#and after this the conlang starts

[sannehnagi]

Iyilii a’nitlii kaliilaq

When casting spells of searching and finding

Arhaqq aag na’haneqaapia iinikiitšyaneqig

It is best to have an object the person holds dear

Au’nyahig aag šiinikiitšaš

Or at least an object they owned

Au’nyahig aag šiinikiitšaš aag yatšaapia

Or at least an object like an object they owned

Haqaš, gaalaaqavilaapia haqayaneqig

Of course, it is actually best to have a piece of the person

Aag askiš gigiilit.

Living things remember.

[kolic]

Word of the Day - Wednesday 26. 3. 2025

Skéra ; skérar /skɛɪ̯.rɑ/ [s̠kɛɪ̯rɑ] ; /skɛɪ̯.rɑr/ [s̠kɛɪ̯rɑr̥]

noun, feminine ; verb, intransitive

Death ; to die

Okay so this one's gonna be a little more lore-heavy, especially for that example sentence.

Skéra is the word for death, and it's also where one of the Kolic goddesses - Skérjun - gets her name. You might notice the diminutive suffix -jun, so you might have already figured out that "Skérjun" means something like "little death." She is the goddess of death, who is bound to never leave the underworld, to which she's fallen when she died with her human lover. (I am writing a song about that btw, but it's taking years). Aside from being the goddess of death, she's also the goddess of fate (which is connected to her role as death), and also the goddess of adults who never had their rite of passage ritual, and are therefore still referred to in the diminutive gender.

Example sentence(s):

Skéraei frogg, júrm ána arfa hjölfrära äða gyða veiðaenjä prënrina. Þýtti ääni ärfi pórära äða fíði þýttin kaevrijä äða hjakkjä. Nae gerð án, eir þúðvu ärfir. Eir tannu hjölfrjä Skérjänjä, týðrjunaen Firrän.

translation: When a person dies, their blood disperses through the earth and becomes food for worms. Their breath disperses through the sea and gives breath to the waves and wind. But their wit, it can't dispers. It goes to Skerjun's realm, like a letter from Firra.

lit. translation: Dies-when person, blood hers spreads earth-through and comes food-as-to worms-for. Breath hers spreads sea-through and gives breath waves-to and wind-to. But wit hers, it cannot spread. It goes earth Skerjun's-to , writing_tablet-as Firra-from.

This is so long, writing a gloss will be such a pain, but lemme try:

die-F.ATEM=WHEN person, blood 3SG.F.GEN spread-F.ATEM earth-PERL and come-F.ATEM food-ESS.LAT worm-PL.BEN. breath 3SG.F.GEN spread-M.ATEM sea-PERL and give-M.ATEM breath-GEN wave-PL.LAT and wind-LAT. but wit 3SG.F.GEN, 3SG.N can<NEG>-N.ATEM spread-INF. 3SG.N go-N.ATEM earth-LAT Skérjun-POSS-LAT, writing_tablet-ESS Firra-ABL.

Whew! That was a lot.

To give some explanation as to what this sentence means:

The Kolic religion considers three essential elements of which every earthly thing is composed.

First, is a physical form, which they call, through a metaphor, "júrm" (meaning "blood"). Everything material has a physical form, be it people, animals, plants, water, rocks, etc. Note that the air is not usually considered to have a physical form.

Then there's a so-called "lifeforce," which the Kolic call "þýtti" meaning "breath." Everything which moves on its own has a lifeforce, so that includes people and animals, but also plants, since they grow, and waves, the wind, and even the ground during an earthquake. This also shows that lifeforce is fluid - one moment a rock can be totally lifeless, but the next moment, it might be overflowing with wild, unbound lifeforce. The lifeforce in humans, animals and plants doesn't leave until they die, but there's plenty of free lifeforce flowing through the world, causing movement, disasters, and even some supernatural phenomena.

And the third element is the soul, which the Kolic call "gerð" meaning "wit." Of the material world, it is only possessed by people and animals. It is characterised by the ability to make conscious decisions. In the Kolic worldview, the soul is, unlike any of the other elements, inherently individual and cannot become part of anything else, or be scattered. Therefore, after a person dies, it is the only part of them that survives, and goes live in Skérjun's underworld.

[nomaishuttle]

comparison (new on left old on right)

[dravidssideblog]

If my DomCycle world had a language they'd have different pronouns for weak-form and strong-form and that'd make it WAY easier to talk about Stuff.

[dedalvs]

My brother and I absolutely cackled after that Aemond and Aegon Valyrian exchange!

I wanted to ask (and I'm terrible at conlangs, so forgive me) what grammar/syntax Aegon is stumbling over here and how to properly say what he intended to? Any why is he making thise mistakes (simply lacking the vocabulary, or rules of the language he hasn’t grasped)?

Let's take a look at it. This is what he said:

Nyke koston... Bēvilus... Sētegon bīlīvāzmi?

The subtitles say this:

"I can... Have to... Make a war?"

Prior to this Aemond is, essentially, showing off. He knows that Aegon has simply not put any time into studying Valyrian (or studying anything). At this stage, Valyrian is no longer spoken by the family on a day-to-day basis—especially as Alicent probably never learned it at all (or if she did, only in a few scattered lessons here and there; not to actually use). In order for either of the boys to gain any kind of fluency in the language, they have to study constantly and find ways to use it. There's simply no daily need for the language—and plenty of reasons not to use it, as very, very few people they'll encounter on a daily basis speak the language.

Now, if we were talking about two random people in Westeros, this wouldn't mean anything. But these are the children of Viserys Targaryen, himself a descendant of Aegon the Conqueror. They brought their family line and their culture with them to Westeros—and, of course, their language. If someone like Alicent Hightower doesn't speak High Valyrian it means nothing. If a Targaryen doesn't speak High Valyrian, though… See, they're supposed to be able to speak Valyrian. Failing to do so carries with it a sense of shame that isn't present for a random person who doesn't speak Valyrian. Aemond knows this. Aegon is annoying him, so he goes poking at that wound.

Aemond could have fed him a short line with an obvious answer to help Aegon out, but instead he threw a whole mess of Valyrian at him. The longer it goes on, the more lost Aegon gets, desperately trying to catch up and figure out what was just said and thereby missing what is being said at that instant. From the whole speech, Aegon probably only figured out that he was being asked a question, and it was something having to do with planning.

So, back to what he says. The beginning student of a language is quite adept at doing a single verb in a present tense sentence. In a discussion like this, though, you're typically saying things like "I think that" or "We should" or "I suggest" or "Perhaps we might", etc. All that stuff that we need to offer opinions, make suggestions, hedge, etc. Much more than simple narration.

Aegon is attempting to do this without a sufficient command of the language. He knows some vocabulary, he knows some grammar, but he simply did not put in the work to actually speak this language. Thus, he has to overcome a lot of Common Tongue (i.e. English) interference.

There are many differences between Valyrian and English, but the biggest one by far is the major word order. In English, the verbs come before the rest of the junk; in Valyrian, they come at the end. And this is how things get all messed up.

In English, you start the sentence saying things like "I think" or "We should" or "It seems". In Valyrian, those things come at the end. If you start with the Valyrian equivalent of "I think", you will quickly realize (presuming you know enough of the grammar) that you're sunk, because once you've said it, the sentence should be done. Thus you get Aegon's false starts.

Starting at the beginning, Aegon says Nyke koston, which is kind of like saying, "I could". But there's nowhere to go. This is how a sentence ends. For example, if he wanted to say, "I could fly to Harrenhal", he would say Harenhalot sōvegon koston—literally "To Harrenhal fly I could". If you're thinking English-ly, you're essentially thinking backwards, and if you simply translate what you're thinking, you'll immediately have nowhere to go. You'll have to take a pause and think about how to get started again. And that's exactly what happens here.

Now, leaving aside that Valyrian is a pro-drop language and starting it off with nyke "I" is unnecessary and makes you look like a beginner, koston isn't bad (I mean, if used sentence-finally). Once he realizes he can't start there, though, he loses confidence. It's those old High Valyrian lessons all over again, and some maester suggesting he hasn't studied. That self-doubt makes his facility with Valyrian worse. This means his chances of recovery are severely hampered.

But onward he presses, and he decides to say "We have to" or "I have to". Now, the problem here is in Valyrian that requires the verb bēvilagon. This verb isn't used in the usual way. Literally it means "to lie on". If you wanted to say "We must mobilize our dragons", you'd say Īlvī zaldrīzī mazannagon īlo bēvilza. That's literally "Our dragons to mobilize us it lies upon". The one who must do something is placed in the genitive and put directly before the verb. If you start with the verb, well, you missed your chance to say who it is that must be doing something—let alone what they must do. Another false start.

It's also worth noting that he says bēvilus as opposed to bēvilza. Let's ignore that it's the aorist and focus on the fact that it's the subjunctive (just like koston). You use the subjunctive with your main verb when you're hedging—when you're suggesting. Not when you're commanding. Kind of an odd thing to say "We must do this" with the subjunctive. Kind of like saying "Maybe we might considering having to do this".

At this point, his confidence has completely evaporated. Everybody's staring at him like he has no idea what he's talking about; Aemond's eating it up. He knows he's cooked. He's got to say something, though, so he says sētegon which isn't even conjugated. It means "to make" or "to create", which might make sense in English (e.g. "to make war"), but doesn't make sense in Valyrian (a bit like saying "to construct a war" or even "to bake a war") and then tries to pronounce vīlībāzmi "war" (wrong case/number, wrong order) and fails, saying bīlīvāzmi, which means nothing (also he wanted vīlībāzme. Vīlībāzmi is "wars").

Long story short, he doesn't present himself very well—and we didn't even talk about his general pronunciation or intonation. It's kind of a great big mess in only five words. A true disaster.

But if there were no expectation that he should be able to speak Valyrian, none of this would matter! If there were no shame associated with him specifically not being able to speak Valyrian no one would expect it of him, and this challenge would mean as little as someone challenging him to speak the Old Tongue or Asshai'i. It'd be meaningless.

In short, this small portion of this scene is about being a heritage speaker of a language. It's the exact nightmare scenario all heritage speakers fear: To be put on stage and made to perform despite being unequal to the task while simultaneously feeling that they should be equal to it.

It'd be so cool if it was okay to be kind of good with a language—if that level of mastery was acceptable. In the real world, anyway.

[calaisreno]

WIP Wednesday : The Sibylline Book

In 2019 I wrote a short fic called The Story of Us, inspired by a line from the movie Arrival. It was an intriguing idea and good enough story, but it felt incomplete, as if I'd skipped over a lot of the best parts. I had ideas about it.

A few months later, I started writing a story called Palimpsest, but backed away from it when other things took my attention.

At some point, I realised that these two ideas were made for each other. The John from The Story of Us with the Sherlock of Palimpsest might create an interesting dynamic.

In May of 2020 I wrote Sherlock investigating the murder of Vincent Karpaty. He didn't know John yet, but John had already -- well, you'll see.

The Sibylline Book includes some of my favourite things: ancient books, manuscripts written in unknown languages, conlang nerds, cold cases, murders, Chicago, classical scholars feuding over trivial things, first meetings, a John Watson obsessively trying to read a story written eight hundred years ago, and our favourite consulting detective falling in love. Did I say murders?

And Johnlock, for sure 💕

I'm aiming for early 2026, but will give you a bit now:

“Where is his laptop?” “Didn’t see one.” “Really, Lestrade.” I’m holding up a power cord, still attached to the wall under the desk. “Obviously it’s been taken.” “Okay, someone broke in and stole his laptop. Killed him when he caught them at it.” “A rather stupid thief, then, since he left the mobile.” Plucking the cell phone off the floor, I flip it open. “Enabled for email. Maybe it’s here.” “What’s here?” “The last message he sent, warning his colleague.” “Colleague?” “Partner, whatever. He’s an archaeologist, an unlikely victim of murder, unless he was involved in something more than ancient history. For that, he would need a partner, a collaborator, a confederate. Here it is.” I pause, frowning at the phone.  “What, like smuggling artefacts? Running drugs?” Ignoring Lestrade, I continue looking at the email. Don't go home tonight. It appears that our victim wasn’t warning his colleague; instead, he has received a warning himself. Not the only interesting feature of the case, but certainly worth looking into. 

“So, they weren’t supposed to kill him? What were they after? And why not take the phone?” “I don’t know yet. Probably thought the laptop had what they wanted. When I’ve studied the message, I might have a better idea.” “His last email?” I raise my hand for a cab. “Trace the sender for me. The name’s JH Watson.” Lestrade grimaces. “Common name. I’ll see what I can do.”

@keirgreeneyes @totallysilvergirl @copperplatebeech @lisbeth-kk

@mydogwatson @a-victorian-girl @meetinginsamarra @helloliriels

@chinike @lhrinchelsea @7-percent @randomquadballpun

@ghostofnuggetspast @redmondcollege @thegildedbee @raina-at

@peanitbear @safedistancefrombeingsmart @kettykika78

@chriscalledmesweetie @ohlooktheresabee @thalialunacy

Let me know if you'd like to be tagged when I begin posting.

[ranahan]

Hot take:

Compounding the same small pool of roots over and over again sucks and fandos should just start making up their own roots and word families.

I mean, I’m definitely guilty. I’ve personally taken the compound word approach as far as it can go and then some. And that’s exactly why I’m saying this, because what happened is that the language started feeling less and less like Mando’a and more and more like very Latinate English.

See, it’s not that Mando’a doesn’t have compound words. It does. They’re very characteristic, even. But the kinds of compounds you will eventually start making in order to come up with the umpteenth verb from the same root don’t feel like the kinds of words and derivations and compounds that already exist. And the sentences that are one complicated compound word after another feel even less like it. Although the roots and the sounds are the same, the feel of the language changes.

And I don’t like it.

I think a better way to preserve the original feel of the language would be to create new roots and word families in the style of the existing corpus, rather than use the canonical roots ad nauseam. Keep to the phonology and phonotactics, think what mandos would associate with the concept and how they would view it, and you’re good.

It makes for a better conlang too.

[parsleysagerosemarytimemachine]

Rereading The Goblin Emperor (because it's a comfort-read) and it's so good to come back to this again. Two interesting new thoughts as I get started:

The first is that while I don't remember when I last read it, I know that at least the first time, my father was still alive. This time, as he goes to the funeral for everyone else who died in the airship crash and thinks about how he doesn't know how to talk about the death of his (distant, tyrannical) father and that it wouldn't help anyone if he could. I remember being at my father's funeral, and wearing the mask of being silent and supportive, because that way people could read their own grief into it if they wanted, and wouldn't ask me to perform it for them; whatever grief I might have had, I was done with years ago, and this was not the place or the company to talk about my actual feelings. Really feeling it with Maia here.

The second is (prompted by some other discussion I'd seen here recently) that as much as this is a book about recovering from abuse, an aspect I hadn't seen as clearly in previous reads is how much it is about the experience of becoming an adult after an abusive childhood - about being ill-used and ill-prepared, and then realizing that things have changed, that you will never be that child again... You can be safe in ways you never thought possible, and also this new world has threats and dangers you can only hope to discover before they hurt you, because people will hate you for being hurt, for not knowing things that were kept from you. And all you can do is try to find a few people you can trust, to risk being vulnerable until you can find new ways of moving through the world; to learn what power you do have, in a situation that is still confusingly conscribed. And you _can_ do it; it might not look like what you imagined, you will have to build a different world for yourself, but you can be happy because you made it.

I don't know, this book is just so good. If you like political fantasy, if you want a story about abuse and power and recovery, about discovering who you are when the world opens up, go read it!

The Goblin Emperor

(Also if you like conlangs, and imperial bureaucracy, and characters with lots of names, and worldbuilding by way of all of these...)

[thedwarrowscholar]

🧾A Note From Behind the Beard

Every now and then, I receive questions that stray a bit (or a lot) from Tolkien, Dwarves, or (Neo-) Khuzdul. Nothing too intrusive—don’t worry—but more personal curiosities: “What are your hobbies?”, “What’s your background?”, and even, after the release of our semi-nude calendar (yes, that happened), “What’s your orientation?”

I’ve always made it a point to keep my personal life in the background here. Not out of secrecy, but simply because I wanted The Dwarrow Scholar to focus on the Dwarves, their language, and lore—not on the one behind the curtain. With the possible exception of my end-of-year rambles, I’ve tried to stay behind the runes, so to speak.

I never set out to make this about me. But after years of questions—and kindness from this community—I figured it was time to offer a little glimpse at the one behind the stone wall. Heads-up: if you're just here for Dwarves, Khuzdul, and the like—feel free to skip this one entirely.

📆 About that Calendar...

Let’s address the elephant in the forge.

Yes, there was a semi-nude Dwarvish calendar. No, it wasn’t entirely serious.

It started as a simple, genuine idea—I wanted to create a physical Dwarvish calendar with proper Neo-Khuzdul months, cultural motifs, the whole nine yards.

Then a friend casually joked:

“Oh, like those fireman calendars?”

And I couldn’t unsee it: Half-naked dwarves posing with hammers, anvil glistening, beard windswept. Too absurd not to bring to life. So we did. You’re welcome. Or I’m sorry. Possibly both.

🌱 Hobbies

Over the past few years, gardening has become my main thing ("obsession"?). I now live in a beautiful, hilly part of Flanders called the Flemish Ardennes—a land of rolling hills (Think The Shire—but with better beer. Truth. Deal with it, Hobbits.), known for its cycling mainly.

A look at a section of the garden I've created

Plum trees are abundant in my garden (amongst other trees), and I've even started making homemade plum liqueur from them. It’s surprisingly decent. Brewing beer has somewhat crept into the background too (when in Rome).

I don’t watch sports often, but I do have a few faithful loyalties:

As a somewhat fierce fan, I’ve resigned myself to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ yearly playoff disappointment.

Luckily, my joy levels were high thanks to Wrexham’s earlier promotion to the EFL Championship. (And no—I didn’t hop on the Hollywood bandwagon. I’ve followed Wrexham since I was a kid. Still, I’m cheering them on.)

Why these two teams, far from the Belgian coast where I grew up? Well, trips to Wales and fanatic hockey-fan uncles go a long way toward explaining that.

And I’d be remiss not to mention Lili, my white Chow Chow—a four-year-old ball of fluff and sunshine who’s easily the friendliest creature in the entire Flemish Ardennes. She supervises all garden activity with quiet dignity (and frequent naps).

These past two years I’ve also been developing a fantasy management game—a single-player project where you run a Dwarven fighting stable.

You’ll train warriors, forge gear, negotiate with sponsors, go on quests, learn the lore of the land, mine for resources, and aim to win the Emperor’s Cup. It’s a blend of tactics, unique rich lore, and stubborn Dwarven grit, naturally.

More on that when it's ready to leave the mountain.

🎭 Background

Believe it or not, my background has nothing to do with linguistics, fantasy, or Tolkien studies. I actually studied the arts, and ended up in a completely unrelated career. But languages? That’s been a passion since childhood.

Long before I knew the word “conlang,” I was creating imaginary languages in my notebooks for fun. I grew up in a multilingual family and country, which helped—but really, I just enjoyed puzzling through grammar systems like some people enjoy crossword puzzles.

I speak Dutch, English, French, some German, and have dabbled in Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew.

🪓 Why Khuzdul?

Khuzdul pulled me in not just because it’s the language of the Dwarves, but because it’s very unlike anything else in Middle-earth.

It’s Semitic in structure—structured, yet mysterious and methodical. There’s beauty and hidden meaning in every root. Yes, it can be daunting at first—especially without a Semitic background. But you don’t need to be a trained linguist to enjoy or explore it. Curiosity and patience go further than any degree.

🌈 The Other Question...

Some asked about orientation—fair question, given the tone of my calendar. I’m a straight fellow, with an open and accepting mind. Been happily married to my wife for nearly ten years (together for twenty), and I deeply respect the spectrum of identities others bring to this community. You're all welcome here.

✨ Fun Fact Speed-Round!

First Dwarvish word I ever coined? Honestly, I can’t recall—it’s been thirty years...

Favourite Khuzdul root? Probably [KhGR], which is one of the rare winks to my local childhood dialect. A “kegge” is West-Flemish for “big nose,” and that’s exactly where KhGR came from—it’s now the Neo-Khuzdul root for “nose.” Most personal Khuzdul word I’ve coined? That would be ugloriskhûna—meaning “wise woman known for kindness, humour, and the ability to enjoy life.” The word (and its meaning) was inspired by the nickname of a dear friend of mine.

Most surprising moment? When I visited HobbitCon in Bonn, Germany. I dropped by the booth of the German Tolkien Society to say hello to a kind acquaintance—only she wasn’t there. Instead, someone had a full-on fan moment and asked for a picture with me.

Most moving request I’ve ever received? Someone once asked me to translate a poem for the funeral of their brother.

Best compliment I’ve received? I get more praise than I feel I deserve—but one that truly warmed my heart was:

“You would have made Tolkien proud.”

Most ridiculous runic request? Well, aside from someone asking me to translate The Hobbit in its entirety (which would take me years), nothing truly “ridiculous.” Folks ask because they’re curious—and that’s never a bad thing. That said... the biggest chuckle? A tattoo request for “Meat is back on the menu”—to be inked on a very private part of the body.

And just so you know who’s been rambling behind the beard all this time—here’s a noble mashup a friend made of me, in full Gimli regalia. (Yes, that’s me. No, I don’t imagine I swing an axe nearly as well.)

If you’ve read this far—thank you. Thank you all for being part of this strange and wonderful journey. Your curiosity, kindness, and shared love for Dwarves have kept the forge warm. I hope this answers some of the more personal questions that found their way into the queue. Now, let’s get back to the runes, shall we?

Ever at your service, The Dwarrow Scholar

[forgingtheblade]

TECHNOBLADE BASE OUTFIT—SHIRT!

WOO YEAH SHIRT TIME let’s all play nice and pretend i didnt make this in like august. thanks

the process was ultimately pretty similar to the pants, just with less dyeing! i drafted a pattern using a tutorial for a bishop sleeve shape on youtube to design the ruffled sleeve, and stitched a half mock-up.

then came assembly which happened in parts due to a fabric quantity snafu… after it was assembled, i added in hand-stitched eyelets for the laces.

the dye job here wasn’t so much an intentional dye job as it was a byproduct of something i needed for another step—tannins. tannins react with iron to create a dark brownish color on fabric, which is a reaction i used on both the shirt and the pants! on the pants, i used straight up iron, while the shirt utilizes a mud dyeing technique from Mali. a fermented mud slurry is watered down and used as a paint effectively, and when let dry entirely and rinsed off it leaves a dark color behind where the mud was applied!

the actual design i used here is a technoblade quote—“one day we’ll look back on where we started, and be amazed by how far we’ve come,” translated into my friend @corpseofsuturedseams’s PIGLIN CONLANG which is FUCKING AWESOME, and then written out in the script it designed to go along with the language!!

ultimately, i didn’t quite let the mud dry completely enough when I went to wash it off and it bled a little, but I really don’t hate the effect that has. I’m super happy with the design as a whole, and with that, the base outfit was done!

next up is the stuff i made for my second critique this semester, which is where things start getting really exciting in my opinion—the head and ‘paws’!!! keep an eye out for those write ups soon*

*soon in the mcyter sense. could mean tomorrow. could mean two months from now. i’ll catch up eventually. maybe.

[in-case-of-grace]

TTRPG Devlog: Qet and Inaccessible Names

I've been boiling a thought in the back of my mind lately, in regards to Naming Things in Fiction.

Newer folk may not know this, but my longest running creative endeavour has been Qet; a dark fantasy eldritch horror setting with inspiration from various Mesoamerican cultures and histories. It's a worldbuilding project, narrative setting, and TTRPG-- relegated to the backburner for over a year now. I needed a break.

Herein lies my problem: Qet's "common" equivalent language is a conlang inspired by Nahuatl.

English-first speakers, particularly fellow Americans, struggle a LOT with Nahuatl and anything similar to it. I'm American so my audience would...include a lot of Americans. Naturally a lot of the friends I'd want to run the game for are also American.

People struggle to read a lot of the proper nouns in Qet. An early first draft campaign took place in the deep caverns of Tchaoxlik, and the players were given Zykeutuezyl-- little light-emitting lizards-- as their primary source of light, to care for.

The bottomless lake Chluetichlon is significant in the lore, the Coulqepluex are a major ethnicity, and Qeplueoytz are shape-shifting monsters entire campaigns could center around. I've more examples, but you get the idea by now, I'm sure.

Part of Qet's inception was me noticing that US/UK fantasy overwhelmingly takes inspiration from European cultures, and That Sucks! There's so much more in the world, for one-- and this is fantasy! I want to see UNIQUE worlds that aren't just England But With Magic. Qet was my first worldbuilding project, and at the time I began, I had yet to develop the ability to just...make new stuff off the dome.

So I needed a solid inspiration from the real world as a starting point, and I chose something I thought was severely underrepresented: Mesoamerica. There is no 1:1 "this is the Maya but they're blue" or "here's the Olmec but they're birds" type stuff in Qet, rather, there's bits and bobs spread amongst original cultures and the world they live in. Corn is a staple food. The climate is hot and humid with a lot of shared flora from the real world Mesoamerican region-- but more differentiated fauna. One culture wears Aztec-inspired capes but live in Pueblo-inspired adobe homes. Polished obsidian mirrors play into eldritch magic. Some cultures sit and sleep on reed mats. One regional religion is a blend of the Aztec faith and Catholicism. Alongside these and many other bits of inspiration, the trade language of the world is Qetlec, which is inspired by Nahuatl.

I quite like a lot of the Qetlec names and words I've come up with over the years. I find several to be particularly satisfying to say! But I do have to admit that I, myself, had to train and practice to pronounce my own conlang. It may be second nature after years of working with it, but I often run into the dreaded "sbah...sbshs...uh...however you say it" or blatant word-butchering from new readers. It's an accessibility problem, after a certain point.

When I think of naming in fictional settings I return time and time again to what I believe to be a shining example of strong, accessible naming: Destiny.

Everything players need to know has a simple name that's typically just straight up English, no matter how alien. The Eliksni? Well that's a difficult name for some, so to players they're just...called "The Fallen." Other alien groups are simply titled: The Cabal, The Vex (who are actually made of radiolarian fluid-- another difficult name), and The Hive.

When they do concoct unique names for things, they do so in a way that should be easy to pronounce for their primarily English speaking audience. Fikrul. Mithrax. Oryx. Savathun is probably the most difficult one and that still seems fairly easy for players to pick up on.

Sometimes Destiny takes proper nouns from existing languages on Earth, but does so in the same manner-- sticking either to words English spakers already know or could feasibly pronounce with ease. Rasputin. Osiris. Ahamkara.

Destiny's player-facing setting is one that is crafted to be accessible. They're careful with their names. It's in the weird background lore that things may get complicated from time to time-- where it's not essential for players to be able to pronounce everything.

Qetlec isn't the only conlang in Qet, there are several others, but I'm less worried about them. It's reasonable to expect that English readers can pronounce Lhehd names like Hanviehl, Ahndel Veha, and Linnh; Tolech names like Mochog, Romtol, and Kupuch; or Auroullott names like Beuttep, Tteunor, and Auroboll.

Eldritch names are fine to be a bit difficult, I think, but I ride the line with those too-- Ul'jvot, Gaegoed, Kub-glorrha. Yaesheuhnahl is right at the edge but, it is a god made of 3 separate entities (Yaesh, Euhn, and Ahl) so I think it's not totally unreasonable.

It's Qetlec in specific that I think causes problems, which is a really big shame because I think it adds a lot to the world's flavor. But it includes a lot of sounds that aren't readily apparent, with things like "x" actually being pronounced "sh" or tight consonant/vowel pairings unfamiliar to the English reader like "ytz" "zyk" and "qeu." Hell, even beyond pairings-- the letters q, y, and z aren't super common in English! (Y is common at the *ends* of words but not at the start.)

I've tried some halfway measures here and there. I include pronunciation tooltips on every word I think folk may have difficulty with-- but that's only really doable on a webpage. In recent years, anything I added that I thought might be difficult to pronounce included an English alternative name. Gaiwej: Whispering Mouth. Asdeom: Adaptive Flesh. Zeloutihue: Lunatic of Lliaq. P'qur: The Labyrinth of Gods.

You get the idea.

I think it did work in making things more accessible, but it did bother me a little that this made the titles of each article much, much longer. It did make for names that were easier to remember, and, crucially-- look up. It was a bit of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution.

However, while this might work for a setting presented in a wiki format-- it doesn't work for a book or TTRPG. If you find yourself in a canyon and spot something in the distance you wish to warn your comrades of-- are you really going to shout "everyone look out for the Asdeom: Adaptive Flesh?" No. You're going to pick one or the other-- "Asdeom" or "Adaptive Flesh."

If your comrades have internalized only one of the two names, especially the one opposite what you called out-- they might be confused. We solved one problem only to create a new one! The easier solution is to simply have one, memorable-- and pronounceable-- name.

And that's where I'm stuck, I suppose. I'm attached to the many unpronouncible names of Qet and I know I must do away with them. I need to make new rules that limit how many syllables they may have, and cut out sounds that are difficult for English speakers.

Part of me thinks I need to start entirely from scratch on Qetlec instead of just reworking what's there. That I'm going to be too blinded by familiarity to spot all the problem areas, or too attached to change key nouns. Is "Zeloutihue" totally fine and pronounceable for the average English speaker? I can't tell! I'm lost in the sauce here!

If words like zykeutuezyl and olxlikliz are totally easy for me by now, how can I judge everything else fairly?

This is all to say, hey, think about this from the start. Don't make my mistakes and end up in this pit with me-- if you want your project to be accessible to your intended audience, consider the language(s) they might speak. What sounds are they familiar with? Could they feasibly pronounce all the important terminology in your work?

I'd love to hear folks' thoughts on this, what do you think? What would you do in my situation? What good or bad examples of accessible conlang have you come across? How have your own projects approached conlangs and names?

[elodieunderglass]

When does Tolkien start entering the public domain?

(In reference to this poll https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/730451774219190272 where I tagged it supporting my own personal theory and added that when Tolkien enters the public domain WATCH OUT)

Tolkien’s works enter the public domain in the USA, uk and Canada 70 years after his death - so 2043 with open season starting 2044.

If we’re all still around in 20 years’ time, make a note of it! I’ll write you a story with unhinged hobbit family structures, the Shire being a place that dampens magic, and the unauthorised yet strangely canonical adventures of Belladonna Took and the Silmarils. It will be 200,000 words long and written in the correct tone, and I promise to do completely immersive research to colour in the background: every linguistic reference, Anglo-Saxon folkway, Icelandic influence, weirdly deep dives into topics like kinship moiety and subtle mischief that characterises Tolkien’s work. This would be so funny to me.

Everyone will be racing to publish basic porn and games; the d&d franchise which will be world-eating in 20 years will finally get to drop the pretense of “halflings,” Witcher and other franchises ditto; all the fantasy writers who have tugged at the tit for so many generations will finally be able to do it openly, and the films will be constant and abysmal. But we, we alone, we happy few alone and free; we will be giggling together, like playing dolls, over what the people REALLY want: constructing elaborate conlang puns with a 200k textual payoff.

It will be my honor to work on this for no reason at all, and I will ceremoniously give it to you in exchange for £7.99. And we will laugh and laugh and laugh

[iislak-mewu]

Īslak Mèwu intro post

Shishīkwa prana!¹ Welcome, travellers! I'll try and keep this post friendly and readable to non-linguists, I just wanna infodump about my language lol. This post has gotten a little long though, so apologies! Hopefully it serves well to give you a feel of it <3

¹/ɕiˈɕiə̯kʋa pʁaˈna/ PL~foreigner.PAT welcome

Consider this a formal introduction post to the conlang (constructed language) i've been making for like, over a year now at this point? on and off, mostly off tho lmao. The vast majority of stuff i've made is the grammar (this is very much my favourite area of langs lol, closely followed by the phonetics side of things), and as a result i really don't have many words or actual forms for things lol

Īslak Mèwu² (lit. valley's language) (or just Īsla for short) is a language spoken by the fictional Rūsawlitwā³ people. While the majority of them are a vertical transhumance culture, living in valleys and farming cattle (herders move the flock up and down the mountains in line with the seasons, while the majority of people live permenantly in the village), some groups have moved further afoot and are living in a more settled way in towns and cities in neighbouring regions.

²/iɐ̯ˈsla-k mɛˈʋu/ valley-GEN language (lit. "valley's language") ³/ʀuɐ̯-ˌsaʋli-ˈtˠaː/ cow-herd-AGN (lit. "cow-herders")

I'll start with Īsla's sounds, then give a (not-so-brief) tour of the grammar.

Phonology / sounds

Īsla has the following consonants: (If you don't recognise these symbols, you can find and listen to them here. You won't find ˠ in there, but it makes things sound more "dark".)

Īsla has eight short vowels, /i e ɛ a y ø u o/, along with the long vowels /iɐ̯, uɐ̯, iː, yː, uː, eː, aː/ and the rather distinctive syllabic fricatives /ʝ̩, ɣ̩ʷ, ɣ̩~ɦ̩/. These syllabic fricatives are high pitch, and often realised instead as breathy voiced vowels depending on dialect.

The syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C). Stress is assigned to the last "heaviest" syllable.

I am currently in the middle of reworking the past maybe 100 years of sound shifts, so this is subject to change (especially the vowel system)

Grammar

For the linguistics nerds among us, Īslak Mèwu is a synthetic language that features noun incorperation, a pretty free word order, 3 grammatical genders, split-S alignment, converbs, a shitty verb agreement system that will likely fall out of use in a generation or two (role marking is mostly done by the case system and emphatic pronouns), and TAM is typically marked via auxiliary verbs (tbf these are a lot more irregular so you do get decent verb agreement thru this). I'll explain these features briefly and how they work in Īsla:

Noun incorperation is a process where nouns and verbs are put together (compounded) into one word. We kinda have this in English - think about mountain-climbing, berry picking, horse riding, dishwashing, etc. In Īsla, this is MUCH more common than in English - this is used for basically every conventional activity. Natives talk about dinner-eating, sheet-changing, cow-chasing, dust-sweeping, fish-chopping, etc. These aren't always obvious from the words they're made of though! "whisky-swimming" actually means "to have thrown, to have deliberately lost a game", named for drinking games where people deliberately lose for the aim of getting drunk.

Grammatical gender. Like in French, German, etc. Īsla has 3 of them, and verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and determiners (think English "some", "most", "the", etc) "agree" with nouns in gender. Case markers merge with the gender markers.

Auxiliary verbs are little "helping" verbs that convey grammatical info alongside a more meaningful verb. English has these - "I will do X", "I should do X", "i have done X". Īsla verbs operate in basically the same way, but they come after the main verb, not before:

/niəsɛ sˠɣ̩mˈmuːs-a ɫʋin/ 3M.SG:ERG cook_dinner-NOMIN 3M.SG.IMP "He should cook dinner" /niəsɛ sˠɣ̩mˈmuːs-a tˠʋo/ 3M.SG:ERG cook_dinner-NOMIN 3M.LOC.COP "He is cooking dinner (for a while)" (lit. "He is in cooking dinner")

Case marking: Like in languages like German or Finnish. Little suffixes added to words to show what their role is in the sentence. In Īsla, the cases are the agentive case (do-ers), patientive case (things that have things done to them), genitive case (possessors), dative case (recipients of things, destinations, also used for expressing opinions as in "to me, X is cool"), the locative case (locations), and ablative case (sources and instruments).

Split-S alignment. ohhhhhh boy. this is FAR too complex of a topic to properly get into in an intro post like this, but the short of it that, Īsla just, can't make up its mind about what case to mark Ss with? For ease of writing, I'm gonna use "S" to refer to the only noun in an intransitive sentence (e.g. in "he walks", S is "he", but in "he hits him", there is no S, because this is a transitive sentence)

In Īsla, the main verb chooses what case the S should be in. There are two (main) categories of this:

"Unaccusative verbs" - S is marked with the "patientive" case (the case given to e.g. "person" in "i chase the person") /ˈtaːmu-∅ miɐ̯ˈlij/ person-PATIENTIVE lie "the person is lying down"

"Unergative verbs" - S is marked with the "agentive" case (the case given to e.g. "person" in "the person chases me") /ˈtaːmy jeˈiɐ̯s/ person:AGENTIVE walk "the person walks"

However, this case preference is overridden by most auxiliary verbs. For example /ʀom/, the inchoative auxiliary (="to begin Xing"), demands an agentive S: /ˈtaːmy ˈmiɐ̯lja ʀom/ person:AGENTIVE lie-NOMIN 3N.SG.INCH "the person starts lying down" /miɐ̯ˈlij/ "to be lying down" is typically unaccusative, but the presence of the inchoative auxiliary means that /taːmu/ is marked with the agentive case, rather than the patientive case as in the earlier example.

On the other end of that, /xe/, the past tense auxiliary, demands a patientive S: /ˈtaːmu jeˈiɐ̯s =xe/ person-PATIENTIVE walk =3N.SG.PAST "the person walked" This is the opposite thing - "walk" suggests an agentive S, but /xe/ overrides that.

The actual system is ofc more complicated than this, but this is enough for a quick overview.

I'm gonna stop talking here, before I make a post so long no one will want to read it, but there's absolutely more posts coming! …when i can fit them in between coursework and the adhd distractableness ofc. Hopefully this has given you a decent feel for the language, and please send asks about stuff if you're interested!! (i hope i've explained things ok) There's a lot I didn't touch on here, and a lotta detail I've left out, and I'd love an excuse to talk more about this stuff <3

[ranticore]

When creating new terms and words like Kattakati for different settings (Kosa, Siren), what's your process? Do you base it off words that actually have meaning in our language, or do you go with what makes sense sound-like? I remember you talking about the etimology and language of Siren being derived from english, so I'm also curious about how that's going!!!

i haven't managed to make a lot of headway but the general shape of air-languages on the eastern continent is determined by landstrider harpies, as zeta themselves don't use verbal language. landstriders use a lot of repeated vowel and consonant sounds in their words - the syllables should feel somewhat bouncy. and this is because landstriders spend hours at a time in travel and a lot of their speech has to sort of develop around their own hopping gait - so multisyllabic words get broken in between hops with distinct split-second pauses on landing. idk if this is practical or realistic at all but i was trying to imagine the type of words someone would invent if they spent 80% of their time running and had to speak around their pacing and breath regulation. so kat-a-kat-ee or the like could even be spoken over four paces (though would probably take two - katta-kati)

a lot of concepts like these don't have an english root because they're describing something which entered the lexicon long after "original" english died out. in the time it took for the early zetas to colonise land, evolve terrestrial forms, and start to integrate enough that spoken language could be used to refer to their cultural concepts, english was no longer spoken and its descendants had lost intelligibility with english. meaning that any new words coined after that point were wholly original. soo there's not much i can say about the process of warping english words into neo-english, so far it's mostly been me trying to tease out what point in the timeline this word would have been coined, who would have used it, and how closely related it would be to its wider family tree. i am so bad at conlangs lmaoo i haven't actually begun to start the process of making rules and stuff for this evolved english

[dedalvs]

Hey! Sorry if you’ve answered this before or if it’s a bit above your paygrade for a Tumblr ask, but how do you imagine the dialect of Low Valyrian spoken in Lys to differ from High Valyrian (primarily in terms of phonology)? I know GRRM described it as a “musical, flowing, liquid tongue,” but that’s a bit too vague for my purposes, haha.

This is a big ask, because Lyseni and High Valyrian are different languages. They're related, but they're different in the way that Latin and French are different. I haven't given it careful thought you because it's potential future work for some potential future ASoIaF series. I hope to one day be able to create it. If I don't, I hope it'll be a fun exercise for a future conlanger.

Incidentally, if these GRRM books have lasting interest (assuming society lasts that long), it may be the case that these things are rebooted or expanded upon again and again in the future. Consider what's happened with Star Trek since the very first series aired. If some day after I'm dead they really start exploring the rest of the physical territory on Terros (so help me if you come at with "Planetos" I will block you), I hope a future conlanger finds it fun to use High Valyrian as a proto-language. They can, of course, always decide to ditch everything I did and do something new, but if it were me, I would find that fun, given that there is significant material that has been faithfully documented, to the best of my ability. That is, I was trying my best to get everything down. I'm sure there's mistakes (I correct them as I come across them), but it's better than the lack of records that exist for other things. I'm not saying they won't curse my name a few times for some of the absurd choices I made, but I hope on the whole, the experience would be a positive and rewarding one.

Anyway, I think it'd be fun to do a good chunk of the daughter languages of Valyrian, but I'm not sure I'll ever get the chance. Here's hoping.