And that is our latest project,
the new Superman reboot...
Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages
and the people who create them.
I'm George Corley.
And over in sunny California, we have David J.
Peterson and Jessie Peterson.
Hello.
Ugh... Hello.
Goodness, David.
As usual, David cannot say hello like a normal person.
I think that's what you can conclude from this.
Yes.
Oh, I can't see my phone.
Look, I'm holding it.
I can see it.
And also, David has the most stylish microphone.
So.
OK, so
you guys have a bunch of things that you guys wanted to talk about, actually.
So
where should we start?
I just want to say...
Well, let's let's go ahead and not bury the lead here.
We are running a second language creation conference called Kopikon.
We ran the first one in September of 2023
at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
And the next one is going to be this
October, October 10th at the University of Edinburgh.
And so we're very excited about that.
And so if you're going to be in the Edinburgh
area or want to get to the Edinburgh area for October 10th,
we're doing a kind of shortened program because it's more like
I would say a destination thing.
It's going to be like a whole weekend of fun stuff.
But we're going to have some returning speakers.
That would be myself and Jessie and Biblaridion and then some new speakers
from our community, Jake Penny, creator of the Pankashku conlang for Madame Webb.
And if you saw the film and didn't notice
a conlang, it's because the conlang was cut very sadly.
One of those situations where Jake learned
that the conlang was cut when they went to see the film.
It's the type of thing that happens in Hollywood.
It shouldn't, but it does.
And, you know, it's not just language creators.
It happens to actors, too.
I, I wish they would inform people about that.
Because like I, I know of one other case, Paul Frommer had had that happen to him.
And it's just like, why?
Why don't you tell people when you've cut their material from the film?
Yeah, and I'll tell you this.
There was one experience very early on.
The the second ever job offer that came
to the Language Creation Society after Game of Thrones was a movie called Noah.
I was the president at that time and I created a new competition for it.
A shortened one.
And somebody got the job, Bill Weldon,
and he did the work.
It was good work.
They liked it.
But
I guess that it was for the I don't know if you ever saw Noah, but there I never
saw it, but there were these angels, six armed angel things.
I don't know.
Anyway, they were supposed to speak a conlang.
They ended up not speaking a conlang.
And but to the credit of the producer
on that film, who originally thought of the idea of having the conlang,
they told us that ahead of time, in fact, he contacted me ahead of time.
And I told Bill well before the movie had come out that all the conlang material
had been cut, they decided that they just didn't want those beings to speak at all.
Which, OK,
- he still got paid. - Creative choice.
He still got paid.
So there was that at least.
But but also it wasn't like he brought his
entire family to the screening of the movie to say, hey, check it out.
Here is my conlang on the big screen.
And then nothing because that is pretty much what happened to Jake.
And it is the type of thing that happens in Hollywood for others as well.
I've heard about it for actors, too,
especially on Defiance, a young actress, 16 years old, very excited.
This was going to be her first ever anything on television or film.
And she had a whole party.
Her family were going to watch the episode when it came out.
And and yeah, nothing.
Her character was cut entirely from the episode.
Yeah, that's that.
Yeah, that's that's that's why I say they should inform people,
because we understand that things get cut from films
and there's creative decisions there and editing.
But anyway, let's we don't need we need to move.
We need to move on for that.
But Jake will be there.
And I think there are there are there are places where you can see Pankashku...
Now, oh, yeah, even though it didn't make it in the film.
Oh, yeah.
Jake has used it in at least one relay and did kind of like a video preview of it.
Really good work.
And then we're also having Keras Saryan, who's who's from the community as well.
He's actually a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh,
you know, in in linguistics.
And so he's there doing language work all around and is going
to present some of his conlanging work as well.
Anyway, so that is October 10th, University of Edinburgh.
It's going to be like 12-ish to 5-ish.
And then there will be surrounding events.
OK, that's--
And it's going to be live streamed and there's not going to be any
of the technical issues that surrounded Kopikon I.
We hope!
David, you can't promise these things.
I'm going to speak it into existence.
Listen, we are going into it with more plans to take care of it.
But we can't promise it will be free of problems.
I am I am guessing that this like limited set of speakers is like a part of that.
Like to limit the scope of it so that it doesn't get too like crazy,
because I know LCC 11 was a little bit a little bit ago and I presented there and
it was there were too many people in multiple
rooms and it went a little bit haywire.
Yeah, if if you're going to do something like that, you need to go more of the
convention method where everybody goes in knowing that there's just going to be a
bunch of stuff and but you should expect at least
attendance somewhere in like the 500 to 3000
neighborhood so that everybody feels like they
had some attendance at their at their talks.
Yeah, yeah.
But here we have we have Edinburgh 2025.
All this great for people who are like in Europe and the UK
to go to,
you know, nice to bounce it around different parts of the world
Also good for people from Wisconsin if they just want to get out of town for a little bit.
Is it's a little difficult now, David, I have
a contact at the University of Wisconsin.
I might be able to bring it to me if I can talk her into it.
We'll see.
OK, all right.
We've got we've got plenty of people who could talk here, but I won't promise
anybody because I can't even promise that I'll bring it here.
But I will think about that.
But so that's really great.
And now, as we are recording, registration is still open?
Oh, yeah, registration is still open.
Registration is being handled by kind of like a third party site through the
University of Edinburgh, which is honestly fine by me because I just did it by myself
last time, this is much less of a headache.
Now, I cannot I I cannot guarantee that slots
will be open by the time this episode is out.
So I'll have the link in there.
You guys can check.
But if not, there will be a live stream.
So everybody gets to watch, right?
There's a special reason why we're holding Kopikon, both where it is and when it is.
The the when is because Jessie got the opportunity
to put together a textbook on conlanging
that is going to be published by the University
of Cambridge somewhere around October 10th.
We don't know exactly when.
We won't know until September when the actual publication date is.
But it's going to be around then.
And so the hope is that we can actually have copies there on sale for Jessie to sign.
That will be very exciting for me.
And and people will be able to buy the book.
And it's kind of a it's a celebration for.
For the launch of Jessie's book,
I informally, you know
like we had a bunch of people at Kopikon one, but informally,
Mark Okrand was kind of the the keynote. For this one,
that is Jessie.
Jessie is going to be the one that goes last.
That sounds appropriate for like, you know, a conlanging textbook.
And Jessie, we talked about the your textbook
when I interviewed you last last year, I think.
And yeah, it's it's I understand it has been a journey.
And can you tell me a little bit about like.
The the getting up to this point.
And all of that.
Well, a little bit.
You're absolutely right.
It's it's been a journey and...
It I mean, writing a textbook,
writing any book that you're going to get published is always difficult because of,
you know, the amount of feedback and the constraints that you may be under because
this is what they're looking for and this is what you had hoped to do if you,
you know, were going to self-publish and just do what you wanted to put in it.
So there's always that sort of back and forth.
And
then there's also the well, I submitted the final draft, which
looking back in my calendar, I actually submitted the final book a year ago.
And then it's been, you know,
it had to go through editors, external reviews, and then editors again.
And then came back to me.
And there's been a lot of back and forth on, you know,
just everything from the way that files are inserted.
So this what I call the post production
phase is, I swear, almost as long as the writing phase,
just just with all the back and forth and everything.
So it is finally now I just approved the final proofs,
but they called them the final proofs.
And then my editor just emailed me today
and said around July 2nd, I should have the final proofs.
I'm like, well, what did we just spend a week on?
So
I think July 2nd is the last official.
We'll send it off after that, I think,
to the printers, if I understand the process, I think that's
the last official one and it'll go to printers next.
But yeah, it has been and I tell you what,
some things that take the longest are just no,
this table really has to have shading in these cells.
And then you go back and forth with people on how to get the shading right.
And it's kind of important when you're
presenting things like the IPA tables, as they're typically presented.
And it's like, no, those those cells are shaded for a reason.
I need them to stay that way.
- I mentioned it in the pages-- - The impossible sounds right?
You absolutely need to gray those out because that information is important.
Right?
Yes, yes.
Let's let's ... can we spend a little time just like
specifically like talking about what this is?
So like we've had conlanging books before.
I have behind here.
- David's book. - I see a selection of them.
I have somewhere in the house, I have the Language Construction Kit.
Those are like guidebooks.
But what you're making...
It's being published by Cambridge University Press.
It is an actual textbook.
And you could tell me what what that means about the structure of it.
But my understanding is that this will be
available for like professors to order for their classes, right?
Sure. Yeah, yeah.
So I mean, which I mean, technically any book that is produced is available
for professors to order for classes, but this was designed.
Yeah, yeah.
This is designed for use in classrooms, though.
The goal was also to keep it
hopefully meaningful for people who just get it on their own.
That they could hopefully work through the material as well.
Because it's a textbook, there's exercises in it.
And you'll notice as you read David's book, you know, at no point does he stop
and say, "OK, now do this, and here's this data set.
Let's talk about the answers."
You know, like you just don't do that for mass market.
And you definitely don't do that when in David's case, you know, you have an editor
saying, no, you got to cut like 70000 words.
So.
any notion you have of any sort of extra stuff like that, you take out.
And so so, yeah, there's exercises.
There's a lot more walkthrough examples as well, where it's like, you know,
let's set up this hypothetical language, let's say here are the parameters we're
working in, what would you do? And then following that, if you keep going
in the paragraphs, it says, "OK, well, here's one way you could have analyzed it
and done it," just to show like the thought process behind the language creation.
And so, yeah, so that's really what makes it as well that in the massive amounts
of citation that have to go into an academic textbook that
don't always have to go into mass market in the same way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, George, you you've written academic
- and so... - Not a textbook, but a dissertation.
But that's that's enough.
That's enough.
And so anyway, yeah, there's
those are the kinds of things that set it apart from David's book.
And the goal is that someone who does not have a background in linguistics could go
into it and be walked through the process and at the end of it have a much stronger
grasp on how languages work, ways that they can use patterns to create
their own language and of course, the assumption from
beginning to end is you're actually creating a language.
And so, yeah, that's that's what sets it apart.
And I would hope that people who find, you know, David's book,
Art of Language Invention, for anyone who didn't know that title
and then also Language Construction Kit, those kinds of books, I would hope that
you would find this another valuable resource to to go along and kind of fill
in some gaps, especially if you need more attention to defining terms and, you know,
situating things in context, because I did have more space to do that.
And it's-- as an introductory textbook, there's that intention of, you know,
I'm going to introduce you to the terms and really show you how to how to set them out.
And so, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm going to put this the short way.
If you want to be impressed and entertained, get my book.
If you want to learn how to create a language, get Jessie's book.
Right.
And I do want to say, like.
Obviously, there's like there's a level of there's an introduction to linguistics.
here, but you also have the goal, but you also have the goal
of teaching conlanging itself. Right.
So like what is it more about?
Is it more of teaching linguistics
through conlanging or is it more teaching conlanging?
You know, that.
that that is a great question and a great way to think about any
constructed language guide or textbook
that may be on the market to really think about what are the end goals at the end
of this, was it more about teaching the science as a field or more
about this art of language creation and from my point of view, I think it's more
about my textbook is more about the language creation because what linguistic
concepts are introduced are all there in support of this process to say,
you know, you may never remember the terms for these patterns again,
but these patterns exist and you can use them.
And here's how you can use them in your own language.
And there is, of course, a lot of data sets.
But I tried really, really hard to sort
of balance the overall scope of those data sets where
examples are provided in natural languages or conlangs to show the features being
used and to show that conlangs, just like natural languages, can be analyzed.
They can be discussed like any other language patterns that you can discuss.
And so
for me, I think anyone at the end of this
would hopefully get an introduction to linguistics if they had never heard any
of these terms before, they would hopefully have a better grasp.
But my goal is not for you to then know
how to sit down with a data set from natural languages and work it like you
would from an intro to linguistics textbook.
My goal is for you to have seen some
patterns that you can then take and use creatively for your own work.
It's really interesting to have to have that now, because, like,
most like conlanging courses have been, OK, I'm going to give them a conlang
assignment in order to teach these things about linguistics.
And then you're coming at it from the other end.
And I think I think as I have
seen the community grow and I've grown into it, like I think I think of conlanging
more in artistic terms than I used to, like a lot of us were just like focused
on making something that's naturalistic and typologically plausible and stuff.
Right? Before.
And now I find myself, especially with my
like Tongues and Runes stuff, like thinking more about like themes and, you know...
Artistic, you know, expression through the language, and I don't know, I mean,
obviously, you are going to be teaching a lot of linguistic theory stuff, but I
feel like having a textbook to teach people
conlanging first and then secondarily linguistics is like another
like step in the development of the art form.
Right. Yeah.
And it's also... the way I set up the chapter exercises for each one.
And this is where it's like, I think I can safely say my goal was to teach you how
to create a language rather than really focusing on the intro to linguistic side.
Though, again, I'm going to argue that if
you figure out how to create a language, you've gotten some introduction to
linguistics, like just from the process, you you learn something from it.
But the chapter exercises are set up where at the end of once you get through the kind
of introductory chapters where you're not quite doing anything yet in terms of
creating things, you're just going through here's terms you're going to hear.
Here's what you need to know about them.
Now that that's set, let's move on.
Once you hit so like chapter three and beyond, I set up
the beginning exercises for each chapter are in what I call Squirrelish throughout
the book, where it's sort of a guided exercise of here.
I'm going to give you language data that you don't care about because this is
a language that's not from you. This is I'm giving you parameters.
Do these things with it.
What did you do with it? Discuss it.
Figure out why you liked that method best for this language.
So it's like a way of playing with language data that you're not super
invested in, but playing with language data where the goal is you're creating
something from it, like you're deciding what syllables should be allowed.
If you do that, what stress pattern are you going to use?
And how do you apply stress consistently across these units?
And so those are the beginning chapter
exercises and then all the rest of the chapter exercises after that are, "OK,
let's talk about what you're doing in your own language," with the goal of
hopefully, if you work through it all, actually documenting the language.
And to that end, one of the resources that goes with the textbook is a massive Google
spreadsheet of language features where it allows you to enter the features.
But it also tells you precisely what section of the textbook covers the information.
So if you don't remember, you can go back to the resource and see how it's described.
Do you want me to and this again, this is at your discretion, Jess.
You want me to pull up an example to share?
- An example... - From the book?
Yeah, I'm looking at the chapter nine exercises right now.
Oh, yeah, go for it.
- Is this from the one that says? - If you're free to share that stuff...
You can do that.
What's that?
If you're free to share that stuff, you can do it.
I think because I'm not sharing a PDF with someone and it's going to clearly,
if it's the one I'm thinking of, say, proof across the page.
Yeah, okay.
Do you do you see it?
Yeah, yeah, we got it.
- All right. - Should be recorded, too.
Yeah, so this is chapter nine.
And I pulled up this first one because I
think this is a really, really wonderful example.
When I taught the summer conlang course at Berkeley in 2017,
a lot of the actual homework assignments I gave were essentially here are some pieces.
How do you evolve certain elements, number case, whatever?
And there wasn't necessarily a right answer that I was looking for.
I just gave him the tools and said, what what do you got?
What can you do with this?
Justify your answer.
And that's essentially kind of what you see with exercise nine point one here.
I know I'm kind of pulling this on you cold, Jess.
I don't know if you wanted to talk about it.
And I will say, this particular exercise does ask you about grammaticalization.
But I do want to say that I split material throughout the textbook in a way that
what I call the advanced sections, which are marked by icons,
the advanced sections talk about evolving the language so that if you're ready for
that, you can go through that if you're not ready or you're not interested in
evolving your language or your teacher doesn't make you evolve language.
I should put it that way as well.
You can skip those sections entirely and only do the other sections,
which is the bulk of the textbook
Oh, that's smart!
and create a typologically kind of consistent,
you know, more naturalish kind of shape of language.
But that is not evolved.
And so it it kind of has this dual focus.
But then in the exercises, just to reinforce the don't be afraid
of this evolution idea, just think about, hey, what are
some words that could lead to grammatical inflections?
And if you read through the instructions,
you'll see that it's you're not coming up with the forms.
This is the squirrelish language.
You're just saying, I don't know,
what might a squirrel use to mark a singular or a plural form?
What word may end up becoming grammaticalized if if we went down that path?
And so it really is a let's brainstorm.
Well, that's as an added challenge,
- David, that's for the challenge. - Yeah, I know, I love it.
But yeah, it's so David highlighted the as
an added challenge, make sure none of them are the ones listed in the chapter.
So, for instance, I mentioned that like
children can be grammaticalized to make a plural form in many languages.
So don't use that because it's already been mentioned.
Yeah, I definitely see like that.
This is like.
I don't I don't know, I don't want to say
like like this is like along the same lines as y'all's style
of conlanging in LangTime Studio, where as far as I've seen of your streams,
you tend to like go back and try to find a lexical source for any
any affix that you add, which I don't always do.
I do a lot of the time, but sometimes I just like say, OK, whatever.
It was it was a case affix all the way back.
But but I see like that style from you carrying into the textbook, too.
That's interesting.
Yeah, and it does.
And like I said, it carries through in the advanced sections.
Whereas if you skip those sections, what you would be getting is you're going
to create a form if you want to mark the plural,
great. Like think about if it comes after
a consonant, is it going to look different than if it comes after a vowel?
Make sure you Mark that information.
So it's one of those things where you can you could definitely use the entirety
of the material in the textbook and not evolve a language because you skipped
those, you know, the the cogs, the advanced sections.
You don't have to do it that way.
And I try I hope I lay out, you know, strategies for like, hey,
if you're not evolving this, just think about,
you know, these things as you create these forms.
Think about the fact that you're going to hear these a lot.
Make sure there there's sounds that you're happy with knowing that if it's
a suffix, a lot of words are going to end in that. Be ready.
Well, I will say
I've been in contact with Cambridge University Press.
I don't know if I should like say this show, but I'm going to.
But I have been in contact and I'm going to try to get a review copy.
So, guys, watch this channel because I may review this.
And then there's there's another textbook that I may review, too.
So
so you'll get a full review from me, but it's looking good.
It's looking interesting.
Yes. Yeah.
From from what I see now.
By the way, Jess you want me to just
kind of give a peek at the table of contents?
Well, one thing is, as David had scrolled down, you see that nine point one and nine
point two, those exercises were both on Squirrelish again to sort of like
get people thinking, try this out, try out some basic translations.
And then the next exercise after that starts the entire focus on your own conlang.
And so, you know, thinking about how does your language do this?
And, you know, gives you bullet points or
gives you overall things like make sure you consider these things.
And of course, throughout, there are definitely
options to say, well, my conlang doesn't mark this.
And so in that case, then the goal is to say, well, how will that affect
ways I translate and ways I think about this so that I remember that my language
doesn't mark this, because that's definitely a valid option
to, you know, for instance, not mark number at all on nouns.
That's great.
You just need to remember that that was your plan.
Yeah, that's that's that's that's a good thing to remind people of.
I try to remind people like whenever I'm
covering stuff, whenever we're covering like stuff here is like,
yeah, we're going to we'll talk about, you know, number case or whatever.
And I say, you know, and you can't always just not, you know,
last last month we had William on talk about subordination.
But one of the things that we said is like,
yeah, we have all of these different strategies, but you can't just stick a full
sentence into a sentence and be done with it and it's fine.
You know, all of these things, all of these it's all of these things are options.
And you have to be aware of your options to the extent that you can be aware
and also understand that you can just not use any of it.
Right?
Right, right.
Yep.
But you just need to be aware of the consequences.
That's all. And sometimes, you know, the consequences are pretty cool.
You know, like, wow, I never thought of not
doing this and what the result would be, but I really like the result.
You know, pays to give everything a try at least once.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, David, yeah, you're free to-- if you want to jump up to the table of contents
- OK, so there's we'll get a little bit of a-- - It's quite lengthy, though.
There's a there's the there's the short.
This is the brief table of contents.
This is just the overview.
One of the things, by the way, I really,
really love about this book is Jessie devotes an entire chapter to
translation, which is something that I don't think a lot of conlangers give a ton
of thought to. Certainly I didn't at the beginning.
You know, you're creating a language, right?
But often what you use it for is translation and translation is itself
an entire art, an entire art that's separate from conlanging,
that's separate from learning a language and that's separate from writing.
It's something that, you know, you need to-- it pays to give some thought to.
And so this is just, I think, a lovely way to end the book
and really kind of puts you in position, like, say, you go through this from
beginning to end to participate in something like a conlang relay.
You know?
Well, yeah,
that's that's something I will look forward to reading because,
you know, I could I could use some more.
Knowledge of translation stuff,
it is, I always say, like.
If you've done your job right, making a conlang, translation should be hard.
Right?
So having a chapter about translation
sounds like a good idea because it should be hard.
So you got to tell people how to do it because it is hard.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's it's so difficult, obviously,
having one chapter where it's like trying to walk through examples and really
showing so much just has to be glossed over and skipped.
And so.
I would urge anyone interested to,
you know, read actual entire books dedicated
to the art of translation because it truly is an art.
And so the one chapter just gives an overview of things to think about.
Just trying to let students know that not
everything should be a word for word translation, but at the same time,
there are definitely sentences that are going to look like they were basically
word for word because there are languages that express the same
basic idea with the same basic kind of vocabulary.
And that's OK.
It's just, you know, really thinking about areas to inject where it's like, well,
we use this preposition in English, but why what does it really mean?
How might another language look at that?
And yeah, that is difficult.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, I'm I'm just super, super excited about this because I've read this book.
I've said this before.
I'm going to say it many times.
Jessie is really, really, really, really good at
at academic writing in the sense of trying to explain
either an unfamiliar concept or to explain how to do something.
It's it's I wish I could bottle it and I wish she could just write about anything
that I happen to want to learn because it is very straightforward, very intuitive,
much more so than The Art of Language Invention.
Again, I stand by how entertaining The Art of Language Invention is.
I have I have fun reading through bits of that.
But I think that this book is much, much, much, much better.
If your goal is to sit down and learn something about language creation.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, well, we'll see.
I will say, like, I feel the limitations that you had
when I look at the art of language invention, because this book is small.
This book is not big.
Yeah, there's no way you're going to fit all of it.
And so you just have like a few case studies in there.
It looks like this textbook is going to be
much more thorough and have a lot more like meat to it,
which I'm looking forward to analyzing
- Some other things to-- - What was your word count,
David, what word count were you allowed in your book?
Oh, they wanted it to be
ideally about under 70,000 words.
And so that was what David was dealing
with in my book is definitely in the 150,000.
And so, yeah, you're you're getting almost double.
I think even after I trimmed it down,
I feel like it still is in somewhere really close to a hundred fifty thousand.
Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's it's tough.
I mean, especially
when you're doing like traditional publishers, you've got to go.
That's what the publisher wants.
But then like you could do independent.
And write exactly what you want, but there's a trade off and you've got
to do all the marketing yourself, you don't have like an institution
behind you to do all the editing and polishing.
So like you hire editors and stuff and
that costs money and also might not be as thorough as what they do.
So it is it is very, very-- I'm very interested to see this.
But some other things I kind of want to ask about.
Yeah. So the game that you're developing
languages for on LangTime Studio, I have noticed that it has a name now.
Sure does.
Sovála
Yeah. Which is that an Engála word?
It is Engála. Engála
Sovála.
But, yeah, that's why that's why you have
an acute accent on the middle syllable to indicate stress and
also why something that's written in sounds like [æ].
Sovála, okay.
That's funny. That's all right.
But if people pronounce it Sov[ɑ]la, I think that sounds cool anyway.
So that's good.
There has been a lot of movement
on the game, especially in the last two months
that started a bit ago.
So
what we call the like Sovála version 2.0
We playtested that a few times, we playtested that at Kopikon
and I identified some deficiencies.
So there's always going to be issues
with a game where it's like, oh, you spend a lot of time doing this.
And the question is, I mean, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
The question is, you as the designer, did you want people spending time there?
And in this case, the answer was no.
So we we actually went to England to a board game cafe,
a very weird board game cafe that was in a in a tunnel that
has professional spray painters and in there 24/7, very loud.
And I was debuting the magic using classes.
And basically it was like
half the time was just spent people like
reading these spells, figuring them out or like, you know,
the ones who were interested, they were trying to figure
out what are the best spells and choose them with care.
And they were spending like a half an hour to forty five minutes just choosing spells.
And then the other ones that didn't get it were like, "OK, I'll just take these."
Didn't even read them.
Hey, not just didn't get it,
but the ones who had chosen non magic users and so had no choice to make.
That's true.
Because I, of course, in my my beloved mice
and my tanks, like that's what I lean toward.
And so, yeah, there it was.
It was down to like two people at the large
table reading all the magic spells while the rest of us waited.
Yeah, so...
Long story short, huge magic overhaul... overhauled the system.
It led to names that had to change and then change back.
It was it was a whole thing.
But one of the things that kind of gave me
a kick in the butt is that for as a Christmas present, the last Christmas
present, Jessie found a professional printing
company that could actually like, you know, print out some really,
really good test copies of this game. Right.
And so then it was like, well,
I need to get this thing to a place that I'm happy with before we do this.
And so we're getting there now.
And that's actually what I've been working
on most heavily the past couple of weeks, because the goal is for Sovála 3.0
to be ready by the time that we go to Kopikon in Edinburgh.
So we're going to play that.
And yeah, my hope is-- because I wanted the magic system to be interesting
and cool and for people to spend a little bit of time with it,
figuring it out, seeing what's best, but not that much time, not that much time.
Yeah.
And so I hope that it's been streamlined a little bit.
It's the type of thing where, in theory,
you love the idea of everybody being able to make as many choices as possible
to perfectly craft exactly what it is they want to do.
But there's also a limited window.
And so sometimes you have to just take
choices away or funnel people into certain choices.
And I think this does a better job of that.
But yeah, it's going to.
It's going to be done.
It's going to be done, I would say, at least a month, at least a month.
And then we'll be able to to get it printed.
And it will be it will be the best version
of it yet, both in terms of gameplay, but also in terms of how it looks.
Very, very excited about that.
Incidentally, for a little backstory on this and how it came to be named Sovála.
Right. There is this there's this stuff.
The ooze, whatever you wish,
that it's it's actually called
it's called something different in every language.
In English, one of the translations is the blood water.
They call it the blood water because of how it looks in the water.
It's somehow mutated these animals
after humans had been wiped out and the small mammals became
bipedal and other aspects of their physiognomy changed.
This is the part that's much less science based and much more.
This is just what I want to happen.
And so it's going to happen.
The the various animal groups kind of kept to themselves and then it led to fighting.
These were called the First Wars.
Then there was a period of peace after
that when they realized, you know what, what the heck are we doing this for?
Right?
And so there's this period of peace that pervades for a while.
And, you know, the blood water went away, but then the blood water comes back.
and it comes back specifically in a river area right next to where the rabbits live.
It emerges in Lake Sovála.
And Sovála is just the name of the lake.
Anyway, it emerges there.
And so suddenly it becomes a question,
what the heck do we do about this? Because we know what happened the first time.
And essentially the various little animal kingdoms all have very,
very different opinions about what exactly should be done about it.
And so this leads to the second war
of the animals as they're trying to figure out what to do about it.
And the poor rabbits, honestly,
they just they don't want to do anything with it.
But they're stuck in the middle of it because it's right where they live.
And so they're just kind of stuck.
And so that is essentially where the board game Sovála takes place.
And Sovála actually comes from Heart Lake, right?
Because it's the shape of the lake actually looks like a heart from the air.
Yeah. And this is a real lake, by the way,
because this takes place in Ontario, just kind of like north-ish of Toronto.
And so we actually have the area mapped out.
And so I can't even remember what the I think it's called.
Is it Emily Lake or something like that in Toronto?
It was something quite lovely.
I remember that.
It was nice anyway.
So, yeah, that's where it is.
And incidentally, there is going to be I haven't gotten to this yet,
but I'm very excited about it and I think it it could work very well.
There is going to be a cooperative version
of this game that's kind of like more of a role playing game,
more of a hero quest or Gloomhaven style game that has kind of like different
levels where you start as some of the one player characters
and go through different scenarios and then at the end of it, you know,
you're successful and then you're you guys actually level up.
So you keep the same ones, but they get new abilities.
It's nice.
But yeah, at the end of it, essentially,
it kind of falls to you what to do with the blood water.
And essentially what is going to happen is that at the end of this game,
it's going to kind of get out in a way that wasn't anticipated.
And it's going to engender a reaction that was not expected amongst the insects,
which are going to get very large and very angry.
And that, of course, is going to be the end
of the second war as the animals realize, you know what?
We definitely should not be fighting each other.
Now we're fighting for our lives.
Oh, OK.
Wow.
Yeah, work has been happening, work has been happening.
OK, I just want to know when I can have
a copy of Sovála to play with Maria, I think she's probably
old enough that she might be able to to to play it.
Fifi will be will be a bit distracted and Dorothy will throw the pieces on the floor.
But Maria might enjoy it.
So I will be able to answer that question
for you depending on how successful the test this fall goes.
Yeah.
And it'll be nice because we'll have some people who've played it before.
So they'll be able to give direct comparisons.
All right.
And another thing, too, so.
When we were getting ready for this, you guys were at David, you asked me like
if this would come out after a certain time
because you wanted to mention a movie project.
Yeah, it's true.
So as long as this comes out after July 11th.
It should.
OK, it should or it will
it will be after July 11th.
I don't have time to edit it before then.
OK, good.
All right, well, then the reason that July 11th is important is
July 11th is when Superman comes out and that is our latest project,
the new Superman reboot and things to follow.
But yeah, the first the first one, though, is is Superman.
It came out July 11th.
I tell you that as if that date was in the past.
And it features our new take on the Kryptonian language.
Oh, OK.
Now, long time listeners may know that there is another conlanger.
Christine, I hope that I'm getting her name right.
- Christine Schreyer, who - That's how I say it.
So if you have it wrong, I do, too.
I've gotten her name wrong before.
I've I've I've said like Schleyer before, and I think that's somebody else.
And but she made it for Man of Steel.
She made a version of Kryptonian.
So you guys have made a different version of Kryptonian.
Is it does it take anything from that that version or is it a completely new thing?
Yeah, this is a completely new thing.
And I'll tell you at the very outset, when we were first emailed about this project,
I said, you know, that Christine Schreyer created a Kryptonian language
for the Man of Steel movie.
Are you sure you didn't want to use that?
And the answer was, no, they wanted a new take.
And of course, it always has to do with studios and blah, blah, blah.
But
it kind of honestly, it kind of seems like that maybe that is either the era we're
in or the era we're approaching where everything is either a sequel or a reboot.
And if it's a reboot, you know, they want to put their own stamp on the franchise,
which, you know, who knows?
For for people who are out there saying,
"Man, I really could have done a better job at Dothraki."
Who knows?
Maybe 10 years from now will be another Game of Thrones reboot.
And they'll be like, you know what?
We want to put our own spin on this franchise.
So we need a new Dothraki language.
Who knows? You know, there there may be
opportunities in the future and and really we just have to be at peace
with it, because like as I see it, there's really four.
Well, now with ours, there's four Kryptonian languages
starting at the beginning.
There was what was in the comic books and that, of course,
I mean, anybody who's read any comic books from the 50s, 60s and so on
and knows anything about conlanging, I mean, you can guess you can guess what that was like
Probably lots of apostrophes and like it's just gibberish.
There's nothing to it.
- Right? - Yeah.
And not only that,
it was, you know, "made," quote unquote, by tons of different writers at different
times, each of them adding new words, changing the meanings of words,
adding, you know, a writing system and so on.
It's it's just it's a jumbled mess, you know?
And the only person, you know, who actually tried to
make sense of that was, oh, my God,
help me, help me, help me, Darren?
I am so embarrassed about this, I just had his name.
But there's a fellow on the Internet who basically
created everything... or took down everything about the language.
There we go, Darren Doyle, I'm so sorry, Darren, we've corresponded before
and I apologize, I may have slipped my mind for the moment.
Darren Doyle,
he cataloged everything that was in all the comic books.
And essentially, he created a version of the Kryptonian language.
It was just on the Internet.
Basically, it was a fanlang. He was a really big fan,
and
kept as much as he could, innovated a lot,
created a lot of material.
And there was a television show, Supergirl, you know,
and they--
I've seen that one.
Yeah, they did.
I'll say they did some disappointing stuff when it came to conlanging.
But like I knew one of the writers there because she was a writer on something else.
She once suggested to them, "Why don't you hire David?
He created a language for us for this other thing."
And they're like, "Nah, we'll just mess up some stuff on Google Translate.
It'll be fine." That's what they did.
I never
I don't think I got any episodes with Kryptonian in it.
Martian, it was Martian.
Oh, it was Martian.
Oh, because J'onn J'onzz is in it.
Yeah.
But at a certain point, they wanted to use Kryptonian.
And I don't know who made the initial point of contact.
But somehow it came to to Darren.
And, you know, I spoke out in his favor.
I said, "Look, this guy's been working with Kryptonian for years.
He would love the opportunity to do this."
And so he actually got to do some
Kryptonian translation for Supergirl, the show.
And so I thought that was wonderful.
Anyway, that was I think that was actually after Man of Steel,
where, of course, Christine Schreyer created the Kryptonian language,
which got cut from the first one, right, like it's the the visuals are there.
There's writing, there's writing.
And I think she I think that was a case where she did do the writing.
I mean, she did translation for it.
I know she did. Yeah.
Yeah. Like because I know I know you've had
several projects where, like, they didn't let you do a writing system.
They had art department do it or they wouldn't take the one that you made.
But I think she actually did the glyphs.
There was the one like the big S is actually a Kryptonian glyph.
So that was like, set, but otherwise she made some other things.
She collaborated with the with an artist there in the art department.
So.
it wasn't it wasn't free of production interference.
But, you know,
she at least had input on that.
Unlike, for example,
Marc Okrand had no input whatsoever on the writing system for Atlantean,
which which was a shame because there were definitely things he could have told them.
That's right.
That's a thing.
That's a thing that that like the people hiring conlangers needed to get is like.
You can have art department involved, right?
They might I mean, a lot of artists might
actually like the opportunity to to do like the visual styling and like work
with different writing implements and see what they can do with that.
But like you need the conlanger involved to help design the system.
Because it's going to fall out of the phonology and morphology of the language
in a way, and it has to make sense rather than just like having art department do
an alphabet cipher, which makes no sense in universe at all.
Yeah, but
but anyway, that's exciting.
So a new Kryptonian, I feel that I feel that
with Superman, that that's that's the thing that you're going to get,
because like you said, there's the history of multiple different versions already.
Whereas something like Dothraki,
I mean, it wasn't in the books, but it's pretty well established
from the get go in the in in the shows that this is what Dothraki is.
Klingon was established
decades ago as this is what Klingon is.
And the quality of the Klingon in all of the shows is not great.
But there's enough of a community
behind it and enough like knowledge of it that I don't think they would hire anybody
to redo Klingon. If anything, like if if you if you talk about like Klingon and Na'vi,
it's like Marc Okrand and Paul Frommer are going to pass the torch to other people
who've been studying it rather than have somebody hired to redo it.
Right?
Yeah, yeah, you're probably right.
I guess it remains to be seen.
Yeah, bu-
It remains to be seen like kind of like what happens
with the whole, you know, Song of Ice and Fire franchise.
One thing I would like to see happen is if the current MCU
fades out of favor and then they reboot it and restart it when they get to Wakanda,
somebody needs to have the forethought to actually go and make a conlang for Wakanda,
because like I have said, it was really good that the actors involved
saw that and saw like, "Why are we speaking English?
Let's let's just let's pick an African language we know."
And they went with Xhosa.
That's good.
I still think it would have been better to have someone
who has knowledge of African languages, you could have something from an African
family because like there's going to be things in like like Xhosa is going to have
English loan words that Wakanda would not have because
they've been isolated for thousands of years. Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
You know, maybe like
- put that idea out there. - It's also like a thousand miles away.
Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't, also, Xhosa was chosen for like convenience because they happen to speak it.
And then they, they took a writing system from the other side of
the continent to, to use. And it's like,
okay, I mean, it kind of fits with other world building that they were doing with
like grabbing things from various African cultures, but
but maybe it would have had more cohesion if
somebody like actually thought to make something beforehand.
Yeah.
Nice thing is that here we got to create the language.
We created the writing system.
Um, it's going to show up in, um, minor in terms of screen
time, a minor way in the film, but a very important way.
So, um, so that'll be nice.
And then, um, and then, yeah, we did, uh, well, I think for right
now, let me say is we did a lot of work in a related future project.
Okay.
Uh, okay.
Hopefully you have not said too much there, but, uh,
there's, there's, uh, some things to, uh, look forward to.
Uh, I am now more interested in seeing, uh, man, and, uh, is it just called Superman?
Yeah, it's just called Superman.
Yeah.
So I'm more interested in seeing that movie now.
Cause I mean, I've seen previews, it looks good,
but it's like, okay, it's another Superman movie, but
now, it's another movie that I can tell my daughters,
Hey, I know the people who made it, made the language.
And I have said that several times and like, almost always it has been you guys.
[laughing]
I think, I think my daughter is, is finally starting to get it a little bit.
Um, you know, that we, that we work on stuff, um, like she can
identify stuff and, uh, I, I still don't think that she really knows.
At all, like what language creation is about.
Um, but that's fine.
We got plenty of other things to do.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it, it, it takes a while.
Uh, Maria has, uh, off and on, like had me try --
I, I've had, like, tried to help her and like make a language, but you know,
she's nine, so it's not, you know, there's, there's what I can convey to her.
That she'll understand, but like, you know, yeah, I've, I've shown them...
They love Elemental, so I've shown them the stuff that's online of, of Ts'its'ash.
Right?
Um, which is very, very nice choices to evoke the sound of fire in that
with, um, adjectives and, and syllabic fricatives, but--
Oh, thank you.
It was hard.
It was hard?
Especially initially there, you know, uh, the initial ideas were literally to take,
um, recordings of fire and kind of manipulate them in such a way to try to produce a language.
That sounds like a Logan Kearsley project.
{Laughing}
Oh my goodness!
Uh, people, people who, who, who know the podcast will
know that who, who, who, who have watched, uh, Tongues and Runes stuff too.
Um, but, uh, anyway, I think that's, well, that's all interesting stuff.
We've, we've done a wide range of, uh, of things, but I think, um, well, as
we're, this should come out during like the theatrical run of the Superman.
So that's, that's something to check out.
Also, there'll be a link to the Kopikon registration. Go and check that out.
And, um,
And you know what, I'll also get you a link for pre-orders of Jessie's book.
Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I can, I can, I can put that in there, uh, from, from
Cambridge University Press, just like the direct link, and it's a textbook.
So it's kind of expensive, but you know, that it's
probably going to be a really cool thing to have.
And if you are a professor who is aiming to teach a conlang class or has,
has taught a conlang class and might do it in the future,
you know, you might want to, you know, contact them for your, like, uh, I guess professors can get review copies
so that they can decide whether they're going to require it for the class and stuff.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah.
Um, but individuals can buy those books too.
Uh, I'm sure that the con, the, the lending library is going to get a copy too.
So, uh, that, that will be, yeah, the LCS lending, lending library.
But anyway, um, thank you guys for being on and,
uh, lots of exciting stuff to cover on that.
Well, we will see you, uh, we'll see you on the stream
at Kopikon or for people going there, we'll see you guys in person.
And also, you know, every week on LangTime Studio,
you can tell people that.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Thursdays at 2:00 PM LangTime Studio.
We're still going at it.
Still doing the fox language right now.
2:00 PM Pacific time.
The only time that exists in David's head.
There was a, there was a show called 90210.
I don't recall a show about any of your zip codes.
You know what, David?
You don't even live in 90210.
Like, what are you talking about?
All right.
But anyway, uh, thank you guys for being on once again.
And thank all of you out there for watching and happy conlanging.
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