untitled miniconlang

In the writing project that only _hannelore is allowed to see, I was using France as a model for the homeland of the POV character, giving him a French-sounding name and so on. When I reached the point where he was going to be so ashamed of what he was writing in his diary that he would conceal it by writing in his native language, I had to stop and spend a day modeling it. Of course it's a cipher of French with various tweaks, and that was just fun.

Zavre a nu brun. Se brun gov nule mapo ku nu straven te nule rabul. Se brun sor te plum e plum, o pulbe su atandrebe. Fral skelen. "Su mapo kranas kilme," bu. "Vutibe su zavrebe te du."

( traduction )

Listen to it. Forgive me, I have a cold. But yeah, HEY BONUS: That's what my voice sounds like now, kinda.


Then somehow the writing system needed to be modeled after Cyrillic, in that the letters look familiar, but if you tried to sound it out you wouldn't get it right at all. It's an abugida! I like those.

( l'image )

Before I got into LJ fandom, I basically just hung out with conlangers. And that was fun, and I learned a lot, but sometimes the culture of it is sort of stifling, in that there's too much value placed on having a magnum opus conlang of maximal detail and realism that you've worked on for twenty years. Not that I decry these -- I have them too -- but I just don't think they're "better" than a cute little toy lang you make in five hours and then never touch again. This is a toy airplane, and this is one too, and so is this. They all succeed at modeling an airplane, but it's level of detail, zooming in and out.

To put it in fandom terms, you can write an epic novel, or a 2000 word story, or a 15-minute drabble, and I see no qualitative difference, they just are what they are.

It's hard to compare conlanging and fic writing, though, at least for me. I find writing very challenging, and most of my satisfaction comes from feedback. I don't know if a story is "good" until someone says they liked it. Conlanging just... gives me pleasure. It may take work and concentration, but it isn't hard or frustrating in the way that writing is, ever. It's nice if someone admires what I did, but it's a very distant concern, which is probably why I find it hard to motivate myself to post my stuff anywhere.

untitled miniconlang

In the writing project that only _hannelore is allowed to see, I was using France as a model for the homeland of the POV character, giving him a French-sounding name and so on. When I reached the point where he was going to be so ashamed of what he was writing in his diary that he would conceal it by writing in his native language, I had to stop and spend a day modeling it. Of course it's a cipher of French with various tweaks, and that was just fun.

Zavre a nu brun. Se brun gov nule mapo ku nu straven te nule rabul. Se brun sor te plum e plum, o pulbe su atandrebe. Fral skelen. "Su mapo kranas kilme," bu. "Vutibe su zavrebe te du."

( traduction )

Listen to it. Forgive me, I have a cold. But yeah, HEY BONUS: That's what my voice sounds like now, kinda.


Then somehow the writing system needed to be modeled after Cyrillic, in that the letters look familiar, but if you tried to sound it out you wouldn't get it right at all. It's an abugida! I like those.

( l'image )

Before I got into LJ fandom, I basically just hung out with conlangers. And that was fun, and I learned a lot, but sometimes the culture of it is sort of stifling, in that there's too much value placed on having a magnum opus conlang of maximal detail and realism that you've worked on for twenty years. Not that I decry these -- I have them too -- but I just don't think they're "better" than a cute little toy lang you make in five hours and then never touch again. This is a toy airplane, and this is one too, and so is this. They all succeed at modeling an airplane, but it's level of detail, zooming in and out.

To put it in fandom terms, you can write an epic novel, or a 2000 word story, or a 15-minute drabble, and I see no qualitative difference, they just are what they are.

It's hard to compare conlanging and fic writing, though, at least for me. I find writing very challenging, and most of my satisfaction comes from feedback. I don't know if a story is "good" until someone says they liked it. Conlanging just... gives me pleasure. It may take work and concentration, but it isn't hard or frustrating in the way that writing is, ever. It's nice if someone admires what I did, but it's a very distant concern, which is probably why I find it hard to motivate myself to post my stuff anywhere.