Worldbuilding: my terrible 1st conlang (and the naming-language framework I use now, 2 years later)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2024
- You may have seen this video. It may haunt your nightmares. It haunts mine.
Hello, welcome to my new worldbuilding channel! I'm currently working on sorting through my old worldbuilding videos and re-uploading them here. Most will be simpler re-uploads with some new commentary at the end, but this video really needed a complete overhaul. When the original video gets too boring, skip ahead to 10:32, and you can see what my approach to conlanging looks like today, which is less of a conlang, and more of a system of three complimentary naming-language frameworks.
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Not a criticism, more a note for other conlangers/scriptbuilders.
Part of the reason why the Thai (and related) symbols are so curved is because of the writing material used when the written language was developing. They used a type of palm leaf that has a strong grain to it, and the curved shapes are easier to make across the strong grain. Similarly, Romans and Greeks did a lot of stone carving and the straight lines of their letter forms are easier to carve than a curved shape would be. Cultures who mostly used a brush for writing instead of a pen found that flowing shapes are easier to make with a brush, as the lines flow together and it's easier to create a contrast of thick vs thin lines with a brush than it is with a (quill) pen. Quill pens _can_ create a difference in line width, but it's not as strong. Pens also work better with strokes that pull the pen toward the body, rather than push the pen away from the body (because of the cylindrical shape of a quill and consequent ink splattering).
It's worth thinking about what shapes might be easiest for your culture to produce based on the materials they have available. (Also, it's a fun afternoon of playing around with art supplies, so win-win!)
That's pretty cool! I think taking those things into consideration definitely makes the culture feel more grounded and realistic - we often forget that there's a reason why everything develops the way that it does!
...that's quite obvious, now that you mentioned it...! Really interesting!
Yes! The average roman citizen also would have taken notes on a reusable wax tablet with a wooden stylus - this is also easier with straight lines than curving ones, although it certainly allows for more curves than chiseling into stone!
So fascinating! Egyptians used papyrus, which is fairly similar in texture paper, and therefore conducive to drawing fuller pictures, as opposed to cuneiform, which is also pictographic, but uses straight lines because clay and stylis were used.
Looking back on it, I wonder how many other cultures this applies to! Runes are usually carved in stone - straight lines. Ogham, same thing, also straight lines. Heck, even the symbols used in Linear A (pre-Helenic Greek) are stone carvings, so lots of straight lines.
Wasn't Chinese drawn with ink and brush on bamboo?
note also that not every thai font is that curvy: take a look at LilyUPC from windows, it's way less curvy than say Angsana
"you are correct, I just don't care" - made me smile so hard. What an excellent attitude. I love it.
😬😂 That's the whole fun of worldbuilding, right?
Absolutely a Mood!
@@mariahpattieworldbuilding4062 I'mma use this sentence so much in so many discussions lmao. Thanks for the new weapon
@@mariahpattieworldbuilding4062 I consider it to be the mark the of a self assured artist. The creative is making for the self, right?
Not trying to be pretentious, just impressed
This diserved the heart it got! I didn't even catch it. 10/10 made me realize and made me smile
Jaded Conlanging Veterans: “Noooo! It’s not naturalistic!”
Confident, pure beginners, sweet summer children: “CONsToNANTS GO [ʙ]”
ʙ XD.... took me a second
I do not really like the naturalistic conlang "snobbery"
Lol
@@rasmussenrambles8576 It doesn’t apply to everyone’s goals and true naturalism is virtually impossible anyway.
@@senorsiro3748 exactly! For myself, my goal is usually that it works and that it looks naturalistic enough if you squint from the distance
2:13 The English language only has five vowels 😂 I find hilarious how as English speakers we are taught that English only has five vowels. When you actually look at the IPA, you can see how far off that really is.
English may have many vowel phonetics, but only five vowel letters
@@StarlasAiko Five and a half vowel graphemes
This comment is brought to you by the letter y.
嗚嗚嗚嗚!
嗚!
銨去
ㄤ
as a conlanger raised on IPA, the first part made me die inside, and i can tell you were too.
i can relate
i knew the ipa when i made my first conlang too
I'm a conlanger and a historical clothing enthusiast, so it's great to see that we'll be getting more of the former videos on this channel! I've seen quite a few people who were interested in creating their own language for their novels/games/worlds and they, without fail, always start out thinking they have to create a fully in-depth, fleshed-out language just so they can add a sentence here or there, when conlangs can be as simple or complex as the creator wants them to be and needs them to be. I'm glad that you found the balance you needed for your worldbuilding purposes!
Yes, that was exactly where I was at. This is a much better, simpler system for me, and gives me more time to focus on the aspects I love more (CLOTHES)
@@mariahpattieworldbuilding4062 I know your “conlang” use Thai alphabets you can literally read it.
if you write a book about these three groups, I'm buying it.
Same
She DID say she was an author... I think one day you'll be in luck. :)
Who knows maybe she will add “lore” in the context of what the cloths would look like and how they would be sowed
yassssssssss
My husband: Are you...learning how to create a language?
Me: *explains what it is*
My husband: I feel like I should be more surprised...
lol
Me when I tell my brother about the 2 conlangs I'm making lol
The "You are correct, I just don't care" attitude was like a fresh breeze. I absolutely love it. And I've come to realize that a naming language is mostly what I want as well. I still don't agree with ALL of your choices, but GOOD JOB, FRIEND.
1. As a dyslexic, the different spellings sound like a nightmare, can I recommend some sort of guide explaining how it works, assuming if publishing is in the future? 2. As a language enthusiast, YES, oh my god YES
I love when fantasy books include a glossary and language guide in the back, it definitely helps me understand what's going on with the language choices better and I feel like it would tie into your recommended guide!
As a Starkid nerd, I got a little too excited for that reference :D I really love the new format with you expanding old videos. Also, this dress is wonderfull!
starkid is just the best for sewing. I watch them on repeat 🤣
I like the expanded format too, though if we're being honest, it'll also really help the watched hours rack up faster.
ME TOO DGDCJU
"Yeesh, just listen to that authoritative voice, like wow..."
also
"Yes, my conlang sounds very englishy. I don't care!"
^^ Best argument ever ^^
This was super interesting, I really like how you included different spellings of the same word for your different races!
Also, your dress is so incredibly beautiful!
Thank you! The different spellings is one of my favorite things, and it's something we see in the real world too 😄
@@mariahpattieworldbuilding4062 why are you using Thai alphabets in your conlang
@@thefolder3086 She literally said in the video it's because she liked it
@@IonIsFalling7217 ok then. Acceptable I guess (I’m Thai)
Maybe it's just a show of how little I know about the subject but I actually thought the first video was pretty cool🤷♀️ I like the squiggly lines.
But I love how you're willing to revisit those things and improve upon them! Personally I have a hard time staying motivated past criticism, it's really a treat to watch this. Also I'm very curious about your writing now👀
I'm really excited about revisiting all the other videos. I've got so many better ideas now 😆
It helps me to try and remember that most people offering criticism do genuinely want to help, and there's usually something I can learn from it. Sometimes they do have better ideas, and sometimes the critique comes from them misunderstanding me, which means I just need to learn to explain my idea better ❤️
@@mariahpattieworldbuilding4062 I know your “conlang” use Thai alphabets you can literally read it.
It kinda is a show of what little you know about it 😂 sorry, I know that's rude but that's how you've put it.
Basically the whole thing is that English spelling has VERY LITTLE correlation to actual sounds and is absolutely inadequate to describe any other language since there is no common basis as for why a thing should be spelled one way or another, even if SOMEHOW you managed to find (or make) a language that has exactly the same phonetic inventory as English or a subset of it.
I absolutely love conlanging, to the point where I often neglect other aspects of my worldbuilding because I just get way too deep into the language. When I create a conlang just for fun, I start with a proto-language and simluate its evolution over time until I end up with a whole language family. I really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty while letting the language kinda take me on a journey, instead of making it up with a goal in mind. However, when I want to make a language for a project, I can't do it like this, even though it's the most fun way to do it for me, because I'll never finish my project that way. So I just decide on a final phonetic inventory, phonotactics, grammar, etc. without evolving it from a proto-language and make up words as I need them, according to the rules I set for the language in the beginning. The script is usually the last thing I think about, because honestly I don't care too much about it, and most of the time I don't even bother with it at all.
Also, my first conlang was pretty embarassing as well, but the script was pretty (it's actually the only time I've made a full script for a conlang that I didn't immediately throw away). I went for a featural script, but since I didn't know anything about phonology at the time, the grouping of the symbols is kinda arbitrary. I had just six base symbols, which were modified with diacritics for voiced obstruents, voiceless obstruents and other consonants, while the unmodified symbols stood for vowels. So, there was a symbol (I'll just use "e" here) which in its unmodified form [e] stood for /e/, as [é] for /d/, as [è] for /t/ and as [ě] for /l/. That makes enough sense, with d, t and l all being alveolar (less with the vowel, that doesn't make any sense), but in the same way I grouped together e, d, t, and l, I also grouped together a, b, p, h; i, g, k, m; o, v, f, n; u, z, s, ch and ü, r, x, sch. All the sounds were just the sounds from German minus a few, so they're pronounced how a German speaker would expect it, except z, s, and x. In those cases I decided to go with the IPA symbols for some reason, these sounds in German would be written s, ß/ss and ch. So I knew about the IPA, I just didn't use it except for these three sounds? And also the three diacritics I used literally just looked like é, è and ě in my script, just with a different symbol instead of the "e". The script was very pretty, but it made no sense, and it was the best part of the language by far. The grammar was just simplified Latin that was scrubbed of all irregularities. It was soooooo bad...
So this is what makes people study linguistics... I find it fascinating that you let your languages evolve naturally, it should make them very consistent I guess
Making a featural system with no knowledge of phonetics could be a cool way to simulate how writing systems evolve naturally. Like how the Romans used "v" as both a vowel and a consonant letter, and even though "u" and "v" are clearly different sounds to us, the Romans thought they were similar enough to only need the one letter. Incomplete knowledge of phonetics led to a cool quirk in their writing system
@@agenericyoutubeaccount It's not really that they thought the sounds were similar, but rather how they evolved: "w" evolved from "u", as it often does, so they didn't bother to make up a new letter for it, they just knew that "u" before a vowel was pronounced "w". Later, "w" evolved into "v", and they just kept the letter the same. It's a bit of a simplified summary, but yeah. Not really incomplete knowledge of phonetics, but rather the human tendency to keep using a familiar system even as circumstances change.
Hey, featural scripts that are ignorant of actual phonology are pretty naturalistic!
@@agenericyoutubeaccount the history of how waw turned into digamma (and then f) on one side, and upsilon (and then v y u w) on the other, is actually pretty cool.
The Phoenicians, speaking a Semitic (or Afro-Asiatic? Can't recall) language, didn't write short vowels and used the same character for long vowels and similar semiconsonants. So, w was spelled the same as long u, as a sort of stylised ox seen from the front (a rounded, wide Y).
The Greek took that abjad (the system used by Semitic languages, as described above) and invented the alphabet, and thus the shape Y/U/V (depending on region and on who wrote it) took the value [u]. They didn't need a [w] sound. Though actually sometimes they did, for some reason - some very conservative words that hadn't lost it - and they didn't want to use the same symbol like the Phoenicians because that led to confusion, so they tilted the head of the symbol Y towards the right and decided that it meant "semiconsonantal version of Y". Subsequently, that sideways Y turned into F, to imitate Γ (gamma), and was thus named digamma.
THEN came the Etruscans. Etruscans didn't have a [w] sound, but they had a [v, f] pair. So, they repurposed the Greek symbol for [w] to mean [v], and they indicated the voiceless version [f] by adding an H afterwards (pretty smart!). So, that gives us F, FH for [v, f].
And what about [u]? Well, the Etruscans took their alphabet from a region of Greece that spelled it U/V, not Y, so that's how they spelled it.
THEN came the Romans. The Romans, like the Phoenicians and Greeks, had both [w] and [u], but they'd gotten the alphabet from the Etruscans who didn't, so they (unknowingly) did the same thing that Phoenicians did and used U/V to mean BOTH [u] AND [w] (U was for paintbrush and quill writing, V was for stone engraving and wax scratching). On the other hand, the Romans didn't have [v], BUT they did have [f], so they didn't need to spell F and FH for that pair - they just used F to mean the one they did have, so [f].
So now we have U/V = [u, u:, w] (the Romans had a distinction between long and short vowels like the Phoenicians and Greeks, but unlike the former they wrote all of them, and unlike the latter they didn't use separate characters since in Greek the pairs had drifted apart in quality while they hadn't in Latin) and F=[f].
MEANWHILE in Greece, the letter Y/V/U started to be pronounced further and further into the mouth, until it reached a value of [y]. The Romans had been expanding over large parts of central and southern Italy, and they eventually started making frequent contact with the Greeks - but in a different time and place than the Etruscans had, so when they loaned Greek words into Latin and there was this weird newfangled [y] sound, the Romans transcribed it with the letter that was used for it by the Greeks they met: Y.
THEN Old English was transcribed, and given its abundant use of [w], it began to be spelled interchangeably vv or uu to distinguish it from [u], and that was eventually condensed to w. I'm not sure about that last part though, night have been somewhere else right after or at the end of the western Roman empire.
I appreciate the amount of research you ended up doing after this first attempt at conlang. I've graduated in Lettres (a bachelor degree that has both Literature and Linguistics in the curriculum) and Linguistics is truly a mesmerizing subject. It's quite a recent field of study, but it's so rich and interconnected with other areas of knowledge, such as Neuroscience, Psychology and Computation... It's kinda hard not to fall in love. It's frustratingly hard for me to grasp and I got the worst grades in my whole uni years in Linguistics' subjects, but I'm still in love with anything language-related, so this was extra satisfying to watch.
woah im interested in that degree, is that like a double major type of thing or is it its seperate major?
@@thequeertelope7941 I think this is something from my country. It’s an undergrad degree that doesn’t really separate Literature and Linguistics into two different majors, so I had to study both. I honestly think though that unis in France may have it too? Like, kind of a Language Studies undergrad degree, so you see both books and language shenanigans.
@@hollynotholy that's so cool, i'll definitely research that. i was planning on majoring in linguistics or computational linguistics but my options expand haha
3:26 I'm not sure at all if someone has already said this but languages like Hawaiian, Maori, Tokelauan, Tahitian, Pitjantjatjara, Guugu Yimithirr, and most other Australian Aboriginal languages lack the /s/ sound, suprisingly.
& lushootseed lacks nasals, no sounds are universal but some ov them are extremely common
which is why Mele Kalikimake is the transliteration of Merry Christmas in Hawaiian
You made me think about te reo Māori sounds
And now “a ha ka ma na” is stuck in my head lol
That was so interesting! It was great to see the evolution to where you're at now.
PS: also looove your dress, it's so pretty!
Love from Germany
thank you!
You're in good company with this real-world-words strategy, that's what Frank Herbert did to name things in Dune.
I like that you set out your goals and boundaries for this effort, there's alot of people I see who assume you're trying to do what they want rather than what suits your own needs. The process you go over in the "now" portion makes it look way more achievable than making up an entire language, especially when it's to add flavour to something bigger instead of being a goal unto itself.
Really looking forward to what you're going to be doing in this space.
"Too English-y" is a meaningless epithet. It's mostly used by people who have created 17 variations of Tolkien's elvish language. If they'd never heard it before, they would undoubtedly say German was "too English-y".
Right that's like saying Dutch, German or Afrikaans are "too Englishy"
I like that you at least made an attempt at disguising the real-world inspiration behind names. I just named my main character (who semi-dies and gets resurrected) Phoenix and called it a day.
I wish we had a tv streaming program and it was a 40 world building TH-camrs like this
the real worldbuilders of youtube hills
I'm fascinated by language - and this was an interesting take on a naming language. I like the idea of names having meaning as a way of setting up a framework. Will you be taking into account the foreign-ness of one language to another, or will all your languages be based on anglo-saxon so more of a scandinavian group of languages that can be mostly understood one to the other. Or will it be different - similiar to how everyone speaks English on the British Isles, but the Scottish, Welsh and Irish all have their own languages as well that have Celtic/Gaelic roots and are not understood by English speakers. So similiar to John also being Shaun, Eoin, Ian, Juan, Ivan, and Yahya and Sean.
It's hard to describe exactly, because it's so much a work-in-progress. But I think Nautikan would be an entirely separate language, having originally developed before they migrated to the mainland. Simonan I see as similar to Latin or Greek or English, in that it spread and influenced or completely overtook a lot of local languages through force of political power. The Avian cultures are all scattered, with their own territories throughout the mainland. So it would have a bit of crossover with Simonan, depending on who each territory neighbored. But they are still isolationist enough that Avian hasn't been overtaken by Simonan.
As a worldbuilder who spends around 80% of his time conlanging, I was disappointed to hear that you don't really care about naturalistic conlanging but it's totally understandable. The great thing about worldbuilding is that it is so vast and there is so much to cover that no one could possibly cover or even be motivated to care about every part it. I love conlanging, I love creating languages that are rich and complex and very un-Englishy in many aspects :p (I'm currently working on a language with click consonants!) but I have only thought about the clothing of my concultures a couple of times which is something you clearly care about deeply!
In my language Tanol:
Amvo kekhalieze amvuth é khekhal léúníél ansvomir.
/amvo kexalieze amvuθ ɛ xɛxal lɛʊniɛl ansvomir/
2.DL.ABS be.different-CAUS.CONV 2.DL.ERG the be.different.PERF person-PL.ABS create.IMP-3.PL
Because the two of us are different we create different things :p
(ps if anyone wants a proper explanation of that translation I can talk you through all the weird grammar stuff)
I like syllabaries too, sadly in my latest conlang the syllable structure is so complex that there are WAY more syllables than phonemes.
Every syllabary has more characters than phonemes. The number of charachters is more or less equal to the number of vowel sounds multiplied by the number of consonants (or consonant clusters)
Try it lol. Might require 93929929300502929 characters tho
Might help to make a hybrid system, base syllabary with modifiers (you can make it a font where you place the syllabic symbols on the extended Latin alphabet set, and the modifiers on the combining diacritics set)
@@pawel198812 True, meant that it was disproportionately so to make the syllable count too unwieldy. (C(C))(C)V(V)(L(N))(C)(C) for that particular lang iirc
@@bacicinvatteneaca I think it was like (C(C))(C)V(V)(L(N))(C)(C) or something, maybe just the (C)V get syllables and the rest is an alphabet
I enjoy your naming convention, thanks for sharing!
thanks for watching!
You can absolutely do a logography! I know it seems intimidating with having to create 1000s of characters, but something that helped me when learning Chinese is to not think of the characters as individual units, but rather, like words, many strokes/letters coming together to make a character/word. You can come up with, like, 30 different strokes and rules on how they interact, and then plug and chug!
I am netive speaker of thai language and you know It's interesting to see someone adapting this language to another language.
ปล. พูดไทยได้รึเปล่าครับเนี่ย
Very different form thai language that i know whole life
“I can’t have a connection with made up words”
Me, terrible at writing languages but will randomly come up with funky sounding words and go with it:
**General advice:
Hi, here's some advice from a begginer conglanger. First, using engilsh sound is fine for this kind of thing cause communicating what foreign sounds you pick from the IPA using only written words is impossible.
Althoug you are not making the full naturalistic linguist tree of your wolrd, is important to keep in mind what languanges are close to each others, languages that are not realeted should have completely diferent phonotactcis (I think this should be even more present in Nautikans, maybe a word in Natíkan cant end in a consonant so they call themselfs as Natíkani or someting like that), in my experience as a conglanger having really strictits phonotactics is the main reson languages sound completely diferent from one antoher, rather than sounds.
The aestetics of each language looks really cool and indeed makes them distinct, but i think you is missing potential in making this cultures diferent from one an other but at the same time sharing words for the same things, is really cool in fiction when a culture try to refer words from other languages that doesn't exist in their own, like when Dothraki calling armor "Metal clothes" or boats and ships "Wooden horses", you get to learn about the culture itself and how they see other cultures. Maybe Natíkans doesnt have a word for the verb "to fly" so when they describe a fligth of an Aavyan they'll say something like "he is swimming in air" so they made a nickname to refer to other Aavyans that means "Air Swimers".
**Something cool I think the Natíkans should have:
Because sound doesn't travel through water as same as air maybe the spoken language that Natíkans have is completetly useless when they are swimming, so in order to communicate while swimming Natíkans might create a sign language (Like divers in the real word have signs systems to communicate to each others). In Natíkans society everyone is bilingual although they only speak one language.
(Sorry for my bad english, it is not my first language)
I completely understand that your main audience will be English speakers, but still, it made me a little sad to find out that you only intend to use English sounds because you'll only be publishing in English. I'm still learning it, and struggle a lot to keep up with conversations. Most of this text was translated on google. As your fan and follower, I'd love if you'd consider publishing the book in other languages, like Spanish (my mother tongue), Portuguese, Japanese, etc. If you are going the traditional route with a publishing house, maybe selling/assigning the transformation/translation rights to a publishing house or several in each language.
This is the secret ingredient I was missing while conlanging! I don't care about making an actual language, I'm all for the visual and a distinct-looking sound. And you're so right, we don't always need to create totally random sounds for words! I'm having fun combining french and english sounds into my languages, since I speak both, but I'm frustrated that the "u" sound from french, which I use heavily in my coastal language will almost certainly never be pronounced properly by english readers :/ Better to stick to sounds people can figure out, since its purpose isn't to be spoken for real anyways.
Thank you for the video, it was great
you could always write it as ü, that's rather well-understood. but yes, if it's for say names and toponyms, your conlang just needs to be a set of sounds, phonotactics and a writing system, because names and toponyms are likely to have been handed down through a dozen languages and possibly lost any meaning in the process
I also recommend using a "ü" for your u sound. In German the "ü" is pronounced like the "u" in French. It might not come naturally for English speakers to pronounce the ü the way you intended, but at least its obvious by looking at it that it's not supposed to be pronounced as "u".
And the DRESS? wher, how, movie.....soon I hop .... not two years!?!
This is random but simonan sounds like a language entirely created by a random guy called simon
I originally came to your channel because worldbuilding and stuck around cuz omg HB. I am so glad that you've started a second channel to feed your passion.
it's also kinda uncommon for a language to have both a rhotic and a lateral. and the english rhotic is suuuuuuper rare. the old style of conlanging was hard to listen to, but every1 starts somewhere
also, ALL languages are made up and words have no meaning aside from what we give them
My country's language, te reo māori, doesn't have /s/, so the statement that every language has an s sound is incredibly misleading. That being said, /s/ is an extremely common phoneme
I don't like the idea of using made-up names either. That's why conlanging appeals to me personally. If I give meaning to a word, then the name itself will have a meaning. Like if for my conlang, "tokotoa" means waterfall, naming a person after that would have far more meaning than if I just said, "This person's name is Tokotoa because it sounds cool." I also want to make a conlang, but I'm far too timid and no far too little of real languages to be confident enough to make a realistic conlang. It's also hard for me to come up with words to start with because I'm afraid they'll either sound disparate or made-up. But I want that meaning that comes from making your own conlang with a whole lexicon.
Every thai character has a head..
Uhh.. ก has no head...
Thai character design.... lol
Nice joke...
Your language look like tamil or tibet..
Tz sounds like vietnamese
as someone who is way too invested in conlanging, it's very refreshing to see people talk about it in a casual way! naming languages are perfectly valid and the way you present your work is very consistent and appealing. i also really like the variations in spelling for certain words as a sort of 'accent' if you were to have different characters talking about them.... if i ever do end up writing a story i may steal that idea >:)
I absolutely love making languages and I’ve made about 7 with probably 3 of them being fleshed out a bit more. Some things that have saved me many hours are the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the TH-cam channel Artifaxian, and remembering that less is more. The ipa is literally a list of all the sounds known in every language. It’s really cool and I have found a ton of new things to add to my conlangs. One of y favorites is click consonants. They’re in mostly African languages (except for that one Australian language) and they sound really cool. Xhosa uses them and the X is actually pronounced with the same click you would use to call an animal. The TH-cam channel Artifaxian goes into a ton of detail about all kinds of conlang stuff like grammar, clicks, different vowels, and all that kind of stuff. Another thing I learned is that less is more. I general keep my vowel count at three and perhaps put some diphthongs (combined vowels like ai to form a sound like the i in Island) in the language. It’s really fun and this comment is already getting long so I’m gonna stop it here because I’ve ranted about click consonants for half of this thing. Just don’t get discouraged by any mistakes because remember, you’re creating a whole entire language! You’ll get better at it the more languages you make or the more you work on a conlang. Even at 7 conlangs I’m always learning new things and painstakingly taking hours to fix grammar that I got wrong in the past. Good luck!
(Also that dress is super pretty!)
Hi
for vowels in particular, it's not necessary to pick among english sounds to come up with a system that english speakers will pronounce in an accurate/consistent way. Esperanto has the 5 vowels of spanish, but english speakers come up with good approximations for those 5. But I see for Nautikan you came up with something similar.
ah, eh: because those spellings are so characteristic of english phonetic spelling/onomatopoeias, but are rather rare in english words with a meaning as well as in other languages, they end up making words look meaningless. I don't know how to phrase it better. This doesn't seem to pose problem in Simonan, because -ah seems to appear at the end of words, and gives them a hebrew-loan--like look (which fits for the vibe you're trying to convey), but I don't know how it would look in Nautikan.
the script you had first created started out looking like Thai, but ended up functioning much like Ge'ez (vowels and consonant fused such that you have separate characters for syllables). btw did you end up creating a different conscript?
I tried making cyrillic transcription schemes for your 3 languages, it's not my native script but it's diversified enough that you can use it to convey different vibes:
Simonan (I tried to make it look like a classical transcription, I used a lot of letters that were only used for greek transcriptions and then fell out of use)
ѵ а а е а і и о у аѵ еі ѡ оі єѡ иѡ іѡ еѵ
б д ф г х й к л м н п р с ш т ч ө ө в ѵ ѯ,з ж дж
Nautikan (this one looks like a a russian translitteration scheme of an asian script)
э а е э и у ай о
б д ф г х к л м н п р з т тх тх в ў з зь кў кх ц
Avian (this one ends up looking like a language that got its orthography more recently, with double vowels like mongolian, I've also used ӄ to convey the q)
а аа е ы ыр и ии о уу ай ав ее оо ой ейр иир уур айо иийо йо йуу
б д ф г х й к,ӄ л м н п р с ш т ч ҫ ҫ в ў с ж ӄу
I know this videos old, but while rewatching it I noticed your emphasis on making the words distinct for the readers to be able to get the correct pronunciations of them. That reminded me of some fantasy books that have glossaries in the back that show the pronunciation and definition of your unusual words. It could help ease the worry of readers not getting the right pronunciation, and you can add different "glossaries" for funfacts, maps, or more world history as an excuse to give more lore
YES!!! I also do not need an entire conlang but language distinctions for names from different cultures!
I absolutely love your world and your Falcyon! Also, it's so amazing that you mamed the Simonan after Simon. I thought it was based on the word simean.
RU continuing the original Script, or have U abandon°d it in favor of thə Roman Script?
You: "Let me be clear: you are correct, I just don't care."
Me: *like*
For what it’s worth, I saw the original video when it came out and I was (and still am lol) a novice conlanger. I thought the script was absolutely beautiful, and I was also shocked at the vitriol the comments section had accumulated LOL regardless of that situation, I was definitely inspired at the time by the video and I’m glad that you’re getting back on the worldbuilding video train. Excited to see more in the future!
the anglicizing hurts my head, also what is wrong with those vowels
No way you'll see this comment as this video was made in 2021, but I'm gonna comment anyway.
Although the stuff I learned about linguistics does disagree with some aspects of your conlanging attitude, I actually really like how it and how you designed your languages :) I like your emphasis on phonesthetics and accommodations for the people viewing your work.
ฉันมาจากประเทศไทย ฉันดีใจที่คุณชอบอักษรไทย!!
I remember watching your old video when I first started to learn conlanging, and thought that it was really good. Rewatching it, and I would prefer nails on a chalkboard. Still, don't think you should get too much criticism or hate from it. We all made the same mistakes.
But your new approach is great! That's exactly the kind of conlangs I like! It's readable, slightly cryptic, but looks pretty foreign. Great work!
Love the dress! Love this channel! Love your other channel as well, even though I don't know anything about sewing. Don't even own a sewing machine....
9:27 The captions really said
"ARE YOU STILL WATCHING THIS WHYYYYYYY"
even the captions dont like it
“Hermione” was quite shocking to hear for the first time. Definitely had it wrong. Good vid! 👍🏽
The writing system actualy looks really nice. This isn't really a conlang but the way you name things are really really good. I never thought of writing things diffrently depending on the speaker, simply changing couple characters makes a lot of diffrent and gives more depth it seems like. I just want the language I make to make sence but that might not give it any character. I will take some inspiration from this video.
Just wait until you see Oevera! This conlang is probably worse than yours! Here is the lexicon:
Dwrhg: Water world
Sgver: Squid world
Ystom: Bat world
Wrbyd: Magician world
Uasi: Sheep world
Eiri: Snow world
Brver: Fire world
Zepmiqi: A name for my sword
Yynurnyn: A name for my pickaxe
Nyunay: A name for my axe
Kokuliwrgylch: Watcher’s Valley
Paratira: Watcher’s Valley?
Melmocroso Kokuliwrgylch: Welcome to Watcher’s Valley
A little background: The “worlds” are names in this language that refer to dimensions in Minecraft Story Mode Season 1. I made this language specifically for my villagers in my Minecraft Pocket Edition world.
I appreciate how you realized that full-blown conlanging just isn't your thing! If you don't need a whole language and you're not interested in making one, you shouldn't feel pressured to do so!
Love the dress! Also the hebrew is written backwards haha
lol that's what I get for copy+pasting from wikipedia
Just don't listen to those so called "Conlang experts", you are creating a Conlang for aestheticall purpose and not for daily use purpose, so yeah, Conlang is abstract, it is an art, you could go crazy as much as you want,or as simple as you want, no one should judge you. Unless you are making a Conlang for a lost tribe or Conlang similar to Esperanto, criticism and serious development should be primary.
Your wish to have meaningful names is perfectly understandable, but borrowing words from natlangs isn't the only way to achieve this. Creating a history for the language, full of linguistic evolution and semantic messes is a very good way to achieve the same thing. I don't know if you know about it, but Verdurian is one of the most fleshed-out conlangs I know, and perhaps it would be interesting for you to take a look.
Anyway, I know you don't like conlanging as a thing in itself, so this all may be useless for your purposes. But I do enjoy to see when conlangs stop being just "made up words" and get the same level of depth you're aiming to, but by different means.
Great video, by the way. I watched some of your older content in the other channel, but life happened and you then flew under my radar. I'll be following you from now on.
Wow I expected you to be exaggerating when you said the first video was bad, but you weren't wrong. The symbols were nice though.
I can heavily respect your approach to using english and greek roots to inspire familiarity in readers. I've been working on a book that has nine spoken languages in it with shared histories, derivations, dialectical variations, distinct grammar, distinct consonant/vowel groups, and writing rules, but after a while it does sort of feel like it's turning to a mush before my eyes. I struggle with wanting to make things familiar for readers, but then wanting the world to feel unique and self contained. I can respect authors who just say, "Nah, I'll pull in known words and modify them based on pronunciation rules."
9:58 new amongus letter unlocked
im not entirely sure how i came across this video (thanks youtube for the recc, for once lol), i do watch conlang stuff sometimes but very rarely. but i will say your video was a kinda refreshing view on reworking old conlangs in a way that really hit me! ive always like fantasy and conlangs but i remember diving into it the wrong way with little knowledge. i did what i feel you described you-- i wanted to draw cool symbols and didnt really think about anything else. im an artist, i like designing characters first and i secondly love writing stories. conlangs were something i wanted because i wanted 1) unique names/locations/important words for people to see and read 2) a foreign written visual to spice up the world building where i needed it (signs, signatures, advertising...). whatever i attempted way back (when i was also 16) was not good and it was very overwhelming. even more so a ton of the videos i tried to watch then were far more past whatever i wanted, i was confused or again just overwhelmed by the scale of some people's conlangs, i was starting to wonder if could really create a conlang to the scale that i always see people do it.
but watching your video and seeing you revisit the old one while explaining your new take i am sitting here like "wait. thats what i wanted". i like that youve focused on a langauge for the purpose of whats most important to you, and i feel like the communities i used to explore kinda made me think i couldnt do that?? (lots of very elitist communities out there tbh). having a more scaled down conlang for the purpose you describe is *exactly* what i really need. and i additionally relate to taking existing words and having trouble with making up words because they just look like made up words, and trying to even think about a huge extended dictionary sounds far past what id want to do anyways. plus when i was very young i commonly searched up foreign language words, edited them, and made them names to my characters... and im not against doing that to spawn conlang name ideas because it makes sense mostly when, as you say, it can be read from an english speaking perspective and recognized. it kinda settled my brain to see how you tackled your current conlang things and eased my mind about potentially diving into it again.
You know she doesn’t like it when her head starts spinning.
My opinion: I feel there is a bit too much of naturalism snobbery going around. Sure, feedback on it being naturalistic or not is a good thing, if your goal is it being naturalistic. But if it isn't (smart to state if it isn't), such feedback is unnecessary
Not all conlangs need to be naturalistic
I totally get the whole wanted a language but needing to translate easily to English while writing it. I have been struggling with that as well.
wait why did you show it written as natíkan when the accent is on the first syllable? at 17:29
Sorry, I mentioned later that Nautikan is the Simonan spelling, Natíkan is the Nautikan spelling, and Nateecan is the Avian spelling.
One thing you could do when you come up with words and names in the future is think about how naturalistic languages change over time. IIRC you said these are offshoots of future humans from our world, so you could totally turn the inspiration languages into the actual ancestors of these languages. Creating daughter languages and sister languages are kinda my specialty so lemme know if that's something you're interested in
That's part of why I decided to abandon conlanging for the time being. I realized it wasn't as simple as making up my own words or anything. To actually do it well and be realistic, I would need to evolve the languages from a blend of existing languages. And I just don't have the skills for that, or the inclination to learn them right now.
I love watching videos on conlangs but know nothing about IPA. Your squiggly lines looked cool to me. But I'm glad you've developed your conlangs into something that's more useful to your purpose. It's easy to get lost in making something look pretty that you forget to make it functional
18:00 I really found this part really helpful. I need to learn more about pronunciation before i can fully grasp the earlier part but i can tell it will also be useful. Too many conlang content focuses on extremely complicated & advance stuff that as an english speaker with a phonological disorder & dyslexia (I struggle pronouncing & recognising & remembering specific & subtle sounds)
Yoooooooo I wish I'd done this for one of my worlds - possibly all of them. (One of which it's too late to change because there are Books Published and I can't take it back now.)
The good news is... I can do this with one that I started working on last year. :D [Reason #564 that I too, should make a worldbuilding channel.]
There is no best way to create a conlang. The only thing it needs to do is to fit your goals.
Interesting. I like how you used a different kind of language system as apposed to one that you're used to. What I mean by that is your conlang uses characters whereas irl English (I'm assuming that's one of your main languages) uses an alphabet.
For me it's the opposite. My mother tongue uses individual characters so if I were to make a conlang, I'd create an alphabet.
Also, "you are correct, I just don't care" is now something I live by lmfao
Omg, I just discovered this video. I'm a beginner conlanger making a language for a race of fish people whose script look very much like the one in your original video...! --hyperventilates-- But in seriousness, it kinda feels weird seeing how I ended up with a script similar to yours even though I've never even knew you existed and the process I used to get to my writing script was completely different.
The fish race I'm writing are evolved from angler fish (they were like little fish goblins). I wanted to keep the mouth anatomy of angler fish (which means no tongue and their throat is a sphincter) and they only spoke underwater, so I isolated their range to only 9 consonants: ch j k m p r sh t w. Their vocabulary consisted of the things they see, how those things compare to other things they see, and how they feel. They wrote by scratching their nails onto rocks, shells, and coral, so their alphabet was made up of straight and slightly-curved lines.
As they evolved, they begin to more complex thought but their vocabulary doesn't catch up, so they start to make heavy use of preffixes and suffixes, they'd squish two words together to make a new one, and they'd give old words additional meanings (for example, their word for 'water' also means life and soul). Their sentence also got longer while their writing surfaces didn't, so they squished their letters into syllabic blocks of up to 3 letters to save space.
When they reach their final evolution (they essentially become sea elves), they learned to use octopus ink and how to make seaweed paper, so instead of using multiple scratches to make one syllabic block, it would be a continuous line with loops and curves, which is how I ended up with a script similar to your original video.
xd
I am a worldbuilder and writer (in Spanish). My project started like yours when I was eager to create words and naming stuff. In the beginning, I just made up words, try to sound as "original" as possible. But now, 14 years after, I stablished a more contextual language based on the believes of the inhabitants. The words are built from the deities of the world with some yet not well stablished suffixes. This is the first time I saw one of your videos and I like it. It is a new perspective for me.
I have honestly just found this channel today, so I didn't watch them in order, but as I was watching your video on Nautikans, I felt uneasy by the fact that they didn't speak underwater. As I watched this, I realized that you naturally made their language more easily understandable under water, with an emphasis on harder consonants and breaking up the vowels. I would often speak and sing while scuba diving (Drove my dad nuts), but since using water on their vocal cords probably isn't comfortable, definitely would lower the pitch, and also sound carries farther under water, so probably isn't used much, especially when there is a perfectly usable sign language. The one real exception besides emergencies that I could think of would be teaching their little one how to make sounds/ words. Then, as the littles started learning in air, under water talking would phase out, since 'only babies talk like that'. Also, since humming limits how far the sound goes, I could see their signs including a hummed undertone to make it more in depth, which would probably carry over into talking, making it a very musical language.
Then I thought that for your Avian races, Having a softer language that might carry better over the wind and the distance between them while they're flying, and without too many harsh sounds that might startle prey would be preferable. I don't know if any of this is something you've already thought of, or if it is scientifically correct, but feel free to use any, all, or none of this. I've been thinking of writing about my world, and your videos have given me a great big boost in creativity, especially concerning the whys and wherefores clothing (fashion is not my forte.)
making w a /j/ sound is infuriating
Still better than Biblaridion's first one
At first glance at the video cover, the characters seem familiar to Thai natives, and the video content explains it.
Honestly, I never made fully constructed languages. I made little words with different pronouncable sounds in english, malay and chinese, the languages most common in my country. I just mixed and matched it then create meaning out of syllables and combinations of them. For example, "ha" is associated with abundance and goodwill so words and names with the "lu" syllable is related to it. The "kē" syllable is related to plants so it ended up being a suffix for fruits and vegetables and the last name of a family of farmers. I never explored much into the language since I had other writings I wanted to focus on and just made up stuff when need be. I'm very bad with making up fictional languages and have just decided not to focus on them too much and deal with other stuff like plot and characters instead.
I didn't find it bad, I tend to see more autoritathive speaking morons than you than were there talking about animu and stuff like that, wich is hilarious. Tough I see why the coments could be a discouragement.
About Conlangs, I see them as tools, as you do, I'm not ashamed to use real world languages for inspiration, heck I want to base the Old/wise tongue in Euskera for example. Lovely dress too.
Love conlangs, and hope that you have a ton of fun conlanging!
Generally I'm kind of a lurker, but let me just say that it was a fun 24 minutes. Instant sub!
lol the original video wasn't even that bad
oh god the consonant part just broke me
Yay! Conlanging is back!
Last one was pretty good tbh
...
Ngl tho, IPA is nice to have now XD
even for naturalistic-ness, its consonants are kinda like arabic's (no p, no g, no v), but without s (the one really distinctive thing). And the vowels are pretty normal, [ɑ ε e i o u] doesn't sound weird to me.
the one thing that made it weird is, approaching all consonants that exists only through english spelling.
but a phonology that's
i e ε ɑ o u
m n
b t d ts tʃ k
f θ z h
l ɹ w
bl tl kl fl
bɹ tɹ kɹ fɹ
kw tw
is not that unnaturalistic. you could come up with an explanation like s became z or ts or θ in some or all positions.
@@wordart_guian fair.
First glance at the thumbnail made me go "oh wow, Bernadette Banner is into world building now, cool."
It is the ancestor of abugida
This made me so happy and satisfied and I don't really know why besides my writer brain enjoys it.
What a great update! I really like your system, and I might try it out myself because I feel the same way when I conlang. Making up words for the language is the most stressful for me because the words don't mean anything really.
I look forward to more updated and brand new videos!
it's super weird too, because I love other people's made up words. I just hate mine lol
I think it could be worth it to unify some words a bit more. In the case of "mother" and "father" it makes sense for them to vary and they don't have to align between races as it's easy to gather from context. It could actually be good for them to vary, like in various languages you can have things from "tata" through "dada" to "pa" - sounds easy for babies to say but still different.
But when it comes to race names, while it makes sense for a race to have its own name for another race, I think it could be beneficial to either:
make it a distinctly different name (eg. In the World of Darkness vampires call themselves Kindred but werewolves call them Leeches - it also shows their antagonistic relationship)
or
make the names a bit more uniform so that there's no doubt the characters are talking about the same thing. I'm saying this specifically because personally for my multilingual brain some of the names/spellings for the same thing (especially Nautikan) looked like completely separate words.
Alternatively include a bit of a dictionary so that if anyone has doubts they have a cheat sheet
Megdevi(DJP), Thandian(Biblaridion), Nying(me), and the one this video is about. What do they all have in common?
I would suggest using an existing language rather than creating one; this increases your works market to speakers of that language who wish to learn English and English speakers interested in that language. Your script, if invented, should reflect whatever writing surface was first used in that culture, whether metal, bone, wood, sand, clay, or bamboo, which on earth are beep bop boop, pap beep kor
I like the look of the script
Another thing that's wrong with the earlier video is that you laboriously went through each onset-vowel combination in how it would be written. That's just tedious video structure (which you noted), rather than a fault with the language structure, and I'm sure you'd avoid that in any future conlanging videos too.
Im currently creating/writing out a language from my innerworld(i have OSDD and many alters speak both this language and this is helping a lot for how to write down the language we created in our head
Avarian is a language developed with 26 letters and english-sounding sounds. When a letter end sounds like a vowel that comes next, the two will merge and create a simpler word-
should I post videos on this?
Ehh, each to their own when it comes to the meaning we derive from con-words and such, but... by the same token, all *stories* are made up. All worlds (bar the one we live in) are made up. And yet, those fictional things still have meaning, and thus I would argue the conlangs we create can be just as meaningful. For me at least, I find just as much if not more meaning in con-words then I do words borrowed from the real world. As I say, though, that's up to the person to define for themself, and it's good to hear you've found a balance with conlanging that works with you! Don't let me (or anyone, for that matter) stop you from conlanging in a way that fits your needs/wants.
It not that bad, it’s better then mine lol
if you are modelling a non-earth language you better get used to buzzes clicks and whistles. btw lots of languages are inaudible to humans due to higher frequencies of sound which in those species are audible.
I'm almost having a panic attack realising My own language probably doesn't use the f sound. 😶