[George Corley]: Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the
[George Corley]: people who create them. I'm George Corley and with me over in Germany we
[George Corley]: have CD Covington
[CD Covington]: Hi.
[George Corley]: Yeah, so I had you on, you have a column for Tor that covers science fiction
[George Corley]: and fantasy stuff for, from a linguistic perspective, and you've got a
[George Corley]: YouTube channel that covers the science fiction fantasy linguistics, but
[George Corley]: the most sort of important thing that we were going to, the most like
[George Corley]: pressing thing we were going to cover is you are writing a book about world
[George Corley]: building, linguistic world building, for science fiction and fantasy properties.
[George Corley]: So, um, I, maybe we can start out with what is your background in linguistics
[George Corley]: and how did you get interested in this topic? It's sort of related to conlanging.
[George Corley]: I'm sure you encounter conlangs
[CD Covington]: Yeah.
[George Corley]: as you are talking about all this stuff, but also like a broader world building
[George Corley]: thing. So like how did you get interested in this and involved in this
[George Corley]: and you know give us a little bit of a background there.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, I got my master's in linguistics from the University of Georgia in 2019.
[CD Covington]: I wrote about German verbs.
[CD Covington]: But I've been reading science fiction since I was 12 or something. And I've
[CD Covington]: been writing since forever and I started writing science fiction about 20,
[CD Covington]: 25 years ago maybe more seriously than I had been when I was, you know, a kid.
[CD Covington]: And I love reading, obviously. And I was just finishing up my master's when
[CD Covington]: I had the idea that I could write about linguistics in science fiction,
[CD Covington]: because I was reading a lot of, well, let's see, Arrival had come out
[CD Covington]: fairly recently, and The Expanse was just airing for the first time on TV, and
[CD Covington]: you can see like
[CD Covington]: the Belta slang, Belta Creole.
[CD Covington]: And I was like, well, maybe I could... do something interesting with this.
[CD Covington]: And I was like, I wrote a little pitch and they were like, yeah, sounds great.
[CD Covington]: So I wrote about Arrival, because it was kind of part of my pitch and I wrote
[CD Covington]: about The Expanse. I wrote about Babel-17 from Chip Delaney from the 70s. It's
[CD Covington]: like
[George Corley]: Oh, interesting.
[CD Covington]: the computer, like it's a computer language that is being taking over people's
[CD Covington]: brains and turning them into like, I don't know, computer, it was. very
[CD Covington]: it was a Chip Delaney book basically it's very strange
[George Corley]: Okay.
[CD Covington]: uh it was very well written with it just also very uh the brain is a computer
[CD Covington]: and can be literally programmed by this programming language that this alien
[CD Covington]: language he's gonna like um well it's fiction right
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: Right, it's going to like like well it's fiction.
[CD Covington]: That was a lot of... is how i answer a lot of things.
[CD Covington]: well it's fiction but um one of my favorite book series is CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series
[George Corley]: Mm-hmm.
[CD Covington]: and she's not super conlanger but she does invent at least surface level
[CD Covington]: languages for her books. Do
[CD Covington]: Are you familiar with her?
[George Corley]: uh, I, I have read one of her works. I think mostly what she focuses on is
[George Corley]: like these interpreters, right?
[CD Covington]: Yeah, in the Foreigner series, yeah.
[George Corley]: That are between the aliens and the humans and have to like navigate the
[George Corley]: culture and the language. But yeah, it's, it's sort of everything's represented
[George Corley]: as English, except for some isolated words.
[CD Covington]: Mm-hmm.
[CD Covington]: Yeah. And she has... She refers frequently to the structure of their language
[CD Covington]: and how their verb forms require various math, lots of math, because you have
[CD Covington]: to calculate the number of people that are involved in the situation, and that
[CD Covington]: also includes the numerology of the room around you and all this other complicated
[CD Covington]: math just to conjugate your verbs and get your pronouns right. And that's
[CD Covington]: pretty cool, but probably not working any sort of... reality-based anything.
[CD Covington]: But it's really cool because they're aliens and they're very different than
[CD Covington]: humans. They have different psychology, different biology. And that's one
[CD Covington]: of the things that I'm going to get into a lot in my book. How the...
[CD Covington]: How you can do intercultural communication is a big issue at most of her
[CD Covington]: books, really. But in Foreigner especially, the whole way that people, the
[CD Covington]: humans and the atevi, can't understand the word friend. Atevi don't have
[CD Covington]: the concept of love or friend or like.
[CD Covington]: It's fine. They don't have the concept of liking or loving or friendship or
[CD Covington]: anything like that. They have man'chi, which is sort of like a herding instinct
[CD Covington]: that humans don't understand. So when they first met, the humans and the
[CD Covington]: atevi were like, oh, this is great. They're just a little bit weird, but
[CD Covington]: they're like us, so it'll be fine. And the humans basically assumed that
[CD Covington]: the atevi would all be their friends. And the atevi were kind of like, We
[CD Covington]: assume they're going to learn manners someday. Humans never learned manners.
[CD Covington]: It was like a war, and it was great. Humans lost. And they're like, the atevi
[CD Covington]: said, you can stay on this island. Stay over there. And while you're staying on
[CD Covington]: your little island over here, you're going to give us the technology that
[CD Covington]: you brought with you because you're from outer space. And we're not going
[CD Covington]: to be living in our, they're in the steam age. At the time, they had steam
[CD Covington]: locomotives. And part of the treaty was that humans would share the technology.
[CD Covington]: But it had to be translated into the atevi's
[CD Covington]: language using their math, which is a little bit different than human math because
[CD Covington]: there's a lot more of it. They do all the complicated math in their head.
[George Corley]: Right. Okay.
[CD Covington]: Yeah. So
[CD Covington]: That was part of how I got into the whole writing about linguistics and science
[CD Covington]: fiction because you really can. There's so much in there where people who think
[CD Covington]: about it do it. And I want to get more people to think about it.
[George Corley]: Yeah. I mean, the that's an interesting thing when you're talking about
[George Corley]: alien psychology is it can be very much a wide open slate because you
[George Corley]: can predict, I said this on an earlier podcast, like you can, you can sort
[George Corley]: of predict some things about phonology by knowing like what organs they
[George Corley]: have and what, what kinds of either sounds or gestures they could produce,
[George Corley]: right? But the psychological aspect, we probably don't know enough about
[George Corley]: human brain structure. influencing language to actually extrapolate out and figure
[George Corley]: out how alien brain structure would influence language. Right. Um, I mean,
[George Corley]: we can probably have some foundational things about what language does and how it
[George Corley]: would have to work in order to function as a language, but otherwise it's
[George Corley]: pretty open. Uh, I, I do. So I did read a few of your articles for your
[George Corley]: con. Uh, I did read some of your column. Uh, I have to take issue with
[George Corley]: your take on Arrival. Or not,
[CD Covington]: Hmm?
[George Corley]: not Arrival... on Embassy Town for,
[CD Covington]: Uhhh
[George Corley]: from your video, but, uh, no, I,
[CD Covington]: That's all right.
[George Corley]: I mean, it's just a matter of taste. Like, uh, I think we agree that.
[George Corley]: The language of the Hosts is functionally impossible. It
[CD Covington]: Hehehe
[George Corley]: could not happen. I was able to accept that because I felt like the book
[George Corley]: was self-aware about that, especially with the linguist character, like
[George Corley]: pointing out like this doesn't make any sense and then becoming obsessed with
[George Corley]: it. But for you, it just wasn't working,
[CD Covington]: Yeah,
[CD Covington]: yeah,
[George Corley]: I think
[CD Covington]: it just
[George Corley]: another
[CD Covington]: didn't work.
[George Corley]: thing. Yeah. It's another thing to think about is.
[George Corley]: You know, like on this show, most of the time when I'm talking about things
[George Corley]: and the way I'm thinking about things, it's in terms of making a language
[George Corley]: naturalistic and making the world building naturalistic. But what you were
[George Corley]: talking about with the atevi, I think you, you have some idea of balancing
[George Corley]: like the naturalism with the art of it.
[CD Covington]: Mm-hmm.
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: Yeah.
[George Corley]: Can you talk a little bit about that?
[CD Covington]: I'm just gonna keep going back to CJ Cherry because she's really good at making
[CD Covington]: aliens that aren't just like people that are painted blue or have pointy
[CD Covington]: ears or whatever. And
[CD Covington]: that's, I mean, like I love the Vulcans, but they're just like people with
[CD Covington]: pointy ears and no feelings.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, the one thing she does that I wish I could do on my own writing a
[CD Covington]: lot better than I do is just develop these societies and the way they work.
[CD Covington]: And then they're just so different from the way people work. and she makes it
[CD Covington]: believable that they make sense. If that makes sense. I don't even know if I'm
[CD Covington]: answering your question right now. But the. So the art part is figuring out
[CD Covington]: how to make something realistic and believable that's not human, if that's
[CD Covington]: what you're going for. If you're just going for making two different human societies
[CD Covington]: on a secondary world planet or whatever, that's... fine and different,
[CD Covington]: but you can still kind of do this sort of thing because they won't have
[CD Covington]: the psychological differences, but you know, whatever.
[CD Covington]: Like the trick is getting your world building down, right? So that's what
[CD Covington]: I'm writing my book about. To get your character, your other culture to seem
[CD Covington]: plausible. And we I we know how to we know how to do that. Writers already
[CD Covington]: do that in things like history and geology, geography, maybe some do geology,
[CD Covington]: I don't know.
[CD Covington]: Your maps of your spacestations. You know, like we...
[CD Covington]: Think about that. Sometimes people even throw
[CD Covington]: in music and whatever, but what people don't really think about as much as
[CD Covington]: I think would be cool is how people use language because that's something
[CD Covington]: we do in day-to-day life. Like I don't, I mean, I'm a linguist. I do think
[CD Covington]: about it all the time, but your average person probably doesn't sit around
[CD Covington]: thinking about, oh, why does that sound like that? And why is, why did,
[CD Covington]: does this dialect work? How is that compared to that dialect? Because that's
[CD Covington]: like what I do all day. Not all day, but...
[CD Covington]: So your characters will be aware of this. Like, you, general, people watching
[CD Covington]: this podcast or listening to it, are aware that people who sound like me
[CD Covington]: are probably white, probably from the East Coast of the United States. kind
[CD Covington]: of thing and probably getting developing, I don't want to say prejudices,
[CD Covington]: but sort of just a sort of like a picture in your head of me. But if I talk
[CD Covington]: kind of like the way I did, I lived in Georgia for four years and I lived
[CD Covington]: in North Carolina for like 20 before that. So I did pick up a bit of Southern
[CD Covington]: in my life. And you get a different picture if somebody talks like that. It's a
[CD Covington]: different person. And so we're aware of this. And if your characters are also
[CD Covington]: aware of this. you're adding that extra layer of something cool. That's
[CD Covington]: kind of the art that I'm trying to get to, I think. People kind of add that
[CD Covington]: extra layer of...
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: verisimilitude. I've never been able to figure out how to pronounce that word.
[CD Covington]: But does that make sense?
[George Corley]: Yeah, no, you're, you're totally
[CD Covington]: I'm gonna
[George Corley]: making
[George Corley]: sense. And I, I totally agree. And I see, uh, I mean, you've pointed out places
[George Corley]: where authors have done very well with their linguistic world building,
[George Corley]: but very often it is like a side note. Uh, just like something that is
[George Corley]: mentioned. in a character description once and kind of left or it is, you know, mentioned
[George Corley]: on the side. Sometimes there's very, you know, there's, you know, ways of
[George Corley]: describing language that I wish would go away. I, I have said before,
[George Corley]: when an author says a language is guttural, I do not know what that actually
[George Corley]: means.
[CD Covington]: Mm-mm. They're probably,
[George Corley]: It's
[CD Covington]: they're like, yeah, like they mean it sounds like German probably, but like.
[George Corley]: Yeah. I, but like, yeah, it's, it's just, you know, guttural kind of has a
[George Corley]: meaning in linguistics, but not really.
[George Corley]: And then
[George Corley]: the, the languages, the real world languages that I have heard described
[George Corley]: as guttural are like, really?
[George Corley]: Like I've heard Cantonese described as guttural. I'm like, really? I'm not sure
[George Corley]: about that, but, uh, yeah. there's
[George Corley]: There's so much like untapped potential in a lot of works for that. And you know.
[George Corley]: We're here, you know, my podcast is geared towards conlangers and there's a
[George Corley]: lot of linguistic world buildings that can go behind the conlangs, but you don't
[George Corley]: necessarily have to have a full conlang. Right?
[CD Covington]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[George Corley]: Um, uh, let's back up. So your plan for, for your book. So. What, what kinds
[George Corley]: of topics do you, are you going to cover? And like, is there going to be mention
[George Corley]: of conlanging specifically, or is it going to be mostly just all of this
[George Corley]: like background sociolinguistic stuff?
[CD Covington]: Yeah, so I will probably touch briefly on conlining. I am not a conlanging
[CD Covington]: expert, and there's definitely much better guides out there already in existence.
[CD Covington]: It's like they're all behind you on the shelf there, I think.
[George Corley]: Uh, yeah. Yeah. There's,
[CD Covington]: Yeah.
[George Corley]: um, this one. Yeah.
[CD Covington]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: I think I'll probably haven't really found that part out yet. But probably
[CD Covington]: talk about a few that are like probably mentioned Tolkien and like Klingon
[CD Covington]: and a couple of things that say, Hi, people have done this. You don't
[CD Covington]: have to. If you really want to
[CD Covington]: g read this book or read that book, go to this website and find the resources
[CD Covington]: there is a community have fun. But yeah, what I'm going to focus on the part
[CD Covington]: I have not quite completely finished yet. is, I haven't done the morphology
[CD Covington]: section yet, because I'm like, is phonetics? Morphology, and like, morphology
[CD Covington]: is really cool, but I never take it, I didn't, they didn't offer morphology
[CD Covington]: class at Georgia when I was there. So the only class I had was in morphology,
[CD Covington]: was phonology and morphology of German.
[George Corley]: Oh.
[CD Covington]: So it's very, very specific. I have a very, very limited knowledge of morphology.
[CD Covington]: So I mean, I need to find a nice textbook to bother, or just be like, here's
[CD Covington]: how it works in English and German. Not really useful or broadly applicable.
[CD Covington]: But so the verdict, I've written the most of the phonetics section. And so it's
[CD Covington]: basically half of my semester of phonetics and phonology. So the phonetics
[CD Covington]: half, in 10,000 words. It's super crash
[CD Covington]: course. No Praat,
[CD Covington]: none of that. But,
[George Corley]: and so
[CD Covington]: yeah.
[George Corley]: are you talking just like introducing people to phonetics, like actual phonetics
[George Corley]: of human language? Are you also talking about like speculative phonetics
[George Corley]: of alien languages?
[CD Covington]: Yeah, yeah. I have a section that I'm probably going to expand all of this
[CD Covington]: in the future as well, once I have a full draft together.
[CD Covington]: I want to talk about how mouth like phonetics, the vocal tract is affected
[CD Covington]: by the... phonetics is affected by the shape of the vocal tract, right? Because
[CD Covington]: the mouth, the vocal tract is a tube and it's a differently shaped tube.
[CD Covington]: It's a weird tube and the length of the tube determines what sounds you can
[CD Covington]: make, blah, blah. And the human mouth, the human, what's this called? palate, is two,
[CD Covington]: two and a half, three inches long. What if
[CD Covington]: you have like a Wolfman and you've got like a four or five inch palate,
[CD Covington]: how many more sounds can you make? How many more palatal,
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: like stops can you do? How many more different tongue positions can you get?
[CD Covington]: What if you've got like jowly dog things? Actually, I do talk about Scooby-Doo
[CD Covington]: in the draft I have right now?
[George Corley]: Hahaha
[CD Covington]: Because original Scooby-Doo is actually probably not that far off from
[CD Covington]: how a dog would talk if it could speak. because
[George Corley]: Oh really?
[CD Covington]: that's what I'm thinking. Because, I mean, we don't have, you don't know. Great
[CD Covington]: Danes can't speak, but they're Jowly dogs. So you might notice, I'm gonna
[CD Covington]: talk about the 70s Scooby, the more modern Scooby sounds like an actual person
[CD Covington]: talking, which is kind of not great, but so
[CD Covington]: early Scooby, the one I grew up with. So like, "Ruh roh, Raggy." And he doesn't
[George Corley]: Mm-hmm.
[CD Covington]: really round his lips very much.
[George Corley]: Oh,
[CD Covington]: And...
[George Corley]: okay.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, because the great Danes can't, they've got like a jowly, so they can't
[CD Covington]: do this. They're just kind of jowly. And like using an R for that or a rhotic
[CD Covington]: for that, any sort of sound that the dog can't pronounce. Why not? R is
[CD Covington]: kind of just this default, we don't know. It's a rhotic.
[George Corley]: Hehehehe
[CD Covington]: Because we don't, we don't know what, we don't know what R's are. It's just
[CD Covington]: everything that's else. It's not a stop, it's not anything else. It's just
[CD Covington]: an R sound. So, "Ruh-roh, Raggy" kind of makes sense.
[George Corley]: Yeah. Um, if you are, if you do one thing when talking about like an alien
[George Corley]: language, an alien or a language for something that's not human, um, how do
[George Corley]: you feel about the balance of like making it to like what that would actually
[George Corley]: sound like what the actual creature would be able to do versus making
[George Corley]: things that won't lose a reader.
[CD Covington]: Hmm.
[George Corley]: And I, I understand that, you know, different writers might be, might have
[George Corley]: different thresholds on that, but like making it, you know, do you think
[George Corley]: you should be concerned about whether it's going to be pronounced or comprehensible
[George Corley]: to the human reader or, um, like focus more on like the accuracy of the
[George Corley]: physiology you're constructing.
[CD Covington]: Hmm, I think it depends on what you're trying to do with it and like your personal
[CD Covington]: Goals, I guess with how you're writing it and also if you ever want to get
[CD Covington]: an ebook made or not an ebook audiobook Because if you're having an audiobook
[CD Covington]: narrator, you've also to be able to pronounce the letter It's right You
[CD Covington]: know on
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: in it be like, well, this is we can't do this down or just like if they
[CD Covington]: have like there's a lot of like aliens that have extra speech organs or whatever,
[CD Covington]: and like some sort of resonance chamber, and you're like, well, we can't do
[CD Covington]: resonance chamber with this human speaker here, so we'll
[George Corley]: have to do
[CD Covington]: just,
[George Corley]: some audio engineering on that.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, we'll play with audio and, or just get like a kazoo or something,
[CD Covington]: I don't know. Actually, that would be hilarious. Every time they have to
[CD Covington]: do the thing that honk a kazoo.
[CD Covington]: It's difficult and I haven't figured out how I want to explain that yet.
[CD Covington]: That's in the future part of the book that I'm written yet.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, the.
[CD Covington]: Like you want to be able to spell it for people.
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: And that's part of part of that is deciding how you want to spell it. And that's
[CD Covington]: an author's decision. And then you get into like, yeah, do we want it to be
[CD Covington]: pronounceable? And I admit, there's a bunch of books that I've read, and
[CD Covington]: the character names are just sort of look like a really bad Scrabble draw.
[George Corley]: Hahaha
[CD Covington]: Sometimes they do, so like this is a really bad scrabble draw. And I just kind
[CD Covington]: of look at them and go like, that's that name. And I just kind of remember
[CD Covington]: it as that's that name for the rest of the book. And I'm like, I'm not going
[CD Covington]: to pronounce it. It's just S in a bunch of letters or whatever.
[CD Covington]: That's that works for me as a reader sometimes but a lot of maybe there's
[CD Covington]: other readers who that wouldn't work for they're like no, I've been able to
[CD Covington]: pronounce it and
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: It is hard finding that balance and sometimes it's just kind of well, I guess
[CD Covington]: that's not my target audience if they're just gonna skip it because they
[CD Covington]: don't know how to pronounce a word. You're like, probably not my target
[CD Covington]: audience. But if it is your target audience, target audience, why can't
[CD Covington]: I pronounce that?
[CD Covington]: They'll stick with you probably, right? Because if, maybe if you're the kind
[CD Covington]: of person who's writing that sort of book where you actually are thinking
[CD Covington]: about a lot of these things, or game situation, or whatever. maybe you're
[CD Covington]: making it be more about language. And maybe your audience is gonna want to read
[CD Covington]: that because they're interested in reading about language.
[George Corley]: Yeah. And
[George Corley]: It does depend on what the audience is and your thing about names like
[George Corley]: You do have to have character names, right? And
[CD Covington]: Yes, usually.
[George Corley]: it's reasonable to say that your character names, if possible, are going
[George Corley]: to be from the language. There might be cases where they are just impossible
[George Corley]: to render in Roman script, like they're from a sign language or the sounds
[George Corley]: are too radically different and maybe you do translated names or something,
[George Corley]: but usually you want to have character names from the language. Um You said
[George Corley]: that you're not really going to do a whole lot of mention of conlanging, but
[George Corley]: like one thing that could be useful -- I don't know if you are going to
[George Corley]: mention it is the concept of a naming language where it's
[George Corley]: just a limited conlang with just some phonology and morphology just so
[George Corley]: you can make names, right?
[CD Covington]: Yeah, I think that's what I'm, I didn't know it was called that. So...
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[George Corley]: Well, it's nice to have some exchange of ideas.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, yeah, I love learning things. Why I'm here.
[George Corley]: Yeah. Um, but you know, that's, that's something to, to make names within a
[George Corley]: culture consistent. Uh, what about issues of like prestige dialects and,
[George Corley]: you know, you, you mentioned about having this world building set out can
[George Corley]: help with understanding about characters. Well, here's the question is that
[George Corley]: so you have prestige in sociolinguistics, we have stereotypes about different dialects,
[George Corley]: like one thing I would ask is, what are your thoughts on how to convey
[George Corley]: character perceptions of that without necessarily endorsing the
[CD Covington]: Hmm
[George Corley]: idea that that's like a real thing, like, or
[George Corley]: that's, that's like a valid thing.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, because one of my professors in grad school had a personal vendetta against
[CD Covington]: the word prestige. Anytime somebody mentioned prestige language, like, there's
[CD Covington]: no such thing as prestige. I was like, well, true. But because the way I
[CD Covington]: like to think of it is a prestige language, like, prestige has nothing to do
[CD Covington]: with the language itself. It's how society
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: gives to the language. And that's. It's a real concept and it's a real world thing
[CD Covington]: and it's not a good thing. But it's a thing that exists and we have to deal
[CD Covington]: with it just like everything.
[George Corley]: Ha ha
[CD Covington]: Um,
[CD Covington]: everything
[George Corley]: Everything.
[CD Covington]: it's, it's a thing where just, if we live in society, we have to take, we
[CD Covington]: don't have to take it, but we know we have to deal with what we live with
[CD Covington]: in this society we live in. And. Yeah, in the book I'm, the novel I'm revising,
[CD Covington]: well I will be revising after I finish all of this, because this is going
[CD Covington]: to be my first priority if my Kickstarter funds. [inaudible] Is the main character,
[CD Covington]: the two main characters are working class people, they work in a Waffle
[CD Covington]: House, but it's in space, and they have to-- They want to save their favorite
[CD Covington]: bar from being gentrified. So they crowdfund to get the license for it. And
[CD Covington]: the way they talk is normal, I guess. I mean, it sounds normal to me, but
[CD Covington]: then there's another person who they interact with who's a manager and
[CD Covington]: her, the way she speaks is just different. Like she speaks at a more academic
[CD Covington]: level, which is... how I talk, if I'm writing. That's my writing
[CD Covington]: voice. She speaks in my writing voice,
[George Corley]: Mm-hmm.
[CD Covington]: which is kind of funny. But like, that's kind of one way to do it. You
[CD Covington]: can kind of, I don't have any comment on it.
[CD Covington]: I don't think have any comment on it, but somebody could. But like that you
[CD Covington]: can do that kind of thing, give characters different voices, different registers
[CD Covington]: of formality. And maybe something somebody can comment on it like, wow, she talks
[CD Covington]: fancy. And I don't know how to talk fancy like her. I'm glad she's dealing
[CD Covington]: with all the fancy stuff. Cause if we went up to them and started talking like
[CD Covington]: us, it'd be, they would ignore us because we sound uneducated because we just
[CD Covington]: baristas
[George Corley]: Mm-hmm.
[CD Covington]: and waitresses. And so there are ways of doing that. And if you're like,
[CD Covington]: if you're writing a book about language, which I also really endorse, I think
[CD Covington]: it's a great thing to do because I want to read them. I want to read books about
[CD Covington]: language. Is have people actually explicitly comment on it, just kind of do
[CD Covington]: like. So if it's somebody who has to register shift or style shift in different
[CD Covington]: locations. They can comment on, "Man, I hate putting on this voice. I hate
[CD Covington]: putting on the businessman voice. I hate putting on the ... whatever."
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: voice kind of thing. Cause there's, yeah, like there's ways to do it.
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: subtly and less subtly.
[George Corley]: Right, right, right. That's a good point is have a character explicitly
[George Corley]: do that because there are people who have to think that way.
[CD Covington]: Mm-hmm.
[George Corley]: It doesn't, it's not necessarily always automatic. And It is, it is interesting
[George Corley]: to think about like, how would the characters be perceiving it? It has to
[George Corley]: be, you know, from their perspective, but also, you know, maybe a variety of perspectives
[George Corley]: on what it is. Maybe some people buy into the prestige and other people like
[George Corley]: reject it, or they are uncomfortable about it or recognize that it's arbitrary in
[George Corley]: some way. Um,
[George Corley]: it is, and if you do, you know, write about linguistics in the story, that
[George Corley]: that's definitely something that I would like to see more of too. Um, uh,
[George Corley]: what else can we, um, so This book is going to be on a Kickstarter. When
[George Corley]: is that Kickstarter kicking off?
[CD Covington]: August 15th.
[George Corley]: August
[George Corley]: 15th.
[CD Covington]: it's gonna run, yeah, it's gonna run for about, for a month. So until September
[CD Covington]: 14th or 15th, whichever 30 days ends up being, I'm not sure exactly how,
[George Corley]: Yeah,
[CD Covington]: Kickstarter counts that.
[George Corley]: well, so I will definitely get this up before in time for people to contribute.
[George Corley]: What is what is your like first goal for this Kickstarter?
[CD Covington]: 1500.
[George Corley]: 1500 yeah so that's doable guys we can uh-- I don't know if my audience
[George Corley]: by themselves can do this but we can try because yeah these publishing
[George Corley]: uh Kickstarters tend to be pretty low because it's just you're just doing
[George Corley]: enough for what like a print run or what?
[CD Covington]: This book is going to be... there's ebook rewards and print and hardback.
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: And I've got some really cool limited edition rewards that I'm not going
[CD Covington]: to spoil until it's live.
[CD Covington]: But I've also got like, if you're not interested in the book tiers, I've got
[CD Covington]: a three euro level... everything's in euros because I'm in Germany... that's going
[CD Covington]: to be a collection of my Tor essays. It's edited.
[CD Covington]: And the higher we back, the more we get funding we get, the
[CD Covington]: more essays there will be. It'll be edited, have a nice little book cover, all
[CD Covington]: that kind of thing. And it's only like, it's like what, $4 right now, I
[CD Covington]: think.
[George Corley]: Yeah,
[CD Covington]: I'm not sure exactly
[George Corley]: well,
[CD Covington]: the exchange rate.
[George Corley]: that's, that's great. And, uh, so, and it will be, uh, A Writer's Guide
[George Corley]: to Linguistic Worldbuilding. Um, that's, it sounds like something that a
[George Corley]: lot of my audience would be interested for doing the background world building
[George Corley]: work behind the conlangs. Uh,
[CD Covington]: Mm-hmm.
[George Corley]: and also for a lot of, you know, writers out there who are interested
[George Corley]: in how language interacts with the world and want to include that in their
[George Corley]: writing, which I presume is your primary audience. Um, yeah. Uh, let's,
[CD Covington]: Yeah, like I'm hoping to write a book that's interesting to more
[CD Covington]: people than just writers, books, games, and that sort of thing. Because I'm
[CD Covington]: hoping to make this kind of like, I want to learn more about linguistics,
[CD Covington]: where can I start? And
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: also, like these are some really great books. What books does Connie like that
[CD Covington]: did it well? What books can she
[George Corley]: Right,
[CD Covington]: recommend?
[George Corley]: right, right.
[CD Covington]: Because
[George Corley]: CJ
[CD Covington]: I'm
[CD Covington]: CJ Cherry, A+.
[George Corley]: and
[CD Covington]: Um, Arkady Martine, also A+. Um, Ursula LeGuin, but she's just amazing
[CD Covington]: anyway. I don't think [inaudible] worldbuilding. I just think she's
[CD Covington]: an A-plus writer. But, uh, some of my favorite books that just are like, that
[CD Covington]: do it really well, I think, and I've written about many of them for my
[CD Covington]: Tor column, actually. But, no,
[CD Covington]: they're different examples
[CD Covington]: and more detail.
[George Corley]: a different context. Yeah. All right. What really...
[George Corley]: What about like the integration?
[George Corley]: Okay, I need to think.
[George Corley]: when you're integrating this into the narrative, like...
[George Corley]: I know that there's going to be all kinds of different ways that it goes
[George Corley]: into the narrative. Like how much like, do you like things where the language
[George Corley]: is a part of the world building and it affects things, but it's like, like
[George Corley]: a secondary plot versus things like Arrival where language is the, the main
[George Corley]: thing.
[CD Covington]: Mm. Yeah, I like both.
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: One of the, I'm just going to grab this book off my shelf.
[CD Covington]: It's out of print, I got it used. Hellburner. Actually, I think it's
[CD Covington]: back in print and ebook only. I don't have my glasses on.
[CD Covington]: I know that in this book, one of the things she did was they had a very big,
[CD Covington]: oh no, it was heavy time. There's a book that she wrote in the 80s. I should
[CD Covington]: have my glasses on. But they're very slangy, 1992. And a lot of the slangy
[CD Covington]: is just very, it sounds like somebody from the 80s,
[George Corley]: Uh huh.
[CD Covington]: super dated, but that's part of the world building because the people who
[CD Covington]: speak it are living on ships and they've got their own little thing going
[CD Covington]: on. So they have their own little language This sounds kind of 80s. But it's
[CD Covington]: also, oh, god, on this page, I'm looking at it. The new readout says, CAF,
[CD Covington]: MKT, and MSFUNC. Priority MS was blinking. I'm like, oh, Christ. He keyed
[CD Covington]: MS in the hash mark. And it's just keyed. He keyed the button. And keyed
[CD Covington]: isn't a word I would use for that, but it's the one they use in. this book.
[CD Covington]: And this isn't really about linguistics at all.
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, it's kind of... it's Company Wars, I think. Yeah, I haven't
[CD Covington]: read this book in a while. Yeah,
[CD Covington]: so you can you can kind of do that. Not so easily, but like you can make
[CD Covington]: it part of the world building without being. About it, that makes sense.
[George Corley]: And so when you're thinking about like representing these different dialect
[George Corley]: differences, how do you feel about it's not uncommon for authors to like
[George Corley]: take a real world English dialect and use that to represent a a dialect of whatever
[George Corley]: world they're doing. How do you feel like about things like that? Like
[George Corley]: the these places where you're like using the stereotypes and associations
[George Corley]: in the real world to reflect the other world?
[CD Covington]: I have complicated feelings on that.
[CD Covington]: When I read that, I'm just kind of depending on the context, I guess, I get
[CD Covington]: irritated by it. Eye dialect is just one of those things that's just sort of
[CD Covington]: out of fashion for good reason.
[George Corley]: I hate
[CD Covington]: Right now,
[CD Covington]: it's not great.
[CD Covington]: But so. On the topic of eye dialect, when you have people who are from
[CD Covington]: that dialect, writing in their own dialect and spelling it, writing in their
[CD Covington]: dialect, that's a different matter than being
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: like, writing, 'enry, 'iggins or whatever. Because that's, that's what I'm
[CD Covington]: talking about. Like 'enry 'iggins, "Oh, Henry Higgins, just you wait." "The rain
[George Corley]: I-
[CD Covington]: in Spain falls mainly on the plain. You can write it like that.
[George Corley]: The, the, I mean, there, that's a story that was about that particular dialect,
[George Corley]: but like the,
[George Corley]: the thing with
[CD Covington]: bad example.
[George Corley]: eye dialect and, um, if, if people aren't familiar with the term, eye dialect is
[George Corley]: where you respell words in order to reflect pronunciation in another dialect,
[George Corley]: um, although I mean, that's, that's the, the basic point, although sometimes
[George Corley]: I question whether the respellings are actually necessary for that because sometimes
[George Corley]: they like I've seen your spelled as y o r e and i'm like what exactly Is the
[George Corley]: different pronunciation that they're trying to represent? but um
[CD Covington]: of your.
[George Corley]: Yeah but um basically This was very common in like 19th century and early
[George Corley]: 20th century literature. It
[CD Covington]: all
[George Corley]: still
[CD Covington]: over the place
[George Corley]: happens.
[CD Covington]: in Dickens.
[George Corley]: Yeah. It, it still happens in a lot of places, but, um, to me, it's like
[George Corley]: an unnecessary barrier to your reader because like I see it and I don't know
[George Corley]: how to pronounce this stuff. And also like. It often gets into stereotypes
[George Corley]: and stuff. It, it's really interesting to see historical examples because
[George Corley]: I have seen like where you have like what, and it's spelled W apostrophe
[George Corley]: AT. So that was telling somebody that it was,
[CD Covington]: It's
[CD Covington]: not [ʍʌt].
[George Corley]: Yeah, it's telling somebody that the default expected by the author was
[George Corley]: the [ʍʌt]. Whereas like nowadays people might do the opposite and do like hw
[George Corley]: for someone who
[CD Covington]: Mm-hmm.
[George Corley]: actually says [ʍʌt]? instead
[CD Covington]: Yeah.
[George Corley]: of [wʌt] but uh you know, it's interesting in a historical perspective if
[George Corley]: you like research it but like maybe try not to do that, especially if your
[George Corley]: Dialects you're doing are not actually English
[CD Covington]: Yeah, or your own, because there's been, there were two, two or three stories
[CD Covington]: in the Nebula nominees this year. The Nebula Award Science Fiction Writers
[CD Covington]: of America. Those are the Nebula Awards every year, in case no one knows. And
[CD Covington]: at least two of them were written by Black writers
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: that were written in their particular variety of English
[CD Covington]: And it was great because
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: they were represent... It's... when it's written by a Black writer, it's underrepresented.
[CD Covington]: When it's written by a white writer who's kind of being a stereotyping,
[CD Covington]: not
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: super great. So there
[George Corley]: I am.
[CD Covington]: is fine grain distinct... like, what's the word? It's not black and white.
[CD Covington]: I don't want to say it's not black and white, but it's...
[George Corley]: Yeah. I mean, uh, and if you're going to represent, if you're going to be like
[George Corley]: in the real world and represent, um, a real world dialect or, um, I mean, there's,
[George Corley]: there's cases where things that look like eye dialect aren't actually like,
[George Corley]: uh, Also, cause like there, there are these conventional spellings that
[George Corley]: are used for African-American English. There's also like people, people do
[George Corley]: write in Scots with Scots
[George Corley]: spellings and things like that. I think in those cases, it's like consult with
[George Corley]: someone who actually speaks it.
[CD Covington]: Yes. If you do not yourself speak that language, please
[George Corley]: but
[CD Covington]: contact someone who does.
[George Corley]: it might not be something to like grab for your fantasy culture. But yeah.
[CD Covington]: Yeah, no.
[George Corley]: Wrapping up here. So the Kickstarter is coming up everybody, August 15th, check
[George Corley]: that out, get this book out because it will be useful to writers. It'll
[George Corley]: be useful to a lot of people. And I think that a lot of people listening
[George Corley]: may want to hear a perspective on, you know, how to incorporate some like social
[George Corley]: linguistics and, and world, world building of like the stuff around your
[George Corley]: language into things. Uh, so go check that out and, uh, Connie, do you have
[George Corley]: any final thoughts, final advice before we tap out?
[CD Covington]: kind of in general or about the topic.
[George Corley]: Well, I mean, yeah, just like any advice about linguistic worldbuilding that
[George Corley]: you would like people to stick with people here.
[CD Covington]: There was one, I did a little Q&A and there was one I thought of and I can't
[CD Covington]: remember what it is right now.
[CD Covington]: If you're coming up with names for a culture, coming up with for people, places,
[CD Covington]: and things, and you're looking at the letters and it looks like a bad Scrabble
[CD Covington]: hand, start over. But
[CD Covington]: Think about sounds that make sense together. Not that make sense together,
[CD Covington]: but if you have like Ghirardelli, there's a little bag of Ghirardelli chips right
[CD Covington]: here, and like cherry. They probably don't come from the same language,
[CD Covington]: right? They don't sound very similar to each other. But like, also, that's
[CD Covington]: a really bad example because cherry comes from cerise, which is French,
[CD Covington]: so it's more closely related to Italian than English. But it was just two
[CD Covington]: things I had closest to hand. Or like, bottle. Bottle and Ghirardelli. Don't
[CD Covington]: sound very familiar.
[George Corley]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[CD Covington]: Or flask. come with better examples. I'm really bad at improvising. This is why
[CD Covington]: I'm a writer, I'm not an improvisational speaker.
[George Corley]: Yeah.
[CD Covington]: But like. Readers may or may not notice if you do that. But if a reader
[CD Covington]: does notice that it's being consistent and the names sound like they could
[CD Covington]: plausibly come from the same place, or follow at least the same rules of
[CD Covington]: phonetics, like same syllable structure, same allowable consonant clusters,
[CD Covington]: if they're allowed at all, all that sort of thing, people might, if they don't
[CD Covington]: notice, fine. If they do notice, they will love you for it, right? Be like,
[CD Covington]: "Oh my gosh, they made the words that make sense. It sounds like they're from
[CD Covington]: the same language." And like, if you borrow words, change them a little bit.
[CD Covington]: So like we don't say tsunami [tsɯnami] in English, we say [sunami].
[CD Covington]: We don't say angst [ɑŋst], we say [æŋst].
[George Corley]: Right.
[CD Covington]: We don't say zeitgeist [tsaɪtgaɪst], we say [zaɪtgaɪst], but.
[CD Covington]: everything matches the phonology and phonetics of the recipient language.
[George Corley]: Well, that's that's, uh, useful advice and you've
[CD Covington]: I hope
[George Corley]: used,
[CD Covington]: so.
[George Corley]: you've said a lot of useful advice today and,
[CD Covington]: Oh good.
[George Corley]: uh, I am excited for that book. I hope I can get a review copy, but, uh, well,
[George Corley]: let's, uh, everybody go. I will link to that in the show notes or the
[George Corley]: description on YouTube. to the Kickstarter for when it goes live. And
[George Corley]: we're going to, uh, and, um, check out. The column over on Tor as well.
[George Corley]: It's got a lot of useful, uh, information, you know, well, reviews of books
[George Corley]: that people listening to this podcast or watching this podcast probably will
[George Corley]: be interested in.
[George Corley]: And you also have your YouTube channel. So we can send people to that too.
[George Corley]: So thank you, Conni, for being on
[CD Covington]: Yeah.
[George Corley]: the show. And
[CD Covington]: Thanks for having me.
[George Corley]: yeah, and thank everyone else for listening or watching. and our patrons
[George Corley]: for funding this show and I'm going to say happy conlanging.
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