When Conlanging Goes Too Far...

#worldbuilding #fantasy #conlang
I also hear Samuel Ferdinald Leavitt is good friends with a dude named Pierre Menard, wonder what his deal is.

[@aragornk]

I like to imagine that Samuel Ferdinand Leavitt is actually a perfectly pleasant, self-aware guy and that it's just his fans that are insufferable.

[@JJMB27]

This happens so often...

[@thesocialmediagame]

as the old say says potato ando potato are equivalent@@JJMB27

[@andreww4751]

Ferdinald*

[@johnanon658]

Bruh, leavitt? you are jewish?

[@bobbodaskank]

Man: scribbles on 200 pieces of paper Conlang Enthusiasts: sweet mother of Gæd

[@newcantinacrispychickentac7754]

/swiʔ ˈmʌðɹ̩ ʌv gɑd/

[@VTPPGLVR]

“visible to human ears” ❤

[@genericallyentertaining]

English is a hard language, too.

[@wolf7husky885]

Those kind of sentences just happens when you try to actual translate the language into English, because it is incomprehensible for the English language

[@aputik2503]

Oh you don't know czech (not only unnecessarily hard but also generally stupidly made. Hate to have it as my first language)@@genericallyentertaining

[@InventorZahran]

Sometimes I wish I could close my ears just as easily as closing my eyes, but then I remember that of every human could do that, no one would listen to me blathering on about conlangs!

[@Florkl]

@@genericallyentertaining NGL it just made the scene better.

[@DTHRocket]

I expected the guy in glasses to take them off at some point and say, "Of course I know him. He's me." He was acting narcissistically about this Leavitt guy.

[@dabearsfan9]

Dude same

[@TheFansOfFiction]

also the picture was him

[@wingedjellifish11235]

Don't think I didn't catch you calling _alveolar fricatives_ an "obscure IPA symbol" lol.

[@wynnexed]

yeah /s/ is pretty hardcore

[@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles]

velar approximants however are very obsure...?

[@wingedjellifish11235]

@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles I'd hardly call it the most obscure, but yeah /ɰ/ is certainly less familiar to an English-speaking audience, and much less common cross-linguistically (especially if we're talking about distinct phonemes since it mostly shows up as an allophone of other velar sounds).

[@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles]

@@wingedjellifish11235 I'm p sure the video was trying to refer to [w] and just left out the labialization. The other phone they said was [s], I think the joke was they were both very common phones.

[@user-te3ii8ru1m]

@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandlesmaybe he meant the alveolar non-sibilant fricatives: /θ̠/ and /ð̠/

[@heftybandicootgaming5047]

After attempting to Google Sam Leavitt, I have no idea if this is completely satrical or factual....

[@genericallyentertaining]

If you can't find anything about him, it's probably because his enemies tried to erase all information about him online a few years ago.

[@DTHRocket]

@@genericallyentertaining The only surviving info is what he hid on the internet in his unreadable language.

[@lightworker2956]

You can only find him if you google in that conlang. You probably don't have the right keyboard to type the letters.

[@captainwaffles6576]

@@genericallyentertaining his enemies?

[@mattmorehouse9685]

Wait, this is real? Was Levitt possessed by some artistic eldritch abomination?!

[@johnlienhart2717]

Honestly an alien Voynich Manuscript does seem really fun.

[@ivythetwisted6908]

Have you heard of Codex Seraphinianus? Alien Voynich Manuscript is exactly a phrase I would use to describe it.

[@almondbread4119]

"Obscure consonants like alveolar fricatives..." Ah yes, the most common kind of fricative cross linguistically (s, z).

[@Infinitysquaredorsomething]

It isss a sssuper ssspecial sssound that can be voiccced or voicccelesss

[@user-te3ii8ru1m]

what about the alveolar non-sibilant fricatives: /θ̠/ and /ð̠/

[@CrisCheese_]

​@@user-te3ii8ru1mwhat is THAT

[@jayasuryangoral-maanyan3901]

making a conlang with 40 consonants because I don't want to go overboard

[@thefacethatstares]

not even that difficult. Sanskrit has 33, just take that inventory and add /θ ð f v ʑ ʐ z/ & you're good to go

[@liamannegarner8083]

"I was curious what would happen if you crossed the phonemic categories of Navajo and Russian." (Navajo has more stop consonants than Hawaiian has Phonemes.)

[@jayasuryangoral-maanyan3901]

@@liamannegarner8083 but it also has 9 tonemes

[@logon-oe6un]

average international language

[@Xob_Driesestig]

Having some images in your book made with infrared red ink because some races can only see IR is actually quite a cool idea. You can also have regular images that have additional elements if you shine a IR light on it e.g. an image of a human is walking through a room and if you shine an IR light on it you can see text on the wall that says "don't trust the duke" which a member of the IR-seeing race wrote for fellow members of their race. This means you can have clues in plain sight, that people only discover after they've finished the book and go online to see that answers were in front of them all along.

[@GThe-su9kl]

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice it sounds like something that might be a bad idea. It reminds me too much of the "crypto party" where the people placed "black light", only to find out the day after that everyone now had vision problems because it was, in truth, UV lights.

[@Xob_Driesestig]

@@GThe-su9kl Black light is UV light (with a little bit of visible light) which is shorter wavelength (higher energy) than visible light, which makes it more damaging than visible light, but IR is longer wavelength which makes it less damaging than visible light.

[@GThe-su9kl]

@@Xob_Driesestig I was not talking about the scientific part. I was saying that if you leave room for something to go very wrong, somewhere, things will go very wrong (like someone becoming blind because they used the wrong kind of light, or someone burning the book because they tried using a flame to reveal its markings).

[@Xob_Driesestig]

@@GThe-su9kl Realistically basically everyone will look up the images on the internet instead of buying an IR lamp. If not you could also just include a little IR lamp with a purchase of the book.

[@funguy398]

​​@@Xob_Driesestigit's not a wavelength that dangerous but light intensity. Let's for an experiment take two light sources with similar luminous intensity, one is UV other IR. Human eyes cannot see nor UV neither IR, but it still affect it. And we can inflict the exact damage with same intensity but different wavelengths. That's why IR lasers are so dangerous, because they are invisible, but still can reflect from "unreflective" surfaces and blind you, and that's why UV lights so dangerous, it can cook your eyes.

[@Aura_DastlerTv]

This is what it feels like to watch AgmaSchwa's Cursed Conlang Circus. (Seraphim still hunts my dreams)

[@marcag9810]

This whole bit sounds exactly like a Borges short novel.

[@genericallyentertaining]

He was largely the inspiration for this one!

[@ludvigInLegendaryLands]

Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius

[@cheeseboy8241]

Pierre Menard too

[@usuariob4948]

@@genericallyentertaining I knew it! this has Tlön vibes

[@samfranck2119]

It's a little known fact that, actually, there is a retelling of Leavitts novel in English. I think it's called "Finnegans Wake" or something like that.

[@MorgottofLeyendell]

I will carry on Levitt's work. I shall turn his masterpiece into a trilogy worthy of his relatively existant species.

[@brromo]

Officer, I don't know were they came from. I just blinked & suddenly there were 30 more consonants on my phoneme chart

[@authorindisguise5173]

And I thought Ithkuil was hardcore

[@TWlaz]

It's got nothing on THandian...

[@AshSonnenDrache]

@@TWlazbased biblaridion viewer

[@urotaion9879]

@@TWlazoh god not Thandian HELP T_T

[@SamAronow]

You had me at "'exist' is a relative term."

[@melere777]

The final boss of conlangs

[@J.S.J.S.J.S.J.S.J.S]

finnegans wake but epic

[@spacemythics]

immediately steeled up at 'sapir-whorf hypothesis'. had some absolutely awful discussions in a communications class involving gross misunderstandings of the hypothesis. combined with a complete belief in its accuracy and factuality, we got such gems as "i'm so glad i speak english because if i spoke a language with fewer emotion words i wouldn't be able to express myself at all". shudders

[@uamsnof]

Same, Sapir-Whorf is a major red flag/irk

[@henrywong659]

I recently watched Agma Schwa's Cursed Conlang Circus 2 and yeah this is basically accurate lol (minus the pretentiousness since anyone joining something called the "Cursed Conlang Circus" isn't going to be taking it seriously), and some people have gone even farther.

[@crusatyr1452]

Hey, I entered that competition :D

[@bretginn1419]

See, this is why when I make a conlang, I'll just throw random things around and see what rules pop up. And then change the rules sometime later. I want to see what arguments will pop up from my insanity, and how I'm secretly a genius despite everything. Hopefully, I'll just be called a hack. But I'm anticipating disappointment.

[@matheusinacio4722]

worldbuilding content that's less than 3 years old??? Yay?!

[@princezsshorts3209]

Not gonna lie this was simultaneously hilarious and super stressful

[@snowdrop9810]

This video almost feeld like a conlang in of itself lol

[@andeve3]

going to spice up my conlang with some dental fricatives, hope no one else has thought of this

[@user-te3ii8ru1m]

nice profile ficture btw. It looks like the voiced retroflex tap: /ɽ/

[@wiener_process]

That's pretty much Codex Seraphinianus.

[@amicuwu]

that was out of the body experience... at last minutes i just transcended through relaity hearing and trying to understand with my brain what happens AMAZING! 🔥🔥🔥

[@ditzydoodle8381]

You did this so well I forgot for a second you weren't talking about a real person. I was getting excited to look up how insane the author and the book was - I hate that I forgot so fast I got so invested lmao.

[@PaxImbrium]

At first I thought this was a video about Ithkuil. Now I'm thinking Ithkuil might be more realistic to learn than whatever this was about lol

[@tophatbanana4550]

I would never claim to be a linguistic genius of any kind, and I only have surface level knowledge on conlanging, but coincidentally I have written and designed a species of giant that speaks entirely through very large nasal cavities that take the space of where the human mouth would be. They produce different sounds with cartilage plates that move and vibrate independently and it sounds like a chorus of tubas and foghorns and whale calls submerged in soup. I just thought this was a funny coincidence and thought, "Huh, the tonal aspect of that could be an idea to explore". 😄 Before anyone asks, no I never plan to make a working conlang out of it. The whole point was that no one knew what the hell they were saying to make them more mysterious. 🤣

[@watcher314159]

As someone working on a language that tries to take the different physics of the conworld somewhat seriously, and which can't ever be learned properly because for example the grammar relies on P=NP... Yeah, Leavitt was just writing gibberish. Even when making a truly batshit cursed conlang you can still make its structure mostly comprehensible, even if it's impossibly impractical for humans. Seriously, just because my language requires simultaneously singing up to four notes doesn't mean it's not human-pronouncable, at least in theory. It just demands full use of the infinite training time of the speakers to become actually fluent (but I can in fact (clumsily) produce all of the 100,000+ syllables with my human mouth; overtone singing is really cool). The actually hard part is coming up with replacements for all the bedrock metaphors that most communication relies on to contextualize meaning that don't work in my language (namely, directions, which are cross-linguistically ridiculously common, but would require an infinite vocabulary just for them when spoken in an infinite-dimensional space). It's doable, but a royal pain in the butt.

[@dabearsfan9]

I can’t tell if this is a bit or not which worries me…

[@watcher314159]

@@dabearsfan9 the Dragon language from Skyrim, Dovahzul, offends me with how bad it is. You've got fragments of the Platonic ideal of time, "organic time machines" (to quote one of the writers), speaking a language almost indistinguishable from English under the hood, and most especially not doing anything interesting with tense, aspect, or mood. And more generally, there are other languages like Jel and Old Ehlnofex spoken outside of linear time in the lore that are similarly offensive, even if Dovahzul is what drew my attention. The lore even talks about them as if their grammar changes to reflect this atemporality, when in practice it just doesn't show in the final product. Incidentally, the few fragments we have of Valarin from Tolkien also have no indications of how a language spoken in the Timeless Halls might change. So, out of spite, I decided I would do better. The end result is a (very very incomplete, poorly documented, despite 6 years of on-and-off (mostly off tbh) work) language for the Magna-Ge from The Elder Scrolls. Really they probably speak Old Ehlnofex, but they're a distinct speech community among the et'Ada without a confirmed language, so I can make something proper for them without otherwise contradicting the lore. Hell, I made it an in-universe conlang with a LISP/Haskill-esque programming language embedded in it (my solution to the problem of ordering the parse tree sufficiently resembled s-exprs that I decided to make them just that) because the Ge are a race of engineers and so they'd have a legit reason to make it. In short, no, it's not a bit. Yes, you should still be worried. Were I to actually get this thing complete enough to submit to Angma Schwa's Cursed Conlang Circus, I'm quite certain it would be a top 3 contender.

[@THEalfalfa1]

@@watcher314159i think u r the kind of person this video is about

[@watcher314159]

@@THEalfalfa1 *Excuse me*, I am SIGNIFICANTLY more reasonable than the COMICAL EXAGGERATION this video about. Sarcasm aside, yeah, this video hit uncomfortablly close to home. Like, it's frighteningly accurate in some ways.

[@thesocialmediagame]

​@@watcher314159 You're a machine with this stuff. Definitely worthy giving it a try. In regards to the main topic, yeah, I think you're pretty much spot on. This is part of the debate about the emergence of intelligent systems and to what degree a system turns "sentient" along the lines of acknowledging a sense of existence, all comes down to translation. And as you said, metaphors are the tough part, a metaphor conveys a sort of feeling or a sense of something. Good, bad. We can all grasp those concepts, but a trully bad feeling only comes from the subject experiencing it. Altho Leavitt is basically creating the chicken from the egg.

[@MURDERPILLOW.]

I wanna make this conlang, give me a decade

[@dnisbet71]

This is a very normal nerd conversation, sadly.

[@TheDiabeticGameMaster]

I actually have an idea for a book that I'd like to do a limited run "special edition" of. The book takes place in the future, on a planet sized space station with flashbacks far enough in the past that everybody is speaking Old English. The idea is that, the book is far enough in the future, the English language would have changed, call it High English for the sake of convenience, so, in the limited edition, the future scenes would be fully in High English while the Assassins Creed style flashbacks would be only in Old English. Stupid, I know, but I just find the idea so fun. Obviously, the actual version that people are really intended to read would just have some new words and phraseology for the future parts and allusions to Old English for the past bits but I still think at least one physical copy of the work in it's "mother tongues" would be kind of neat, even if nobody was intended to read it, per se lol.

[@eyflfla]

For the future use Newspeak from 1984. Or just spell everything phonetically.

[@dimanyak373]

This honestly feels like something I would create if I didn't have adhd

[@jessehughes8274]

I think I met Samuel Ferdinand Leavitt outside a bar late at night. At least, I assume it was him, he did seem to be speaking nonsense.

[@etnm_playz4500]

When I saw the title for this video, I remember thinking, "How could conlanging ever go too far?" After watching this video I think I still feel the exact same way.

[@mrcin1233]

This better be conlang that sapient spiecies will speak in Biblardion's "Alien Biosphers" series

[@genericallyentertaining]

Nah, I'm sure he'll come up with something even more cursed and insane.

[@cleitondecarvalho431]

I don''t make conlangs, I steal original less spoken languages and fix them.

[@Viator_ig]

We conlangers are conlanging HARD with this one

[@yellowfootproductions8835]

The beginning Reminds me of how sometimes I think of creating a Holy Text, then translating it into my conlang.

[@RolReads]

This is one of the best BookTube channels on KZbin. You are fuckin hilarious, sir

[@CharliMorganMusic]

It sounds like this conlang was closer to a sort of music, where every combination of notes was it's own syllable, where each syllable was combined to form a word.

[@MrQuantumInc]

Of course an important detail is that the fan is someone who thinks that if you are smart then you cannot also be insane. If anything the opposite is true, the dumb simply trust common sense, those who are capable at reasoning are also capable at motivated reasoning.

[@MCArt25]

Talking to you at parties must be a joy.

[@cookiesanddoom]

I would unironically try and learn to read that book, ngl. The infra-red illustrations really sold me on it

[@frawgeatfrawgworld]

genius jokes lmaao

[@JohnJohnson-ys6tp]

I am always mystified by the casual reactions in the comments section. It is as if the commenters feel that they can do what you do. Well maybe they can, but not I. You are what Monty Python would be minus Gilliam and Chapman.

[@Florkl]

I see that "Liar, Lunatic, Lord" reference.

[@jpgamesta]

I missed the picture part and thought that this was a real person and spent a half hour trying to find him online

[@genericallyentertaining]

It's a futile endeavour, I'm afraid; his enemies managed to wipe most information about him off the net a few years ago. As for the (alleged) picture of him in this video, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that he looks a bit like me.

[@Bored_Overthinker]

This just sounds like living with depression.

[@oneinathousand2156]

Did Leavitt write the Voynich Manuscript by any chance?

[@otherDante2]

This is like me writing the comedy script when I don't have this amount of humor! Great Job

[@disastergirl888]

I was going to comment that this sketch was practically Borgesian but then I read the description…

[@somnvm37]

this one hits home a little too close

[@Fayanora]

I cackled like a crazy person at this.

[@lucillefrancois150]

This guy just wrote a 21st century Voynich Manuscript

[@RelativelyBest]

Ah, so the guy basically wrote the Voynich manuscript?

[@armina0033]

I can't even pretend that this is not my experience while checking r/conlangs.

[@wlwgwlwgnomesarereal]

this is like that american psycho scene, the glasses guy should have been putting on a raincoat

[@JandenHale]

I can appreciate this.

[@IcheeCOTC]

welcome the CCC三!

[@RichardGadsden]

I did enjoy the use of Lewis's trilemma.

[@artOVtrolling]

I once performed conilangus on a married woman.

[@MURDERPILLOW.]

Fucking genius, both literally & figuratively

[@Copyright_Infringement]

My non-linguist friends have no idea what this is about I pity them

[@thelordz33]

As a fan of watching conlanger content on youtube, this isn’t even the most insane conlang. In fact, compared to many, it's actually quite tame

[@aethershard463]

Is that your Cryptic on the wall?

[@pl8154]

Sounds like a perfectly good description of composers of Atonalism.

[@bronwynecg]

How long did it take to get all that out without completely cracking up? 🤣

[@Envy_May]

the arrival but interactive

[@MatthewTheWanderer]

I was thinking he might show the Voynich Manuscript at the end.

[@guerrillagorillagorillagor4238]

WOW! that sounds just like the declaration of human rights!

[@kygrus]

this kinda reminds me of the Voynich manuscript

[@christie_brown]

Moral of the story: who is the target audience of your conlang? Are you making a conlang or ARG?

[@infinityslibrarian5969]

Do a video on the Gigachad of conlags, ithkuil.

[@PrimeiroContatoSciFi]

I would love to read that book

[@bjartskular0]

The ipa sounds you call obscure are funny compared to the objective best consonant of all time - the voiceless palatal lateral fricative! Edit: bro said alveolar fricative is obscure which is /s/ btw

[@cupcakkeisaslayqueen]

Yeah, the most common fricative.

[@user-te3ii8ru1m]

and the alveolar non-sibilant fricatives: /θ̠/ and /ð̠/ along with /z/ but thats common

[@falkland_pinguin]

How about the voiced velar lateral approximant? It has this nice balance of being really not that weird at all, but so unusual when your background is with Germanic/Romance languages

[@PrimeiroContatoSciFi]

This entre video feels like a Kurt Vonnegut premise

[@Vivian-eo3qc]

at 0:51 headcanoning he was there. back in proto into european. pulling all the strings

[@anantbagaria769]

do laconic conversations between people

[@zelokorLocalGodOfChaosAndBread]

great video but it'd be even funnier if you transcribed it into the ipa

[@marioksoresalhillick299]

This is genius.

[@danielkover7157]

I wrote my diary in Ithkuil to express myself and so that no one would be able to read it but me. Unfortunately, I can't read it either.

[@quarksquare]

if your conlanging doesn't come to you in a dream it doesn't count

[@Hiljaa_]

The phoneme /t͡r̝̊ʲ/ came to me in a dream

[@sehrgut42]

That Lewis Trilemma tho

[@user-in8qh3zf9d]

I wish I had as much time as these guys do 😅

[@radioactivegorgon2307]

Sounds like a regular John Dee

[@lindybjork2712]

Oh my. 😂😂

[@endermannull4420]

"...those obscure IPA consonants like alveolar fricatives and velar approximants" yeah i *SaW* that

[@endermannull4420]

* technically W is labiovelar but whatever the joke's still funny

[@Hiljaa_]

Plot twist: in this alternate reality, Pana nyungan languages took over the world and /s/ is actually extremely rare

[@lawrencecalablaster568]

The Codex Seraphinianus but for a culture without a sense of irony.

[@melvinshaw7574]

This is disturbingly like how I might sound if I were to recommend the Codex Seraphinianus. Which, hahahaha, I would never dare suggest to anyone

[@ZemplinTemplar]

Not enough vowel harmony ! ;-)

[@captainwaffles6576]

How do I find this book, I'm going mad think about I need to know, I want to know

[@zarkthemuffin]

Insanity

[@longboy5639]

This is like a Jorge Luis Borges shit

[@memyselfishness]

Levitt reminds me of Pierre Menard

[@GR20000]

So, I will say there IS a reason to create n unspeakable conlang (Phyrexian has several sounds that are unpronounceable, such as the sound of two pieces of metal sliding across one another) It exists, then, to make something that is quite alien and to represent that alienness by emphasizing how even the sou8nds are fundamentally unreachable.

[@antonmaoc3898]

I looked up who Pierre ménard is and I had a good laugh ^^

[@NimhLabs]

... I kind of want to experience this book... Mind you, I'm also annoyed that copies of the Necronomicon aren't real, that half of Robert Chamberlain's Tales of the Yellow King have nothing to do with the titular King in Yellow, and have the Voynich Manuscript on various wishlists. That... and people tend to drop their Max SAN stat in my presence due to me being an emissary of Chaos... >.>'

[@esrohm6460]

yeah i'll stick to phyrexian with it's metal against metal moving and hammering noises over 3 noses

[@NoNameAtAll2]

conlang goes to far when it become Gurgle before that it's just fuzzy humantongue