[Conlangs] Commission Work

Taking the first step toward following my dreams of becoming the next David J. Peterson... I have decided that I should continue to flex my conlanging brain and offer commission work!

Conlanging as a hobby can often be an on-and-off process that breathes alongside the work that I do outside of linguistics. I also find motivation to be scarce unless it comes from outside incentives. So I have decided to start doing conlang commissions!

The price of commission work will vary on the nature of the project in question and the scale of the project, but for now I can outline a few different works available with price and time estimates:

• Naming Language / Sketch (~ $50):
• approximately 50 lexical items, phonology, and romanization
• anywhere between 1-3 weeks
• Beginning Conlang (~ $150): 
• approximately 100 lexical items, phonology, romanization, basic morphology and syntax
• anywhere between 3 weeks and 1.5 months
• Full Conlang (~ $300): 
• minimum 500 lexical items, detailed phonology, romanization, detailed morphosyntax
• anywhere between 2-3 months
• + Orthography (~ $150)
• non-latinate writing system, punctuation, numerals
• anywhere between 2-3 months

These prices are approximate and will fluctuate depending on the work hours required of me. A conlang commission also requires clear communication with the patron... the Language Creation Society job boards said it more elegantly than I could:

" Almost everyone in the market for an invented language will care most about one thing: the timely delivery of translations. There are a few things to consider to make that process flow more easily. Translations happen far more quickly if there is a core grammar and vocabulary (500-750 words) already in place when translation time arrives. For even the most experienced conlanger, having to create and translate on the fly is four to six times slower. Creating that core will take between 60 and 80 work works hours. Your conlanger will have other obligations, so it is best to give them at least three months (two in emergency cases) to do the background work. If you are also hiring for a writing system, take into account the time for that, too.
A good conlang -- even one as simple as a naming language -- will not simply be a code for an already existing language (unless it is explicitly supposed to be one!). It touches on culture deeply. It will help your conlanger considerably to have access to any historical and cultural information about the speakers as soon as possible. Your conlanger may also have cultural suggestions. Make sure they know early who to contact for cultural questions.
For print media, you should get to work to be translated to the conlanger in reasonable time for them to complete the work, along with a clear statement about when the translations are due. "

Additionally, the LCS provides an excellent glossary which details the expected product. The prices listed on the LCS glossary are the LCS's minimum pricing requirements, but I will be charging a bit less depending on the nature of the project. (Also, due to the fact that I am not exactly a professional conlanger, I will not be charging as much, especially for not-for-profit artistic projects).


If you wish to discuss a conlang commission, feel free to shoot me an email at danteh@alumni.cmu.edu . Be sure to include [Commission] in the subject line, or I might gloss over your email! 

Whistled Language and the Legitimacy of Droidspeak

First of all, I'd like to apologize for the lack of posts made within the last two months. I had an absolutely amazing experience playing Hamlet in a local production with Band of Brothers Shakespeare, and it ate up most of my free time. Now that I've finally settled back into Pittsburgh, it's time for me to give my blog a jump-start!


A long time ago... in a galaxy far, far away... there was a little blue astromech droid by the name of R2-D2.  R2's charming beeps and buzzes have made a permanent mark on the film industry, and he has become one of the most beloved sci-fi characters of all time. Growing up with the Star Wars franchise left a huge impression on me. My brain couldn't help but pour over the vast possibilities for a future bedazzled in astounding technology... would humans ever invent the light saber, blaster, protocol droid, or starship? Ironically enough, none of the fantastical things in the Star Wars universe struck me as particularly impossible... save for the fact that every humanoid character could understand R2-D2 or Chewbacca. All I could hear were indistinguishable beeps, buzzes, roars, and gurgles. How could anyone possibly interpret these as language?

It wasn't until learning a thing or two about linguistics that I even considered these "languages" they spoke to be anything but mere fantasy. I never understood how these beeps and buzzes could ever function as language. When I found out that all of the languages in Star Wars were approached not as constructed alien languages with grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, but as exploitative and even racist sound design projects, my hopes were dimming; Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz played the 'voice' of BB-8 in The Force Awakens, which was apparently made by JJ Abrams messing around on an iPad while Bill and Ben spoke into a talkbox. This process was very similar to how Ben Burtt created the original sound for R2-D2. However, there is some legitimacy to the concept of Droidspeak, and that is a real-world parallel: whistled speech.

Whistle languages are exactly that: natural languages consisting of high-amplitude whistles that encode nearly the same amount of information as spoken language does. Whistle languages act almost like auxiliary modes of speaking; they rely on a concept in phonology called functional load. Essentially, functional load refers to how important certain features are in making contrastive distinctions and encoding information. Certain features of speech will have a higher functional load in some languages as opposed to others (and having a high functional load means that if these features are missing or obscured, the message is more difficult to interpret). Let's unpack that a little more:

English relies heavily on its vowel qualities to encode information. There are many sets of words in English that differ only by a vowel. For example: pin, pen, pan, pawn, pine, pwn, and pain all differ by vowel sounds only. Consonants in English carry a lighter functional load; how can speakers of American or British English still understand someone speaking with a French accent? We can still understand exactly what is being said, even if all their "th" sounds turn into "z"s, and even if their "r" sounds are all uvular instead of alveolar. As long as the vowels retain much of their phonemic quality, the same message can be accurately conveyed through a very different encoding. Intonation in English, however, carries very little functional load. Utterances spoken in a monotone voice in English still carry almost the same information (save any emotion or sense of inquiry).

Tonal languages like Mandarin, however, rely heavily on what are called suprasegmental features (phonological features which "attach" to more salient features such as consonants, vowels, syllables, etc.) to encode information. Mandarin, like many tonal languages (essentially, in a tonal language, the same syllable can be interpreted as a completely different word depending on what pitch contour is used on that syllable), carries a very heavy functional load in its tones. Basically, if someone were to speak Mandarin in a monotone voice, it would be almost completely unintelligible because the tones carry most of the information in this language. Other suprasegmental features across languages include vowel length, intonation, stress, or even nasality.

Going back to whistle languages, most whistle languages have come out of languages which have a robust tonal system. It's like stripping down the language to nothing but its tone contours. All you get is the suprasegmental features -- the tones, duration differences, and stress... no vowels, no consonants. However, many whistle languages such as Silbo Gomero (the most commonly whistled language today) do not come from tonal languages. These whistle languages instead mimic the change in frequency of the second vowel formant, the f2. Vowel formants are amplified frequency bands produced when speaking which are amplified by the vocal tract (oral and nasal cavities). These amplified frequencies help our brains to interpret vowel qualities; they help us determine the difference between "ee" and "ah". In Silbo Gomero, for example, there are two proposed vowels: "i" and "a". The difference between these two is marked by a higher or lower pitch, respectively. The reason why is because for the vowel /i/, f2 is much higher in frequency than the vowel /a/. Get it?

So, if humans can whistle a tonal melody and convey to each other the same amount of information as speaking, why can't BB-8 beep and buzz and speak a robust complete language to Rey on Jakku? The legitimacy of such a language existing in this fantasy universe lies in these real-world examples of whistled speech. R2-D2's buzzes and whistles have the possibility to carry an extraordinary amount of information... enough that other organic creatures can understand exactly what the little droid is trying to say. Not to far, far away after all, is it?


May the force be with you all,
Dante <3

[Conlangs] Sheikah Language: Breath of the Wild (Part 1)

In my first installment of conlang-related posts, I'll be analyzing the phonology of the Sheikah language from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

In the past, the games in the Legend of Zelda franchise have included writing systems (in this case, alphabets with an exact correspondence to the letters of the English alphabet), but have never had characters speaking a language other than English. 'Languages' such as Zora, Goron, Gerudo, and Hylian (and now, Sheikah) have all had various alphabets assigned to them. Inscriptions and signs within the games, however, were always written in English underneath those fancy alphabets. For example, Jabun, the Great Deku Tree, and Valoo from Wind Waker all speak Hylian, but their dialogues can be easily decoded because they're in English with a different alphabet. 

In Breath of the Wild, however, we finally see some linguistic depth in the languages of various races across Hyrule. The Gerudo people actually speak bits and pieces of the Gerudo language; although these vocabulary items are mostly phatic in nature (small talk, pleasantries, speech not intended to carry specific information), it's still something significant. At some point within the next few days, I'll post about the Gerudo language. 

So where in Breath of the Wild is Sheikah spoken? The answer is: nowhere, really. But, it's the one actual language in the Legend of Zelda franchise that has the most data available to us, and that data is available through the names of the Sheikah Monks who guard each Shrine in Breath of the Wild. Each of these monks has a first and last name, and their names fairly consistently fit within a specified phonology; syllable structure and phonological inventory is consistent across all 120 shrines in the game (with one puzzling exception). That's 240 data points that we have to work with!

The thing that makes Sheikah names different from other character names in the game is that we have a massive pool of them and the way they're spelled is very specifically patterned. This shows that some linguistic effort was put into these names and the language where they came from. In a spreadsheet I made, I have listed all first names and last names of each monk, including what region of Hyrule their shrine is located in, and my proposed pronunciation for these names in IPA, according to the spelling conventions present in the names. I've included the region in which the shrines are located as an extra variable, just in case there was any regional variation to the names... but unfortunately, a pattern didn't seem to appear. 

Oftentimes, conlangers will pick and choose various features from languages of the world to incorporate into their conlang. Every language has a mental image associated with it, a sort of aesthetic quality; Germanic and Scandinavian languages fueled much of Tolkein's Evlish tongues, while Semitic languages (mostly Hebrew) influenced Dwarvish (in controversial ways). In terms of aesthetic design, the Sheikah language seems to very closely resemble various Austronesian languages such as Fijian, Indonesian, or Hawai'ian. The simple syllable codas combined with the overall phonotactics (phonemic glottal stops, coda-h, long/short vowels, gemination, etc.) point strongly toward the 'vibe' of the Austronesian language family.

Throughout the whole data set, several first and last names actually repeat (sometimes more than once). Those names are as follows:

Repeated First Names

• Dah (x2)
• Kah (x3)
• Kema (x2)
• Maag (x2)
• Sha (x2)
• Shae (x3)
• Shai (x2)
• Shee (x2)
• Toto (x2)

Repeated Surnames

• Kai (x2)
• Ko’sah (x2)
• Maag (x2)
• Noh (x2)
• Rokee (x2)
• Sah (x2)

Some notes about my proposed pronunciations:

• This language contains contrastive long vowels. This means that two words can be minimally different from each other depending on how long the vowel is in the word. 
• This is evident from spelling as well as a minimal pair of surnames: Koh and Kooh. 
• There are also geminate (or 'doubled') consonants, as indicated by the spelling. 
• The letter <q> appears to represent a voiceless uvular plosive /q/, as this romanization convention is typical across many of the world's languages.
• Same with:
• <j> = /dʒ/ voiced post-alveolar affricate
• <ch> = /tʃ/ voiceless post-alveolar affricate
• <th> = /θ/ voiceless interdental fricative
• <y> = /j/ voiced palatal glide
• <w> = /w/ voiced bilabial glide
• <'> = /ʔ/ glottal stop
• The letter <c> only shows up once in all of the 240 names: Rucco Maag.
• This does not include the diglyph <ch>.
• Due to the overwhelming variety of values that the letter <c> takes on in various languages of the world, it was almost impossible to take a guess at what phone this letter could represent. Not to mention it's presented in the word as a geminate consonant!
• It likely does not represent /ts/ as this combination is present in the first name Tutsuwa.
• Since I've proposed a connection to Austronesian languages, it is likely that <c> could represent a voiced interdental fricative /ð/, as it does in Fijian; however, this sound is widely romanized as <dh>, especially to English-speaking audiences. 

For Part 2, I'll be talking about the actual phonological space of Sheikah, more on phonotactics and issues I've encountered, as well as some tidbits of Gerudo sprinkled in. I may also venture out and analyze these shrine names in their original Japanese, just to add more data for me to work with. Stay tuned!

Dante <3

Behind the Name: Thieves' Cantata

Howdy!

So, the title for this blog is "Thieves' Cantata" which, on the surface, sort of sounds like I made up a fun combination of words and decided that would be the name of my blog. But, there's a little more behind it that might need some explanation...

'Thieves' cant' is a secret language (cant or argot) that was used by thieves and other miscreants in Britain around the 16th and 17th centuries. This secret language was employed to keep illegal or otherwise secretive dealings out of the ears of law enforcement or other unwanted eavesdroppers. I've found a pretty great beginners' guide here to learning thieves' cant for role-players!

So I decided on a play on words incorporating "cantata". Get it? I'm a musician, right? Humor me.

P.S.
I'll likely be trying to post every other day or so, but if I don't get to it, I might rescind that promise.

Dante <3

Introductory Post!

Hello all!

For lack of a better way to begin this: my name is Dante, I'm a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor of Humanities and Arts in Linguistics and Music Performance (a mouthful that I will continuously regurgitate to future employers and numerous times, I'm sure).

A little bit about myself: as a linguist, I mostly specialize in phonetics/phonology, morphology, and historical linguistics. I've worked on numerous projects ranging from the origins of the Danish stød to irregularities in Hungarian noun paradigms to the morphology of Yakut/Sakha. I'm the most familiar with Germanic and and Romance languages, but have dipped my toes into Turkic, Uralic, and Altaic branches. If you're not exactly a linguist and don't know what any of that meant, I've studied and done a ton of research on how certain sounds have behaved over the history of a language, and how those sounds interact with other sounds in those languages. I'm also an avid conlanger ("conlang" = constructed language... like Dothraki or Elvish or Klingon... yeah I do that stuff).

The question everyone seems to want to know is "Just how many languages do you speak?!" and the answer is a whopping 2 at best: I speak English natively and learned Spanish for quite a number of years and can hold conversations and understand most of what is said to me. I've also formally studied Italian, German, some French, Swedish, and Hungarian (heritage reasons).

On the musical side of things: I've been a musician since the 5th grade and continued to study vocal performance in undergrad. I'm forever a marching band nerd (2 years drum major, alto/tenor sax (I also play the bassoon in concert bands)), I've been in TIA indoor percussion ensembles in high school, and I've been in musicals and plays since 10th grade. I continued to study voice formally in college, and have been involved with numerous operas, musicals, and straight plays. (I'm a lyric baritone if anyone was wondering...)

Perhaps this abundance of information about someone you might not know can get tiring. "Get on with it! What's the blog for?!" I hear from the back row. Ask and you shall receive:

I decided to make this blog on a semi-professional level to document my weird and often unnecessary linguistic knowledge and to share it with the world! Why? I think language, simply put, is the thread that holds human beings together. Language is weird and beautiful, and I want to share that with you. It can be a magical realm of phantoms and angels, but it can also serve as a tool for either good or evil (or memes).

On a personal level, I wanted to create this blog to paint a portrait of the more realistic side of post-grad adventures. As a 22-year-old dweeb, in an inordinate amount of debt, I feel that a large audience can relate to the trials and tribulations of job-searching, apartment hunting, eating too much ice cream because you don't know what to do with all your free time, drinking one too many beers at a friend's house, etc. In short, I'm here to tell a story of sorts. So, expect a mixed bag of informative linguistic posts, musical ramblings, and college-age shenanigans.

I'll leave off at that for now. More on the title of my blog later!

Dante <3