The Vulcan salutation is such an iconic feature of the Star Trek universe that it has its own Wikipedia page and was added to the Unicode emoji set (🖖). There are many ways to build a fictional reality, and gestures are one way of doing this.
These gestures are often Emblems, a type of gesture that has a fixed form and a fixed meaning for the group that use them. Gestures are distinct from performing magic or Jedi mind tricks, which in the fictional world are technically actions. There’s also this fun paper that looks at the way people in scifi use gestures to interact with computers and technology.
The intentional use and fixed meaning of emblem gestures mean that they can take on a life outside the fictional world. For example, here’s European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in 2015 on the ISS, in a final salute to Leonard Nimoy.
Perhaps the most fascinating example of an emblem gesture extending beyond fiction in recent times has been the emergence of the three fingers salute from the Hunger Games books and films. This gesture has been used in pro-democracy protests in countries including Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar. The image below is from the 2021 protests in Myanmar.
These examples got me thinking about emblem gestures in other fantasy and scifi worlds. A recent one that came to mind was the two fingered blessing from Emperor Cleon in the television version of Foundation. Iconic enough in-world that statues of him are positioned using this gesture. It has a long history in Greek rhetoric and Christian iconography.
There’s a rude hand gesture in P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent books - two fingers raised in a backhanded V, which parallels the Up Yours gesture in the UK and Australia, but also fits the in-world context as the offensive act is to plug someone’s nostrils (the hight of rudeness in a scent-focused world!).
I’m sure there are others too. I’ll undoubtedly start noticing them and add them to this post! (if you have any examples, I’d love to hear from you!)
The full Aramteskan grammar has been published on Fiat Lingua. This contains all the notes and details of the constructed language that I created for the Shadowscent fantasy world. Now that the series is completed, I decided to share the work that I had done on the language, in part to stop myself from continuing to tinker with it.
From the Fiat Lingua summary page:
This document provides an overview of the grammar of the Aramteskan language, created by Lauren Gawne for P. M. Freestone’s Shadowscent series (The Darkest Bloom and Crown of Smoke). This represents the state of completed work on the grammar at the conclusion of these two books. This is by no means a complete or detailed grammar, and some sections may contain more information than others.
The publication includes notes on a variety of linguistic features. It also includes a detailed translation of the quest text in book one, and a glossary of words in Aramteskan.
We have been doing a few cross-over episodes visiting other podcasts. Here are three different chats, two with both Gretchen and I, and one where I pull apart some of my conlanging work.
We
are so proud to be able to come back from our break with this absolute
monster of an episode, and we are honored to have been joined by Lauren
and Gretchen of @lingthusiasm!
This
week we lean on their expertise in linguistics and worldbuilding, and
talk about how you too can construct your own languages and use them to
tell bigger and better stories! This was a listener requested episode
that we are really happy we were able to pull together, so thanks to
Skyler for the introduction and suggestion!
You might not know it yet, but you’re about to get very enthusiastic about linguistics.
Yes,
that’s right! The science of language and communication is fascinating
and we recently had the pleasure of chatting with Gretchen McCulloch and
Lauren Gawne, hosts of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic
about linguistics. We talk about what linguistics is, why it is so
interesting and relevant (especially to those who love learning other
languages!), whether we should all learn the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA), and more.
Through their podcast and a number of
other projects, Gretchen and Lauren make linguistics so accessible,
interesting and fun that you can’t help but wonder if you made a
terrible life decision if you didn’t study linguistics at university.
But never fear - if you haven’t studied linguistics before, you haven’t
missed the boat! See more in the links below about how they are helping
everyone to learn more and get as enthusiastic about linguistics as they
are.
George interviews Lauren Gawne of Superlinguo and Lingthusiasm about her
work on Aramteskan for the Shadowscent book series as well as her other
work with authors.
Conlangery is a monthly podcast focused on conlanging and the conlanging community.
So much exciting news for PM Freestone’s Shadowscent duology! Here’s an update on what’s been happening.
The Darkest Bloom translated into four languages and counting
The Darkest Bloom, the first book in the series is now available in German (with a beautiful new cover), French, Spanish and Russian, with Hungarian, Czech and Polish to come. I am very excited to see how Aramteskan words have been given grammatical gender and case markers across the different translations! I’m possibly even more excited to see how things got transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian.
Crown of Smoke pre-orders for 2nd of April 2020
The Shadowscent story is wrapping up with book two Crown of Smoke out on the 2nd of April. US readers can order from the UK, as UK Scholastic will be handling all orders. It’s a fun and face-paced adventure with the future of the empire at stake and I’m looking forward to holding this beauty:
Map of Aramtesh from Virginia Allyn
Crown of Smoke readers will get to see Virginia Allyn‘s map of Aramtesh. This map featured in the US print of The Darkest Bloom (’Shadowscent’ in the US). It’s full of so much wonderful detail.
The Darkest Bloom… as a fragrance!
Finally, 4160 Tuesdays is a small perfume house in the UK and they have teamed up with P.M. Freestone to create The Darkest Bloom, a fragrance inspired by the world of Shadowscent. I’m beyond excited to smell this. This must be the first fantasy world with its own scent-based conlang, map and fragrance.
Have you ever wanted your own constructed language for a sci-fi/fantasy novel, D&D quest, video game idea or bespoke lorem ipsum? I’m donating my starter conlang creation package to raise funds to support the fire fighting crews during this horrific bushfire season.
Authors For Fireys is an auction of signed books, illustrations, unique experiences, one-off opportunities and writers’ services. It is taking place on Twitter from 6th Jan 2020 under the hashtag #AuthorsForFireys. Winners donate to the CFA (Country Fire Authority) and show proof of donation.
As part of the auction I’ll make the winner a bespoke language word generator. See this tweet for the auction. This will include a 1-on-1 chat so I can interview you about what you’d like to do with the language, and some aesthetic preferences.
A few quick details that don’t fit into the tweet:
We can meet 1-on-1 on Skype or in person if you live in Melbourne.
The package will involve figuring out the shape of words in the language. From there you can name characters and places, or start your own dictionary. Grammar is a whole other level of detail, but you can start building that yourself with the word generator!
The language will be yours to do with as you please.
Bids in Australian Dollars (these go further than American dollars!).
The auction ends at 11pm Sydney/Melbourne time on Saturday 11th Jan 2020.
Each author/illustrator involved (open invitation) creates a tweet announcing an item, unique opportunity or writing service they are offering to donate. The tweet will include a supporting image, plus the auction end time and hashtag #AuthorsForFireys.
Twitter users reply to that tweet with their bid in Australian dollars. Bidding continues on that thread (in increments of $1 Australian dollar or more) until the auction end time.
When the auction has ended, the item ‘owner’ messages the highest bidder on the thread.
The highest bidder is instructed to donate directly to the CFA. They must provide proof of donation to the item ‘owner’.
When proof of donation is received, the item or service is dispatched.
To sum up…
Creators run their own individual auction / tweet under the hashtag.
Twitter users scroll through the auction items under the hashtag and reply to the items to make their bids. Make your bids on the original item thread only. (ie. If you see an item quote-tweeted, do not bid there.)
A constructed language can have as many words as you have the time to make, but it’s where you focus your energy that can help give the language its personality. While constructing Aramteskan for P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent I wanted to give the vocabulary of smelling its own detail, since scent is so important to this world.
I have had a lot of fun creating specific verbs for different ways of smelling things in Aramteskan. As the Jakobson quote goes “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey“ (1959). English speakers can convey these meanings (after all, there are translations!), but don’t have single specific words for these meanings like Aramteskan does.
Here are some of the smell verbs I’ve created so far:
gatmar (gat-mar) v.t. to smell something deeply without knowing what it will smell like; to inhale irresponsibly.
gukmar (guk-mar) v.t. to smell something bad, often unintentionally, and then feel disgust.
hukmar (huk-mar) v.t. to smell something non-volitional, has a similar sense to gakmar but doesn’t have to make you feel as ill.
nelmar (nel-mar) v.t. to smell something faintly, often on a breeze.
nosnar (nos-nar) v.t. to smell something slowly for a long time because it has a pleasant smell, such as burying one’s nose in a bouquet of flowers.
nulmar (nul-mar) v.t. to smell, the general verb for smelling.
rashmar (rash-mar) v.t. to smell something by wafting the scent to your nose with your hand.
sugmar (sugmar) v.t. to smell cautiously, as though unsure of what the scent will be, to sniff.
toshmar (tosh-mar) v.t. to smell something that you remember but can’t immediately place.
yidnar (yid-nar) v.t. to smell with great enthusiasm, to inhale a scent deeply.
Lingthusiasm listeners will notice that Gretchen’s suggestion “to smell something and you’re not sure if it’s disgusting or not” has been added as sugmar.
Linguistically minded people will notice these verbs have a similar ending, which we don’t see in other verbs like ‘walk’ tawrad, ‘eat’ garat and ‘make’ donshir, indicating that perhaps there is some common root word here.
When P.M. Freestone first told me about Shadowscent, her YA Fantasy duology set in a scent-filled world, I was immediately intrigued. After reading an early draft of the opening chapter I was hooked. I have greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to create the Aramteskan language for this series.
You get some glimpses of Aramteskan in book one The Darkest Bloom (or Shadowscent as it’s known in the USA), but there’s a lot more of the language that doesn’t make it onto the page. Over the next year or so between books one and two being published I’ll be writing occasional posts about how the language works.
I want to start by outlining the three main things that influenced my decision-making process; the world of Aramtesh, the medium of books and how language works.
Thinking about the world Freestone built
In Aramtesh scent is prized, commodified and used to create social meaning in a way that is more like visual status symbols in our culture. I therefore made it central to many choices I made about how the grammar of the language works. There are many more verbs for smelling than, say, movement. There are also subtle translation choices; people in Aramtesh don’t talk about ‘facing forward’, they talk about being ‘nose forward’. The language also has an evidential system that marks if you know about something because you smelled it.
Of course, there are non-scent features of the world that influence the language too. Aramtesh is an empire with diverse geography, and a range of cultures. Freestone and I spent a lot of time talking through these different regions and their history. Although there is one language spoken across the Empire, it has its own characteristics in each area; People from Hagmir pronounce vowels more like Old Aramteskan, you’ll only find names with ‘ph’ in Aphorai and names that begin with ‘I’ are distinctly from Trel (Hi there Iddo!).
There’s also at least half a millennium of time history between the earliest documents of the empire and when the story takes place. I built a few centuries of language change into Aramteskan to give that sense of history; think something between Chaucer’s Middle English and Shakespear’s early Modern English.
Thinking about books and reading
The language not only had to suit the world, but also work in YA fantasy with a cracking pace. All of the sounds of the language can be written using standard keyboard, and mostly have the pronunciation you would expect as an English speaker. We didn’t want the language to feel too jarring to readers.
Did I also take into account how the language would sound if someone turned Shadowscent into a film or TV show? Of course!
I’m very excited that translation rights have been sold for a number of language. I’m looking forward to seeing how the names and words we created are translated into French, Hungarian and Czech, and very excited to see how they’ll look transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian version.
Thinking about how human language works
Because constructed languages are made through a series of conscious choices, it provides an opportunity to make decisions to include features that don’t appear in ‘natural languages’ (the term conlangers use for language that emerge through use and transmission, like English, ASL, Hindi and the 7000 or so others). I wanted Aramteskan to be mostly naturalistic, doing things that we usually find in human languages, with a few twists.
This is where my knowledge of linguistics became very useful. I know that most of the structures I’ve created are not very unusual, but some of them are so unusual we don’t have any documented evidence of them in natural languages. Take the ‘smell evidential’ I mentioned above. We know that around a quarter of the world’s languages have evidentials, which let you mark the source of your evidence. Many languages have one that marks that you saw something, or sensed it, or that someone told you about it. No natural human language to date has one that means specifically you know something because you smelt it. Adding that was a fun way to break with naturalness, while also fitting in with the world of Aramtesh.
Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented
What’s your favourite smell? You might say something like the smell of fresh ripe strawberries, or the smell of freshly-cut grass. But if we asked what your favourite colour is, you might say red or green, but you wouldn’t say the colour of strawberries or grass. Why is it that we have so much more vocabulary for colours than for scents?
In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about language and smell! We discuss research into how languages describe scents, colour-odour synesthesia, and how researchers go about doing experiments on smell vocabulary (featuring the gloriously-named Sniffin’ Sticks).
Plus, we talk about how Lauren invented a scent-focused language for a YA fantasy novel! The book is called Shadowscent in the US or The Darkest Bloom in the UK, and it’s by PM Freestone. Lauren created the Aramteskan language that appears in the book. We discuss what it is like to work on a constructed language for a novel, and how Lauren brought her knowledge of linguistics into the creation of this language. For more details on Shadowscent, including how to order, visit PM Freestone’s website.
–
November is our official anniversary month! To celebrate three years of Lingthusiasm, we’re asking you, our listeners, to share your favourite fact from the show! This helps people who need more linguistics in their lives realize that this is a place where they can get it, and helps show us what people find interesting. If you share on social media, tag us (@lingthusiasm) so we can thank you and reshare it.
We also have new merch! All of the Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for the linguist or language fan in your life, and we love seeing your photos of it!
You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content and lets you help decide on Lingthusiasm topics.
Lingthusiasm
is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer
is Claire Gawne, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is
‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
Some more insight into the Aramteskan language in this episode!
P. M. Freestone’s debut novel The Darkest Bloom (Book 1 in the Shadowscent duology) celebrated its book birthday on the 7th of February. You can get it at any good bookseller. the blurb:
In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.
When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart.
It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote.
To succeed, the unlikely pair must uncover secrets – cryptic,
ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an
adventure that will ignite your senses!
The book features the first few snippets of Aramteskan, a language I created to be unlike any existing human language, which places smell at the centre of people’s experience. All the names in the book are from the language, and you’ll even catch some lines of dialogue.
The book will also be published in these countries (with translation), I’ve added dates where known:
USA: Scholastic (Fall 2019)
Australia/NZ: Scholastic
France: Editions du Seuil
Spain: Roca Editorial
Russia: Eksmo
Hungary: Maxim
Czech Republic: MOBA
If you are in one of these places and have to wait, trust me it’s worth it! I’m already looking forward to seeing how Aramteskan is transliterated into Cyrilic for the Russian, and how it’s going to look with case marking in a bunch of languages! I’ll be posting more about the mechanics of Aramteskan when the book is out in more places!
These interviews are always titled “Interview with a…”, but when it comes to language creation, David J. Peterson has been the person over the last decade bringing other worlds to life with his conlang skills. He’s behind the Dothraki, and Valyrian languages from Game of Thrones, Shiväisith from Thor: The Dark World and Trigedasleng from The 100. As well as being a very talented language creator and font maker, David is also an enthusiastic and supportive person who is always the first to point out the great work being done by other language creators. Check out his website for some of his favorites.
I
began at UC Berkeley as an English major, then added Linguistics as a
second fun major. I finished both, and then went on to graduate school
in Linguistics at UC San Diego, where I received my Master’s degree.
What is your job?
I
work on a variety of different projects in film and television and
sometimes theater. What I do varies, depending on what stage of a
project I’m at, and what I’m working on that day. The longer the project
lasts, the more time I’ll be spending translating into my new conlang
than creating the language. Actual language creation is done during the
first stage; thereafter it’s just translation, recording, and general
consulting or voice coaching, depending on the project. Sometimes I also
create writing systems, which entails designing the system, and then,
if necessary, building a font for it, and then after that doing
translation as well as trouble-shooting. I’ve also written a few books,
so sometimes part of my day is spent working on a new book project.
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
In
creating a language, nothing you learn about language is wasted, be it
actual linguistic education, language study, or work on a conlang, big
or small. Every single day of my life is spent engaging with language in
one capacity or another. Most useful in my day-to-day life is
coursework I did in phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical
linguistics, field work, cognitive science, and pidgin and creole
studies.
Do you have any advice you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
Yes:
TAKE MORE LANGUAGE COURSES! However many you’re taking right now is not
enough. There will never be another time in your life that it will be
so easy or inexpensive to take courses in a second language, and the
variety afforded you at a university is so much greater than you’ll find
in your regular day-to-day life.
Any other thoughts or comments?
Education
in linguistics is not the same thing as conlanging ability. Just
because you have a B.A. or M.A. or Ph.D. or equivalent in linguistics
doesn’t mean you can create even a mediocre conlang (and note that
“functional” is not the same thing as “good”. Functionality is a very
low bar to clear). Similarly, you don’t need any formal education in
linguistics to create a language—you can start right now! Linguistics
can definitely help, though. The best conlanger is one who has a solid
understanding of theoretical and practical linguistics, who has studied
many languages from many different language families, and who has spent a
good amount of time creating languages. This person will know when
linguistic theory can improve their work, and when it needs to be set
aside because the linguists haven’t figured out the theory is garbage
yet—or because the linguists must pay lip service to the theory for
political reasons. Conlangers are beholden to no one, which means
they’re ultimately responsible for all choices—and all mistakes. A
conlanger who comes to conlanging from academic linguistics will need to
unlearn some things to really get going, but they’ll already have a
pretty good handle on the multifariousness of language, and that’s key.
I’m so excited to be able to share some news from the world of fiction. P.M. Freestone’s debut YA novel about a world of scent-based magic has been picked up by Scholastic in the UK and US as a duology deal.
I’m not only excited because it’s a fast-paced and beautifully-written adventure. I’m also thrilled to be able to share the news that the book will include some bits and pieces of a language I created. The language is based on the scent-focused world of the book - what happens in a language where smell is the most important sense? I got to create and explore a grammar that is unlike any existing language.
Working with P.M. Freestone is a delight, I’m looking forward to bringing you more about the world and words of Aramtesh in 2019.
The story, from the press release:
In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.
When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart. It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote. To succeed, the pair must uncover secrets – cryptic, ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an adventure that will ignite your senses.
I’ll be sharing more information about the language and how it came to be in 2019, here and hopefully in an episode of Lingthusiasm. You can also keep up with the news from P.M. Freestone by joining her mailing list!
The book is also available for pre-order from Amazon (UK) ahead of the Feb 7th release date - where you can also see the very pretty cover.
Suzy Styles of NTU’s BLIP Lab has put together this chart showing the most common speech sounds across languages. It’s set out like the IPA chart, but incorporates features such as unvoiced nasals that are represented with diacritics and not typically included in the main chart. You can see that only a few sounds occur in 80% or more of the world’s languages, and there are many sounds that only occur in a small handful (some of you may think of Zipf’s law when you see this distribution, as only a few sounds are in many languages, and many sounds are only in a few languages).
It’s useful if you’re building a conlang and you want to know how naturalistic it sounds. It’s also handy if you’re learning a language and want to know just how ‘weird’ those ‘weird’ sounds you’re learning are. For example, the trilled ‘r’ of Italian and Spanish [r] is actually much more common than the English ‘r’ sound [ɹ], and the sound at the start of thing in English [θ] is also pretty unusual.
Prevalence rates of
speech-sounds across 1672 languages. Data from PHOIBLE Online. Colour scale
indicates range from the listed percentage to the next higher percent.
This
figure first appeared in Styles SJ (2016) ‘Sensory worlds: Multisensory
outcomes of sensory tuning to phoneme structure’ Presentation at the
5th Southern African Microlinguistics Workshop, Bloemfontein, South
Africa, November 2016.
With so many more major films and TV shows using constructed languages to build realistic and novel worlds, constructed languages are a great way to teach people about how language works.
David Adger and Coppe van Urk at Queen Mary University London ran a week conlanging course for year 10 students (~15 year olds). The students were introduced to phonetics, phonology, morphology, as well as word order, agreement and
case (syntax). They also created a script for their language.
David has written about the course on his blog. It sounds like the students really took to it:
The students looked at conlangs including Tolkien’s Sindarin, Peterson‘s Dothraki, Okrand’s Klingon, David’s Warig, Nolan‘s Parseltongue, and various others. They even had a guest lecture from Francis Nolan on Parseltongue, which he created for the Harry Potter films!
David also shared the summary posters that the students made for their language. Here’s one of my favourites:
Find out more about the Creating a Language course on the course page and David’s blog. Similarly, David J. Peterson has just finished running a summer course at UC Berkley called “The Linguistics of Game of Thrones and the Art of Language Invention”. Conlanging is a great way to get students to think about the structure of language. It’s a great time to use conlangs in the classroom!
Back in February David J. Peterson dropped by SOAS to talk about constructed languages, how he conlangs and some of the features of his favourite languages (spoiler: they’re all his favourite).
He kindly agreed to us recording and sharing the talk. That disembodied voice introducing David at the start is myself. Apologies if you can’t quite make out what questions people are asking, let me know and I’ll try and remember!
Dialect is a tabletop roleplaying game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost. It’s a GM-less game for 3-5 people that runs in 3-4 hours.
The game’s core spark comes from gradually building up elements of language among players, who gain fluency in their own dialect
over the course of play. Words are built off of the fundamental traits
of the community, the pivotal events that have defined their lives, and
how they respond to a changing world. Players use the language and
explore both their characters and the world by asking what this new
language really means to them. A new word is made, the language grows,
and the community is tightened.
From age to age, the Isolation changes and we see those changes reflected in the language.
In the end, you’ll define how the language dies and what happens to the Isolation. Players take away both the story they’ve told together and this new language.
The mechanics look interesting, and they’ve got conlang rockstar David J. Peterson (@dedalvs) on board, so that’s encouraging. I’ll admit I’ve been sitting back on this one a bit. I’ve found the promo for the game a little to heavy on the language death theme (see the Twitter thread that starts here). It was nice of co-creator Kathryn Hymes to drop by in my feed and let me know that it is *possible* for the language you create to be maintained - just like many minority languages have been and continue to be - although I still find focusing on the metaphor of language death reasserts it as the dominant narrative or inevitable outcome (both in game and in real life). (also, remember folks, although language and culture loss are deeply interlinked, it is possible to maintain one even if both aren’t transmitted).
There’s an interview with the creators on the Talk the Talk podcast. As of writing this they have smashed their funding goal, with a couple of weeks still to go. I’ve chipped in for a PDF set, and look forward to finding a few hours and a few people to play this with.
