#Need to work on my conlang again to get those

[thoughts-by-anny]

The draft I finished was the third of a story very dear to me. It's been with me since 2019 and saw me both falling in love with writing again and growing tremendously as a writer.

I'm looking forward to line editing and working on the sequel again, which has been on hold for over 3 years, but I want (force myself) to take a break from that draft. I've told myself I want to get some short stories done again, but truth be told, I'm only doing those specific worldbuilding things you'd be too ashamed to tell a non-writer of.

I've calculated the 325 years the moons of my world need to be in the same position on the same day of the year. help

Writers need to talk more about that feeling of being lost after finishing a draft.

It's like "no I'm not sad, I just don't know what to do with myself after I was looking forward to working on that story for the last 1,5 years"

It's the knowledge that one day I will have to say goodbye to the characters I know so well they might as well be real.

[ahamkara-apologist]

Bits about the opening mission of Revenant that I absolutely love:

-Crow opening it talking about how he wants this to be a diplomatic mission where he proves that hunters can build bridges, not just burn them, and then the mission fucking ends with the bridge of the Helm getting blown open and the whole damn thing crash-landing into the Tower

-Failsafe taking one metaphorical look at this whole crashing thing and calmly taking over bc this is not her first rodeo. Rip Failsafe's new chassis it was fun while it lasted

-Getting to actually walk amongst House Salvation and fight alongside them!! I've wanted a begrudging alliance with them since I first started playing during Beyond Light and I'm happy that we're getting it. Strained political ties my beloved

-More Eliksni words!! I love the way the language sounds, so I hope we can get more of it. The conlang folk deserve to eat good this episode

-Everything about showing up to fight alongside of Eramis, and her sorta just begrudgingly accepting it. Like you can practically feel her desire to be a proud bitch struggling with her desire and her responsibility to keep her people safe, and her pride is failing. I love her so fucking much

-Eramis not giving in bc of her pride and her disdain for humanity until Crow mentions that Eido would be sad if she didn't come with. She is SO soft on this kid, I just know that she used to be the type of parent who'd bitch about her children whining that they want something only to turn right around and give it to them later. Granted, with Eido its not hard to not want to dissapoint her, but the fact that she's such a deeply caring person at heart under her wall of thorns is just. It gets to me, man

-I also love Crow acting as a diplomat, bc again, he's doing what I've been itching to do since I figured out what Salvation's whole deal was. Put those uwu softboy powers to good use prettyboy

-Eramis implying that she trusts us (the guardian) to ensure that Crow sticks to his word had me like '!!!' bc it genuinely wasn't something that I expected, especially after Ana's stunt on the Seraph Station. I think the fact that she's fought us so many times and has seen us fighting to keep House Light safe has convinced her that the Young Wolf is a pretty straightforward fellow who follows the honour-rules of her people, while she hasn't had the proof that other humans are the same. I think that's something that she respects about us, at least, even if she still very much does not like us. I mean, she also could have been speaking sarcastically but given how she talks to us later on I don't think that's the case

-(Granted, I also think that Eramis is aware of her crimes and feels like she needs to be punished for them in some capacity, and we're an outlet for that, but humanity also isn't exactly her first choice. Shes a deeply proud individual on account of her suffering so many indignities over her long lifespan, so if she's gonna choose to work with us, she has to be clear about how unhappy she is with all of it)

-(also who's responsible for repeatedly scaling her up in bossfights and then shrinking her right afterwards. Bungie???)

-Crow fucking pointing his dinky little Hawkmoon at Eramis's head. I know that it has paracausal shots and that Crow is a guardian, but it's comically small next to her and got a good laugh out of me

-When Fikrul smashes into the helm and we're being blown about like pieces of debris (I'm ignoring the fact that Crow can apparently speak in the vaccum of space bc idk what the fuck is happening there), the fact that Eramis just nonchalantly braces for impact with all her arms cuffed up implies that she's done this many different times before, and I love that little bit of detail. Fuck yeah more alien space pirate action, I always am down for that sorta shit

[best-non-english-word-torunament]

Word of the week rules and submissions!

What is this?

This is no longer a tournament as that takes too much time and admin. We have also already decided that многоꙮчитїй/ mnogoočitii from Old church slavonian is the best word, so no need to do that again. Instead, I will use this blog to highlight a word (or a couple of words) every week (or other time period if the queue runs out) from languages which aren't English. This will be based on reader submissions with me editing for clarity and adding a blurb about the language, much like in the tournament.

In short, tell me about your favourite words! Let's all learn something new! (My favourite phase of the tournament was definitely research/round one)

Who are you?

I'm a linguistics student and language nerd from Sweden who decided to run a tournament of non-English words because I wanted to highlight language diversity. My native language isn't English, so please be kind if my posts are worded weirdly sometimes (or my username is misspelled lol)

What makes a word good?

There are many ways that a word can be good, but here are some examples: it sounds good/feels good to say, the script looks nice, it denotes an interesting concept, it denotes a concept you like, it does something interesting grammarwise, usagewise or soundwise, it's funny, it's an interesting/fun compound, it has an interesting/fun etymology, it just has good vibes... The possibilities are endless

Rules:

No words in English, but loanwords from English are allowed with good motivation

No conlangs (I love them but the focus is on natural language)

Words from signed languages are allowed and encouraged as long as you can provide an explanatory picture or film for the sign

Words from pidgins are allowed

Words from extinct languages are allowed

Usage should be widespread within a language community (if it isn't/wasn't used in the language it doesn't belong, neither does words only your family/friend group uses, but slang words are allowed)

No words that have appeared in the tournament or previously on word of the week (search for the word on my blog, all words are tagged)

How submissions and posting work (read these before submitting):

Each person is can make two submissions at a time. Please wait until yours have been posted before you submit more

The submission form is currently open. It will remain so until I have too many unposted submissions, then open again when those have been scheduled

If you're able to, please provide an IPA transcription for your word (the International Phonetic Alphabet has a sign for each sound used in any language, which makes transcription of exact pronounciation possible)

You will need to provide a translation/explanation of the word in English since that is the language used on the blog for ease of communication and reach. If the exact translation of a word is part of what makes the word good, please provide that too

It is possible to be credited for your submission if you want to

If more than 5-6 words in the same language are submitted, all of them might not be posted until some time has passed to avoid one language dominating

I reserve the right to pick which words I want to share if I have many submissions and don't want to do all of them. I do this in my very limited spare time because I think language is fun and if it doesn't spark joy I won't do it

Submissions will be fact-checked, edited for clarity and get a short text about the language. If I find something interesting while researching I might add a note about that as well

Have fun! I can't wait to see your submissions and learn something new!

Submit your word(s) through this form

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Choglaem

First, it seems that Tumblr's search function is flawed in such a way that just searching the tag doesn't actually get all of the results. So if you drew something for this round and it's not in this post, let me know and I'll put it in a reblog. Same applies to previous (and future) rounds.

Anyway, it's now time to look at the results for the Choglaem! Anyone who doesn't know what that means is encouraged to look at previous posts in this series, collected at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .

And here's the link to the entry people are working from:

Now, let's get into it. As before, these are presented roughly in the order that people posted them. (I'm going to go through the tag on Tumblr's regular search, then again on the alternate search method someone suggested, so any that only show up on the alternate source are going to be at the end.)

@embervoices (link to post here) decided to show that the Choglaem is bigger than all living things on the earth by... having it fight Godzilla. Perfect. Inspired. Love it. No notes.

@mobileleprechaun (link to post) has helpfully labelled their drawing for us, which I enjoy. Also the interpretation that the tongue through the blowhole is a lure used by an underwater predator is a good one -- honestly, putting something this large in the water just feels more plausible, you know? In their tags, mobileleprechaun describes this as "sort of a dinosaur snake tsuchinoko", and I had to Google that last one, so let me show you the best result from that ...

(If anyone else needed that word defined, it's a creature from Japanese folklore that does actually look a lot like a fat snake, but I'm pretty sure it's not just a fat snake. There's a (disappointingly brief) Wikipedia article about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuchinoko)

Anyway, the drawing is great! I have no idea why Saddam Hussein is there; you'll have to ask mobileleprechaun.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has given her Choglaem wings to aid in causing the air to become turbulent. The medieval stylization is pretty dead-on, I have to say; I swear I've seen those trees before. And I think this Choglaem may actually be the closest to the drawing in the Aberdeen Bestiary out of all the submissions we got, so coolest-capybara is clearly quite good at thinking like a medieval artist. The post linked above contains a brief explanation of her design choices and also a link to the medieval illustration that elephant is based on.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has once more done a very realistic-looking depiction of this week's beaſt. According to their post, part of their inspiration was an oarfish -- and I have to say this is pretty believable as a terrestrial version of an oarfish, so well done. I'm impressed by this one, which manages to look cool and dangerous but also kinda cute -- I think the tongue-through-the-blowhole part of the description makes all of them look a bit goofy in an endearing sort of way. The post linked above describes their design decisions, including a brief diversion over round pupils vs. slit pupils in snakes.

Silverhart also mentions that the nonsense-names I'm using sound like the names of mythical animals in a fantasy novel, so I feel I should confess what my process for randomly generating these names was. I've got a Goblin conlang that's been sitting in my pile of works-in-progress for years; I just fed the phonology from that into Zompist's gen program (link here), then picked out several dozen of my favorite results. So that's why they sound like kinda-plausible words.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has drawn us a Choglaem who is having problems. Or, I don't know, maybe it meant to knot itself up like that; who am I to judge? Either way I think it's cute. Just look at that face. A brief overview of her design decisions is included in the linked post; I think the chicken crest is a pretty sensible call given the source material.

@pomrania (link to post here) has made some creative choices with their version. I like how they've decided that if the Choglaem kills with its tail, the tail should have something at the end rather than just... you know. A tail. That tracks. "The tail ends in a fist", specifically, however, was not something I saw coming. The crest looking like an emo hairstyle is funny, I think, and the angry elephant is great. The expression on the Choglaem's face is suspect to me; it looks like it's having too much fun with this. The linked post above includes an early draft, and itself links to a post with a detailed account of the artist's thought process and some additional sketches.

@miapcain (link to post here) has... wait, hold on, look at that border. That's gorgeous. Had to acknowledge that before moving to the inside of the frame. Anyway, Mia has given her Choglaem legs, which might seem odd for something described as a "snake", but actually isn't out of the ordinary for a medieval bestiary -- the authors tended to play a bit more fast and loose with their categorization of animals than we do today, and there are indeed examples of animals with legs being called "serpents" or "snakes". (I assume the artist knows this, I just want to share that with the rest of the audience.) Anyway, the drawing style is great; I like the stylized landscape and the muted colors. That elephant is definitely modeled after a medieval elephant -- I swear I've seen it before -- but I couldn't tell you which one offhand. Anyway. Love the vibes here. Not sure why the tongue is a vine, but it's a cool design feature.

@rautavaara (link to post here) has gone an entirely different direction with this one, and I can kind of see the steps. Snakelike creature, kills with its tail... what if the tail it kills with is a snake. As a result, we have this chimeric "bovid-lion-snake beast", as the artist describes. It definitely stands out from the crowd, and looks menacing as hell. Rautavaara continues with the cool frames and stylization, and I continue to appreciate them. Kind of an art-deco feel on this one.

@karthara (link to post here) gives us a big snake with a somewhat aquatic-looking fin-crest, grappling with an elephant in a very believable manner. That is a quality depiction of a snake fighting an elephant, no mistake. And like I said before, a kind of aquatic look feels right for something this big. The linked post contains a short description of the design decisions.

@gradling (link to post here) apparently also had the thought of "if it kills with its tail there should be something dangerous on the tail", and made the excellent decision to give the Choglaem a thagomizer. That's amazing and I love it. The crest also looks quite good. I don't have anything else to add here. Thagomizer. Brilliant.

@moustawott (link to post here) has done this very cool, kind of celestial-looking Choglaem. I like that its pose is evoking an infinity symbol. And, of course, it is in its natural habitat:

the skies

A brief explanation of design choices can be found in the post linked above.

@treesurface (link to post here) has managed to really evoke the size of this thing even though it's the only thing on the page, which I think is quite good. Also, the brief discussion of their design choices in the post linked is pretty interesting, and honestly that's what I want to highlight for this piece, so go check that out.

@scarlettbookworm (link to post here) has given us an elephant apparently in the moment when it realizes it's about to be attacked by a Choglaem. In order to allow their Choglaem to lurk despite its size, they've given it camo-pattern scales, which I think is clever. There's a pretty good explanation of their design choices in the linked post, which I think is worth reading.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) apparently did this with a fountain pen, which I think is very cool. I like the oarfish-inspired crest, and the very menacing face, and the elephant being ambushed. However -- and I realize I've said this like three times in a row now -- you should check out the linked post to read the artist's explanation of their design decisions. They describe it pretty thoroughly and I think it's more worthwhile to read their account of what they've drawn than it is to read mine.

@strixcattus (link to post here) posted this while I was typing this round-up, so this will be the last result from Normal Tumblr Search. They've given us another "there should be something dangerous on the end of its tail" interpretation and drawn their Choglaem with an ankylosaur-style club, which I think is excellent. As per usual, their post includes an amazingly detailed modern-naturalist-style description of the animal in question, which I always enjoy. It's exactly my jam. (That bit about where the largest Choglaem lives... is that a reference to something? It feels familiar.)

All right, I'm now looking through "#choglaem" on @findtags's search system, and it is a bit different, oddly. There are fewer results than in the regular Tumblr search -- only six of the above images show up -- but it also has one that doesn't show up on the normal search! Dammit tumblr.

@hairycarrot ... whom Tumblr will not let me tag? what the hell? [edit: the tag works now that i’ve posted this, but the editor seemed to think this blog wasn’t real] um... (link to post here). Anyway, they've done this neat stylized thing that kind of looks like pastels? I don't know art, that's just what it looks like to me and I like it. I also enjoy the Choglaem being coiled up like a spring -- I know it's because it's a constrictor and showing it in coils is a good way to communicate that, but I still like the look. Very pleasant-looking depiction of an elephant being ambushed by a giant snake.

All right, time for the reveal. Here's the Aberdeen Bestiary drawing:

Yep. That snake has legs and wings. So everyone who added limbs was in an appropriately medieval mindset. It doesn't seem to have a crest, though, and I don't see any blowholes. And it's attacking with its bite more than with its tail. Honestly, I think y'all read the entry much more closely than this artist did.

But maybe they were also working with more preconceptions.

Because you see.

This is the entry for the Dragon.

Yeah, that's not what I was expecting from a bestiary description of a dragon either.

The interesting thing about it to me is that it's absolutely not what you generally see in fictional depictions of dragons in medieval literature. The bestiary entry is very firm on the idea that it's not venomous, it's a constrictor, it kills with its tail -- and most medieval dragons I've read about are highly venomous. Some of them aren't even that large; they're dangerous for their venom rather than their size. So maybe this is a bit of medieval mythbusting -- "no, guys, real dragons actually don't have venom at all".

And yes, this means there's historical precedent for the green & black dragons in D&D; dragons being so venomous they spit, breathe, or blow out poison instead of having to inject it with a bite is a pretty common motif in medieval dragon stories. I think a lot of people think of those as just variants on the classic fire-breathing version depicted by the red dragon, but actually there aren't that many fire-breathing dragons in medieval stories as far as I remember. (I would do some research on this, but I wanted to have this posted like two hours ago, so you're just getting what I remember off the top of my head instead of proper sources, sorry.) To my understanding, the classic fantasy dragon breathes fire because Smaug breathed fire. And Smaug breathed fire because the dragon in Beowulf breathed fire. But the Beowulf dragon isn't actually representative in that regard; the venom-spitting dragon is more common as far as I've seen. (No word on lightning or cold, sorry blue and white dragons.)

Anyway, there's probably room to reintroduce the constrictor dragon that kills with its tail. What colors haven't already been used up in the various monster manuals, splatbooks, &c.?

I'm rambling. End of post.

[helenvader]

You mentioned on a post about Sauron inventing Black Speech that you're a linguist - are you comfortable elaborating?

I'd love to know more, as an informal but dedicated linguist myself. Always curious about how people get into languages.

@oroniel So, here we go. It's going to be long!

I love languages. I'm fascinated by all their aspects - the development over time, the way they influence each other, how they often reflect the speakers as a group at a certain point in time, and the system of a language as such.

At the university I studied English and German, but not pure linguistics, I majored in translation and interpreting (loved the first, hated the other, because those two require differently wired brains, and my brain is definitely a translator's brain).

While at university, I also learned French, Latin, Swedish, Old English and ivrit (these days I am in awe, I barely manage ONE language course now), and sometimes just read grammar of others just out of curiousity - Gothic and Breton, maybe others, can't remember now! These days I sometimes read on Old Norse and and look up words in Proto-Germanic, not really learning, just having fun.

I also started translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into Slovak, a project that I abandoned once I started working, but at that time I was very good at that particular dialect of Middle English and it was a great exercise in translating poetry (and translating in general).

Of course I have forgotten most of the above as it happens when you don't practice. When I came to Luxembourg I had to start learning French again, and took Italian later on, but my Mum had Alzheimer's, and it took its toll on my brain, so I ended up not being able to do that at one point. This year I'm not working (unpaid leave), so I FINALLY started learning Luxembourgish. I was a bit afraid, but my brain cooperates, I'm just rather tired after each class.

I also have to mention that when I was watching my favourite Chinese drama (The Story of Yanxi Palace), I started recognising words and even deduced some very basic grammar rules (confirmed by a colleague who studied Chinese), which made me immensely proud. I love deciphering a system, that's for sure.

I do not expect to learn anything beyond Luxembourgish at a level of being able to hold a basic conversation, and maybe come back to Italian one day. I'm not getting younger, and my brain is chronically tired.

I have always admired Tolkien, the natural linguist, not only for the sheer amount of languages he knew, but for the amazing job he did on his conlangs. That's just. WOW.

Oh, and I love Black Speech, I know it's supposed to be ugly, but it doesn't sound ugly to me. My HC is that Mairon based it partially on Valarin (his first language, and one that sounded unpleasant to the Elvish ears, and thus Quenya was born), just making it simpler. Imagine my JOY when I found out that the word for ring in Valarin is... naškad. Not dissimilar to nazg, is it? :)

And of course Black Speech is a language that has no exceptions, because our darling Maia is such a perfectionist. It's a pity we only have but a few words and sentences. And I NEED to know what Halbrand said to that warg! Hopefully we will learn in time.

[strixcattus]

...And now I'm thinking about the time travel conlang and how I might want that to work.

I looked up the phrase just to see if I could get inspiration from other time travel–related languages and found Mpiua Tiostouea, the language of all time. It's got some neat concepts, though it was designed to have an... interesting... phonology and I'd definitely make some different choices—which is good! It means I won't be copying ideas when I make my own conlang.

A conlang for time travellers needs to be able to express some complex and seemingly self-contradictory tenses. For instance, I might tell you this sentence:

"After I go to my date with the time worm, I'll text you how it went."

Except today is Thursday, and my date with the time worm, which I'm going to tomorrow, is Wednesday (yesterday), and I plan on jumping again afterwards, but I'm not sure in which direction or how long it'll take me to get around to texting you, and at any rate you only experience time forwards and will certainly receive the text in the next few subjective and objective days.

...Also, while I, the person talking to you, am going to be going to the date and sending the text, I'm not dating the time worm—the date is between myself from three years into the future (as opposed to an alternate version of myself whom I never have been and never will be), I'm spying on it, and also the time worm experiences all of time simultaneously in every universe and thus has no time clones or past/future selves.

...And the groupchat has like three versions of you in it.

A properly time travel–inclusive language should encode all of these things efficiently through the use of creative agreements, pronouns, and tenses.

It should also be inclusive towards people who experience time in reverse. Not those who've lived backwards all their lives—they can learn any language just fine, the same way everyone else does—but people who've found themselves temporarily moving the wrong way through time, despite having learned the language forwards. I think this can be settled by having two acceptable word orderings—one the reflection of the other—and employing asymmetrical particles that indicate important things like proper nouns and sentences, and maybe having a necessarily asymmetrical syllable structure.

Like CV. Every syllable necessarily has one consonant followed by one vowel, unless you're experiencing time backwards relative to your conversation partner, in which case all their speech will sound to you like every syllable is VC, and the same from you to them. That ought to work and to be simple enough that anyone, with any native language from anywhere across time, can pick it up with relative ease.

Then we get to pronouns. Mpieua Tiostoeia has an impressive set of seven grammatical persons, numbered 1–7. I understand and respect the reasoning behind such a choice (and a dedicated grammatical person for antimemes is pretty darn cool), but I'd rather go in the opposite direction:

1st person: I, the one talking to you. 1.5th person: Me, but a different instance of me than the one talking to you. 2nd person: You, the one listening to me. 2.5th person: A different instance of you than the one listening to me. 3rd person: That guy, the one I'm pointing to. 3.5th person: That guy, but an instance of them that's not right here. 4th person: The time worm, which experiences all of time and the multiverse simultaneously.

...Which coincidentally is also seven grammatical persons.

Due to the need to stress subjective and objective time experience for multiple entities, basically everything that can take agreement will agree with the person and gender of whatever it can agree with—most crucially, verbs, which might include tense markings that have to agree with any number of people:

"I'm having a party with these guys last week, do you want to come?"

Where I'm going to the party in the future and inviting you to come along in your subjective future (while acknowledging you may have already been), but some of the people I'm gesturing to have already been to the party and others have yet to go. Also one of them is the time worm. I think this party might be where we met... will meet.. whichever. Both.

Now, when I say gender, I don't mean male vs. female. Time travellers can come from any timeline. Some of them have only one acknowledged gender. Others have three. A few have as many as sixteen, or even more. Some of them plot gender on a four-dimensional spectrum encoded in the phonology of their gender pronouns. The only way to please everyone's idea of what gender trappings deserve encodement is to encode them all equally—that is to say, not at all.

Besides, we're all time travellers here. I don't need to specify how you identify with each word. I want to know if this is you, or your future self, or your evil alternate universe self. That's the kind of gender I'm concerned with.

Which means you can have a mixed-gender group (the three versions of you in the groupchat) that needs to be referred to with... essentially, it'd be something like you (2sg) and you (2.5pl), where you (2.5pl) is gendered both for your past self and for your alternate universe self, which are two different genders.

I think this ought to be my next conlang project. It's been way too long since I really got into one—right now, Yvelse is my only conlang that's not either dead or been in cold storage for the past year+.

[dedalvs]

Hi I've been working on a conlang that underwent tonogenesis by losing coda non elective stops and becoming high tone (coda elective stops then become plain voiceless, giving a fun way for my language to be divided into different initials and finals) and low tone coming from the coda fricatives [s] [ɕ] and [ʑ], with mid tone happening in open syllables or with coda sonorants (though 2 of those sonorants from the proto lang [r] and [r̥] are now fricatives [ʁ] and [χ]). I'm also debating having intervocalic /s/ debuccalize to [h] and then delete and get contours from those new diphthongs like this: [ˈʊ˩.sə˧.nʊ��] > [ˈʊ˩.ə˧.nʊ˩] > [ˈʊə˧˥.nʊ˩] > [wə˧˥.nʊ˩] but I'm still not feeling satisfied with this but then I remembered reading yours and Jessie Peterson's posts on instagram about Ts'ítsàsh some months ago where you guys had tonogenesis by consonant loss and also stress and I was curious about how that worked in Ts'ítsàsh because I think that could be what I'm missing, especially because stress in the proto language was based on morae and was therefore not fixed and I want my conlang's tone to be more dynamic. Sorry for the long introduction and thank you for your time.

What is an elective stop...? I've never heard that term.

Essentially, stress is another variable you can play with. You can ignore, as your system here has, or you can add it back in to potentially create even more tonal distinctions in your language. Stress is associated with a number of elements, depending on the language: volume, vowel length, pitch level, or some combination of these. The goal is to somehow give a particular syllable more prominence than other syllables. If stress is associated with pitch, well, tone is also associated with pitch. You can imagine, then, you have two syllables, however this works (i.e. whatever needs to happen to get you these two proto-syllables):

*pat

*ˈpat

Now you've got options. You already know that a loss of something like [t] in coda position results in high tone on the previous syllable. Throw in stress, and you have some options. Here are some examples. First, there's option A, which is what you have above:

*pat > pa˥

*ˈpat > pa˥

That is, stress plays no role, and it's simply the loss of the consonant that gives the syllable tone. Let's call this option B:

*pat > pa˦

*ˈpat > pa˥

This kind of additive tone. The loss of the coda [t] pushes the pitch one point higher, while older stress pushes the pitch one point higher. This results in a high tone and a super high tone, which is now a regular distinction your language makes.

Now here's an option C:

*pat > pa˧˥

*ˈpat > pa˥

Some tone languages don't allow contour tones on short syllables, but if yours does, this is another option. With the loss of [t] and stress you get a solid high tone. The the loss of [t] and no stress, however, the tone is dragged down a bit, resulting in a rising tone.

This is how an older stress system can play into creating a more complex tone system down the line. You have to be meticulous in writing down the rules, and, both Jessie and I can tell you from experience, it's easy to forget them, but it can lead to some more grist, if that's what you're after.

Again, though, this is not something you have to do in creating a tone language. Often stress plays no role in the development of tone.

[abidethetempest]

Hilo, everyone. I feel like I've been a little bit AWOL since about May of this year when it comes to my creative projects, especially my conlang which is the one 90% of you probably follow me for. I want to give an.... update? explanation? about why I've been so inactive and where I'm at mentally.

To be brief: I had burnout. Bad, bad burnout. For my conlang, for my fic, everything. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm still burned out on those projects. There's a combination of factors at play: working nonstop on two things at the same time for over a year, my interests shifting between different fandoms and projects as they tend to do, health issues, and plain old insecurity about the quality of my work.

I never expected anyone to care much about my Eliksni language project. It's been both wonderful and overwhelming to have so many people interact with something I thought would only be seen by myself and maybe a few other linguistics nerds. I am still a beginner to conlanging, and I worry constantly that someone better, more knowledgeable, and more experienced than me will come along and say "This is terrible, and you should quit." Even back in April and May of this year, I knew that feeling dread at the thought of working on my conlang was not healthy or normal. So I took a break! It's helped a lot, and I've been working a bit on translations lately. Hopefully I'll have some conlang posts soon :)

The other big thing I've been burned out on is my Destiny longfic. On top of the already present burnout, I got a rude comment that really took the wind out of my sails. I'm not going to dwell on what was said or who said it, and DO NOT go crusading on my behalf or come ask me about the details. I don't want drama over this, I want to move on from it so I can hopefully start writing my damn fic again. Just... be kind to each other when you comment, okay? There's no need to suck the joy out of someone else's project bc you think you're a better writer than them, especially when you're reading it for free on the internet.

In some better news, I'll be doing Destinytober, same as last year: writing oneshots in the universe of my longfic. I really think that will help me get back in the groove and be inspired again.

Anyway. I'm still here, and I'm still trying to be creative! Here's to maybe getting out of the burnout hole before the year is over.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippet Thursday: Viper continuation

For context: in previous sections Daxter's ottsel hearing and Jak's eco-assisted eyes picked up a deadly snake camouflaged near Damas’s throne. It didn't get there by itself. Having foiled the assassination attempt, Damas keeps the boys with him to help identify the would-be assassin. As it will turn out in a part I haven't written yet, there are two: one is an agent of Veger disguised as a monk who wants to destabilize the Spargan nation so Haven can control it. The other is an exiled Krimzon Guard who thinks Damas is too soft and who has been promised his old rank back if he kills him.

Obviously, this means tensions are about to be very high between Spargus and Haven. A note: the language I have Spargans using for ceremonies comes from some conlangers on reddit who have been expanding the Gerudo language from Breath of the Wild. I chose Gerudo because "Sabaa'geru" or "Evening People" sounded like something that over generations could become the word Spargus.

Check out their work HERE and HERE!

"Hey boss!" Daxter hopped out of the elevator and made straight for the pools of water. "Aaaaahhh. Sweet relief."

Damas stifled a chuckle at the boy's antics. He was better suited to the heat than he pretended, but he'd never begrudge Daxter the use of the water. By the time he'd looked away, Jak was already halfway to the dais with a spring in his step. Something rattled in his hand.

"I didn't expect to see you today, Jak," Damas greeted him, "What's that you've got?"

Jak held up an intricate band of bones, fangs and claws symmetrically spaced between tiny vertebra and polished until they shone. "It's done!"

Carefully, he passed it to Damas, watching him eagerly for his opinion. Damas turned the band necklace over in his hands, eyebrows raised.

"You have some skill, my boy! I'm impressed with the detail! How long did it take you?"

"Not too long. The fangs were the last piece I needed. See?" Jak leaned over his arm to point to the Dust Demon viper's fangs, forming a circle at the front that mimicked the emblem on the tower door.

"You can keep it, I have another one I'm working one." Jak clearly meant it, but the way he was looking at the necklace suggested he wasn't ready to part with it.

"It reminds me of the arm circlets my captains wear outside the city's walls, albeit bone rather than woven fabric." Damas stepped back up to his throne and set the jewelry down on its arm to admire it. He turned to look back down at Jak, who was clearly pleased by the comparison.

"Were you able to locate Thrax or the false monk?"

Jak's smile fell immediately into a scowl. "Lost Thrax in the Underport. Veger's guy? No idea. Sorry."

Damas jolted. "You chased him all the way into Haven?! Were you seen?"

In the water, Daxter opened one eye and called up, "They don't suspect nothin'. See, those ungrateful yakkows think they can just snap their fingers and Jak will come runnin', so they just figure we're there on one of their orders and start piling on the tasks."

He shut his eye again and yawned. "Boy are they in for a surprise if this turns into war."

"It may come to war," Damas acknowledged. He was devastatingly matter-of-fact about it, as if he was simply discussing the weather. He turned away from his throne, and the ring of tiny bones, to face Jak.

His gaze rested on him with an unbearable weight.

"Should that day come, you will no longer be able to simply run between cities as you please. I need to know where you stand, Jak."

Perhaps his own lack of hesitation should have concerned him. Made him feel guilty for abandoning friends and history so quickly.

It didn't. It made him feel braver than he'd ever felt.

Taking a breath for courage, Jak stepped up onto the dais and approached the king.

"If you asked it of me," Jak said quietly, meeting Damas’s eyes for as long as he could, "I would breach the walls myself. If you gave the order, I'd even lead the Infiltrators right into the Council Hall. As long as the few people who actually stood with us are given at least a chance to support Spargus, there is nothing binding me to Haven."

Damas looked at him with a bemused expression that wavered between stern and fond before a gentle pride won out. He laughed softly and shook his head.

"I don't think I've ever had a citizen quite as bold as you, young one." He rubbed his chin in thought for a moment, then smirked. "Very well, I accept your terms. Give me the names of these "friends", and they will be granted a chance for asylum."

The boy's smile was brief, but genuine and full of life. He stood a little straighter, trying to look as grown-up as possible.

"Then you have your answer," he replied.

"You'll stand with me? Even against the city your friends call home?" Damas pressed, just to be certain.

With a level of emotion unusual for him, Jak answered firmly, "I'd follow you into the underworld. You're-"

He cut himself off quickly, but his eyes finished the sentence for him.

You're the closest thing I have to a father-!

Blinking in a belated effort to hide those emotions, Jak let them push his impulse into action. Two deep breaths, one for courage, one for luck. Then he bowed, fist to his heart.

"Damas, where you go, I go. I will stand with you -- I swear on the Beacon -- even against the people who called themselves our friends. For our people."

Inside, he was shaking. This was a step he'd never taken. He'd never formally given his loyalty to anyone. If Damas didn't accept it-

Jak refused to think about that.

In an instant Damas’s entire posture softened. He placed both hands on Jak’s shoulders, and raised him back up.

"Do you understand what you're saying?" he asked in a hushed voice.

With a dry throat, Jak swallowed and nodded hard. He searched his mind frantically for the old Coastwatcher language Wastelanders still used for ceremonial purposes.

"A'neen Sabaa'geru vaqu."

We are Spargans.

"E'so Sabaa'geru vaqu, darro'ni," Damas answered gravely. You are of Spargus, my son.

It took him far less time to remember the old tongue.

He stepped back to scoop the band of snake vertebrae off his throne and looped it twice around Jak’s right arm before bringing their foreheads together for an instant.

"I will not forget this," he vowed. "I'm...proud of you, Jak."

Now we are one, son-of-my-heart, his spirit sang. What do I care if you have not earned your last amulet? Now and forever you are Spargan!

Jak's eyes glistened when Damas released him, but his crooked smile didn't budge. This was no childish impulse, he'd meant every word. And Damas would honor that pledge.

"Go, then," he said, returning the smile, "seek out your allies in Haven and tell me where they stand."

"We will." Jak squared his shoulders proudly.

"And," Damas added, raising a brow, "I will expect regular reports on your progress, Captain."

"Don't worry, I- Captain?!" Jak sputtered.

There was just a hint of mischief in Damas’s eyes as he gestured to the armband now covering Jak's bicep. "I am giving you the same authority to recruit citizens that I gave Sig. Use it wisely."

Scurrying up out of the water, Daxter rejoined Jak and smacked his leg repeatedly. He knew exactly who he was recruiting.

And who they weren't recruiting.

Jak stood straighter, stiffer, and Daxter felt him trembling just barely under his paw.

A captain? Him? No one listened to him, he was a glorified servant! What was Damas thinking, giving someone like him authority?

Don't screw this up, Jak. Don't screw this up, whatever you do.

He took a shaky breath. "I- I don't um. I don't know how to- to lead, or if anyone would listen to me but-" DON'T SCREW THIS UP!

"I'll-"

The words caught in his throat, then escaped past his teeth.

"I'll do my best to make you proud."

Damas grinned fiercely at him.

"You already do."

[jackdaw-kraai]

New Patreon Post? New Patreon Post.

It was probably high time I told y'all about the fact that I have a patreon again and attempt to do so in a way that's not completely gauche, SO. Let me tell you about about what it is, does, and after all that, why you should at least look at it even if you would sooner gargle orange juice after brushing your teeth than give me money.

Patreon, as you probably know, or maybe not, is a site that kind of works on the old idea of patronage. AKA, artists get paid money to do what they love so they don't, y'know, starve. Except instead of one rich fuck, it's funded by many far-less-rich people, because fuck capitalism. In practice, you subscribe to an artist, pay them however much a month you want, and the amount determines which tier subscription you have and what rewards you get access to. As you've probably guessed, I have such a system in place.

So *slaps roof of patreon* lemme tell you what this bad boy can fit in it. It can fit LORE for one, like, all of it. This is where I post 4K long essays on the specific kind of fungus that grows only in the driest place on a fictional planet, digests rock in order to get nutrients, and feeds an underground ecosystem through the mycelium that bore through the rock and into the networks of underground rivers that exist there and thus is a keystone species for an entire biome. I also post fictional transcripts of drunk history videos with a delightfully crude historical archivist, that tell stories about how a fictional train network got created by a trainwreck of a human being that involves a contest, a technically legal museum heist, the mob, a trained cat, and a disastrously gay aristocrat. And then another about that guy's mob enforcer sister who once killed a man by putting him in a headlock and flexing her bicep and also her absolutely pathetic wimp of a husband who loves his built-like-a-semi-truck wife very much.

That's not even mentioning the extensive articles on my own conlang, including IPA annotations, detailed character descriptions, redacted reports from amoral scientists who are about to greatly regret everything they ever did, and excerpts from an essay on forbidden magic by a scholar from outside the community.

Mind you, almost all of those are in the lower tiers of the patreon, the tiers that you can get for only a handful of dollars a month, yes, a literal handful. I haven't even gotten to the high-tier stuff. Higher-tier rewards include: ability to vote in polls that make me answer spoiler questions, access to secret lore like how the magic in this world works and what occult elements are at play in the story, and even creating a character together with me if you really decide to be insane with the money you throw at me. I've already done this once and it was great fun to create Sol with someone, an absolute unit of a black lesbian fighter pilot with the soul of a gentle giant.

With all levels though, you also do this: you support my ability to write, and keep writing, as I begin to plan out my own original fiction ideas and further career steps into becoming a published writer. You support my ability to experiment with my writing style, my interests, and help me keep my head above water in a world that's increasingly hostile to artists and writers. You support my ability to live a small, comfortable life that lets me create wonder and magic in a world that desperately needs some of that.

And, as I promised above, even if you don't want to, or simply can't give anything (Gods know that everyone is struggling to get by these days) then it's still worth looking at the public-facing page, because instead of boring-ass tier descriptions, I gave each tier a little blurb of text that is a part of a larger, fragmentary story of Keshiro, Storm Wraith's, last great adventure before he left the Desert. It's a story that currently only exists in said blurbs, but is planned to be written out in full, and when it is, it will, of course, be posted for free on Ao3, no caveats or strings attached. Until then... give it a read. Tell me what you think. I'll see you there.

The link to my patreon page, see what you think.

[itshype]

Ao3 WIP Tag Game!

I was tagged by @nonamemanga a while ago but I didn't have time to do this until now! Thank you for thinking of me!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? Thirty Eight! (37 on my account and 1 that is currently anonymous!)

2. What's your AO3 word count? 170,914 (oooh!)

3. What fandoms do you write for? Netflix's Wednesday (2022), DC Comics (Mostly Batman), Danny Phantom. Other fandoms I have written for but I wouldn't consider myself as currently writing for are; Disney's Descendants first film, Teen Wolf, Fantastic Beasts and where to find them the first film and Netflix's The Witcher. If we're counting my long-abandoned fanfiction account I have also written Dr Who fic, I think maybe a Sherlock one and Without a Trace (2002-2009)

4. What are your Top 5 Fics by Kudos?

In ascending order:

5) Hang On, I Still Need You (Descendants)

4) The Captivating Case of Percy’s Imaginary Date (Fantastic Beasts)

3) Bad Boys, not Bad News (Teen Wolf)

2) Espy Me, While I Watch You (Teen Wolf)

1) a language they cannot understand (Teen Wolf)

5. Do you respond to comments? If I can think of something to say! I can't always though unfortunately.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I generally write the most unrepentant fluff so I think Once Bitten, Never Shy? But I still wouldn't classify that as angst.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Again, most of them are pretty happy! I'm not going to reread 38 fics to check but the overall fluffiest, happiest AU I've written that comes to mind is The Only Garden My Heart Will Ever Grow In.

8. Do you get hate on fics? I don't think I've gotten hate in my comments but I did get an unkind comment on Tumblr fairly recently saying I needed to get a lot more feedback before publishing (I do have betas) - amongst other less friendly suggestions.

9. Do you write smut? No sorry. When reading fics I'll be like "Hmm this unsafe-kink, publicly-set, PWP is a little too vanilla." But when writing I'm like, "They kiss...with the tongue....I guess."

10. Do you write cross-overs? Yep! A bunch! I haven't always loved crossovers but over the last few years I've really come to enjoy them. On my account is a few DC x DP fics (Danny Phantom and DC Comics) and one, very poorly written Batman and The Witcher I never want to think about again.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? Niet.

12. Have you ever cowritten a fic before? Yes! Not all of them are published and I don't think I currently have a cowritten fic on my ao3 account but yes, as a process. I enjoy it but also find it challenging to blend writing approaches and deal with time zones.

13. What is a WIP you would like to finish but doubt you ever will? All my fics are completed. However I just begun a new AU (Wyler) that's VERY ambitious so we'll see how that goes.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship? Malec. Have I ever written a Malec fic? No. Will I? Probably not. The fandom is low key intimidating. But in my heart I have so many AUs.

15. What are you writing strengths? I think my comedy and worldbuilding?? Maybe? I'd feel more confident if a reader of mine weighed in on this.

16. What are your writing weaknesses? Length. It took me almost the whole year to get to the end of A Standing Reservation in the Eye of the Storm. I'll never be one of those people who can smash out 30k in a few days.

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I'm not 1000% sure what this question refers to. I think it's important to check that any real-world language is written correctly. But with real-world languages AND conlangs, ensuring readability is so important. My preference is probably the sentence in English with the dialogue tags something like "he said in flawless Mando'a" but an immediate translation in parentheses at the end of the paragraph (hover text is good but doesn't work on mobile) is decent OR have the in-text reply make the dialogue fully evident:

"3456 234567 2345?"

"Oh, I love this song too, I'd love to dance with you!"

Encoded footnotes are alright, and my detested option is full separated out glossaries that give the meaning of each word used for me to string into correct order for each sentence. A headache.

18. First fandom you wrote for? Can't be sure...I think I was involved in a Five Find-Outers and Dog fanfic (not that I used that word) as a child that never made it near a computer, let alone the internet.

19. Favourite fic you’ve ever written? OH easily A million years ago, last night & at the end of all things (also known as AMYAL). The words flowed and I loved every moment. However, I did also love writing Espy Me, While I Watch You back in 2017. I wish the third story in the AMYAL verse came 1/3rd as easy.

20. What fic would you want to rewrite one day? None! Often after a fic is fully published I never think about it aga...That's all a total lie and I feel sad DAILY over the complete hash I made of Pry This Home From My Cold, Dead Mountain because I loved my au so much and I failed to show anyone why. It was just NOT good.

Tagging: @suchaladyy, @cosmic-lullaby, @katwitchwriting, & @writerrose1998 + @ohnomybreadsticks (If you'd like to be tagged please lmk and I'll add you ASAP!)

[halfbakedspuds]

Thanks to @honeybewrites for the tag

Get to know me tag

Rules: Answer the questions because I want to get to know you better :D

Do you have a pet?

Three actually! Two dogs: Tyson and Scrappy, and a cat named Kami.

Comfort food?

Droëwors or biltong. I know this is possibly the most Afrikaans thing I have ever or will ever say, but when I'm in a bad mood I'll just put a bunch of these in a bowl and munch on it while I jol a game for a bit or watch a movie

Droëwors

Biltong

There's also chili variations of these which are to die for.

(Also a little tip: if you come to South Africa for whatever reason, for the love of God DO NOT CALL THE ABOVE JERKY unless you want some random uncle going on a three hour rant about 'That goddamn factory castoff')

How many languages do you speak?

I can speak perfect English and Afrikaans, as well as good enough German to hold a conversation. My German won't win any awards and is most definitely a bit scuffed, but it's workable.

I also speak some properly broken Esperanto that I've forgotten a lot of, as well as a few conlangs I've made for my WIPs (although I wouldn't really count those).

I started learning Russian a few years ago before giving up because of life™, so I know five variations of "Go f*** yourself" and can say "Hi, sorry to bother you, but do you perhaps serve Vodka here?" in semi-workable Russian

I'm planning on learning seSotho from next year onwards because it's a very common language in my area, so I'll have plenty of opportunities to practice.

Random fact about yourself.

I once hit a guy so hard with a coke bottle that he had to go to the hospital for stitches.

Not my proudest moment, I'll be the first to admit that I fucked up there...

...The thing was mostly empty, too, like to this day I have no idea how it carried that much force behind it.

Something you're proud of?

The fact that I'm still alive.

Like, aside from the obligatory "How have I not gotten myself killed yet" joke, I'm genuinely proud of the fact that I'm still alive. I won't get into any specifics, but it was touch and go for a few years there, and I'm proud of myself for hanging in there until now, when things have finally started to look up again.

Also proud of myself for flipping a fat bird at my anxiety by starting this blog and putting my writing out there. There's still a lot of work that needs doing there, but it's a start.

Open tag for whomever wants it

[bread-tab]

This is definitely an actual accessibility issue for me when reading things, despite otherwise being a strong reader—I trip up on unfamiliar words (particularly names) because of AuDHD brain shenanigans and end up in that loop of rereading the paragraph over and over again, getting frustrated, and having great difficulty finishing the passage. (This is a disability-level issue for things like classes with assigned readings.)

What I do about it:

Look for a pronunciation guide in the front of the book. These are uncommon but extremely valuable additions, most commonly found in textbook editions, translations of foreign books, or fantasy books with conlangs. Dramatis Personae sections are also great to refer back to. (@ publishers: Put useful front matter in your books, gosh dang it!)

Take notes. I have trouble remembering names in a large cast of characters even if they are culturally familiar to me. If I'm struggling to follow along, I grab a pen and start jotting down a few details about each character as they appear. (Eg: Bob Bouwmeester (BOW-mayster, dutch), 50yo M, brown eyes, Builder.) Usually I don't need that list anymore after I'm a few chapters into the book; it just helps with the initial phase of actually getting things into memory.

Make an effort to practice pronouncing it right in my head from the start. I have a "verbal" mental voice playing in my head most of the time when I read, and if I don't know how to pronounce something, my brain generates garbled nonsense pronunciations so it can move on and keep reading. At this point I make myself consciously stop and sound out the word. I don't want to get stuck with the garbled version, which can happen if I try to ignore this, and it's a lot harder to change it to the correct one afterward. (Like, this is actually a minor example on this scale, but I spent years calling a character named Marcia (pronounced Marsha) "Marseeya" as a kid even after my younger siblings made fun of me for it.)

If I'm really struggling/don't know anything about the language, it's not that much extra effort at that point to grab my phone and look it up (especially knowing it will save me the headache every time I see that word for the rest of the book and my life).

Actually finding a reliable source on pronunciation is a whole 'nother problem, but for quick-and-shitty there is always Google Translate, and for more reliable results you can often find something like Wiktionary or a language-specific dictionary website with a little practice at these searches.

(These kinds of strategies also work well for getting used to unfamiliar neopronouns, btw.)

This is just my frontline set of approaches for mostly casual reading, btw. If I'm in, say, an English class, that brings up another set of accessibility struggles and I have way more tactics in the toolbox for those.

There are other disabilities (eg dyslexia) that can cause the same difficulty and might need different strategies. People who need them, find them. If there's one thing disabled people hate, it's being left behind or thought of as "lazy." If we want to read the thing, we damn well find a way to read the thing.

(Although, the dyslexic people I know are more likely to listen to audiobooks, and therefore often have less trouble than I do when it comes to the pronunciation part.)

"Just give up and erase that part of the book" is a strategy, sure. It's just the last one I would go to. Because I like to learn about other cultures. Funnily enough, I don't particularly want to be told,

"You're disabled, so it's okay if you can't help being xenophobic, sweetie 😘"

[writingquestionsanswered]

Alternative Vocab in Fantasy World

Anonymous asked: Hello! I’d like to ask your opinion on something! My novel is set in a fictional fantasy-like world similar to game of thrones or the witcher. Dance, more specifically ballet, plays a key role in my story as my MC is an experienced dancer, as is the woman he is courting, and his love interest trained when they were a child. However, since it is fictional in the way that real places or countries don’t exist (I mean the continental map of my fictional world is completely different to ours) should I still call ballet…ballet? I understand that most of the time it is better to just settle with the words we use nowadays since it gets to a degree of pointlessness when you start trying to replace everything with Fantasy Words (and then you get into conlang). Basically I’m worried it will seem very out of place to have this repetitive element of ballet and name the elements or moves of it when I don’t have “Fantasy France” or “Fantasy Italy” that use the language that inspired those things? Would it be better to create a style of dance that mimics or is based off of ballet and use that? Then again, I was planning to include things like the waltz just with less relevance. Thank you!!

Normally, with something like this, I would recommend finding a middle ground between the two. So, a word that isn't ballet, but something where the meaning is still instantly obvious. Unfortunately, with ballet, there are any great options. The most obvious one would be "toe dancing" which is sometimes used to describe ballet, but... toe... just doesn't have a great ring to it. An alternative that could work would be "point dancing" which is a little more refined sounding.

Outside of that, another route you might consider is giving it a name that isn't conlang (a word that is part of a constructed language) but which again, has meaning in the language you're writing the story in, but which will still need to be defined. For example, maybe in your story's world, this type of dancing originated at the annual Winter Festival and was meant to symbolize the drift of falling snow. So the style of dance became known as "drifting," which you can then describe as you would describe ballet... short projecting skirts, heelless slippers with reinforced toes, graceful rotations and leaps, toe dancing, etc. This way, the reader will understand that "drifting" is ballet, and they'll have some context to help them remember it. You could even do this with a made up word... not conlang, exactly, where the word would be a made up foreign language word meaning "ballet," but rather where the made up word is the name of the place where the style of dance originated. So, to use A Song of Ice and Fire as an example, if this type of dancing originated in Dorne, it would be called Dornish Dancing, or Dornish Point, or Dornish Foot Dancing.

Hopefully one of those options will work for you!

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[nekpian]

Starting a new worldbuilding project

So I've been conlanging and worldbuilding for a long time at this point. Most of what I've done has existed in the form of isolated ideas or otherwise just exists in a vacuum and is largely unrecorded. Things don't really interact with each other and they were more like little thought experiments, if I were pressed to give them a label.

I think it's about time that I really started committing to a single world. Of course, this isn't going to stop me from playing around with little one-off ideas on the side, but my goal right now is to have a sort of main, "canonical" world where most of my attention is focused. More importantly, I'm not going to get carried away putting all this thought into all the cultures and places and features of an entire planet: my style of worldbuilding is much more "slice of life", and I prefer to focus more on one specific setting in depth than a massive overview, as I find that to be overwhelming.

But with that being said, I think that it's important—for a lot of reasons—to have a very rough idea of the entire "extent", so to speak, of the world you're working on. It helps to add depth and keep things a bit more consistent. For example: real languages are generally full of loanwords and other marks of language contact, so if I want to work on a conlang it's a good idea to have a general idea of the other languages it's going to be in contact with, even if you don't want to work on them in detail at a given moment. Another thing is that the history of a particular area will be affected by the history of the rest of the world around it, so again, we need a very rough idea of what's going on. The other benefit of building out an entire planet is that it gives me a more concrete canvas to play with my more fleshed-out ideas.

Finally: filling an entire planet is simply an unachievable undertaking for one person, in my opinion. But by having an entire planet worked out, you open the door for collaboration. You don't have to fill the world in on your own, because when you're collaborating, it's not yours and yours alone. And collaboration can really open doors for some fun and interesting things.

Anyway, I have a few goals with this blog:

Showcase some of the things I've made for the world. This is generally showing things from the world and giving in-world explanations. Possibly out-of-world explanations too, but I'm not sure—I'll judge things on a case-by-case basis.

Document how and why I do things. My methods, motivations, justifications, tools I used, problems I encounter, solutions, and just overall the journey to get there.

Possibly showing off results of experiments with tools (like random generators)—although this could just be a part of the previous goal.

Showcase interesting features from conlangs, especially from underappreciated areas of linguistics, like pragmatics, and possibly write little crash courses on those things.

Perhaps some other things I've forgotten?

I feel like with showcasing worldbuilding, there's a lot of focus in the community on point 1, especially out-of-world perspectives. People are excited to show off their work! However, I think that it would help a lot of people to showcase how I actually got to a finished product. There are so many things that I see and think to myself, "I would really love to know how to do that myself!" It's good to know the journey that someone took to making a finished product, because it helps gives you an idea of how you can apply some things to your own worldbuilding, and also judge for yourself whether or not something would work for you based on the method rather than the contextless products. Also, I think it can give people some appreciation for the work that goes into creative projects like this.

Well, that's enough—probably too much—background context, so I should move on to talking about this world. I've had this concept slowly gestating in my mind for years, but I never really did very much with it. Sometimes I used it as a sort of "yeah this would probably happen here" setting for some of the ideas I had, as a sort of subconscious mental aid. I started working on this planet more concretely with one of my friends, and we've got a general idea of the planet now worked out. There's still a lot of work to be done (and I will show some of the results in the next post) and a lot of work that will simply not be done because it's uninteresting. But here are some details:

Mostly Earth-like planet: the planet is roughly Earth-like; the size and tilt are more or less the same (not exactly identical but close enough that it makes no difference; the actual figures don't matter, we just want another earth).

Two moons: there's a large moon (the more traditional sphere type) and a smaller moon (probably just a large asteroid or something along those lines). We have no idea how this will affect tides, but maybe we'll figure it out at some point.

Earthen life: the life on this planet is the same as the life on Earth (but not necessarily distributed in the same way). There is an in-universe explanation for this, but I won't give it to you (and probably never will) because I don't think it's relevant or matters. The out-of-universe reason is, of course, because getting a broad idea of the biology of things on an entire planet is... well, no thank you. It doesn't strike me as very interesting, and I want to work on things that are kind of more familiar to home, things like human cultures, societies, and languages.

Largely like our world, really: besides obviously having physical characteristics pretty much the same as Earth, and life essentially identical to Earth, this project is also not sci-fi nor fantasy and more or less has the same tech level as we do in the present day, maybe delayed by a few decades. But there will be some differences, which will be shown at some point.

Not named: to be honest, I don't even know how to name it because names for a planet differ radically between languages and cultures. However, what I'll probably do is refer to this project with the name of the main "country" that I'm focusing on, since that's what I'll be writing about most.

In the next post, I'll be giving more information about the physical world itself. Generally I don't plan for posts to be, well... They won't be quite like this one. This one is a little bit unfocused because there's a lot to cover and no context to start with. Information about the focal country will come soon after.

Cheers!

[dedalvs]

This might be because I'm tempted to introduce you and your work to my followers but am personally aware of how even very impressive work (like your GoT langs) can still be a complication for the artist in the present, by virtue of being Past work., but I wanted to ask what your thoughts on that are? like where do you see conlanging in 15 years, as a thing ppl are interested in

These seem to be two different questions, and I wish you would've elaborated a bit more on the first, as it could mean a number of different things. I'm always delighted to talk about old work (although since House of the Dragon is currently airing, Valyrian is kind of current work, isn't it?), because I can remember what it was like to create it. I may not think some language I created a long while back is the best language, but I can remember why I was doing it, what the goals were, and how I executed them, and I can always talk about that. I don't see that as a bad thing. I guess someone might be worried about people only being interested in their old work and not their new, but that's not a big deal. Time usually evens things out, as long as you're still at it. And if you go somewhere new, there will be a new audience to await you and be excited about what you're doing.

Think about something like Twin Peaks, for example. Richard Beymer plays a character named Ben Horne. Twin Peaks was, like, the IT show for a while, and everyone who had a major (or even minor) role in it became famous—like, next level famous (talking about the 90s). For a lot of people, that is how they know who Richard Beymer is—an older guy who played Ben Horne on Twin Peaks. But he also played a character named Tony (i.e. the male lead) in the movie West Side Story—and, in fact, was nominated for the Golden Globe for best actor. If it's the year 1962 and you're talking about Richard Beymer, you're talking about the West Side Story guy. That was his thing! That was the ONLY thing he was known for! And it was a big thing, and he did a great job. And he did other work in the intervening thirty years between West Side Story and Twin Peaks, but for a while, he was only the West Side Story guy. Then Twin Peaks happens, and younger fans are like, "What's West Side Story…?"

I suppose as an artist there's a concern that if you do it once, you may not be able to do it again. And then let's say you do it twice. Could you do it a third time? And maybe you do it three times, but it was five years, and you were hot then. What about ten years later? Will that be it?

All this stuff is just thinking. It's intangible. If it does nothing to help you, then banish the thinking: Let it in, hear what it has to say, then send it on its way and allow your brain to move on to other things. If your brain gets caught up with thinking like this it won't move on to other things, and those "other things" are what you could be doing now.

The nice thing about creating a language is a language is never done. All the languages I've created for shows are still current, for me. I'm still working on them. None of them have errors or quirks so bad that I don't want to work on them anymore, and I think that's a real sign of success as a conlanger. The languages I created before that, only one would I still work with (Kamakawi); the rest need a total overhaul. (In fact, that was part of the inspiration for LangTime Studio: I wanted to give some of my old languages that I still liked an overhaul. Instead, Jessie and I created brand new ones, and they're even better.)

I don't really know where conlanging will be in 15 years, because right now, it's kind of a mess. There's too much going on and no way to focus in on any one thing—and no way to figure out who's doing what. That means it's harder to find and recognize good stuff. That situation is unsustainable. Conlangers will either give up (imagine a huge crowd gathered to shout for the attention of the queen who's on tour, only the queen never shows up, because there is no queen), or something will happen that allows the community to focus its attention and say, "This is good! Let's look at this for a little bit." Like, music is coming out every day, but we have award shows, we have radio stations, we have movies and shows and commercials that feature music, we have artists curating lists, in addition to self-promotion, of course. Right now we have movies and shows that feature conlangs, but while every show and film has music, not every show and film has a conlang. Then outside of that there's self-promotion. It's not working. Good work isn't being ignored: It's not being found. There's an important difference there. It's not like we all know what the best conlangs are right now and we're choosing not to say anything about them: We literally don't know what or where they are. That's what isn't sustainable.

So yeah, I don't know what's going to happen in the next 15 years. Someone needs to find a solution to this. And it's hard, because there's no one place on the internet where everyone goes. There's no guarantee that anyone's going to see anything. It's not like the old days, where everyone watched what was on TV, and everyone read the newspaper.

Not sure if these were the answers you were looking for, but I hope they serve you well. <3