#but i love it and i love my work

[cb-writes-stuff]

SO I went through the Project Opal tag and WOW. Great worldbuilding, I can picture it. How do you come up with names and words in the language? I focus on the real world with my writing so not much is left up to me to decide.

I’m glad you asked! Which I’m realizing is a phrase I use a lot!

Loredump time~!

And also

Linguistics time~!

So! The language spoken by people in the Vandeth Desert is called Vandeth. You asked about names and words, so I’ll talk about names and words.

I knew I wanted to use a constructed language (or conlang, for short) for the Vandeth people. After a previous project proved extremely time-consuming and not at all worth it, I decided to create Vandeth using a top-down method. I started by just making up words, then seeing what they had in common, finding rules they follow. Every word I made after that would follow those rules. And when I needed grammar rules, I made those up, and continued following them.

Some of the most important things are vowel inventory, consonant inventory, and phonotactics (what sequences of sounds are allowed to go together). Vandeth uses the standard /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ vowels, and that’s it. (They’re pronounced consistently, unlike in English.) I won’t write out all the consonants, but at this point I’m no longer adding any new ones.

Now, the phonotactics. This is mainly about syllable shapes. In Vandeth, the most common vowel shape is CV. After that is CVC. A very rare syllable shape is VC. Even rarer is CVV and CCVV. I also try to have a good balance of how often certain sounds appear and where. Hard, sharp sounds are more common, while soft, round sounds are rarer. What makes a sound hard, sharp, round, or soft is kinda vague. It’s a bit of a kiki/bouba situation. But to me, a word like “luvimo” doesn’t sound like Vandeth at all, but “shivaki” does.

But how do I even come up with new words? Well, I first look at the words I have and consider if it can be derived from any of those. At one point, I wanted a word for “gossip”. I looked at the words I had, and I noticed blai, “stain” and saksa, a verb stem meaning “to talk”. In Vandeth, words go after the word they describe, and when a word is derived from two others the words swip-swap. So the word for “gossip” ends up being blaisaksa. As another example, the word geital is a combination of gi, “two”, and keital, which used to be “gikeital” before it was shortened to be easier to say. The reason for this is that a geital is the same length as a keital but twice the length. The word keital itself actually comes from the verb stem kei, “to wear”, and the noun tal, “shadow”.

And what about names? Well, usually it’s just a word. Or it should be. I gave a throwaway character (an infant) the name Kimi, which in Vandeth means “pearl”. It’s kind of a cutesy name. Most often I just pick sounds that are Vandeth-y. It’s really important to me that Vandeth names (Vennem, Kalami, Mela) sound distinct from Delgane names (Lynn, Elvi, William, basically any English name) and names from other languages (Sóf, Markhi, Lili).

Don’t even get me started about grammar. There’s lots of linguistics and affixes involved, and admittedly, I haven’t made a whole lot of full sentences so the grammar is actually not super fleshed out. There’s enough for deriving words, though. Maybe I should just start translating random things, or have people send things to be translated via asks. Hmm… Anyway.

[theriverbeyond]

Ideal work schedule:

I show up and am given a list of cognitively engaging but achievable tasks

I complete the list

I leave immedietly

[brainrotcharacters]

When irl pisses me off, I rewatch the Honda Odyssey scene to relax

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[littlelightfish]

Funny things I found out playing with language setting in Netflix while looking episode 15:

Chilchuck's scream sounds HAUNTED in brazilian portuguese. Give it a try if you can.

(You can hear it here)

In spanish dub, Senshi says: "tocó mis senos de hombre", which means "he touched my man boobs" in Spanish. And I think that's the best dub line one so far.

[shyflops]

[ahfrickenfrick]

nightwing being hurt in the field, and over comms he can’t get out what was wrong, nearly in shock, and jason puts on his best batman™️ voice and says “robin, report.”

and it snaps dick out of it enough to say concussion, possible broken ribs, and a gash in his side.

no one talks about it, and then a year later, damian does the same thing to tim

[chez-cinnamon]

What if Pomni seeks out comfort from Kinger bc of the last episode?? Finale !!

It is DONE !!

Everyone is so fun to draw I cannot.......... /pos

[post-grammatic-stress]

If you've ever told a person who's had to be bedbound for a period of time that you wish you could "just stay in bed", DO IT.

Stay in bed. For days. But don't get up if someone needs you to, or you get bored, or you get antsy. Don't do anything other than rest. Just lie in your bed, whether you need to get stuff done around the house or socialize or anything else "productive". You'll have to cancel on people, you'll disappoint them, they won't understand.

And if you're thinking, "well, i CAN'T just be in bed. There's stuff that has to be done - I have plans", maybe ask yourself why you assumed a disabled person doesn't have plans or things to do or desires.

[bug-s0da]

blehhh...

i made an aa/lawyersona of @snapscube :3 we all know and love the lawyer+silly girl duos of ace attorney but it's about time the silly girl became the lawyer

[bellwethers]

Tough.

[crowkip]

yeehaw, baby!

[retquits]

1.6 is coming—see you march 19th!!! 🥹🌱

[millidew]

his change in career has captivated me

bonus:

[canonkiller]

but you can't keep holding on like this.

[toorumlk]

the weasleys, circa 1995