: Sorry Lukes out there.

Randall: I mean, if you’re going for the phonetic profile, I think “damp” fits.

Gretchen: “That’s so damp, man.”

Randall: No, wait, no, because, I mean, that’s very similar to “dank.”

Gretchen: That’s very similar to “dank,” yeah. “Dank” is already there.

Lauren: The things people can semantically shift when they set their minds to it are truly astounding.

Gretchen: You really can’t predict what’s gonna be in cool, but they do seem to have some sort of phonetic signature. If any of these words that we’ve mentioned turn into a word for “cool,” I definitely didn’t see “based” coming, so who knows.

Lauren: That would be very “whale.”

Gretchen: We get bragging rights. That would be very “whale.”

Randall: That was real “tepid” of you. Well, to put my stake in the ground, my prediction – when I was a little kid, you could tell if someone learned from reading because they would pronounce certain words ways that – like they’d say /dɛbɹɪs/ instead of /dɛbɹi/ because they hadn’t heard someone say it. They had read it. I feel like we’re conducting so much written communication now, I wonder if more of those will just become alternate, accepted pronunciations. So, like /dɛbɹɪs/, /fəkɛɪd/ instead of “façade.”

Gretchen: If you were me when I was a kid saying /sɛntɹɪfjʊgl̩/ instead of /sɛntɹɪfɪkl̩/.

Randall: Exactly. “Grand /fɪnal/.”

Gretchen: There’s one that’s already there which is “forte.”

Randall: Oh, yeah, I only just learned that I’ve been saying that one wrong.

Lauren: What would be a “non-forte” pronunciation of “forte”?

Gretchen: /foɹt/, I think, right, because it’s originally Italian. In Italian, it’s both spelled “forte” and pronounced “forte,” but a lot of people write it with an accent mark as if it was French, like “café” – or “resumé,” which gets written with the accent mark. You can understand why you’d wanna do this because the E there isn’t silent, but it’s not actually originally a French word.

Randall: Yes.

Gretchen: Yeah, I like that we had this pronunciation argument. This makes me feel much cooler than coming up with for words for “cool.”

Randall: Mispronunciation is my “forté.”

Lauren: I guess if you’re listening to this in 100 years from when it was released, email/contact @lingthusiasm to let us know which of us is closest. [Laughter]

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get tree structure scarves, “Not Judging Your Grammar” notebooks, and kiki-bouba mugs, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. You can follow our guest, Randall Munroe, @xkcd on various social media sites. His new book is called What If? 2. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes, and you wish there were more? You can get access to an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month plus our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Have you gotten really into linguistics, and you wish you had more people to talk to about it? Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans. Plus, all patrons help keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include a chat about the design of the IPA chat and what it’s like to be in an MRI machine. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Production Manager is Liz McCullough. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Randall: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #podcasts #episode 73 #transcripts #randall munroe #xkcd #what if #what if 2 #what if linguistics #interview

[kikyan]

hi! i hope you doing great! <3

can I have male obey me matchup please? (the only character a wouldn’t like to be matched with is asmo but don’t get me wrong i love him my whole heart!!! just don’t feel like it)

i’m a girl, aries, 18, enfp, my pronouns are she/her. i could be really shy sometimes due to my bad anxiety, but mostly i’m very sweet and bubbly person, i deeply care about my friends, and i’m super affectionate with people who i love. also, my love language is physical touch!!! i’m also very sensitive and emotional person, but i’m fully open with my feelings only with close people in my life. my height is 5’5, i have a petite figure, have some boob, long brown hair and green eyes, i would describe my style as a hyperfeminine <3 i’m polyglot and i speak 6 languages, and i’m studying linguistics in uni. i’m obsessed with rabbits and bunnies and all the bunny-themed items!

hope it’s okay! sorry for my grammar, english isn’t my first language. i hope you have a nice day <3

So sorry for this being so late but here you are! I match you with Leviathan and the runner-up being Mammon!

Breaking down from your sign and your MBTI, your sign is Aries and unlike the stereotype that Aries are hotheads, I want to offer up that Aries are just more in tune with their emotions. From your MBTI which is ENFP, you're someone in tune with your feelings and others. You're outgoing and open-minded. You tend to be positive and have a someone lively approach to life. Your main goal/focus is establishing emotional connections with others and making those feelings heard/seen. You also want to create a space/relationship where others can be honest about their feelings to/with you. You're a bubbly and charismatic person, so I think Levi would simply adore you!

Levi is an otaku but before that, he was a well-known war general. He's often looked down upon or mocked, but you could be the safe space he confides in. He's enthusiastic about the shows he likes but insecure when talking about them to someone he cares about. He may be insecure talking to a stranger, but at the end of the day, it's someone who doesn't matter. His S/O is different. He longs to be in your good grace and earn your affection. I pair you up with him because you both are enthusiastic about your hobbies and likes/dislikes. Both care very deeply about feelings and want to create meaningful established relationships. I think Levi would understand where you're coming from when you say you have a love for bunnies. It's a hyperfixation and he knows a lot about that. Overall, I think you both suit each other. When you both get close, you can really be open about everything with each other. You can create a safe no judgement zone for Levi when he wants about his interests and hobbies and he can create a safe place where you feelings are welcome. Around him, you both will learn to build each other up while also improving each other's behaviors. Creating a safe space for one another! I am a yandere author so if there was no yandere here it would be weird so with that being said, again disregard my previous fics because I will be redoing the headcanons. Levi is clingy, way too clingy. Sure you've build a healthy relationship but Levi's insecurities would get the better of him resulting in anxiety induced thoughts. What if you leave him? What if he was only kidding himself when you said that you'd be together forever? He cares about this stuff a lot and trust me, he'll be on you like a hawk. Constantly observing you, waiting to see when he needs to interject. I honestly think he would be the type to kidnap you or simply hold you hostage in his room, ushering apologies and that he only did this to protect/salvage the relationship you guys had.

Mammon! Basically anything I said for Levithan, apply that here. Mammon without a doubt already does what he can to provide you with a safe and secure place to speak up, but who does it for him? I think with your love and support, you will be able to make him confess his feelings for you and his feeling in general without the need to hide behind. As a yandere, he'd react the same. One main difference is that he would probably worship you. You're kind, sweet, enthusiastic, etc. He lights up when he sees you smile and talk about how bunnies or gush over something bunny themed. He may want to preserve that feeling, not only do you bring him up but that smile on your face, he wants to keep it. He would be your protector, puffing up his chest and making it known that you're under his protection. He'll work behind the shadows and he'll stain his hands red just to see you smile again. You'll never know what he's doing for you.

Hopefully you enjoyed your match up! Thanks for the support!

#kikyan #yandere matchup #yandere obey me

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

reading tolkien takes me ridiculous amounts of time and I'm trying to work out why exactly is that. his work just rings a bit hollow to me, beautifull story, beautiful world, beautiful words but while I read it, I feel like I'm watching the story and especially the character through glass. LOTR is a story driven story, right? or it is just me not vibing with it as much as I'd like to. cuz I truly want to! the history, the world building makes my heart soar but then I crashland while the characters come into the picture. (Tolkien's allergy towards "human" characters, those that have their own faults and make mistakes does not help at all...) I wonder if it's just me or other people have even a bit similar problems with Tolkien's writing

I think that's an entirely valid opinion to have and not at all an uncommon or unusual experience with Tolkien's works.

My own experience is one of those ones where I love the world, I love the potential, the broad outlines he's given us of characters, but the execution of the story itself? I've a few critiques I'd make if I were in a writing workshop with him. (Stop letting your Catholicism scuttle and undermine how you demonstrate the message of the story. Unless you specifically do want it to be that death is the only form of redemption possible, fuck basic kindness and the power of friendship and love. I somehow don’t think that’s what you’re aiming for.)

It does come down to the fact that Tolkien is doing a specific thing with LOTR, and Middle Earth more broadly. He's got this language he's created, this history he's developed for it, and now he's got a world to make for it and those are ultimately the fundamental details he cared most about. It's where his linguist, academic side really shows through.

Not that he didn't care about his characters, he absolutely did (as is abundantly clear in letters, in writings outside the trilogy). But Tolkien was writing, in many ways, a mash-up of Arthurian legend, Anglo-Saxon epic, and classic fairy tale. All these modes of story telling are ones meant to convey things in a more allegorical format. They're not, traditionally, character driven/deep interiority forms of writing/story telling.

To get a great depth of connection to a character requires a lot more work on the side of the reader than in, let's say, something written by Ursula K. Le Guin or NK Jemison. Even things like Lies of Loch Lamora and hell, Discworld (which started its life as a spoof of works like Tolkien's), have more character-driven-ness than LOTR and I think most of us are more used to that than these more traditional, if at times archaic, modes of story telling.

Because, as you said, LOTR is story-driven, not character-driven. The characters exist as vessels for the story, which can - and in the case of Tolkien does - give them a distant feeling. (Obviously, everyone is different and there are plenty of people who would vehemently disagree with me, and that's fine. To each their own/we all get different things out of different books.)

The withdrawal from the intimate portrait of people that LOTR does is what allows Tolkien to world build so successfully. Doing all that development, while being deep inside someone's head, is hard! It's something GRRM has run into (and I suspect one of many reasons why he's never going to finish ASOIF).

So, yeah, I wouldn't say you're alone in finding connecting with the characters hard and finding the books a bit difficult to sink into the way we would with another series. Tolkien does require the reader to work harder than other writers and, at the same time, he's writing a specific kind of series and it's just not character-first.

My very long way to say, I don't think you're alone and you're right in thinking it's a by-product of how Tolkien has structured his narrative (i.e., story driven entirely which leads to less rich and fleshed out characters, because every approach to a novel has its pros and cons).

Thank you for the message/ask! <3 <3

#like I write super deep interior third person POV #which yes you can world build with that but it's completely different to how Tolkien was doing it #and the effect is different - the purpose is different etc. #he was truly a linguist of anglo-saxon english writing a fantasy world and it shows in what he wanted to do with his world and his writing #which was make it as fleshed out as he could manage - so it would be like studying the history of our own world #sacrifices are made when taking this approach #lotr #ask #reply #lord of the rings

[tellmewherehomeis]

Conjunction is a thing for me.

The other night, I was thinking about writing. I was thinking of conjunctions. Note: I’m not a grammar nazi.

It amazes me how this linguistic element presents the notion of choice. The opportunity to decide on a path. I may have been confused when studying parts of speech back then, but I now understand their significance in shaping our experiences and lives. They are essential in building our relationship with someone close to our hearts.

Little did we know, conjunctions intertwine paths. They have connected me to someone. Someone I would choose in a heartbeat, the reason why I would never see “but” as a word that negates everything.

I would tell them, 

“The world is so big, but I found you.” 

“Love is complicated, but I would gladly take the risk if it’s you.” 

“This will be hard, but loving you will be easy.”

Conjunctions have created a sense of unity. We have woven a story where every part contains both me and them. There’s an unexplainable connection between us. Our interests, dreams, and aspirations are all intertwined.

I still remember then, 

“My love language is acts of service, and yours is words of affirmation.” 

“Let’s build a house together and do things we wish to do.” 

“I’ll share my favorites with you, and you’ll tell me yours.”

The decisions we had to make along the way were veiled in the possibilities of “or” – with the uncertainty and assurance it brought.

I would ask them, 

“Would you like me to talk or just listen?” 

“Do you want to listen to music or watch your favorite film?” 

“Am I bothering you, or do you want me to stay?”

As I’m writing this, I’m a little hesitant to use the conjunction “yet.” I know it has a subtle difference from “but.” For me, disregarding grammar rules, I would use them both in ways that provide additional choices, new paths, and a whole new perspective.

Just like how I wish I could tell them, 

“Everything is hard right now, yet having you around makes it bearable.” 

“I know working on a healthy relationship is hard, yet I’m willing to work hard with you.” 

“We have already separated ways, yet every piece of you still lingers on me.”

Oh, the remarkable power of conjunctions, connecting numerous separated clauses – just like us.

 

Our paths may be separated for now; but I cherish the moments we shared, the choices we made, and the ways we embarked on together. Though we may be apart, the imprints of our connection will forever remain in my heart, guiding me toward new paths, new choices, and a future where our paths may connect once again.

[solacefruit]

I hope this is alright to ask but one thing I've been really curious about after reading your fics is how do you come up with natural sounding conlang and terms? Would you have any tips for that?

Hello! Yes, absolutely you’re welcome to ask that. It’s very nice--and kind of flattering--to get asked questions about writing and things that interest me, and although I haven’t had much time to answer or really interact on this blog lately, it’s something I find fun. If there’s ever anything I don’t want to talk about, I’ll say so, so please don’t worry. 

I love conlangs (and also just... langs...) and I’ve put a decent bit of thought into them over the years so while I’m very much not an expert in the field or a linguist, I don’t mind sharing some of my principles for writing conlangs and using them in your stories and hopefully some of my thoughts will be useful to you!

I have a couple of mental guidelines that I use when starting on conlangs. 

1. Why is it here? I think some people make conlangs because they’re fun (which they are) but never actually think about why/how to weave them into your story. They just kind of come up with some words, liberally sprinkle them through, and be like, [diogenes voice] “Behold, a plausible world.” 

There’s an enormous conversation to be had about the question “does everything in a story need a purpose?” and we don’t have time for that today, so I’m going to sidestep all that and say instead, “If we take for granted that a good story is made through intentional creative decisions, what is the intent of including conlang in this story?” You might not end up with an especially complex answer, but any answer is better than none, in my opinion. 

Personally, my reason for involving conlangs is about 60% because I want to introduce cultural details etc. that are not easily translatable into English and 40% because it’s fun and for me gives a richness and depth to the world and people in a way I find pleasant to read. 

*

2. Who is speaking? Everyone’s got different lengths they can stretch disbelief to, so for some people, any creature can say anything. But I do feel it’s still worth thinking about the physical capabilities of the speakers. Are their jaws able to make these sounds? What sounds do we feel would be plausible for them to make (note: feels plausible and is possible are two different things, and it’s totally okay to go with impossible ideas as long as you can make them feel like they could happen). 

One way to make a conlang feel plausible (especially for xenofiction) is to invoke sounds that we already associate with that kind of being, if there’s a passable real-world equivalent. So to use Watership Down as an easy example, the lapine language was designed to sound “wuffy, fluffy” because they’re rabbits and Adams wanted to use sounds that felt airy, light, and at home in meadows and fields. He also used some onomatopoeia, which can be another great way to make a word or aspect of language feel like it would exist for a culture. 

*

3. Building blocks first. Some people will jump into a conlang with words fully formed and, as a general rule, I advise against that. I think if words come to you first that’s okay and you can and should write those down for reference, but if you want to make a conlang that feels cohesive, my recommendation is to start with sounds and syllables. 

If that feels overwhelming, don’t worry. You can break it down into little bits. I think vowels are a strong place to start, since that shapes a lot of how a language sounds, so decide what vowel sounds would exist in this culture--and also what counts as a vowel and what sounds belong to what symbol. For example, “a” can have a range of pronounciations, and it will make things easier on you in the long run if you pick which sounds and how you want to present them. 

Then you can do the same with consonants. In the end, you’ll end up with a kind of library of letters, which then you can start combining into syllables. These are the building blocks for your language. Play around with them to get familiar with the sounds and rhythm you want for this conlang. Are there letters or sounds that can’t go together? Are there letters or sounds that always go together? What combinations change the sounds of letters--e.g., how t + h = th? 

Don’t be afraid to say, “this just doesn’t exist” and cut things out of the language, by the way. Gaps are as important as what’s there. Cultural rules around pronunciation are where accents come from, and what a language does--or doesn’t do--defines its identity (at least from a sonic perspective).

Personally I find this part super fun, but if you’re struggling with it, there’s a few algorithmic apps online that will do this kind of thing for you and give you a headstart. Usually googling variations of “conlang generator” will toss some up.

*

4. Don’t reinvent the wheel. From years of just drifting around internet creative spaces, I’ve noticed there’s often a trend in younger or less experienced writers to feel compelled to think about every single minute detail of the world they’re creating, and then getting profoundly overwhelmed because they don’t have the skill-set or knowledge to be a linguist, and a civil engineer, and a historian, and a biologist, and a politician, and--you get the idea. You don’t need to be all or any of these things to write compelling stories about complex worlds. 

Your conlang doesn’t have to be functional outside of the story it belongs to. The conlang exists to serve the story you’re telling, not the other way around. Stories aren’t just a way to showcase a conlang. What matters is that the conlang fits into the story in a way that enriches the story, and often what that means is that the conlang should be used sparingly and purposefully. 

Coming back to the point about intention, you can ask that question for each use of the conlang. Any time you’re writing a conlang word or phrase in, ask yourself--”what is this for?” It might be because what is being said has to be said in the conlang, because there’s no English (or other language) way to say it. That could be a concept, or animal, or other aspect of the world that is unique to this place and people.

Alternatively, you might be using the word because it’s someone’s name, or a pet-name, or something with cultural significance that simply will not be reflected by the language of narration. You might be using it to intentionally withhold information from your reader, because the characters know what that word means but the reader does not. 

If you’re using it “just because” it sounds good or feels cool, that’s probably not the right time to use it. As a creative philosophy, I feel like you should always hold back a little. In a perfectly honed, balanced story, there should still be space left for wondering and dreaming for the reader. 

*

5. Devise some root words for the nerds. Once the syllabic pieces are sounding good to you and capture the general tone and flavour and feel of the culture you’re making a conlang for, that’s the time to experiment with words. Some people will throw syllables together until words start forming--which isn’t a bad strategy--but then will go with those words with no further consideration as to the language as a living, evolving structure. 

If you want your conlang to feel real, it’s worth putting a little thought into the relationship words have with each other--i.e., root words. These are what make certain words and ideas into cousins, etymologically speaking, and it means that you give yourself a lot of options with how to want to use the conlang you’ve made. You can also give the reader more to work with. 

For example, you might come up with a word--pelthan. It doesn’t mean anything to the reader until you explain its meaning. Later, perhaps you use another word--vethelthan. This time, even before you explain the meaning, your reader might recognise the similar suffix and structure, and have an inkling--based on this, and the context of this new phrase--what this new word means. 

Finally, you might use another word--palthor. And when you explain the meaning of this word, the reader can see how pelthan and palthor came from the same root word, the ancient prefix pelth-, and if you’ve made good choices as a writer, that might have some significance to the reader--or maybe just delight them, because they’ve unearthed a connection that you didn’t even tell them about in the narration, they figured it out all by themselves [wink wink nudge nudge].

*

Like I said, I love talking about this kind of thing, writing is my burden passion etc. etc., so this is some of my thoughts but not all of them! I hope it’s somewhat useful to you, though, and good luck with your writing. 

#supposed to be working on my thesis oh dear #reply

[mandoa-for-dummies]

What even is this?

This is the first in what I sure hope will be a series of entries documenting my progress as I attempt (attempt being the keyword) to transform Mando’a from what I’ve always thought was a pretty lackluster cipher of English into a conlang.

What’s the difference? A cipher uses one to one substitutions to turn the original language into the “new” language. Take this example:

“best of the best” in English becomes “jatnese be te jatnese” in Mando’a

As you can see, this is English with different syllables. We’ve got the affixed -se intensifier of the Mando’a word “jatne,” which differs from the irregular transformation of “good” into “better” (comparative) and “best” (superlative) in English, but other than that, we’ve preserved the English preposition and article.  That’s fine for a fly-by sentence in a movie or a novel! But we can do better than that.

By contradistinction, a conlang or constructed language has its own fully-imagined and developed grammar, vocabulary, style, idioms etc. Think Quenya or Klingon. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: there will be parts of speech. There might be a redesigned alphabet. I will definitely be playing fast and loose with the lexicon over at mandoa.org

There’s a third important category of artificial languages that I’ll be messing around with as I truck merrily along, and that is what is called an auxlang, or auxiliary language. These are artificial languages like Esperanto--designed for simplicity, regularity and maximum ease of adoption. Mando’a is canonically supposed to be an auxlang. I have some thoughts about this that I will develop in future updates.

Why do this? The simple answer is: for funsies and to teach myself how to build a conlang, a hobby I’ve admired from afar for a long time but hitherto haven’t dared to dip my toe into for real. I’m not a professional linguist. I’m just a language-loving dork who wants to take a passable but lazy sci-fi cipher and make it special. If someone else has been doing a version this work on Mando’a elsewhere, that’s great! I haven’t looked it up. I’m not doing this for posterity--this is entirely for my own amusement, baybeeeeee.

THAT SAID, HERE IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT USING WHATEVER YOU FIND HERE: you can incorporate anything you find on this tumblr into your own creative goings-on. You can also further modify or adjust it to suit your own needs and preferences. It’s yours! You’re welcome to it! All I ask is that you credit me.

You can expect updates every few weeks, since, lo, I am a sad and overworked grad student. The background research doesn’t do itself, dontcha know. It goes without saying that your questions, comments and feedback are always welcome.

#star wars #the mandalorian #worldbuilding #sci fi #linguistics #conlang #I'm in this to have a good time and cry a lot

[moviemunchies]

I didn’t know if I wanted to see this in theaters, but once good word-of-mouth came around I thought it’d be a good film to watch at some point. I only just got around to it though when I had some free time. And you know what? It was pretty darn good.

And hey, it’s got the same director as the recent Dune movie.

[I should put some sort of disclaimer that I’m not familiar with the source material that the movie’s based on.]

Dr. Louise Banks is a professor of linguistics mourning the death of her teenage daughter. And then one day a dozen alien spaceships land on Earth all over the world. Dr. Banks is called in to try to see if we can communicate with them, so she and her colleague Dr. Ian Donnelly work with the US military to try to build a rapport and work out a way to talk to the aliens before finally asking what it is that these guys even want with us in the first place.

There is a lot about language in this movie that I thought was interesting. Language is one of those things we don’t tend to think about all that much, other than that different people speak different languages. And some movies we don’t even think about that–consider how many movies involve international travel or interplanetary travel, and there’s no hint of a language barrier between characters.

This movie, on the other hand, is all about language–not just how languages work, but how to think about language, and how language changes how we think about the world we live in. Language is a complex topic! It’s not just as simple as transferring individual words.

Mind you, Arrival doesn’t spend all the time it needs to in how to communicate with the alien culture. There’s a large chunk of time that’s sort of skipped over, and I’m really not entirely sure how Louise and Ian became as fluent in the hexapod language as they do at that point, especially considering that the hexapods don’t speak to communicate, they use a “written” language.

Considering the story is about communication with aliens, it’s interesting that we don’t actually see the aliens that much outside of certain scenes. Or rather, we do see them, but they’re generally behind a transparent barrier and obscured by fog. This might have been a budget thing, but it’s also neat because it helps ratchet up the tension because we don’t know what these aliens are like. This isn’t an alien invasion movie, but it’s still dealing with creatures from beyond our planet and we don’t know what it is they want with us.

When we do actually see the hexapods I appreciate that they’re very strange-looking. Aliens in fiction tend to be mostly humanoid, or close enough that it’s easy to identify with them. Not so with hexapods! They look freaking weird, and I like that. It’s a creature from another world with a completely foreign way of perceiving the universe–of COURSE it should look freaking weird.

And obviously, because they’re creatures that look freaking weird and we don’t know what it is that they want, a large part of the tension is that the people of the world aren’t sure what to think and are freaking the fudge out. If they’re here to kill us, after all, it might be better to kill them first, right? And let’s be honest, we as a society are trained to think that if there are aliens they’re going to try to kill us.

I think if you’re interested in language and how it works this is a must-see. If you like science-fiction, and want something a bit less action-oriented, then Arrival might be your speed. I certainly liked it, and felt it was significantly different from most science-fiction movies I’d seen, so I’ll be thinking about this movie for quite some time.

#Arrival #Movie Munchies #reviews #Amy Adams #aliens #science fiction