Conlang Critic: Viossa

[@DarthFennec]

Imagine being on a discord call with your friends and one day just going "hey, let's all start speaking different languages and see what happens". This is just about the nerdiest thing I've ever seen and I love it so much.

[@narsames814]

Omg, me too

[@eac-ox2ly]

Amazing

[@exedeath]

"This is just about the nerdiest thing I've ever seen" Would be nerdier, if everyone joining the chat would need to pick an unknown language problably few will know and try to spend X days trying to learning it (and then stop trying to do it FOREVER), they will have just enought info to start the thing. Some tried to start one just with pictures, but there is the problems that the pictures may be "explaining too much"

[@jackiecozzie4803]

when i first heard of it as a con-pidgin i thought it was even more nerdy and was a pidgin between conlangs... that would be so cool

[@longiusaescius2537]

Hmmm

[@morninglurker]

The real conlang was the friends we made along the way

[@MorganEarlJones]

I came here thinking this video was going to be about a programming language called Conlang and this comment remedied my disappointment

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

Enough to make a grown man cry *Sniffles*

[@eac-ox2ly]

Adorable

[@emtheslav2295]

Lol, literately, since viossa is a pidgin

[@lanisepa4471]

Literally lol

[@kevincsellak296]

I think they should make a “snapshot,” a recording of a specific text widely known in another language, transferred into Viossa every half year or so, possibly the same text every time, possibly a different one It would serve as a scientific record that could genuinely used by some linguistics student somewhere for a thesis. Plus, it’d give you something to marvel at in accomplishment.

[@fairycat23]

That would be so cool!

[@_yellow]

The Sun and the Wind

[@mccookies3664]

probably either The Sun and the Wind or the Tower of Babel narrative would be good to use since they're so widely translated as samples of conlangs.

[@Sean-of9rs]

You win the comment section.

[@frzzldiscord6730]

Since everyone has their own dialect, since everyone will teach you different things, this wouldn't really be possible.

[@polifemo3967]

its just like conlangers that, when they get to speak in their conlang, they speak ABOUT language XD

[@jeremias-serus]

yes because the vast majority of people that make these insignificant conlangs don't actually put in the work to learn their own creation

[@spegnagmaglorious3590]

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ *i feel called out*

[@jeremias-serus]

@@spegnagmaglorious3590 I'm included in that demographic, as well. For all the conlangs I've attempted and completed--some I feel great about, others not so much--I've never actually applied myself and tried to learn any of them. If the creator of a language can't even bother learning it, that ought to be pretty telling of its usefulness and purpose... unless I suppose it's use is to be useless.

[@Katerina-kqkq]

@@jeremias-serus conlangs created for stories can be a mess to learn because they’re realistic and there can be a bunch of them…

[@italianrobo7608]

I just want to say that I absolutely love that the word for "soft" is fuwafuwa

[@jh5401]

that's the softest word I have ever thought

[@theMoporter]

Japanese onomatopoeia is very fun, I would totally integrate mochimochi too!

[@Milark]

You should learn Japanese then ;0

[@idonthaveanygoodnametouse1704]

I like “auauauau” for “so on and so on”

[@zacf991]

i love reduplication

[@driveasandwich6734]

Viossa: everything is allowed. except "is". screw "is".

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

Stuart be like......

[@Mercure250]

All my homies hate "is"

[@the-bruh.cum5]

ye exist je exista ie exists

[@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8]

*laughs in Russian*

[@carbonmonoxide5052]

Sounds perfect for Bill Clinton.

[@montymcgee7087]

Maybe it's because I'm still bad at understanding the nuts and bolts of conlangs, but I think this is my favorite conlang critic episode. Everyone jan Misali interviewed seemed super fun and the spoken sample was hilarious and whenever jan suddenly giggles it rejuvenates my spirit. It was just such a unique episode

[@spinnis]

Just so you know, 'jan' isn't part of his name, it just means person in toki pona, and it's there cuz names in toki pona are adjectives that must be applied to the noun they are naming, which in this case is a person.

[@cardboardhed1967]

@@spinnis ona li jan Misali e nimi kepeken "Jan" la, mi pali e kalama pona a! ni li toki.

[@Sean-of9rs]

@@spinnis yes, but even in English, it is still common to refer to them as "jan Misali".

[@parnikkapore]

@@Sean-of9rs (OP referred to jan Misali as just "jan" later on.)

[@Sean-of9rs]

@@parnikkapore True; past me was not clear on the wording of this comment.

[@kiro9291]

holy cow it's a pidgin it's a peer-pressure-fueled group pidgin, stressful but fun the pidgin is so vast in phonology so it sounds like an emulsion of vocabulary and pronunciation, a bit of a patchworky quilt for everyone to work on this was really fun and unique as a concept

[@KazuTree]

Viossa is such an interesting concept to me. it's just super special and unique. It feels like a snapshot of how a language would naturally form-accidentally and by chance. Just throwing things together and what sticks, sticks; and what doesn't, doesn't. It's the kind of thing that would be difficult to actually learn traditionally, but this 'experiment' helps people visualize the process. It's just so fascinating, I love it. This is linguistic nerds just hanging out and being linguistic nerds. I really do hope they keep at this, I think it's great!

[@godminnette2]

Obviously it's far from a perfect experiment - as they mentioned, they all study linguistics and have a further level of self-awareness in what they are doing. But it is still fascinating. I'd love to contribute, though my only languages I have any form of confidence in are English and French, which are already covered.

[@W4t3rf1r3]

In a way it's a bit comparable to the genesis of Nicaraguan Sign Language.

[@jslice6137]

@@godminnette2 you can always bring more french stuff and participate! some of us have wiktionary or another dictionary handy in case there’s a new word that we need :p

[@lonewolf711_]

Yeah, it’s such a cool idea, but I wish it were done with people who didn’t speak a common language and had less linguistic awareness. Admittedly, that would be INCREDIBLY difficult, but it would still be cool and even more accurate if it were even possible

[@martakoakowska9872]

@@lonewolf711_ that's something I'm actually planning to do in the future. Now you know after those 2 years xd

[@brianb660]

Viossa couldve easily been ised as an April Fools video if he didnt go to the trouble of getting interviews and just said “its anything! Phonology? Anything! Granmar? Anything!” On the other hand, this is such an organic living thing without being traditionally developed and I love this idea. What better way to make a real looking language!

[@sictoabu9611]

I love hearing the pleasant surprise in jan Misali's chuckles.

[@user-kd1eb6vc7y]

yeah ikr!

[@galvinn]

oh hi sicto

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

lon a a. ante la toki a, jan Sitopa o!

[@galvinn]

@@mamusipipalisajelo5419 toki, palisa jelo Natan o

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

Galvin Escalona toki a! ma pona pi toki pona la nimi sina li seme?

[@thedeadgoldfish]

At some point in the video, I fell out of my seat and screamed "THEY'RE TALKING LIKE THE SIMS"

[@anxez]

"I'll be reviewing English." You'll be what? *About time* someone puts that crap conlang on blast.

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

Iqlic, Jack Eisenmann’s English

[@atomsplitter601]

XD

[@oledakaajel]

didn't he already talk about that one before?

[@gmestanley2214]

@@oledakaajel he briefly mentioned it in the zese (?) episode also i wouldve pronounced it another way (/ikgliç/ for example) but i guess saying english the same adds humour to it lol

[@livedandletdie]

@@gmestanley2214 there aren't enough symbols in the IPA for me to accurately write down the English word English. After all, there's only about 20 vowels in the IPA. And they don't distinguish between roundedness or not, or the type of roundedness or any other characteristics that vowels contain such as creak...

[@peterschmidt6200]

So I've been doing research on the Saami languages (dialects?) for the last few months, and I just wanna say that I hella appreciate Pauli giving North Saami the recognition it deserves by contributing some of its vocabulary to this fascinating project. This has been one of my favorite Conlang Critic episodes so far (gotta give props to Poliespo tho), and I really hope you keep up this fabulous work sinjoro Misali!

[@lahagemo]

they’re considered their own languages, and not dialects of each other ;) tho there’s a intelligibility continuum

[@peterschmidt6200]

@@lahagemo I wouldn't say it's as cut and dry as that. Languages from opposite ends of the spectrum are mutually unintelligible, and definitely would be considered different languages, but the lines get a lot fuzzier when you look at neighboring communities. Adjacent Sámi languages/dialects are typically about as distant from one another as different dialects of English (maybe slightly more), so the speakers can understand each other fairly easily. On top of that, Sámi speakers rarely make a distinction between different dialects (referring to all simply as Sábme), so that sounds a lot more like dialectal variation to me. The fact of the matter is that the boundary between dialect and language is not well defined, and both terms can apply within a continuum like this depending on which speakers you're comparing. Sorry for the essay of a response, but I mostly meant to be cheeky about the ambiguity of the situation in my original comment, and I don't want to leave the impression that there is one correct answer.

[@RedHair651]

Peter Schmidt Definitely different languages

[@atlantis720]

Viossa’s logo is just the Twitter logo from a different angle

[@jamiebullshit]

Lol

[@kzeriar25]

It's probably because it was created in Skype

[@henry55]

I don’t see it

[@saschabaer3327]

It’s a pigeon (get it?) flying in front of the sun (compare conlangs flag), with blue/white colors (viossa started on skype)

[@erikwg3814]

Lemon Gang Twitter’s logo is a bird seen from the side. Viossa’s is a bird from the front/back

[@ananas_anna]

This is legitimately the coolest conlang I’ve ever seen.

[@joshuascott7641]

I'm so jealous to not be a part of it

[@bakk.]

@@joshuascott7641 You could change that... /r/Viossa

[@fanaticofmetal]

@@joshuascott7641 you can head to their Discord

[@AylaKD]

akkurat

[@lonewolf711_]

I love the backstory behind the word “deza” they mentioned They unintentionally took a grammatical feature that made things a mess, and it evolved to mean “a mess”. That was incredible to me

[@MrMageofHeart]

I was involved in the Skype group around four years ago and fell off from it because of some drama (I can’t remember what it was about but I think it had to do with some infighting between long-standing members and activity dropping off from the Skype chart that I was in) and the fact that I was getting ready to go to university. It was so special for me to see this episode finally come out. Viossa is still one of the coolest and most fascinating projects I’ve ever come across.

[@jh5401]

was there any familiarity of it to you?

[@MrMageofHeart]

James H Only the most mild familiarity. Things like the pronouns, akkurat or akk meaning yes, and the most recognizable being fshto. I was only actively involved for around a month or two. But I remember being very fascinated by the project, it being something of a meme on /r/conlangs, and being lightly chided in good faith for using things like emojis and pictures. It was a fun experience though, the challenge of trying to understand or describe what a word meant using only the words you knew already was an exhilarating experience.

[@pkphyre8920]

I've never been spoiler warned on a language before

[@morismateljan6458]

"and then ther is "zh" which I don't uzhually use..."

[@abugidaiguess]

zhtranzhe

[@ingwerschorle_]

rzhlanrlwey

[@Tesl8n]

"Auauau" is such a cute phrase! Very wonderful :) I actually really liked the conversational sample. It feels a lot more realistic and natural than a reading of something written. It's definitely a harder thing to put in the video, but if you have the opportunity for future conlangs, I'd love to see it

[@Styrbjiorn]

I saw in another comment it's from Japanese and means "and so on"?

[@angelodc1652]

@@Styrbjiorn Auauau

[@BlackM3sh]

They talked about how Norwegian was one of the languages they got their words from. Being Norwegian I find it fascinating to see how many Norwegian words made it into the core vocabulary. *Especially* how the meaning has slightly drifted from their original meaning in Norwegian. E.g. «akkurat» which translates to «exactly», but seems to have drifted somewhat to become general agreement or the word «yes». And «mange» which means «many» has seemingly become a general word for a large quantity so also has the meaning «a lot» and «very». These makes sense to me, but would probably be difficult for me to do naturally as I'm already very familiar with these words. Very interesting. Thanks for the insight into Viossa.

[@tahmidt]

Blackmesh I’m learning norwegian and I found so many similarities as well, fsto representing understanding was another one of them.

[@_yellow]

"Mange bra" sounded so goofy, it was quite amusing

[@Liggliluff]

As far as I can see, "akkurat" can be used as the response "exactly". So "'hammas' means tooth?" "exactly/akkurat". But I'm no Norwegian speaker.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

When English speakers comes across English pidgins and creoles we experience a similar thing. "Fellow" has become "-pela" in a lot of them. "Belonging to" has been shortened to "bilong", meaning "of". But if you want to communicate with the people that speak it, you have to speak it! It helps to think of it not as a 'broken' form of your language, but one that's borrowed the form of a word and then changed its meaning. Come to that I have never had to talk in German about mobile phones but if I did I'd have to use "Handy", if they're still using that term. I'd really have to say "cellphone" or "cell" in the States.

[@thewanderingmistnull2451]

@@MatthewMcVeagh Really? Most people in the US just call them phones where I'm from. You gotta specify if it's landline now.

[@Dilpikl2]

This reminds me of a trip where my father, who only speaks english and poorly remembered spanish and italian, was working with a man who only speaks portuguese, and they more or less created a Romance-language pidgin on the fly

[@WiseMasterNinja]

I love "imadag", it sounds so perfectly Japanoswedish.

[@angelodc1652]

I'm guessing that means "Today"

[@WiseMasterNinja]

@@angelodc1652 Spot on

[@JESUSWASAJUGGALO]

"ishilik ting" for "rock-like thing", too. absolutely underbart

[@cmyk8964]

今（いま）日（dag）

[@AylaKD]

from the root "dag" which means day

[@nixel1324]

This feels like the language equivalent of abstract art or freestyle dance.

[@fieryphoenix6432]

Me and my (online) friends did something very similar to this, a "conlang" that we dubbed 'Monke'. None of us new a thing about linguistics or had any experience with conlangs, and most of us only spoke English. We created a discord text channel and explicitly banned any pre-existing natlangs or conlangs, with the aim to create a language that we can communicate in, nothing more. Most of how we defined words was by putting an emoji and then the suggested word. It went for just over a month, mostly developed by 3 people (Monke developed incredibly quickly, and was hard to keep on top of) before we got bored of it and archived the channel. At the end of this month, we had 72 words, if you ignore plurals, and we had present and future tenses, and had a grammar system that was basically just simplified English. I'd highly recommend doing this if you have a group of people willing to do it, it is 100% worth it.

[@jeffreyulman5969]

Next step: gather even more languages and start over with Viossa as a donor

[@jerryq1837]

Update: they did that with other conlangs. It’s called wodox, and viossa is a contribution language along with things like dusolulu

[@whistler_]

​@@jerryq1837 i tried looking up "wodox" and cant find anything, is it spelled differently?

[@oliviamay]

The spoken conversation sample was beautiful. I don't think I've heard a language I like the sound of more than Salp's Viossa.

[@georgios_5342]

24:21 hanasutropos. From hanasu which means speak in Japanese and tropos which means way/manner in Greek. Way of speech ie pronunciation. I love this language already.

[@mads_in_zero]

The amount of Norwegian in this meant I recognized a lot of it in the sample conversation. "Nei mange bra" registers in my head literally as "no many good", which is a fascinating construction.

[@RichConnerGMN]

nice photo

[@12-343]

Oh that's why it took so long to make. Glad to see this, it's really cool!

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

Yeah, Good Job!

[@MaraK_dialmformara]

Me now: I should join this community, it would be a lot of fun. Me from ten years ago: remember how lost you felt at Chinese immersion camp? now imagine that without any possibility of reference material Me now: dammit

[@VaradMahashabde]

I would just like to say that the edit was amazing and very well put together. I honestly thought that it was a group call until he pointed it out that it was recorded as separate interviews

[@pafnutiytheartist]

Conlang with the concept of spoilers? Viossa is indeed something different.

[@jack_of_all_1565]

I loved hearing the spoken sample! It’s so cool to see them slowly shaping the language as they talked and using similar words to describe what they were trying to say.

[@parmaxolotl]

"I'll see you next time, where I'll be reviewing English."

[@gal749]

Viossa, and arguably just this video, had sparked a whole new subset in conlangs - there are now countless conpidgins now (one of which I'm part of) and it's such a fun way to communicate with people internationally Edit: two now lol

[@eldabys]

what a wonderful, wholesome episode of conlang critic

[@m4rch3n1ng]

i love the usage of "akkurat" as a "yes"

[@jansojele289]

So good

[@hikingpete]

Great job editing! I was blown away how well the video flowed. This was way more cohesive than interviews have any right to be.

[@MSilva-ee7nc]

You should do an episode on Tsolyáni . Its an artlang created by M. A. R. Barker for his world of Tekumel. Its a very interesting medieval fantasy world, based on things like mayan and egyptian culture and mithology, instead of western european mithology like Tolkien. Theres is a lot of material about it and its not talked about a lot

[@Painocus]

Meso- and South-American (mainly Aztec) and South-East Asian mostly actually. I don't think there is much Egyptian in there. Also, while the form religious practices and iconology take are inspired by those cultures, the mythology is one of the few elements of Tekumel culture that is explicitly not.

[@MSilva-ee7nc]

@@Painocus you're right. I remember seeing Egyptian being cited as part of the influences, but it might've been mostly for the languagues

[@iivarimokelainen]

*mythology

[@TheZenytram]

I wanna see a viossa 2,0 in which everyone that started it speaks only his natural language, and has ppl as diverse as possible.

[@jh5401]

I could see a bunch of universities or high schools pairing up from around the world that are distinctly without too many common language speakers, with a bunch of students essentially being online group pen pals without common language coming up with their own version of the experiment.

[@hungjury7482]

Any other non-English native speakers who want to take part in such a thing?

[@exedeath]

This would stil not work because you could speak a language that is someone else natural language as second language, so you would understand what he says. If you have someone that speak the same natural language as you as first language, its even worse as you would be able to understant what he says and talk with him. Viossa 2.0 would require people that only speak one language only and this language is a language no one else at the viossa group speaks, that would be hard to do because who the hell that cares about linguistics and such kind of stuff dont speak english. You could create a group where people can speak more than one language, but if a person A speak language X and Y, no one else would be able to speak either X or Y. This would at some times make things harder and other times easier. Because if you allow someone that knows language X and Y, you are blocking someone that knows language Y (but not know X) to join later.

[@nadeen6968]

@@exedeath doesn't basically forbidding English (or any one specific language y) count as a solution- as in to know language y and the language you'd contribute

[@nadeen6968]

@@hungjury7482 kinda yea

[@girv98]

Oh man, I love everything about this. Especially love that I can almost understand it because of the Norwegian influence.

[@HAL-oj4jb]

Honestly the amount of Norwegian was a little too much for me, I don't speak it very well but I still recognized so many words from the sample that it sounded much less exotic and diverse than I expected :/

[@atlasnataniel]

It surprised me how much Norwegian there was in this 😍

[@hakonsoreide]

Knowing Norwegian and Japanese, I almost didn't need the translation for the conversation example.

[@iivarimokelainen]

@@HAL-oj4jb agree. expected something diverse or exotic. i barely know Swedish (as I'm from Finland) but half of it was understandable. pretty boring and disappointing, sorry to say

[@girv98]

@@iivarimokelainen I don't know what all yous were expecting lol. Pidgins/Creoles usually get most of their vocabulary from only 1 or 2 "prestige" languages. This is pretty naturalistic

[@MrZyroid]

"Oh yeah, this is gonna be editted out" ☠️

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

This is so interesting! Probably one of my favorite conlang critic episodes

[@popretmaster]

Is there a place to join and try to immerse oneself in viossa? This sounds like a fascinating learn.

[@spaceisspace1771]

i really want to as well

[@girv98]

aye same, I love this

[@404am3]

I think its on a discord server, don’t know which tho

[@soudesu6726]

discord.gg/psJvGxc there's a link to the r/conlangs server. if you join here, you can ask around for a link, because this is the home of the viossadjin c:

[@Agnes.Nutter]

Is your icon the bowl of cheese puffs from Scratch?? :D

[@OrangeC7]

Hearing the spoken sample move into Japanese vocabulary and then move out again was probably the strangest thing my brain has had to comprehend

[@h-Films]

H

[@issy.with.s]

me, a french speaker, seeing the word "mange" in viossa:

[@ottovonbismarck3905]

(Spoiler warning) Before I saw that “fshto” was “understand” I noticed just from the way they were using it that it sounded like “verstah” which is the Swiss German for “verstehen” i.e. “to understand”. It’s amazing that you could pick up the language from acquisition so quickly.

[@cannot-handle-handles]

I was able to fshto that, too. 😀

[@LarthVolos]

Next natural step will be Viossa speakers to have children with each other and these having Viossa as their first language.

[@impiaaa]

I love how much fun the speakers are having in the sample conversation.

[@crimsonhawk52]

Idk why but the uhhh sound-visual (idk what it's called) under the names while they talk really helped me focus on the discussion. Glad you did that

[@migarsormrapophis2755]

That's called an audio visualization, and it's created by graphing the different pitches of sound. Spikes on the far left represent bassy sounds, spikes on the far right represent high pitched sounds.

[@g4_61]

Hey, jan Misali, ever thought about making your own conlang? Just curious

[@xvstar_]

I haven't watched his vids in a while, but I think he did. Might be thinking of someone else.

[@jeremias-serus]

p sure he’s done a video on how not to make a conlang, showing one he’s made

[@nyarthecat8195]

@@jeremias-serus that was biblaridion

[@m__y-t-s]

toki pona with enough numbers added to do his preferred base

[@dentar5233]

Hello. I invented a totally new way of writing, I use it to do math operations but it works to create words. I called it the "Argentine Numeral System" Google it. It's on Medium If you are interested, ask me here! I would like to make it known to the whole world.

[@belgaer4943]

This makes me wish I knew people irl who were willing to do this kind of major linguistic project with me

[@ourtube1128]

Yay conlang! Thanks for making us this high quality conlang content! I don't know of anybody who does such a comprehensive overview of conlangs :-)

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

You were first!

[@konnorkuznetsov1035]

Your channel is really growing fast. Crazy.

[@Hi_Brien]

It's the math content I swear!

[@sictoabu9611]

A lot of people came after he made the video about hangman. I'd say the math videos were the product of the fact that more subscribers came to the channel after that.

[@m__y-t-s]

Ohhhhh, conPIDGIN.

[@Liggliluff]

Is it a conlang at that point though?

[@watsonwrote]

This has to be one of my favorite logos. Not saying this is the best logo for everyone, but it hits so many of my own personal design delights

[@FTZPLTC]

The concept of a language having spoilers is completely gorgeous to me.

[@PiercingSight]

[SPOILERS] As a weeb, I love that "soft" is "fuwafuwa" (potentially just "fuwa" if that was reduplication to mean "very soft"?)

[@ChristianPerrotta]

I'm pretty sure it comes from the Japanese ふわふわ, which means "soft, fluffy".

[@PiercingSight]

@@ChristianPerrotta - Indeed, but I'm unsure if Viossa speakers shorten it to just ふわ in normal speech because I know I totally would.

[@mr.osamabingaming2633]

You're not a weeb.

[@CarelessMiss]

Youre gonna love this language then. It has a lot of Japanese

[@joannasthings]

knowing japanese to a certain degree, listening to them speak sounds like exactly how they describe it in the end: english syntax made up of a large japano-norwegian vocab. it is a beautiful language it honestly couldn't be any more perfect for what it is

[@MalachiCo0]

"Next time I'll be reviewing English" Oh my gosh... I was joking when I said he should make natlang critic

[@MrKogeta]

So I was listening to the video instead of watching it, which means I heard Iqglic as English, and thought jan Misali was abt to have the boldest take imaginable

[@amushpe5243]

as a viossadjin for almost a year now, i love coming back to this video to see how the language has grown since :) with the massive influx of people since this video, and seeing just how viossa has expanded, in lexicon, in literature, in video content, in music, its kinda nuts, thank you for this video, and it would be really really cool to see a part 2 for this to see just how much viossa has grown in this past year :)

[@22tfortnitevevo]

is there an invite? id like to contribute a little hindi

[@dieke8978]

I could listen to Salp talking for hours

[@wookielocks]

me too

[@LilyTengoku]

LET'S GOOOOOOOOO!!! I love conlanging so much

[@rileyshipman4479]

The sound of this language is so pretty. I loved hearing it

[@jumpythehat]

Being familiar with a lot of the donor languages and hearing/seeing all of them in Viossa is really beautiful in a way I can't describe

[@sargecad3t]

This is the coolest fricken thing I've ever heard

[@WiseMasterNinja]

Akkurat, Viosa manga bra

[@Styrbjiorn]

@WiseMasterNinja maōnge bra

[@Scrogan]

Really good language, fascinating to see how language evolves naturally like this. Though the idea of getting 20 or so monolingual people from different languages together to make an “interpidgin” could really be fascinating from a research point of view.

[@ratedpending]

I got the notification for KZbin then Discord and it made me feel so special

[@Composer_Ben]

It was really nice to have the community view of Viossa on this one. Also, salp's voice sounds super, very really nice. @_@ The Viossa conversation was funny, and I was surprised to see a certain Swedish word having the same meaning in English and Viossa.

[@VaradMahashabde]

When you can notice the Japanese influence because anime

[@isaacthedestroyerofstuped7676]

This is an incredible experiment and sounds like a lot of fun! I'd love to see what it would look like if none of them shared a language.

[@Taib-Atte]

**SPOILERS** During the recorded conversation I found it very interesting that by listening to their inflections I could tell what line they were on in the translation. At the same time I heard both Japanese and English words even though they were spelled differently. Viossa is amazing!

[@laprankster3264]

I wonder if this method could be used to create a naturally evolving international auxiliary language.

[@spinnis]

The only problem with that is that it would just become like any other language after enough time, and thus just as hard to learn.

[@laprankster3264]

@@spinnis true, I guess we’d have to create a committee to regularize for example the spelling and grammar of the language to reduce the irregularities.

[@skyworm8006]

This already happens tho. It wouldn't be a 'language' as such it is just people using what they know to best communicate. Two people who know eachother's languages imperfectly would mix and match to best communicate. This is perfectly suitable for day-to-day stuff and entirely tailored to wherever you are, but for practicality like in international business or law a simple lang with clear rules and ideally universal semantics is best.

[@Noziac]

that's one hell of a project! The interview style fits well, you couldn't have done it any other way

[@Zeigren]

I've definitely watched the entire video before making this comment. I can't believe you said that thing you said that is really controversial for a reason I don't understand

[@jeremias-serus]

cheeky

[@cirlu_bd]

@@jeremias-serus stop commenting or change your username, my screen is not yours to break.

[@jeremias-serus]

Ulric-cirlU no

[@hole1274]

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ Follow your bliss

[@garret1930]

@@jeremias-serus ha

[@captainimperialism4568]

This is by far the coolest collaborative project I’ve ever seen, let alone a conlang. The idea of an internet pidgin is so creative and interesting, even for someone with a passing interest in linguistics.

[@JerusalemStrayCat]

I think this is the first one that doesn't have "Votgil" in the end credits

[@potatoonastick2239]

That's such an amazing concept && I'm in love with that idea, just mashing languages together to create something novel like this.

[@TNTErick]

long been waiting for another Conlang Critic!

[@pfroud1]

This is my favorite episode of Conlang Critic so far, excellent work. I know interviewing and editing takes a ton of time, so I joined your patreon to support more stuff like this!!

[@kori228]

bruh I saw this on my recommend list instead of getting a notification 7:52 woah, 3 way non-[s/z]-sibilant distinction. I assume it's from English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese? edit: oh, Russian, cool

[@wookielocks]

It's really just /S/ /Z/ with optional palatalization and then the retroflexion is kind of just to contrast with the palatal more strongly when the distinction seems to matter

[@imanukekaboom3715]

I love how you posted this and viossa blew up and it got so many new members that it's like, completely unrecognizable now lol. Still a great conlang, but the influx of all the new people made the language change REALLY quick

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

It's a lovely project, and the most important thing is people had fun, made friends, and demonstrated that such a method of communicating, and creating a new shared medium of communication, is possible. It's also not just a one-off or a dead project: I suspect it will continue, and it has inspired several similar projects and proposals (not sure if all of them will have the stamina to be as successful). Viossa has in effect created a whole new category of conlangs, which is a rare achievement. Some critiquing: It's not really the same situation as what we will now have to call a 'natpidgin'. In natural pidgins the creators don't come together to create a new language as an experiment, they come together for practical purposes such as trade, diplomacy, negotiation. They don't care what the linguistic result of their attempts is, as long as communication happens as well as possible. In the Viossa situation not only is the purpose and atmosphere not the same but contact is not face-to-face, is totally voluntary and is timed as much as participants like. Natpidgins also tend to end up stratified, with vocabulary superstrate from a dominant culture and phonology/idiom substrate from a non-dominant culture. That's presumably not what's happening here, although I notice some of the more prominent and founder participants are getting a disproportionate amount of their chosen source language material into Viossa. I personally don't see what's wrong with using visual clues to indicate meaning? This is exactly what people would do with natpidgins. Point, pull faces ( = emojis), pick up objects and mime something, etc. Of course it encourages people to try to use Viossa and explain the meanings of new words by using the language itself if you prohibit/discourage such visual clues, but actually those clues are not cheating by bringing in an easier common language (like English), and they might actually help create new words in the pidgin better than relying on in-language explanation alone. If Viossa continues, then it will continue to grow. It will also probably standardise, or gravitate towards more common versions as dominant ones. New learners will be influenced by those forms which they have more contact with, or find easier to assimilate. This will iron out some of the phonological and lexical variation we see in the video. Syntax will probably harden towards 'rules' in the constitutive sense as well. Speculating wildly... if those Viossa-inspired projects flourish as well, maybe one day there will be new conpidgins formed from combining them with Viossa and each other... maybe eventually a new super-conpidgin will become a genuine world language. Well, it's not impossible, but the end result will be quite different from the beginnings of Viossa.

[@jslice6137]

Yeah, as a viossa speaker, the atmosphere of this project is that this is a project/experiment, and not that this is a naturally derived pidgin, and that’s okay for me! and regarding the superstrate/substrate situation, I would say that Japanese and Russian had a tremendous impact on the language - Japanese provided a lot of vocabulary, Russian really stretched the phonology (consonant inventory) of this language by introducing a lot of affricates and fricatives and regarding visuals - yeah I’m not sure why people are sticklers for visuals. There are some people who prefer to explain with words, because they think that you can get a lot done with text, but emojis and pictures are not at all banned in the server, not sure why people were saying that in the video. Though English and other natlangs are not used, always Viossa with explaining things. And yeah - Viossa still has a lot of variation, because different people still have a lot of small differences in speech, but there are definitely forms that are more common (unanimous for some as well). And I’d love to be in one of these mega-pidgins!

[@hotlinkster123]

They werent lieing when they said a lot of the words were taken from japanese. Almost every sentence has at least one japanese word.

[@Neptunequeen42]

This was so wholesome!! I feel better in an existential sense knowing that people are doing something like this and enjoying it so much. I hope that was the whole discord singing at the end!

[@Saturos02]

As a norwegian knowing some elementary russian and finnish, listening to the viossa dialogue was both very interesting and hilarious! I like how blood became "vonarø", I assume from german "wohnen" (to dwell) and norwegian "rød" (red), with "vona" extended to mean life in general. Would love to see a finnish-style local system thrown into the mix though

[@walangchahangyelingden8252]

This is about the most natural conlang I've ever heard.

[@adriangd5040]

i like the idea that *theoretically* you can speak viossa and one person could intend on saying “i’m getting off the airplane in a few hours” but it can misinterpreted as “i’m eating a grandma in a few hours”

[@jens6076]

This’ by far my favorite Conlang Critic video. If you could do more interviews in future videos it would be amazing!

[@yeremiafrans9425]

Interview episode??? 😎 Pretty Cool Beans.

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

Ooh. The toki pona outro sound li kama ante a! I wonder if there are others out there, waiting to be played in future videos.

[@kuroikenjin7652]

OMG! It's the Minions playing linguistic telephone! (If you haven't noticed or didn't watch movies with the minions, they seem to be using words from various languages in. I noticed this in the Mionions Movie when they strung Spanish and Japanese together.) This language... project?... is pretty awesome.

[@Bellehiek]

I can’t believe how wonderful the spoken version sounds. It makes me want to learn it… but I’m afraid I won’t find the time. I’m learning Russian and I’m a linguistics student as well… though, could I technically write my experiences in Viossa as my thesis?

[@johnargeles7019]

I love the interview aspect of this, hope it stays for future videos!

[@fabulo19]

This made me genuinely happy, what a cool concept and community

[@HaapsaluYT]

I’m glad I joined the discord. I also loved how I entered the discord! Hehe

[@nyarthecat8195]

how did you find it

[@nlbuescher]

I also tried finding a discord link with no luck. Is there an application process?

[@soudesu6726]

discord.gg/psJvGxc here's the r/conlangs discord server, join here and then have a word with some people and ask for a link! the viossadjin don't like having public links to the server so this in your best bet

[@kevycatminecraftmore7721]

@@soudesu6726 Thanks so much!

[@uppgivan]

It’s insane how much of the conversation i understood, felkt like it was 80% norweigan