ELSEWHERE

I've had a migraine all evening but that didn't stop me from translating a text out of somebody else's conlang for this relay challenge!

I read this tumblr post and the study it links to last week, and I've been having some thoughts about it since, in two different directions.

 
First, let me explain real quick what a conlang relay is, for people who aren't into this niche hobby. It's a translation challenge that goes like this:
-Person A writes (or obtains) a short text that they then translate into their conlang. They send the translated text, a small dictionary of relevant words, and a grammar guide (altogether the 'torch') to Person B.
-Person B translates the text back into English using Person A's notes, then translates the translated text into their own conlang. Their translation and notes are sent to Person C.
-Person C translates the text into their own conlang, which is sent to Person D, etc etc.
-The final translation is sent back to Person A, who translates it into English and posts all of the translations for everyone to laugh at, because it's been telephoned into silly nonsense.

So this is on my mind because I'm currently participating in one, and it's relevant to the aforementioned post and study because I think a thing often happens in translation exercises like this where a person will translate the grammar of a sentence without translating the meaning of the sentence. Let me try to demonstrate an example-

Let's say you get a torch that contains the sentence "Bing bong icky ding dong doot". The grammar notes say that "Bing" means "dog", "bong" turns the word preceding it into an adjective, "icky" means "monkey", "ding" means "to ascend", "dong" means "any", and "doot" means "tree". So you translate it and get "Doglike monkey climbs any tree", which seems grammatical enough -- and I think a lot of people will stop here, translate this sentence point-by-point into their own conlang, and send it off.

Here's the relevance, is that they aren't stopping to think about what this sentence means. It's grammatical, but is it coherent. What does it mean for a monkey to be doglike? Is the monkey inherently doglike or is it doglike in the way it's climbing the tree? How relevant is it that the monkey is climbing any tree and not a tree, or the tree? How does this sentence fit into the greater text, what is it doing there? They are translating the text, but they are not understanding it, they're not reading it.

I don't have a greater point on that, it's just something that I'm observing, especially as I've gotten to that point in my translation and gotten sentences like "Its opinion is regarded, recognisably". But I can't tell you what that means yet or why it's in the passage -- I'm about to go over it and attempt to actually translate it into coherent English. But I could, if I were a lesser man, simply translate it part by part into "it-possessive", "opinion", "regard (verb)", "recognise (adjective)", and send it off into the wild.

 
Okay, the second direction I've been thinking about this from has to do with the book I was reading, Freakslaw. I was reading it for the book club I was thinking about going to, and ended up deciding not to largely because I was not particularly enjoying the book but not not-enjoying it in a way that gave me much to say about it beyond a vague shrug. But I went looking at reviews of it, which are generally very positive, and clearly from people who are getting something out of the writing that as far as I can tell just does not exist. And that thought combined with this:

like, i’ve said this before, but the year i taught third grade i had multiple students who told me they loved reading and then when i asked them about a book they were reading revealed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on - on a really basic literal level like “didn’t know who said which lines of dialogue” and “couldn’t identify which things or characters given pronouns referred to” - and were as best as i could tell sort of constructing their own story along the way using these little bits of things they thought they understood. that’s what “reading” was, in their heads [...]

(emphasis mine)

So, like. There's been a lot of talk about children, and now young adults, not being able to actually read. But I haven't seen anyone come to the conclusion I have of -- what happens when these people write a book? What happens when an entire generation of people who have not been taught reading comprehension begin to dominate the literary marketplace? Does it maybe inundate said marketplace with books that sound very samey and don't have the hooks to grab more literate readers? Is it possible that a not-insignificant portion of books now function more like fill-in-the-blank templates where you have to take the characters and scenarios being written about and imagine that it's more interesting than is actually on the page?

I find a lot of writing now reads more as a series of events than a story -- The character does this. The character does that. The character does this. The character does that. I found Freakslaw's characters to be largely indistinguishable despite the fact that most of them were "freaks" with one very prominent character trait each.

Maybe I'm jumping to unwarranted conclusions, maybe I'm being uncharitable. But I've been thinking about it, and I do wonder if there isn't something there.

Fetian wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 10:05 pm

I'm watching the Language Creation Conference streams for this year and my main takeaway is that the loglang community is much more chill than I was aware of it being back when I was first getting into the conlang community

do they interpret the language of logs

(I am genuinely asking what loglang is, and also being a stinker)

It's short for logic-language, it's a subtype of engineered-languages ('intentionally constructed' as opposed to 'naturalistic') that focuses on trying to be as logical as possible. One of the first instances was an attempt to test the hard sapir-whorf hypothesis, to see if thinking in a 100% logical and unambiguous language would make people behave more rationally (results: probably not!). Unsurprisingly this type of language has historically attracted the kind of people who will interrupt you to correct your grammar, which is a behaviour that has a lot of opportunity when you're trying to speak an unnaturally-regular language

Apparently there are communities now that frown on that sort of behaviour and do what they can to discourage it, and rather encourage language-play and exploration (as one ought)

 
"Legitimate interest" is already a by why the fuck is 'consent' greyed out so I can't deselect it?? Really stretching the definition of "consent" here guys!!

Have I consented if I can't not consent? Survey says no!!

That is almost 100% over my head but sounds neat!!

Just changed all instances of /tʃ/ in teket with /c/ -- I've been unsatisfied with having /tʃ/ in there for a while, because /ʃ/ doesn't appear anywhere else in the language and it just wasn't sitting right to have a consonant only existing along with a different consonant, even though I'm sure that does happen (ANADEW). And I didn't want to compromise by adding /ʃ/ as a sound on its own, so instead I've compromised by removing it, and I'm pretty happy with said compromise! /c/ is a very close sound to /tʃ/: it is a voiceless palatal plosive -- for full accuracy it should be a voiceless palato-alveolar plosive but the sounds are so close that they're usually IPA'd the same unless there's a distinction between the two in the language being described. The sound is made by putting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, creating a force of air behind it, then releasing that air by pulling your tongue down. Contrast with /k/, which is made in the same manner but at the back of your mouth (to make the 'k' sound as in 'king' and 'bank', obviously) -- /c/ should be higher pitched and less sharp, compare them without adding a vowel ("k", not "kuh") for best elucidation.

The best part is that I've long had a voiceless palatal approximant (/j̊/) being represented by 'ch' in the writing system. This is the sound you make at the beginning of the word "hue", by putting your tongue near the roof of your mouth and blowing air between them. You may recognise this as being very similar to the voiceless palatal plosive described above, just, you know, an approximant instead of a plosive -- and what was /tʃ/ and is now /c/ in the writing system is represented by 'c'! So that's a very happy coincidence. In fact, in much the same way the voiceless palatal plosive is so close to the voiceless palato-alveolar plosive that they're not distinguished between unless necessary, the voiceless palatal approximant (/j̊/) is so close to the voiceless palatal fricative (/ç/) that they're not distinguished between unless necessary, and the /c/ and /ç/ make a nice symmetry, so I think I'm going to go in and change the pronunciation guide to make all the /j̊/s into /ç/s now. I'd gone with /j̊/ to begin with to contrast with /j/ (the 'yuh' sound in 'yellow'), to go along with the 'you pronounce it by making a 'yuh' sound without using your voice' pronunciation explanation I usually go with. But that IPA tends to confuse computers, and doesn't even get its own wikipedia entry (it's a subsection on ç's entry), so swapping over is probably simplest and for the best

I did this in a hurry but I think I got it all--

 
This is my phonetic inventory now. It would still get you stoned in harder-core (read: "mean") conlanging circles but I think it looks slightly better? Got exactly two voiced/voiceless distinctions and every got damn alveolar on the planet but... it's a little more balanced?

Oh that /t/ should actually be a dental stop, not an alveolar stop. So not quite every alveolar on the planet!

(The rule-of-thumb is that it's unnatural to have a column or row with just one thing in it. I more subscribe to the 'I like these sounds and I like these sounds together so these sounds are what I'm using' school of thought)

I need steam to just not even fuckin' bother me for sales that are less than 90% off. 20% off? In this economy? Get outta here with that