Douleur (θͬæͬɐ̃ͬχ̓ɤ̞̃ɐ̃ͬlͬ) | Curse Conlang Circus 2023

Vive la France.
Vɐvɤ̞̃ χ̓ɤ Ðlͬɤɕͬkx̓ɤ̞̃.

[@stephenkramer7157]

Attention! After much delay, I bring you the grammar and vocabulary of Douleur! Use its power (un)wisely. Link: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OVDVfHZJbi9X_Rbu5UD--MKC7ltU-Th_WDSdy5u7s2E/edit?usp=sharing

[@tlatai]

i'd love to learn more about the country of doul. what made them and their language this way

[@fernit0505]

Hi, I've noticed in my effort to translate a certain text into this language (I will share the result as soon as I'm done) there is a mistake in the arcticles chart: Ultrafemenine gender is written twice, while Other gender can't be found. I guess the second Ultrafemenine is equivalent to Other and it is just an erratum, but I wanted you to know. Edit: I've also noticed there are to letter "p", one for the sound /s/ and another one for the sound /ʑ’/. Is that meant to be like that? Because that's cursed as heck but I don't know how to treat each P.

[@divyanshaggarwal6292]

Oh thank you!

[@stephenkramer7157]

@@fernit0505 1st thing: Well I guess that's unfortunate. Yes, the second UF is Other. 2nd thing: Yeah that was definitely intentional 110% no mistakes here.

[@TheRojo387]

Pain? Suffering? That's literally what "douleur" means in French! No WONDER your viewers are calling it "Ultrafrench"!

[@cmyk8964]

you’ve invented ultrafrench

[@livedandletdie]

Nah that was Agma Schwa's job... this is Lͬaͬ Fͬrͬaͬnͬcͬeͬ pͬlͬuͬsͬ uͬlͬtͬrͬaͬ.

[@imlemonth]

It’s the ultimate form of cursedlangs

[@wyntyrr]

This is ultraultrafrench bro

[@kittykat5090]

GOD IS DEAD HELL IS FULL

[@abxy_real_official_since2020]

Douleur is actually more phonetic like Spanish/Romanian. It's orthography just makes much less sense. 3:23 is the example I'm giving you.

[@aldopro23rex]

I was already pissing my pants when i read "l'aviation" but when I saw the actual romanization it all came together. You're a sick mind but nevertheless a genius one. You made something thought impossible: make french incomprehensible even to french speakers. I cannot stress enough how much work and intellect and mental illness are necessary. Thank you for your sacrifice. You scare and amuse me at the same time. This "conlang" is probably the most likely to be picked up by me. Good work!

[@Bingoyamaguchi4]

Very confused about the punchline. Extremely impressive video but the writing being in french doesn’t do anything at the end. It’s just a translation as he even says the the conlang is ovs and french is svo. Am I missing something?

[@Flaquar]

​@@Bingoyamaguchi4 The passage is translated from English into Douleur, and the entire language was engineered such that the Douleur translation of this paragraph would appear identical to the French translation. The individual Douleur words, however, do not have the same meanings as their French homographs. For example, at one point the verb "fly" is translated into Douleur and is written as "l'abeille," which coincidentally looks exactly like the French word for "the bee."

[@valtteripennanen4043]

Being French is it's own mental illness becausewhy would someone make such fucking hard language in the first place

[@mattheworchard481]

3:51 "The ‹n› letter makes the sound /ɕͬ/, and here we have the /n/ sound being made by an apostrophe of all things" Truly one of the most cursed cloŋs ever

[@alexilonopoulos3165]

I just realized it’s all French 😂😂😂

[@jochenau9164]

True fact: the average native speaker of Douleur has had seven uvula replacements by the age of ten.

[@stephenkramer7157]

I meant to drop in that most native speaker were fluent by the age of sixty-five, but that joke just got lost somewhere.

[@jarblewarble]

This is probably the language that Gollum would have spoken if his native language were French.

[@Guji198]

shoutouts to me for giving the 65th like to this comment 😏@@stephenkramer7157

[@hakr14]

This whole thing is funny, but the punchline of written Douleur just being French is... it feels impossible. How did you do that.

[@stephenkramer7157]

I started with the French and built the conlang around it. The system of mutation came from an effort to make the three different words for bee fit in context. I should stress that this paragraph is the only thing in the whole language that is identical to French in its orthography.

[@viiizzaalishvili9967]

@@stephenkramer7157its like the "overfittiong" that happens when ai is trained on a specific kind of data and when confronted with sufficiently different data, the results the neural network spits out is nonsence

[@qantuum7567]

@@stephenkramer7157 now that's dedication :=)

[@renerpho]

​@@stephenkramer7157 "this paragraph is the only thing in the whole language that is identical to French" -- Is that a theorem, or a conjecture?

[@tonydai782]

@@renerpho Conjecture, it's not really feasible to list out every possible sentence and check if its French equivalent is the same. It's a very reasonable conjecture, but a conjecture nonetheless.

[@SL-wt8fm]

I love that the language is spoken by wailing in abject pain, and that all grammatical rules perfectly resonate to produce french when reciting the bee movie script, quickly devolving into keyboard smash when translating anything else

[@vaiyt]

the perfect punchline, I am still laughing

[@user-dx5wm1uz9d]

I hear you adding a thrill to some sounds when speaking actual english and I can't tell if it's your dialect or brainrot from making douleur

[@stephenkramer7157]

Absolutely brainrot.

[@ItsPForPea]

Man don't even state the punchline throughout the entire video lmfao, props to you man.

[@Echor_Covos]

Never thought would find a pvz content creator here😂, cheers!

[@ItsPForPea]

@@Echor_Covos has always been into linguistics in the background, cursed conlang contest is where it peaks though. If there ever be a third one, I'll make my own cursed conlang, that's for sure.

[@ysciao]

it is p for penis

I think this video would be even better if it ended right when the script did. Just a quiet French anthem and let people figure out the rest.

[@board-qu9iu]

@@ItsPForPea Did you make one? It ended yesterday the deadline

[@mariusmavridis2941]

The fact that there's an 'insectile' gender but no, bees have to be piratical...just brilliant

[@kitcutting]

The French national anthem going on in the background while speaking douleur, I definitely feel the pain 😂😂😂

[@YEWCHENGYINMoe]

2^7th like

[@angelcaru]

You feel the bread?

[@JoseHiggor]

We should adopt this for universal language. Since the phonology is so bad, everyone will have equal difficulty in learning it!

[@SinarNila]

😅😅😅😅 forget this idea 😅😅😅😅😅 this conlang serves to tragical and comical movies and series only 😅😅😅😅. I agree with the phonology its so bad, that dismotivates a person to learn this conlang ALL Over the world .

[@NetherTaker]

Chaotic Evil Esperanto

[@sylv512]

@@SinarNilafrench keyboard syndrome

[@cerebrummaximus3762]

Why did I read this in either a posh villain British accent or Doofenshmirtz-esque German accent? Behold! The unesperant-inator

[@cerebrummaximus3762]

​@@NetherTaker *Chaotic good

[@owensmusicalmisadventures2312]

Please remind me to never get in an autism-off with you. This is the most terrifying and impressive thing I have seen in a long while.

[@nsr-ints]

My adhd might be able to compete. Let me grab extreme-Latin that uses a modified (albeit still extremely cursed) Thai orthography real quick.

[@wilyriley_]

@@nsr-intsI am scared now, please elaborate

[@nsr-ints]

@@wilyriley_ quite simple, really. Thai but it's a synthetic/polysynthetic language.

[@GregoryMom]

@@nsr-intspost it

[@animanya394]

This was so worth it. This is the first ccc entry what literally made me laugh, I literally can’t stop laughing right now💀💀💀

[@koftp-was-taken]

This is so good, I absolutely love the idea of being able to express that something is a green pirate in the way that everyone acknowledges my level of masculinity. So convenient!!

[@Zayashuku]

IM IN A HOLE TOO DEEP I ONLY LEARNED ABOUT CURSED CONLANG *2 DAYS* AGO -AND I CANNOT STOP- This shook me all the way up😂 Great work!

[@dejadee]

I'm in the same situation. RIP my KZbin feed.

[@Monoryable]

That's how linguists reproduce: they infect you with conlang brainrot, and you make more of it yourself 😂

[@cerebrummaximus3762]

​@@Monoryable Haha, why is that so accurate 😂 I begun trying to make a private language so nobody will understand, now I can freely read my language in IPA, know words I never imagined I could know, in the process of watching entirety of Crash Course Linguistics, hoping Xidnaf will return and occasionally trying to learn Esperanto and other conlangs for fun myself.

[@aishaahmed3736]

same

[@altejoh]

Really underappreciated cursed detail being that this language needs to specify Cyan, but not blue/green xD

[@oogalook]

I never want you to feel like you're obligated to make another KZbin video, cuz you've already made the best one. But I subscribed on principle.

[@stephenkramer7157]

The video is doing well enough (notwithstanding that I'm riding on the back of an established creator) that I might actually try to do the KZbin thing. We will see.

[@andrewk.5575]

Encore meilleure que l'accent québécois.

[@charlesleninja]

Je ne sais pourquoi, mais en tant que Québécois, je trouvais ça jolie comme langue, et assez intuitif aussi.

[@smergthedargon8974]

And most certainly better than French!

[@Nathouuuutheone]

Eille

[@christopherboa7771]

BAHAHAHAHHA en tant que québécois, j'ai tant ri 🤣

[@BlakMuffin]

Silence, eur*péen

[@GustavSvard]

um, excuse me professor? I think I'm in the wrong class? Professor Kramer: - And how would that be said in Douleur? Without insulting your classmate's bookshelf this time, please.

[@snibo1024]

how did you come up with a romanisation that is just the french translation of the original sentence.

[@stephenkramer7157]

I glossed the sentence, assigned each French word a meaning based on the gloss, and then created the mutation system to justify the fact that there were three completely different words for "bee". Hence why it was a conlang built backwards.

[@dyld921]

I don't get it. This is just normal French.

[@Pining_for_the_fjords]

Trilled fricatives actually exist in Czech, specifically the trilled voiced post alveolar fricative, written as ř. I don't know if this a correct phonetic description but that's what it sounds like to my ear. Trilled vowels however are a novel idea. I can see why they're not used in natural languages. 😂

[@grahamh.4230]

I think the difference with the famous Czech sound is that the trilling/flapping there is part of its primary manner of articulation, while Douleur’s is a coarticulation.

[@apia46]

i cant believe youre able to say that so fluently how

[@stephenkramer7157]

Torment.

[@pojnacoviceaproductions514]

Those sounds are called "strident", they are produced with an epiglottal trill instead of vibrating vocal cords. They are written with a double tilde under the letter and are phonemic in Taa.

[@stephenkramer7157]

If they appeared anywhere it would be in Taa. That being said, I've already hear a couple of interpretations of those sounds. I'm curious what conclusion Agma and his discord will come to.

[@pojnacoviceaproductions514]

@@stephenkramer7157 Taa is pretty much as cursed as natural languages get from a phonology point of view (:

[@Ezullof]

Aren't they phonemic in a bunch of other languages as well? Also, isn't "epiglottal" considered obsolete and replaced by "laryngeal" in modern linguistics?

[@Ezullof]

@@pojnacoviceaproductions514 Maybe it's artificially cursed though. I see a lot of weird ideas attributed to !Xoon all the time but it's rarely grounded in actual research. Clicks and long ejective clusters are already weird enough as it is.

[@rodrivazquez1590]

Of course it had to be phonemic in ǃXóõ 🙄🙄

[@connortoenail]

this is almost as cursed as french.

[@smergthedargon8974]

Oh hey, trilled vowels! One of the conlangs (not actually cursed) I'm working on has them. "Gender system for verbs" You mean conjugations? 😛 "Verbs take marker from the clause's subject's color" GRAMMATICAL RACISM, BABY!!! This is definitely one of my favorite submissions I've seen so far - some good creativity here. I'm sure the language's name resembling "dolor", the Latin word for "pain", is pure coincidence.

[@drd-hm6fc]

It’s French, same meaning

[@benediktsender4290]

r/woosh

[@vahonenko]

Well, in some languages verbs conjugate differently for male and female nouns, in Slavic languages for example. "Я ел/Ya yel" = "I ate (said by a male speaker)", but "я ела/ya yela" = "I ate (said by a female speaker)"...

[@smergthedargon8974]

@@vahonenko Yes, I know - that's not what was meant in this context, pretty sure. My own conlang does gender inflection in all persons on verbs.

[@cypriencoon8744]

This gives me the same feeling as the 1812 Overture does, a swirling buildup with just enough foreshadowing culminating in a magnificent conclusion.

[@rainbowlack]

The final slideshow gives the same effect as the cannons.

[@egodeosum]

It's like a fax machine with a head cold trying to speak Hebrew.

[@vincentfinn292]

La traduction de la fin m'a tué 🤣Par contre quel boulot pour arriver à ce résultat ! Chapeau ! Eng: The end translation had me going crazy! How massive of a work is it to come to this result tough! Congrats!

[@imrukiitoaoffire1908]

Bro, I have literally no idea what the weird as-though trilled velar is, and YET I can produce that sound so very easily, but I CAN NOT Identify WHERE and WHAT it could be in the IPA. My best guess is that it's a highly protracted uvular co-lingual trill, where the very BACK of the tongue is soft and TRILLING against EITHER the Uvula OR the Velum, which the very backmost in my mouth, the Velum, right before the Uvula, is soft...

[@stephenkramer7157]

My feelings exactly. I was hoping Agma would tell me what in the name of God the sound I'm making actually is.

[@MatrixTheKitty]

you know, colour classes are actually a really interesting idea for a xenolang of some kind, whether for space aliens or fantasy creatures. maybe some kind of fey?

[@FlagAnthem]

Indeed

[@abarette_]

what's always funny in the cursed conlangs is that some part of them are genuinely fun ideas

[@melol69]

what if a country just south of England spoke this

[@redpath_testchannel]

Oh God no. no no. no

[@erkinalp]

we call them france

[@ReatExists]

a country just south of england? would be nice to see that sea that separates iberia from the rest of europe filled

[@jurisjancevskis9076]

hmmm Jersey?

[@krishacz]

yes, bees are of the piratical gender, that makes perfect sense

[@colehewitt9827]

I was caught off guard every time you said the name of the language and it was funnier every time

[@RedHair651]

This is what French sounds like if someone who never studied French described it to you.

[@rollerrobert4238]

seagull language edit: further along in the video now. the seagulls are terribly advanced and I am scared

[@moonostultus]

6:45 genuinely made me start cry laughing, it absolutely caught me off guard oml

[@TheLazyBot]

Made me do a spit take for sure

[@KarolOfGutovo]

Outfrenched ultrafrench

[@SinarNila]

😅😅😅😅

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

sounds like hyperpirate+ultrafrench lol

[@chaosinsurgency884]

"Babe wake up, French 2 just dropped"

[@benediktsender4290]

You're aware you cannot just send in a natlang, right? Geez, at least change up the pronunciation 😂

[@inf0phreak]

OMG. I've watched this so many times, and I only just now noticed that you chose Quotative Ultramasculine for the sample text (I assume that's what QUM in the gloss stands for).

[@abendregen5211]

Fusional ithkuil be like

[@Albinojackrussel]

I dont know that much about linguistics, but I know enough for this to be upsetting. I think this might be a cognito hazard to actual linguists.

[@aliceh5289]

A beauty of a creation, hats off to you good sir

[@jondw]

honestly given that the language of the speaker causes mutation, imagine someone coming out as trans by speaking a different mutation of the language

[@MatrixTheKitty]

omgs, uvular-trill-ized vowels! i've used those in a conlang before, i love them

[@rhsmn2334]

this had burst out laghing to tears as soon as the final slideshow started. amazing work mate

[@SinarNila]

😂😂😂😂 Bro ya saved my day thanks i laugh so much, this conlang its a colangs for painfull people sick people, that can learn french 😅😅😅😅 Trilled vowels with trilled consonants holy shit,man its hard to say you created the perfect conlang for comedies' and tragedies' movies and series. 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅 Nasty creative phøcking creation 😅😅😅😅😅😅

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

great job on producing so many uvular trills so well. I've always had a hell of a time producing them neatly, so this would really be a hell language for me lol, but have found that brushing my teeth helps, weirdly enough. Basically the glycerin in toothpaste thickens your saliva and as gross as that sounds, it aids in producing uvular trills lol As a hopefully interesting aside, some dialects of German also have do-support. Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect name notwithstanding, for example has do-support. The use of it is rather interesting as it's been influenced by English over the years, so much so that there's a dialectal split based on religion. Anabaptist groups for all their conservative nature actually have a dialect much more influenced by English and largely use their do-support in the same ways English does, though still not exactly the same. Non Anabaptist groups (the Pa Dutch nobody seems to actually know about lol) however use their do-support more as a kind of emphatic continuous form. In this sense it's a bit of the opposite of what one might expect from English. In English "I do swim" means that swimming is a thing I (habitually) do, while the cognate sentence in Pa Dutch 'ich duh schwimme' instead means rather that I am in fact swimming right this moment, which could be similarly expressed in English via "I AM swimming" i.e. by stressing the auxiliary verb

[@kakdasfiksterre]

I'm "new" to conlanging and this is still fucking brainrotting lol, great job mate

[@SillyLittleTree]

THE FACT THAT THIS IS SPELLED ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE FRENCH 🤣🤣

[@zojaXII]

fier de souffrir ✊

[@natepb]

a πal number is one of the worst things i've ever heard, so flagrantly nerdy

[@Elara_____]

Douleur is all I feel. Congratulations.

[@CuriosityCore101]

Almost a year later and I'm still in awe of this beautiful monstrosity and the fact that you built it BACKWARDS.

[@royce_beyer]

This sounds like the language of wookies.

[@jane_gorelove]

ah, thanks so much, you've accounted for the rare cases in which someone non-masculine is speaking! i feel very included /j /pos

[@MarcelGomesPan]

I want to hear a sermon in it….including the entire Gospel of John.

[@eggplant4367]

wookie + Klingon is this monstrosity

[@michaeldaconceicao1041]

magnificent display of conlanging talent ! Great job ! this conlang gets an A plus in conlang creativity

[@BryanLu0]

OMG, the conjugation is so cursed. It's like polypersonal agreement without any of the benefits of polypersonal agreement Edit: I would find ot strange that adjectives, adpositions, etc. don't inflect for anything, because these usually are derived from verbs or nouns

[@hugonegrete6325]

Going backwards into French isnt easier or less painful than going headfirst

[@tannebraevitus1222]

I love that its just French but make it insect pirates Edit: I suspected something was up from the name alone but then I saw "l'aviation" and just fucking new from the bottom of my heart the entire purpose of this video I love it. XD

[@that1niceguy246]

I felt quite a lot of douleur already 1 minute in i don't think can sit through this all at once.

[@starc3968]

Salutations from a Tom Scott mailing list follower

[@stephenkramer7157]

What exactly is the relevance of Tom Scott's mailing list?

[@Ditocoaf]

@@stephenkramer7157 Tom Scott's weekly newsletter is mostly a collection of recommended links, and this is one of them today! I'm very glad I came here this was hilarious.

[@I_Love_Learning]

@@stephenkramer7157 He also claims Conlangs are a waste of time, but we can let that slide.

[@starc3968]

@@stephenkramer7157 the mailing list sends a few video recommendations that Tom found interesting. Looks like this one caught his eye!

[@eddierosenblum1218]

@@stephenkramer7157 Tom Scott called this video out as something cool to watch on his weekly mailing list! nice work :)

[@Guji198]

thank you for sharing this video, Tom Scott

[@konayasai]

I think it's cultural misappropriation to name your conlang after the mating call of the French.

[@zakuro8532]

Gives off danish vibes. Danish moment.

[@exotrrc1636]

that's offensive to this conlang

[@whitequartz5289]

Imagine if you will, four hours into nguh’s second stream, the second to last language of the day. He thought he saw everything, then he gets jump scared by FRENCH!!

[@rainbowlack]

I can't stop thinking about this. Douleur has ruined me. If this has destroyed my mind in ways unknown to mankind, and it has, I am so so sorry for what you went through while making this. Thank you for your sacrifice, because this is the funniest shit I've ever seen. A language to surpass Kay(f)bop(t).

[@benjaminnewman3837]

I want an accompanying writing system where 50% of the letters are silent.

[@EdwardNavu]

Note-to-self: Douleur moments - 0:11, 0:21, 2:22, 2:43, 8:26 (Dou**L**eur), 12:26, 16:48 Bonus: Trill phoneme moments - 2:10, 2:55 ~ 3:02, 3:53 Cut moments - 2:36, 17:01, 17:35 (Beautiful) Translation - 18:32

[@vrixphillips]

I.... you had me in the first half ain't gonna lie lmfao wow, a whole secondary pronunciation of Franch.

[@XTSonic]

As a Dutch speaker, this seems easy enough

[@ninel1995]

I have watched several horrors, Tarantino's movies and this sort of thing, but I have never seen anything so terrifying.

[@FlagAnthem]

I-cant-eat-rice

[@ninel1995]

@@FlagAnthem Rice is nice, eat it twice

[@40watt53]

I can only do a bilabial trill and damn this is so impressive to me.

[@22222Sandman22222]

this video cured my depryershiôn thank you

[@senecavermeulen8110]

“and finally… gnomic.” mental hospital. NOW!!

[@JohnNada-b9s]

This gave a great idea for an infimal or surreal number, for all things that are infinitely close to but not zero.

[@Superbajt]

I suspect I know one of the language classes you admitted you've failed.

[@Madisongs]

I watched this in class and I had to constantly stifle my laughter because I was supposed to be taking a test. I don’t know how ANYONE can come up with something like this. It takes a special form of talent to make something this abysmal. I envy your persistence and wish you well on future endeavors. Amazing video.

this is one of the funniest videos i've ever seen

[@JohnSmith-of2gu]

WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?!? How do you come up with, much less execute, the idea of a conlang with infinite trills who's orthography corresponds *exactly* to the French bee movie script without giving any indication it does so? You utterly brilliant bastard. Even before the punchline, I burst out laughing every time your normal smooth English was interrupted by the hellish growl of you pronouncing the language name. I haven't smiled so hard in years. Even if it only takes you 5 seconds on average to come up with an article and you work 15 hour work days, that's still 13 days of work to make that insane excel spreadsheet. Are you OK? Do you need a hug?

[@stephenkramer7157]

Don't worry. Agma's video on how few phonemes a language can have showcased a web app for autogenerating words base on custom phonotactics. The hard part was getting excel to populate the bloody spreadsheet once I imported the words.

[@SenduQendu]

You forgot the e-al in the numbers bc pial needs a partner

[@Blananoo]

I wish I could like this video multiple times Thank you.

[@hieratics]

Probably this is what French will look like into the near future

[@francislelievre5172]

trilled Ş? did you actually invent Shyriiwook, the Wookie language?

[@SinarNila]

Piratical gender from pirate gender 😅😅😅😅ah man phøck this shiiiiiittttt😅😅😅😅😅😅

[@wolftube5793]

19:42 Me trying to tell my crush that I love her💀💔

[@etruscanetwork]

"Omg the french language is so beautiful!" The french language: 18:33

[@neevee_gd]

birds at 3 am in the morning

[@theMuBot]

I've been playing too much Hollow Knight lately, because my first thought on hearing this was "Cool, it's Leg Eater's native language!"

[@brockpiano]

my brother told me about this comment while I was watching a video related to Hollow Knight. I had to open up the game just to find out you're absolutely correct.

[@coolkattcoder]

Autocaptions are good, but also add some custom captions for Douleur. Good luck! Great video! (Make sure the custom captions don't overwrite the english ones though!)

[@Zachary2070]

̃̃h̃õw̃ d̃ĩd̃ ỹõũ m̃ãk̃ẽ d̃õl̃ẽũr̃

[@alexander191297]

Google translation is just “I’m sorry” of your comment 😆

[@Zachary2070]

@@alexander191297 how ?? 😆😆

[@junebugrobotics]

ultra-french+

[@xdarin_]

I'm glad the ^w^ conlang video led me into this terrible, terrible rabbit hole. These have been a delight to watch.

[@n124ac9]

Ironically, its name means “pain” in French.