Keeping a luminous mind ~

Finally back home after my first year wtf. I'm so tired, and I still have to find a job for the summer! I like too many nice things and as a poor student, can't own a single one. Mostly skincare, not going to lie, since I've been having a panic about being twenty (!) next month and don't want to start getting wrinkles. Prevention is better than cure! I've been looking into Korean skincare in particular since it's meant to be about 12 years ahead of European, plus all the products are so cute! And reading about the science, it seems sound. I refuse to get old with grace, I'm going out kicking and screaming. How can I have had approximately a quarter of my life, yet accomplished none of the things I really want to so far? Someone invent a drug that lets me live forever, and stay as I am right now (but preferably  more successful... I can't be poor forever, right?)

I also got my results. They weren't exactly what I wanted... but they're probably what I deserved. I did piss around for the first two terms of the year. After all, first year doesn't count, and now I know the kind of work needed for next year. So what if I wanted to have a little fun this year? Now, I should accept the consequences of the fun. For that reason I am not too disappointed in the results.

And... I moved my stuff into my new uni house before I left! It's super exciting, even though it's just a student house. My room is the third biggest, but has the best lighting and desk chair. It's leather and swivelly, so's I can feel like Dr. Octopus whenever someone enters. Also jacked a housemate's full length mirror, since he's a guy and won't use it.

Been taking so many selfies omg. Mostly to cheer myself up after exams and leaving uni. If you think about it, my thought process is really messed up...

- feels sad about not getting firsts in everything
- scolds self, "Why are you miserable?? You did better than many people! Besides you chose to have fun, remember?? Oh, probably you can't, you can't even remember all of glycolysis and you only learned that a few months ago."
- feels sad about scolding
- takes selfie to stop thinking about being sad
- filters it to death
- "I might not get firsts all the time but I'm looking good!"
- feels guilty for vanity
- feels sad about not getting firsts in everything and only being good for photos

 The above selfie is the last one in my old room... goodbye! You will be missed. The place of many a gathering and drunken escapade. It's weird to think some fresher will have it now. Use it well, young and innocent one.

Use it well.

(For those who care to know, the filter is from an app called Camera 360 and is called 'sweet' under 'magic skin'. I also enhance the saturation a little, but it looks too much on my computer screen. It looks super nice on my ipod though.)

As for writing, I'm plotting plotting plotting! I've worked a few other aspects in; I want to focus more on the disappearances of those who oppose Rosita's regime, and the way they are collectively forgotten. The world building is so tight now, I know exactly how it looks - the hypermodern, futuristic, beautiful hologram world, covering up the grit and the grime of poverty and suffering. Some of the tech is really looking fun too - thought control, drugs, hypergrip shoes... It's going to be pretty 'visually' in people's heads, I hope! A combination of beautiful and disturbing.

I figure since I screwed up my results a little, I'd better get on and write this book and make it a success.

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I'm back!

Exams (and most post exams parties) are finally done! They may not have been finished with style, or even finished particularly well, but I reckon I passed. We visited the botanical gardens to celebrate, and that's where the photo spam's come from. Flowers are pretty, and it turns out my phone has an actually decent camera. We also went on a bar crawl, all 16 student bars in Durham... it was an interesting night, to be sure.

Me and Jade's impromptu mirror selfie. Near the start of the night; can you tell?

But now, it's time for finalising the plot, time for beginning the write-up! I'm super excited for it, and I'll tell you about it as I go! But for this post, I've got one brief(ish) rant for the day. I'm going to sound bitter in it, maybe even jealous. I'll admit it right now - I am bitter about this, and you know what? I am jealous. I'd love even half of this to happen to me. But I'll try to explain why I'm frustrated... if you just bear with me.

So, a few days ago, I happened to be browsing some news sites when I noticed a certain article. It attracted my attention, so I clicked on it. Some of you might have seen it. Two of the youngest members of (quite possibly) one of the most tasteless families in the public eye just now were at a press conference to promote their new book.
They'd written a book? Good for them, I thought.
You see, at first I was completely taken aback - these girls are better known for materialism on reality shows and being models. Had they really written a book? It was even a science fiction dystopia; my genre. Fortunately, my question was quickly answered by the subjects themselves. When asked if they wrote it by themselves, they essentially responded "Of course not, there's no way we could write a science fiction novel by ourselves."
They'd got a ghost writer in. I ought to have suspected. And I seethed.
I checked some reviews out for it - basically they all read in a very similar way. Unoriginal, derivative, poorly written, no character development. So it's not even a good book.
It's a bad, unoriginal book, that these girls did not write, and yet they shamelessly promote it under their own names. They had a real press conference to promote it, they got media attention for it, people are buying it, and most of all, it was published in the first place.
I explained it to my basketball-loving boyfriend like this, when he didn't seem to understand why I was cross.

Imagine you loved basketball more than anything, and the dream you had since you were very young was to play on an NBA team (for the non-basketball-literate, it's a super elite league in America or something.) So, you train really hard, for all your spare time, even though you know it's unlikely you'd ever make the cut (after all, aren't there many people just like you working for the same goal?) But then, you see in the news that a member of a famous boy band (let's go for Harry Styles, I don't exactly follow pop bands very much but I know him) woke up one day and decided he wanted to play for an NBA team - maybe your favourite team. And they just let him, because hey, in their defence, it's going to be great for ratings. But here's the kicker. Harry Styles is terrible at basketball - he can't play at all. So in all the games, a body double plays in Harry Styles' place, and he just appears in the post-game interviews taking all the credit. When asked if it's him playing in the games, he says of course not - how could he ever be skilful enough to play at that level?
And no one even questions it.

That's got to hurt, right?

I think it's more the fact that they outright said they weren't talented or driven enough to work and write the book themselves that gets me, because they still have probably attained more success then I ever would as an author. Because their family is famous. Because they can wake up one morning and decide to do whatever they want, and do it, and have it turn out well for them. Because they can succeed in a discipline I desperately want to make my living in because I love it, a discipline I worked for years to get better at and still work to this day, by doing hardly anything at all - just flashing the cash and their famous names. I get it, I really do, it's how the world works - but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.
It doesn't mean I have to think it's fair.

I'd begrudge them it a million times less if they'd written it themselves and it was actually a decent book. I'd have been pleasantly surprised, and even pleased for them. But as it is, they insult every aspiring author everywhere when they swan around with their names plastered on that cover. And they contribute to the current state of the publishing industry, which puts no value on talent and hard work - only who you are, or who your family is. They make it that much harder for someone who actually wants it to succeed. And, you girls, next time you decide you want to be something... either work for it like a normal person, or don't do it at all.

This has been a public service announcement, I suppose? I'll try not to be bitter over it... It's just hard, sometimes. I guess I'll just write some more. Really, that's the only thing I can do.

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brief notice of abscence

The reason for my huge hiatus/lack of posting over the last few weeks is that my exams are  occurring and I didn't really revise enough orz. At least next year, I'll know to start earlier. In fact, the plan is to summarise each day's lecture notes on the computer as I go, so I don't have to do this rubbish now.
All I can say is that past me was clearly a prat who didn't fully take into consideration the potential effects of her non-revising behaviour for present me. Time travelling should be a thing, not to change history or kill Hitler, but so you can go back in time and slap your old self in the face for inconveniencing you.
See you on the other side, blog.

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conlanging continued - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

I just figured I'd post some more about my conlang (still unnamed, whoops.) I wanted to create it to be somewhat easy to remember, so I've based it around stem-words or concepts (these can be very general, ie the word for seat and chair is the same, coming under 'a thing to sit down on', or more specific than English - having words for two different kinds of light.)

This stem-word (the noun) can then be modified to become a verb, adjective or adverb. This basically means there is less for anyone to remember.

To become a verb - add a 'tense' prefix.
To become an adjective - add an 'ae' suffix.
To become an adverb - add an 'aí' suffix.

Example: melusine.
As a noun, melusine means happiness.

melusine : happiness (n) (meh-liu-seen)
(x)-melusine : smile (v)
melusinae : happy (adj) (meh-liu-see-NAH)
melusinaí : happily (adv) (meh-liu-see-nah-ee)


Information on the (x) for the verb later. Just going to explain the rules about adjectives/adverbs.

Note that normally ae / aí are simply added onto the end of a word. There are just a couple of exceptions. If the noun ends in a or e, then both ae / aí replace the a / e. If the noun ends in i or ai, then aí replaces that. No noun ends in ae.


Examples:
marin (the sea/ocean) -> marinae / marinaí  
         (ma-RIN)                         (ma-RI-NAY) / (ma-RI-NAH-ee)

scioa (knowledge/understanding) -> scioae / scioaí
         (skyo-ah)                                             (skyo-ay) / (skyo-ah-ee) .... and so on.


Now, a little about verbs.
You will notice that the verb for melusine was written (x)-melusine. This is because the prefix changes depending on the verb's tense. The prefix is actually the one irregular verb - to be.
Below is the conjugation for the verb, to be (or, to exist.)

li : present tense. (I) am, (you) are, (it) is.
lé : past tense. (I/it) was, (you) were.
lor : future tense. (I/you/it) will be.

These are the most basic! But there are others too... Note, these following 'tenses' can be further modified themselves by the past/future tenses. Not the present, it's assumed they're in the present.

kou : conditional tense. (I) can.
aou : perfect tense. (I) have been.
hou : 'desire' tense. (I) want.
sou : (I) should.
vou : (I) must (imperative, ruder than 'so').

These are most of them, but there are others also. I don't think they're so commonly used, though. Also note that these are 'to be' when used with VERBS only, not nouns or adjectives (there's a different set to maintain distinction between verbs and nouns.)

So, I will conjugate a verb in this way. I'll choose votchka, the verb to speak.

llui li-votchka - I speak / I am speaking.
llui lé-votchka - I spoke / I was speaking.
llui lor-votchka - I will speak / I will be speaking
llui kou-votchka - I can speak 
llui aou-votchka - I have been speaking.... and so on!

Extras. Basically to show how to modify the second lot of tenses.

llui aou'lé-votchka - I had been speaking.
llui kou'lor-votchka - I will be able to speak.

Pretty neat, right? At least, I like to think so.


Another important point about about 'to be' - it's also the only verb that can be used on its own without any sort of prefix. For example, to use with adjectives. As well as the ae suffix, you can tell it's not a verb because 'to be' changes :

mi : present tense (I am, you are)
meí : past tense (I was, you were)
meor : future tense (I will be)
aó : perfect tense (I have been)
kó : conditional (I can, I could)
só : I should, you should
vó : I must, you must
hó : I want, you want

It's also not written with a -, since it isn't absolutely necessary - although it would normally appear before an adjective it doesn't have to. For example, if someone asked you what you thought of something, you might just respond with "Pretty" if you were being lazy - or in this conlang, where you don't actually need to refer to the something again since it is clear what is being talked about.

xue mi melusinae - they are happy.
xue meí melusinae - they were happy... etc.

llui mi ó pantalion - I am a cat

One more note on sentence structure in general. If there's more than one noun in a sentence, the noun before the verb is the thing doing the action and the noun after the verb is having the action done to it. If there's just one noun, it doesn't matter which way you put it. An adjective follows the noun it refers to. An adverb follows directly after the verb it describes, and can be considered as part of the verb. 

And when it comes to adverbs... See, this sentence here:
xue lé-melusine melusinaí - they smiled happily....
Would not probably be used because, while it is grammatically correct, sounds a bit stupid!
Melusine and melusinaí come from the same concept stem. It is already presumed that when someone lé-melusine, they did it happily, since the word comes from the stem for happiness! You could say smiled widely, smiled slightly, or even smiled sadly. But not smiled happily! This is a huge pet peeve of mine when I'm reading/writing.

It's like someone saying 'running quickly.' Why!? It's such a waste of words. If you're running, I assume you're moving quickly without you needing to describe it further. Either use running on its own, or swap it for something like 'sprinting' if you really want to emphasise the point. Unless there's something unusual about the verb, that isn't already implied by the verb, and there isn't a better verb that will get the point across without a stupid -ly word, don't use one. It drives me bonkers. It's a one-way-street to over-description, which just distracts from the story/what you're actually trying to say. Come the glorious revolution, -ly words will be first on the block. I literally go back on my work and cut them out where I use them most of the time, I can't stand them. 90% of the time they get overused and the writer ends up sounding about thirteen. I went through that awful over-description phase - 'Look at me, I'm a writer and I know words and I'm going to use them to describe Literally Everything just in case my readers are too thick to imagine it for themselves!'
Never again. It's just not nice.

So, I deliberately made this conlang in a way that should stamp out some of these ridiculous over-descriptions. Thank you. You're welcome.


 

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some thoughts on youth & beauty, unnatural and natural

Could absolutely not help camwhoring the hell out of the blossom trees I saw today. 100% not sorry for such vanity. They were too pretty. Rejoice in the pretty!



Below is my current spring-theme manicure, unfortunately this is about a week old so is chipping in places now. Pastel lilac with a pastel yellow accent nail. Like crocuses, or something! It's survived pretty well, to be honest... still looks passable!



I was admiring the flowers practically all day, and thinking about things in general as I revised (more genetics, disgusting.) Basically, in my novel's world, such trees cannot easily exist. The sun is covered by smog, they would barely get enough sunlight (the air in my novel's world is understandably filthy, full of dirt particles as well as carbon monoxide and other harmful gases. There are lower oxygen levels and higher carbon dioxide levels. Technology taken and enhanced from today's world has provided 'air filters', structures able to function in a similar way to trees and essentially purify the air, but these are typically confined to richer areas and so poorer areas of the city have to breathe in the disgusting air anyway. Even with these, the air quality is poorer than it is now. The alternative to breathing it all in, as many people choose, is to wear gas masks outside. Houses and other buildings are generally equipped with air filters.)
In the wealthy district (the city is based off the British class system taken to extremes, giving us distinct upper class, middle class, working class and impoverished districts), there are trees - but they are fake, they are all projected holograms. They never fade and the blossoms never fall, they are always perfect and beautiful, but they aren't real. They're called holos in the language of the novel, because that's what they are - hollow, empty.

I can't help but find it a little sad.

Lilia, the main character, grows up in this district with all of these beautiful light shows. Even the sky for them is projected, the real sky is grey and dismal and without a sun. It's similar to the television screen in Beijing showing the sunrise, because otherwise no one can see it. In her district, everything is beautiful. And it is beautiful, I'll emphasise - objectively, it really is prettier than the real thing, and the holos are engineered to be prettier than what they are meant to represent. That's okay - it's one type of beauty.

Also in this district, many people have plastic surgery. They're all rich, so why not? They use serums to regenerate their skin, surgical fillers to keep their faces youthful, they can mould and reshape their bone structure and features to their heart's desire. Implant more hair follicles, gloss their hair, dye their eyes a new colour, polish their skin to make it dewy. Most people want to look like the models in advertisements - everyone wants to be 'perfect'. In this future, plastic surgery looks very natural, but there's still something uncanny about a face with any imperfections scrubbed away. What's more disturbing is that often it's teenagers doing this - Lilia's friend Mellina Lassoir being a prime example. While beautiful anyway, Mellina constantly strives to improve herself in her own (and her father's) eyes. Mellina even has surgery to cause the corners of her lips to turn permanently upwards, so she's always smiling - but it's a fake smile. This is made even more ironic by the fact that Mellina is actually desperately unhappy - but since she's one of the richest in the city and gets everything she wants, everyone assumes she is always happy. She doesn't actually understand that she's sad. The reason for her depression is that her father, while giving her all the material things she wants, has extremely high expectations for her and mostly ignores her. Mellina believes that by becoming perfect, he will show her some interest, but she always falls short. It's later revealed that actually nothing Mellina could do would make her father kind to her - but that's a plot point. ;v Basically, all the money in the world can't make you happy if you're lonely.

Mellina is probably objectively prettier than she was before surgery, despite it being just a little creepy since she looks practically airbrushed. But it's really just a different kind of beauty than she had before. Perfect and imperfect, 'real' and 'artificial' - neither necessarily has to be better or worse than the other, they're just different. I mean, I don't know many people who wouldn't want to get rid of their own imperfections. I don't have anything personally against plastic surgeries/photoshopping... as long as it's made obvious that this is indeed 'artificial' beauty, not 'real'. There's nothing wrong with it! As long as you don't claim it's real?

Mellina never claims it's real in the story, haha. She's proudly 'plastic', and regularly suggests surgeries/methods that other characters could use to improve their looks. She sees working on your looks as pretty much the same as practising to become better at playing the violin, or painting.

I have my flaws - I'm really rather vain, in fact terribly so, and spent far too long looking in the mirror. I know my flaws really, really well - both in looks and in talents/personality. But, I'm actually okay with them just now. I'd never do plastic surgery, at least not now - it's expensive/painful/I don't trust a surgeon not to wreck my face. I'm okay with being the regular blossom-tree, with the odd raggedy petal, the tree that eventually will lose all its flowers... well, I'm not okay with getting old. I really wish I didn't have to do it. I like being young and somewhat attractive ;v It's fun. But then, doesn't the world have a weird obsession with youth? We idolise it, and we all want it, and yet we turn around and shit on it for being 'naive' or 'idealistic' or 'delinquent' whenever we get the chance. Don't you think it's weird, when you think about it like that? I guess it's like Chuck Palahniuk says, in his novel Lullaby. Every generation wants to be the last.

We don't like younger generations, because they remind us of how old we're getting. We don't like them because they're still idealistic and naive enough to believe they can change the world, when we failed to do it ourselves. We don't like them because they see what we've done wrong as a people and point it out, so we write it off as idealism and general stupidity so we don't have to listen. Sure, young people can be stupid sometimes... but we get a bad rep, generally.

I hope I never turn into the kind of older person I just described.

This post has been stupidly meandering, and I'm not entirely sure if I came to a satisfying conclusion... but I got some thoughts out, at least. Otherwise, what's the point of this blog?

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punt punt punt the boat, aggressively down the stream

It's been a little while, but I had a super busy weekend! On Saturday, I met up with some of my university friends to go punting (despite living in Cambridge for most of my life, I am dreadful at punting and can barely maneuver the pole since it is so heavy.) My boyfriend also came, and then stayed over until yesterday! It was super fun.
For the punting, we split into a guy's punt and a girl's punt. Since two of us girls came from Cambridge and had punted before we were guessing that we'd win the race. We decided that it should be a race, since we are competitive and thought it'd be fun to beat them.
Unfortunately, it seems that guys are naturally gifted at punting... All of them were good at it, without even really trying! So unfair. We got to the half way point a long way behind them - they were already turning back. So we craftily stole David (the boyfriend, haha) and had him punt us back to the start.
He was not even particularly tired afterwards, although it is harder upstream and he did it the entire way.  When I tried to punt for about 10 minutes, the punt span around and didn't really go anywhere. We also crashed into just about every other punt on the river... super shaming. My only saving grace was that I didn't fall in or lose the pole like a tourist.

We've already planned the next excursion - some time this summer, we shall engage in pirate punting. Punt hopping, bridge hopping, copious amounts of rum and pirate costumes.

However, spring is most definitely here! The sun keeps coming out, and the trees are all blooming - one of the reasons I love where I live is because it's so green, with so many plants. I keep stopping to take cheeky photos of the blossom. I just wish there was more! Cherry, plum, apple, magnolia blossom trees. Crêpes from the crêpe stand in town, sitting on the greens. It's pretty nostalgic, really.

For now, it's time to revise. But I've had tons of good ideas for my novel - might post about some of them soon, or about my conlang. At the moment I'm also deciding on a name change for one of my principle characters - I just don't like the old name so much. It's tough to find a better one that fits, though.

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15 questions

I couldn't really think of another post for today, and I had some revision I very much needed to avoid. Thus, a rather stereotypical 'get to know me' post! It was going to be 50 questions... and then 20 questions... it finally tailed off at 15. Oh, well.


Who are you?
I'm Alice, nineteen, from Cambridge - the real Cambridge, not the American approximation. I'm British! For those who wonder, I was called Alice because my mum loves Alice in Wonderland, and had hardly heard of anyone called Alice that she knew. I guess she wanted me to have a less common name. Unfortunately this backfired, because there were three in one of my classes. Not so unique after all orz.
 
Why writing?
 I've wanted to be a writer for almost as long as I can remember, and always made up my own stories and worlds in my head as a child. When I was seven I read the first four Harry Potter books, and that sealed it. I wanted people to read the ideas I had in my head, and hopefully enjoy them. Thus, I began writing them down. Since that time, I've worked without stopping to improve.

Future ambitions?
High Overlord of Life, the Universe and Everything.
In all seriousness, I hope to one day become a published author. That's always been the dream - it's really the only thing I've ever wanted to be, and I want it more than anything.
Yet, I am doing a Biology degree... I could have done an English one, but here's a secret - I hated English A Level. I got full marks, but it was really rather boring. I didn't want to pay nine grand a year to be bored. I could have done a creative writing course, I suppose, but let's face it - I probably wouldn't be doing the writing I love to do, and I'd have someone else telling me what to do. With creative things, like art and writing, I really think you have to do most of the work yourself. You have to develop your style yourself, and from my experience none of my teachers have helped me much when it comes to writing creatively. They might have told me how to use punctuation and to indent paragraphs, but not much else. The rest of it came from reading out of school, and my own work writing my own stories in my spare time. I'm fascinated by Biology and inspired by it, but it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Where in the world would you most want to go?
I hope to travel the world some day, like my two uncles. I've never left Europe before, so there's a whole lot of world out there to see! Right now, there's several things I definitely want to see at some point. I want to go to Japan to see the cherry blossoms flowering, I want to go to Vietnam to try the food (my uncle says that out of all the places he travelled, Vietnamese food was the best by far) and I want to go to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef! I'd like to see the aurora borealis at some point, I want to travel to Russia for the ballet, and I want to revisit Paris and Budapest. Also, Santorini for its beauty! There are so many places I want to go!

Favourite cities?
Out of the places I've been, I love Budapest the most. My uncle's flat is there, so we stayed right near the Danube. The Szechenyi baths are amazing, the best baths I've ever visited. After Budapest comes Venice, and then Cambridge. What can I say, I'm biased? Paris is nice too, though.

Any sports?
I don't like team sports, and I don't really like to compete in sports. But I am a black belt in Shotokan Karate, and love to ice skate. I also cycle a lot (prerequisite for living in Cambridge) but that probably doesn't count. Either way, I exercise - I just don't really do sports.

Favourite words?
I have an awful lot of favourite words. I particularly like crystalline, luminesce, shenanigans, tatterdemalion, hobbledehoy, popinjay, flummery, abyssopelagic, xanthochroic, and quixotic.
 
Favourite book?
George Orwell's 1984. Easily. But I also love Flowers for Algernon, Brave New World, and the Harry Potter series.

Favourite bands?
Muse, easily. But I also love Nirvana, Florence & the Machine, Marina & the Diamonds, Karnivool, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, and Fall Out Boy. Mostly for their latest album.

Favourite song?
Super hard wtf! At the moment it's Sunburn, of course by Muse. But other favourites include Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends, Florence & the Machine's Cosmic Love, and pretty much anything else ever by Muse and Marina & the Diamonds.
"She burns like the sun, I can't look away, and she'll burn our horizons, make no mistake~"

Favourite tv programmes?
Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, Futurama, Sherlock, Doctor Who. Fresh Meat is also really rather good.

Religion?
Nope. I'm an atheist.
That doesn't mean I hate religion. I recognise the value of its good parts, and believe they should be preserved. I just don't believe in any sort of God, and the bad sides of religion disgust me. People who try and impose their religion on others in any way at all will always be dreadful excuses for humans.

Political stance?
I hate most of our politicians right now, and genuinely fear for my country. But I did this political compass test thing, though, and I shape up as a left-wing libertarian. Basically, I don't like when people try to take other's rights away, information and education should be free to everyone, censorship is the first step on the ladder to dictatorship, and while there's nothing wrong with working hard to earn more money and a better life there needs to be greater social mobility and everyone should get the same chances.
Also, they need to stop watching us. Did none of them read 1984? Or did they decide it was an instruction manual? Stop spying on everyone! I'm pretty sure every country in the world does it, it's just America and Britain were stupid enough to get caught.
Mind you, the amount of dodgy searches I've made in the name of writing (How long does cyanide take to kill someone? Where can you get shot and survive? How do you make a molotov cocktail?)... I'm probably on so many Government lists by now.

Best feature?
The thing I like best about myself is probably my imagination. And I like to think I'm pretty creative. I don't know, I'm not going to try and big myself up.

Personal flaws?
I'm very proud. And vain. Sometimes that turns into being arrogant, even if I don't mean it. There is nothing wrong with having pride in yourself or high expectations, but I have to be careful sometimes. And I can never meet my own expectations for myself.

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conlanging aka I'm a major nerd

How many people wanted to make their own language as a kid?
Either because they wanted to say things secretly to each other without adults hearing, or because they were nerds and liked Lord of the Rings.
I was the second option.

There are tons of fictional languages. LOTR has Elvish (multiple varieties!). Game of Thrones has High Valyrian and Astapori Valyrian. Star Trek has Klingon. What use are they? Not a lot in the real world, but I suppose they help world-building and reader immersion into a story. Mostly, though, I'm pretty sure it's the creators just getting off to sweet linguistics :V

I do not blame them.

It's fun, okay? Like, even looking at other real languages, the different ways sentences are constructed is fascinating. My favourites are French and Japanese - just about as different as you can get. I learned French at secondary, and Japanese at college. I also learned Ancient Greek electively at school, but wasn't much good at it. I did, however, love seeing where some of our English words come from. English is basically one massive bastardisation of multiple other languages, and I love it to bits. Even when it isn't particularly sense-making.

In my novel, there isn't a particular need for a constructed language, or conlang. I might not even include it, but it was a lot of fun to make and saying it was involved in my novel gave me an excuse to procrastinate. As of now, the language is unnamed. The working backstory is that it was created pre-cataclysm by a group of linguists in the original city state that survives to the story, and while it enjoyed usage among various intellectuals it remained somewhat of a curio. I guess it was kind of like a divide in the class system already, and though it doesn't survive as a spoken language post-cataclysm is still around in the histories. It's designed to be fairly logical and simple to understand, and its words stem from various European languages as well as being invented.

It's an excuse, okay?

So, first,  I guess I can talk about some of what I've got so far for it. I've worked out most of the rules behind the language, so it's really just creating words now. Pronouns seem like a good place to start. These don't really stem from Euro languages, these were among the words I invented. (Note, x is pronounced as sh. So xau is pronounced shau, xue is pronouned shue.) The pronouns are gender neutral, but have their own twist.

I : llui
You : xau
He/she/they : xue
It : sia
It (abstract) : siu

We : lluitou
You (plural) : xautou
They (plural) : xuetou
It (plural) : siatou
It (abstract) (plural) : siutou

Let me explain the significance of 'it'. Yes, I know 'it' has no plural in the English language.

'It' pronouns, that is sia and siatou, are used to refer to things that are not alive. That includes inanimate objects, as well as things that were once alive and now are not - including dead people. It's basically 'they' for non-alive things. Someone who refused to believe or didn't want to admit someone had died would use xau and xue to address/talk about them, instead of the correct sia. On the other hand, if someone were to refer to an animal or plant as sia, it would seem very ignorant - as if the worth of being a living thing that evolved over millions of years was not being taken seriously.
It's a fatalistic kind of language in this sense, I think - not necessarily atheist, but it accepts that people die and that's the end. However, I still wanted it to value life - possibly more highly than otherwise, since it accepts that there is only one and it's finite.

This is all fairly significant to later plot points - especially, the question of whether anyone or anything should last forever.

Siu and siutou are the abstract version of sia - they're used for concepts, generally, things that don't actually exist tangibly in the world. There is no xue equivalent, since an abstract concept cannot ever have lived. Siu might be used as a pronoun for situation in general, for an ideology or a theory - that kind of thing.

Next, nouns in general. Now, nouns are slightly different to pronouns in that the unmodified 'stem' is always taken to be a plural but in the abstract. For this example, I'll use the word houmou, meaning person. This stems from homo sapiens, the Latin name for human.

ó houmou : a person, a single specific person. For example, ó houmou li-vitka literally means a person is looking/staring, one specific person that is being directly referred to. All singular nouns (an apple, a bird) must be preceeded by ó.

í houmou :  some people. A specific group of more than one person. í houmou li-vitka literally means people are looking - a particular group of people are looking or staring.

houmou on its own, houmou li-vitka, means that people are looking, but a wider group of people than the immediate or specific group - people in general are looking or staring.

So, with this example, if you were with your friend in public and they started to argue with you (and people began to stare...)
"li-shiok, lua ó houmou li-vitka." - Stop, that person is staring.
"li-shiok, lua í houmou li-vitka." - Stop, those people are staring (that particular group over there.)
"li-shiok, lua houmou li-vitka." - Stop, people (in general) are staring.

Lua in this case means that, or those, depending on how the noun is modified. Without it, "Li-shiok,  ó houmou li-vitka." translates to stop, a person is staring.

Also, the phrase does not have to be written in that exact order - I write it that way because my native language is English. As long as the general meaning of the phrase is clear:

"lua ó houmou li-vitka." -  that person is looking.
"li-vitka lua ó houmou." - is looking that person.

It can be written or spoken either way.
ó houmou is treated as the noun as a whole, so you have to move that part as a whole chunk. The verb is li-vitka, to look/stare, with vitka being the raw verb and li (the sole irregular verb, 'to be', essentially meaning is) defining the tense (in this case, present.) Without the li prefix, vitka is treated as a noun (ó vitka - a look/a stare, ie he gave me a funny look.) Therefore, li-vitka has to remain together as a whole chunk. Lua, meaning that, can go before or after the noun it indicates. You can just as easily write "ó houmou lua li-vitka" as any of the others, but "ó houmou li-vitka lua" is a bit awkward. The modifier should remain attached to what it is referring to in some way.

It is able to go either side of the noun without confused meaning because in English, that has two meanings. For example, "That person that is looking at me." You will notice the first that is concrete (that particular thing there) while the second that is abstract. This sentence in my language would be:

"lua ó houmou chae li-vitka sa llui."

But it could just as easily be written:

"ó houmou lua chae li-vitka sa llui" or other variations thereupon.

However, lua should be joined onto the noun it modifies, and chae should be joined onto the verb it modifies.  It would make less sense to write "ó houmou chae lua li-vitka sa llui", even though the direct translation in English would not be much different.

It's complicated, I guess, but simple once you get your head round it!

I'll explain other things such as verbs and tenses in some other post.

But if you want to create your own language, the first thing you have to think about is the rules. I've tried to create mine so that it's easy to understand and learn for people who may speak different languages than English as well as English speakers, and while it's stripped-down in some ways is more complicated in others. Verbs and nouns are based around concepts - for example, vitka as a word covers looking and staring. However, the act of seeing is different to looking - to see rather than stare, you have to register and comprehend what you are staring at. It implies knowing something, and so the concept of actually seeing something is merged with the concept of comprehending or understanding - thus, you have the verb scioa. It comes from the Latin scio - to understand.

On the other hand, there are two words for light - lux and lliume. Lux would be used to describe a harsh light, or a glare - the light from the desert sun would be lux. Lliume is a softer, gentler light, or a glow - the morning light through spring leaves or the light of the aurora borealis would be lliume. Stick a verb prefix before them and they become the verbs to shine (harshly), or to glow.

So, it's quite different to English! But making it is a lot of fun.

If you want to make your own language, I do have some software I can recommend for you. WeSay! It's basically a way of creating your own dictionary (you make an entry for each word, and there's space to write the meaning/origin of the word as well as sample sentences) and you can then search through it either for the English meaning or for the word itself. It's not originally intended for conlanging, but it works very well for it.
Download WeSay Here!

With this entry, I have cemented my place as a huge geek. And I love every second of it.

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