Alien Biospheres Part 15 Progress report: the rough draft of the script is now at 10,000 words (almost as long as Part 14), and there are still large sections of it yet to be written. Still aiming to get the full script done by the end of the year.
Best of luck, you’re doing great! And thanks for this, my current project is vastly different from this but hearing other conlangers talk always gets the word-brewing side of my brain fired up
12:37 lmao we actually have a suffix like this in English: "-zilla", derived from "Godzilla". so someone might actually call a particularly large and/or monstrous fish "fishzilla"
My favorite animal name derivation is from Navajo: dogs are shit-horses. There was a word for dog at a time when dogs were the only domesticated animals. Then horses were introduced and it was applied to them too, because they were captive mammals. And then horses came to be the much more important animal socially, so the word in its simple form was used to mean horse; dogs, because they eat their own excrement, were the shit- domestic mammal. So now there's horse (horse) and shit-horse (dog). Scientific taxonomy doesn't make domestication a defining feature but this happened because the Navajo language made it *the most* defining feature.
Especially when it just falls so beautifully into place. The word for insect in my conlang is a diminutive of the word for ‘to be hungry’. So they are “little hungries”, roughly.
Japanese has toki meaning "time" and tokidoki meaning "from time to time." It also has hito meaning "person" and hitobito meaning "people." As far as I'm aware this is no longer productive but these two words are pretty common in everyday speech.
You stumbled onto something interesting with same "location" suffix for nouns meaning the place where it happens and for adjectives meaning "ness" In Spanish, the "ía" ending does something similar, along with being used in many other derivations. Alegre, happy and alegría, happiness/joy. Pescado, fish and pescadería, for a place that sells fish and other seafood. (There are also other suffixes for "ness" like "ez/eza", but it is one strategy) Something else to consider is that in Spanish the place where something is done is based off the person who does it. Pescado, fish and pescadero, fishmonger. Even the word fish (only for dead ones you will eat) is a derivation, using the past participle to mean "the thing that was fished"
One fun example of the name of one animal can be used for another is the one for "spider" in Irish, which is "damhán alla". "Damh" itself can mean "ox, stag" (basically a large horned beast), and "-án" is used to derive masculine diminutives, tools, instruments, &c., thus "damhán" means "calf, fawn", while "alla" means "fierce, wild". Thus a spider in Irish is literally a fierce fawn!
My dialect of French, and probably other romance languages aswell, have a kind of "moderative/detensive" '-oter' affix that are basically partially pejorative "diminutive" for verbs. Like marcher "walk" can become "marchoter" "to half walk, walk in a clumsy manner, walk slowly while dragging one's feet" or "parler" "speak" parleoter "to half speak, talk in one's beard, talk about everything and nothing, small talk, chat". In more general french you also have -ailler which is mostly pejorative but have also somewhat of a same meaning like "discuter" to talk, to chat, to discuss > discutailler "to small talk, to chat, to talk about everything and nothing."
3:56 That kind of reduplication is common in Japanese too. (Specifically, I think the first consonant of the second copy tends to become voiced, or rather to undergo a consonant mutation idiomatic to Japanese that involves voicing unvoiced stops to voices stops, but also probably involves turning [h] into [b].) It's also kind of a funny that one of the common associative plural words in Japanese COINCIDENTALLY happens to sound like this: "Watashi-tachi" (私達 or 私たち) is a first person plural pronoun which is the word "watashi" (私) (one of the many first person singular pronouns, maybe the most basic and general) with the associative plural suffix "tachi" (達 or たち) added onto it. It's possible this is just the first example of the associative plural in Japanese I was told about BECAUSE it sounds kind of funny, though. It's worth noting that while I call "tachi" an associative plural marker, Wiktionary just calls it the plural marker, and I think it is the only plural marker in Japanese, but as WALs helpfully describes in it's 4 plurality features, Japanese uses this same suffix for both "additive" and "associative" plurals, which are both only possible on humans nouns and optional even then. (Usually they are not used, I think, but I don't actually speak Japanese.)
That was a cool episode. I really like the idea of the word “hunt” being different between people and animals. It could be a way to signify what animals do isn’t as complicated as how people hunt, plus every language has some etymological weirdness.
17:05 I bet this is metaphorical: Snails carries it's shell around the way a cow (or ox or whatever) might carry around a big load for humans. Another weird one is that the Japanese word for seagull (more specifically Larus crassirostris) is "Umineko" (うみねこ, ウミネコ, or 海猫), which literally sea-cat, because their calls sound kind of cat's meowing. (I'll let people guess why I know that.) Apparently, "seamew" (supposedly from Dutch zeemeeu) and "mew gull" are also an English words for a type of Seagull (Laurus canus, specifically). (That I just learned on Wiktionary and Wikipedia.)
The verbal augmentative in Hebrew is just an historical relic at this point. In modern Hebrew the same template is a general transitive verb (and is often used productively for loan words). Even for words that still preserve an augmentative meaning, this is often not obvious, such as הָלַך /halaχ/ went > הִלֵּך /hileχ/ wandered, walked around and חָשַב /χaʃav/ thought > חִשֵּב /χiʃev/ computed
We have a similar thing to the reduplication thing in Turkish where we change the first letter to "m", it's very informal though. For example, we say "şaka maka" when we want to say "all jokes aside".
Can you make a video breaking down on how to create a conlang? I know you already created some videos but I mean breaking down the more complexed foundations when making a conlang.
i not shure what time this will be for the finale of tira9b showcase but mabye next year or if lucky mabye near the end of the year i dont know just my guss
I have a idea, six season to represent the five mass extinctions but six is modern times and we also do a second show you talk about the cultures and more of the sentient species and plz do this
I have a idea, six season that represent the five mass extinction and season six is modern times and also a second show where we talk about the progression of the sentient species and plz notice me Biblardion
For English, things like chit-chat are called "ablaut reduplication" but I'm not sure there exists a single widely-accepted more general term that also encompasses reduplication in things like English itsy-bitsy, Turkish kitap mitap 'books and things', Indonesian kaya-raya 'very wealthy', Mongolian цай май 'tea and stuff', Tamil maaʈu kiiʈu 'cattle and the like', though I have seen the phrase "imitative reduplication" used here and there. For Turkish, it gets called m-reduplication and obviously we have shm-reduplication in English (< Yiddish). Incidentally, my language Kamya actually also has an associated plural which also formed by a similar type of reduplication: czcams.com/video/NEINfK5rmO4/video.html
As a Hebrew speaker I find the statement that Hebrew has intensive verb forms a little weird. From a quick google search I guess you mean the heavy verb structures (/piˈʕʕel/, /puˈʕʕal/ and /hitpaˈʕʕel/) but I really don't think of them that way. Like, there are certainly ways where they do that, like the verb שיבר /ʃiˈbbeɾ/ [ʃiˈbeʁ] which is an ancient more intense form of the verb שבר /ʃaˈbaɾ/ [ʃaˈvaʁ] (both meaning "to break"), and you can probably find better examples than this, but in the end, it's just another verb form, and there are many verbs that have both forms with no really clear connection between them, like קיצר /qiˈsʼsʼeɾ/ [kiˈt͡seʁ] means "to shorten", which is supposed to be the intense version of קצר /qaˈsʼaɾ/ [kaˈt͡saʁ] which means "to harvest" (which in this case I can imagine that it may have come from an intensive because when you harvest wheat you make the stalks shorter and you can make them really short in a bad way to just make them shorter and then you also use this verb in other scenarios and it takes a different meaning) or שיכן /ʃiˈkken/ [ʃiˈken] which means to house someone in a place which is supposed to be an intensive of שכן /ʃaˈkan/ [ʃaˈχan] but is instead more of a causative (although the third "causative" form of this verb השכין /hiˈʃkin/ [hiˈʃkin] also exists and is used mostly in phrases like להשכין שלום which means to make peace between some sides as a third party), without mentioning many verbs like בישל, זימן, ביקש, צייר or כיבד which exist in this form but not in the simple form (and all the new verbs in this form that do not really follow any simple-intensive pattern like צילם or פישט, not to mention four-consonant roots that can only form verbs in this structure). Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it may have been an intensive form originally thousands of years ago but speakers don't think about it like this at all nowadays.
Alien Biospheres Part 15 Progress report: the rough draft of the script is now at 10,000 words (almost as long as Part 14), and there are still large sections of it yet to be written. Still aiming to get the full script done by the end of the year.
For a sec I thought you gave up on it and just started doing this again. Thanks so much.
:)
I can't wait for the part 15! Also, you can't imagine how much your videos helped me!
Place your bets as to which clade gains sapience. I think it’ll be a distropheognathan, maybe a social mesocarnivorous dryptognathan of some kind.
Best of luck, you’re doing great! And thanks for this, my current project is vastly different from this but hearing other conlangers talk always gets the word-brewing side of my brain fired up
12:37 lmao we actually have a suffix like this in English: "-zilla", derived from "Godzilla". so someone might actually call a particularly large and/or monstrous fish "fishzilla"
My favorite animal name derivation is from Navajo: dogs are shit-horses.
There was a word for dog at a time when dogs were the only domesticated animals. Then horses were introduced and it was applied to them too, because they were captive mammals. And then horses came to be the much more important animal socially, so the word in its simple form was used to mean horse; dogs, because they eat their own excrement, were the shit- domestic mammal. So now there's horse (horse) and shit-horse (dog).
Scientific taxonomy doesn't make domestication a defining feature but this happened because the Navajo language made it *the most* defining feature.
Deriving new words is one of the best experiences in conlanging
hell yeah
i love just doing weird shit with that, it's amazing
Especially when it just falls so beautifully into place. The word for insect in my conlang is a diminutive of the word for ‘to be hungry’. So they are “little hungries”, roughly.
Japanese has toki meaning "time" and tokidoki meaning "from time to time." It also has hito meaning "person" and hitobito meaning "people." As far as I'm aware this is no longer productive but these two words are pretty common in everyday speech.
You stumbled onto something interesting with same "location" suffix for nouns meaning the place where it happens and for adjectives meaning "ness"
In Spanish, the "ía" ending does something similar, along with being used in many other derivations.
Alegre, happy and alegría, happiness/joy. Pescado, fish and pescadería, for a place that sells fish and other seafood. (There are also other suffixes for "ness" like "ez/eza", but it is one strategy)
Something else to consider is that in Spanish the place where something is done is based off the person who does it. Pescado, fish and pescadero, fishmonger.
Even the word fish (only for dead ones you will eat) is a derivation, using the past participle to mean "the thing that was fished"
Fun fact: The word "computer" used to refer to a person who does mathematical computations.
One fun example of the name of one animal can be used for another is the one for "spider" in Irish, which is "damhán alla". "Damh" itself can mean "ox, stag" (basically a large horned beast), and "-án" is used to derive masculine diminutives, tools, instruments, &c., thus "damhán" means "calf, fawn", while "alla" means "fierce, wild". Thus a spider in Irish is literally a fierce fawn!
My dialect of French, and probably other romance languages aswell, have a kind of "moderative/detensive" '-oter' affix that are basically partially pejorative "diminutive" for verbs. Like marcher "walk" can become "marchoter" "to half walk, walk in a clumsy manner, walk slowly while dragging one's feet" or "parler" "speak" parleoter "to half speak, talk in one's beard, talk about everything and nothing, small talk, chat". In more general french you also have -ailler which is mostly pejorative but have also somewhat of a same meaning like "discuter" to talk, to chat, to discuss > discutailler "to small talk, to chat, to talk about everything and nothing."
It was so good meeting you at KOPIKON! Great presentation.
Don't know much about things like this, your channel has helped me learn alot about these things.
Derivations give a conlang its flavor...and is probably the most culturally connected aspect of a conlang. Excellent video, sir.
A lack of distinction between a person doing a thing and a device doing a thing: calculator.
3:56 That kind of reduplication is common in Japanese too. (Specifically, I think the first consonant of the second copy tends to become voiced, or rather to undergo a consonant mutation idiomatic to Japanese that involves voicing unvoiced stops to voices stops, but also probably involves turning [h] into [b].)
It's also kind of a funny that one of the common associative plural words in Japanese COINCIDENTALLY happens to sound like this: "Watashi-tachi" (私達 or 私たち) is a first person plural pronoun which is the word "watashi" (私) (one of the many first person singular pronouns, maybe the most basic and general) with the associative plural suffix "tachi" (達 or たち) added onto it. It's possible this is just the first example of the associative plural in Japanese I was told about BECAUSE it sounds kind of funny, though.
It's worth noting that while I call "tachi" an associative plural marker, Wiktionary just calls it the plural marker, and I think it is the only plural marker in Japanese, but as WALs helpfully describes in it's 4 plurality features, Japanese uses this same suffix for both "additive" and "associative" plurals, which are both only possible on humans nouns and optional even then. (Usually they are not used, I think, but I don't actually speak Japanese.)
That was a cool episode. I really like the idea of the word “hunt” being different between people and animals. It could be a way to signify what animals do isn’t as complicated as how people hunt, plus every language has some etymological weirdness.
Lushootseed has a distinction between humans dying and animals dying. The word used for animals dying means "to starve" if applied to humans
17:05 I bet this is metaphorical: Snails carries it's shell around the way a cow (or ox or whatever) might carry around a big load for humans.
Another weird one is that the Japanese word for seagull (more specifically Larus crassirostris) is "Umineko" (うみねこ, ウミネコ, or 海猫), which literally sea-cat, because their calls sound kind of cat's meowing. (I'll let people guess why I know that.) Apparently, "seamew" (supposedly from Dutch zeemeeu) and "mew gull" are also an English words for a type of Seagull (Laurus canus, specifically). (That I just learned on Wiktionary and Wikipedia.)
This is great! I always find it fun to research/determine where different derivation strategies come from for my conlangs.
I was genuinely thinking "I wonder what Biblaridion's been up to" minutes before this uploaded!
The verbal augmentative in Hebrew is just an historical relic at this point. In modern Hebrew the same template is a general transitive verb (and is often used productively for loan words). Even for words that still preserve an augmentative meaning, this is often not obvious, such as הָלַך /halaχ/ went > הִלֵּך /hileχ/ wandered, walked around and חָשַב /χaʃav/ thought > חִשֵּב /χiʃev/ computed
We have a similar thing to the reduplication thing in Turkish where we change the first letter to "m", it's very informal though. For example, we say "şaka maka" when we want to say "all jokes aside".
Can you make a video breaking down on how to create a conlang? I know you already created some videos but I mean breaking down the more complexed foundations when making a conlang.
Your catchphrase is Alright Love it!
Bro, I just love this series. It's been super helpful for me in making my conlang
oooh, the final 45 mins of work have just gotten a lot more soothing.
Could you tell me the app you used for the 3d creature models for the speculative evolution
He’s back!!!!
I'm glad you're back!
i not shure what time this will be for the finale of tira9b showcase but mabye next year or if lucky mabye near the end of the year i dont know just my guss
I have a idea, six season to represent the five mass extinctions but six is modern times and we also do a second show you talk about the cultures and more of the sentient species and plz do this
Nice video!
Babe, wake up, a new episode of conlang case study just dropped!
🙂
17:06 Maybe because cows are slow
Don't count on that my friend, they can run up to 40km/h, might be slow compared to other animals, but still almost as fast as Usain Bolt
Not sure if you still do conlang critic or showcase, but would love to see you go over the Banu language from star citizen
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 let's go
Let's f****** go
Your name and profile picture 👌❤️ (my fav phone)
I have a idea, six season that represent the five mass extinction and season six is modern times and also a second show where we talk about the progression of the sentient species and plz notice me Biblardion
For English, things like chit-chat are called "ablaut reduplication" but I'm not sure there exists a single widely-accepted more general term that also encompasses reduplication in things like English itsy-bitsy, Turkish kitap mitap 'books and things', Indonesian kaya-raya 'very wealthy', Mongolian цай май 'tea and stuff', Tamil maaʈu kiiʈu 'cattle and the like', though I have seen the phrase "imitative reduplication" used here and there. For Turkish, it gets called m-reduplication and obviously we have shm-reduplication in English (< Yiddish). Incidentally, my language Kamya actually also has an associated plural which also formed by a similar type of reduplication: czcams.com/video/NEINfK5rmO4/video.html
As a Hebrew speaker I find the statement that Hebrew has intensive verb forms a little weird. From a quick google search I guess you mean the heavy verb structures (/piˈʕʕel/, /puˈʕʕal/ and /hitpaˈʕʕel/) but I really don't think of them that way. Like, there are certainly ways where they do that, like the verb שיבר /ʃiˈbbeɾ/ [ʃiˈbeʁ] which is an ancient more intense form of the verb שבר /ʃaˈbaɾ/ [ʃaˈvaʁ] (both meaning "to break"), and you can probably find better examples than this, but in the end, it's just another verb form, and there are many verbs that have both forms with no really clear connection between them, like קיצר /qiˈsʼsʼeɾ/ [kiˈt͡seʁ] means "to shorten", which is supposed to be the intense version of קצר /qaˈsʼaɾ/ [kaˈt͡saʁ] which means "to harvest" (which in this case I can imagine that it may have come from an intensive because when you harvest wheat you make the stalks shorter and you can make them really short in a bad way to just make them shorter and then you also use this verb in other scenarios and it takes a different meaning) or שיכן /ʃiˈkken/ [ʃiˈken] which means to house someone in a place which is supposed to be an intensive of שכן /ʃaˈkan/ [ʃaˈχan] but is instead more of a causative (although the third "causative" form of this verb השכין /hiˈʃkin/ [hiˈʃkin] also exists and is used mostly in phrases like להשכין שלום which means to make peace between some sides as a third party), without mentioning many verbs like בישל, זימן, ביקש, צייר or כיבד which exist in this form but not in the simple form (and all the new verbs in this form that do not really follow any simple-intensive pattern like צילם or פישט, not to mention four-consonant roots that can only form verbs in this structure).
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it may have been an intensive form originally thousands of years ago but speakers don't think about it like this at all nowadays.