Conlangers

Create a conlang for a race of animate trees, that use human-shaped diagrams to represent language phylogeny.

Your conculture has a specific dialect for each season, but they don’t have established boundaries on when each season starts on their calendar.

Evidentiality is marked by the meter of a clause. Anything directly observed is iambic, hearsay evidence is dactylic, inferences are anapestic, etc.

Have a series of consonants that occurs mostly in words about the human body and in slang from a period about 50 years before.

These are, of course, the retro-flex consonants.

David J. Peterson received a BA in English and Linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2003 and an MA in Linguistics from UC San Diego in 2005. He created the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for HBO’s Game of Thrones, the Castithan, Irathient and Indojisnen languages for Syfy’s Defiance, the Sondiv language for the CW’s Star-Crossed, the Lishepus language for Syfy’s Dominion, the Trigedasleng language for the CW’s The 100, and the Shiväisith language for Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World. He’s been creating languages since 2000.

• Download (.pdf)

Abstract

The show Defiance aired on the Syfy network for three seasons from 2013 to 2015. It featured four full conlangs each with its own writing system. This paper details some of what went into making that a reality.

Version History

• fl-000033-00 (Original Version)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

irjal = shadow (noun) (Some things Google found for “irjal”: an unusual to uncommon term; a rare last name that can be Indonesian; a rare first name; similar írjál is in Hungarian a conjugation of the verb to write; similar Irja is an uncommon feminine Finnish first name; Irjal ash Shaykhiyah is the name of a place in Iraq; similar Irjala is the name of a place in Finland)

Word derivation for “shadow” :
Basque = itzal, Finnish = varjo
Miresua = irjal

My previous Miresua conlang word for shadow was iljar. I swapped the L and R around, which makes the new word look more similar to the Basque and the Finnish words.

The word shadow isn’t in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, although its plural can be found once in Through the Looking-Glass.

— the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight — the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her — the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet — and the black shadows of the forest behind —

Aqua quae eum recepit nomen ab illo tenet. At pater infelix, nunc non iam pater, “Icare,” dixit, “Icare, ubi es? Quo in loco te quaeram? Icare,” dicebat cum pennas notas in undis summis spectavit et damnavit suas artes. Tum corpus carum filii in sepulchrum posuit et terra a nomine pueri dicta est–Icaria.

la anhāri anakkāsimma pa jawēramma; ē masōwa mamāsa āl wa masōwa; samma ien λi īkarus; λi īkarus, la sāen sūkēñ; salla jarūna mo riēn sūkēñ; il samma ien λi īkarus il sema jatīāni jawāññi sū jatāoni ōl ī samma jatūrelil mo jakēlimma; ē ñamma mīsa macāna janōññū rā jajōste ī āl pa jekiēn mamōīñ jawēramma īkarja;