JEREMY: Just say that we're
delighted to welcome back
to Google, David Peterson,
linguist, language creator.
And his new book is "The
Art of Language Invention."
[APPLAUSE]
DAVID PETERSON: Grab this.
All right, all right.
By the way, Jeremy, I just
want to mention beforehand,
you have a great one of
those teacher stares,
the "I can wait just
as long as you."
Wonderful.
All right.
So anyway, thank you.
Thank you all for coming out.
I'm delighted to be here again.
This is my first
time in this room,
and I absolutely love the
color of the chairs, which
of course, nobody watching
this on YouTube can see.
But they're randomly colorful.
I would definitely be
sitting in an orange chair.
Anyway, so as we're
getting started,
let me get out of the way
my fancy little animation.
Check this out.
Ooh, sparkly.
All right, so that's
the title of the book.
Anyway, so yeah, my
name is David Peterson,
as he mentioned.
This is a picture of me.
That's my mother buttoning
my top button there
the morning of my wedding
because I couldn't do it.
Anyway, so I've created
a number of languages
for television and film.
Some of them, you'll know.
So for example, for
"Game of Thrones,"
I created the Dothraki
and Valyrian languages.
And this bottom one is Mag Nuk.
That was a language I created
for the giant for last season.
I kind of thought that
he was going to have
more lines than just one.
Probably didn't merit an
entire language, but you know.
Hey, now there's a possibility
for a great big giant monologue
sometime in the future.
I'd look forward to it.
Anyway, so I've also
created languages
for "Defiance," specifically
these languages.
And I got the
opportunity to create
these fancy scripts for them.
I love that I was
able to do that.
Creating scripts is one
of my favorite things
to do as a language creator.
And you can't always
convince the production
that it's worthwhile,
but sometimes, you can.
So "Defiance," and then I
did that for "Star Crossed"
as well, where I created a
language and a writing system.
This was a show that
was on the CW last year
and had a one season run.
After that, I created a language
for Thor's "The Dark World"--
it was the sequel to
Thor-- called Shivaisith.
And I did create a
writing system for it.
But this was actually--
it's a bizarre-- it is
a fan-created writing system.
So I created it for a
fan of the language.
It wasn't actually
used in the film.
But there's basically one
real big fan of this language,
and I thought, well, all right.
I also created a language
for "Dominion" on Syfy
called Lishepus.
It's the one that the angels
and the Eight-Balls speak,
if you watch that show.
I created a language for the
second season on for "The 100."
The language that
the Grounders speak,
it's called Trigedasleng.
And then for "Penny Dreadful,"
which is an amazing show,
I created a language
for season two.
It's basically the
demonic language
that you hear Vanessa and the
witches speaking periodically.
And it's pretty cool.
And I'm also happy
to announce that I'm
working on a new show
called "Emerald City"
that's going to be
on NBC next year.
And all the episodes
are directed
by Tarsem, which is just crazy.
He did "The Fall."
He's so good.
I'm really excited about it.
And so the two languages
that I've created are called
Munja'kin and Inha.
You can look forward to that.
But I am not here
today to talk to you
about any of those
languages at all,
any of those fancy languages.
I'm here to talk to you
about this language, Megdevi.
How many people have
heard of this language?
Are you serious?
Wow.
I really did not expect
to see any hands.
All right, so this is the
first language I ever created.
I created it as kind of
a freshman, sophomore,
over-the-summer type of
thing at UC Berkeley.
And if you're wondering why
the language is called this,
I had a girlfriend at
the time named Megan.
My name is David.
And then you've seen,
fantasy languages
sometimes have names like this--
Cheysuli, Dothraki, Ferengi,
Pakuni.
And so that was how
you got the name
of that embarrassing language.
So this was my very
first take at it.
I had never heard
of anybody creating
a language for any
purpose other than
international communication
prior to doing this.
So I truly believed I was the
first person ever to do it.
And in fact, at the
time, I thought, oh, wow.
I could create a language
for myself and that maybe me
and my girlfriend could speak.
And maybe there's actually
marketability in this
since nobody's ever thought
of this idea before.
This is what I believed.
This is 2000, bear in mind.
It's just that conlanging wasn't
very much in the public eye.
Anyway, as for how
this language worked,
I need to take a sidetrack
and introduce you
to a little bit of Arabic.
I'm sure there are some
people here who know Arabic,
but for those that don't, I took
a year of Arabic at UC Berkeley
and absolutely fell in
love with the language.
It's a wonderful language.
I never imagined a language
that, grammatically,
could work in that way.
And one of the unique
features of Arabic
is that it has something
called a root system,
usually a triconsonantal
root system, where
you have something like these
three consonants-- K, T, and B.
And by the way, Arabic is
written from right to left.
So notice how each
consonant matches up
with the orthographic
form there.
And what happens is that
this root has something
to do with books and writing.
But the way that
it is transformed
into words in the language
is that you actually arrange
vowels inside and without
these consonants, and also
suffixes and prefixes, to
form different types of words.
And the only thing
that remains constant
is the linear order of
these three consonants.
So for example, these are all
verbs in different tenses.
At the top, we have "naktub,"
which means "we write."
Then on the lower left, we have
"aktub," which means "I write."
And then in the past, "katabat,"
which means "she wrote."
And notice that the only
thing that's happening here
is K, T, and B are always
in the exact same order.
Sometimes, they're right
next to each other.
Sometimes, there are
vowels in between.
And you can make
even more words.
So for example, "kaatib,"
"writer." "Maktab," "office."
And "kitaab," "book,"
just like that.
So I thought that was a really,
really cool way for a language
to work.
And I never heard of it before.
And so basically,
when I was creating
my own language, Megdevi,
I just copied it wholesale.
And I also created
this terrible font,
which I included
just so that you
could see how terrible it is.
Actually, when you're
standing that far back,
it actually looks
better than it is.
But there are just so
many little shaky lines
and everything, just god awful.
Anyway, so that you could
have a root like this-- ja,
su, fe-- and have
jaesif-- these are
real words from the
language-- "flame thrower."
Jisfe, "flame-colored."
And jasif, "flame," like that.
Hm, flame thrower, whatever.
And you can also see that
with the writing system,
I was heavily
inspired by Arabic.
So if you were to
spell something
that would be roughly
equivalent to the pronunciation
of "writer" in Arabic, "kaatib,"
it would look like this.
And so you can see the K,
it's got that thing on it.
And it just has a little
bubble on the top.
And the B has one dot
except it's above.
And there's another
little bubble.
And the T looks more T-like.
It was clearly just derivative.
The worst part about it
though, was, in my mind,
the way that I
understood language
to work, and specifically,
how I created words
for this language.
So grammatically,
it's a neat system.
But I just want you to look
at some of these [INAUDIBLE].
In order to be able
to appreciate this,
you have to know these
three patterns right here.
So the 1, 2, and 3 are for the
consonants that will change
root to root.
And then pay attention
to the vowels on top.
If it has an "ae" as the
first vowel and an "i"
as the second vowel, that's
more or less a thing.
If it has an "ay" as the first
vowel and an "i" as the second,
that's a person.
And then if it has an
"ee" as the first vowel
and "eh" as the second
vowel, that is a place.
All right, so our
first word, there
wasn't a place one for it,
but "jaelif" is a sailboat,
"jelif" is "sailor."
All right, fine.
That makes more or less sense.
Next, W, V, D.
"Wived" is "marina.
"Wevid" is "mariner."
And what the difference is
between "sailor" and "mariner,"
hm, I'm not sure there.
We know what the
difference is in English.
Basically, they came from
two different languages,
and that's why we have them.
But yeah, so now we have both
of these words in this language.
So I'm like, all right,
all right, fine, whatever.
Then we have "thaenis," which
was vessel, specifically,
an aquatic vessel.
So now we have a word for
"sailboat" and "vessel."
And "thenis,"
which is "captain."
Next, "boat," which is
different from "sailboat," which
is different from "vessel."
That was "chaesich."
And we also have "chisich,"
"boathouse," which
is different from "marina."
And "chesich," "boater," which
is different from "sailor,"
which is different
from "captain," which
is different from "mariner."
Then it goes even further.
We have a very special root
that's just for clipper ships,
"baelil."
Presumably, "belil"
is somebody who sails
a clipper ship or something.
But I think that the
reason that we even
have this word for clipper
ship is just because I
was a fan of the Clippers.
And so why not?
I wonder, actually, if that
B-L-L root has something
to do with the Clippers.
All I'm thinking
of is Bison Dele.
Somebody remember him?
Anybody remember
his original name?
Because I literally don't.
All right, anyway, moving on.
Anyway, so there are a
bunch of other crazy things
about this language.
For example, I had
taken Esperanto.
So the case system for
this language was identical
to Esperanto's.
The number suffixes.
So looking at number systems
for natural languages
is a fascinating thing.
But this language literally
had separate suffixes
for number words that were in
the tens, hundreds, thousands,
hundred thousands, millions,
billions, trillions,
up to the quadrillions.
So that you could take
the root for 1 and make 1,
10, 100, 1,000, 10,000,
so on, all the way up
to 1 quadrillion.
I don't think that there
are other languages that
do things like that.
There is a special
word pattern just
for colors, which is weird.
I kind of like it.
The tenses were
identical to Esperanto's.
It had this correlative
system that was, again,
identical to Esperanto's.
All of it was purely lifted.
And in the beginning,
when I'd just started out,
I actually started to translate
Shakespeare's "The Tempest"
into this language.
And it just keeps going like
that, which sounds impressive
until you know how palely
derivative the language is.
In fact, I get
this question a lot
about, oh, wow, how do you
create a full language that's
functional?
That's actually not hard.
It's not hard to create a
language that is completely
and fully functional, can
do everything you want.
It's fairly easy if
you're going to copy
a lot of things wholesale
from other languages
and just basically recode them.
Then all it takes is the simple
matter of just coding it over.
It's like if you're
talking about drawing
a human, it's like, wow, it
must be tough to draw a human.
It's not hard.
There you go.
It's a human.
We all recognize it's
basically a human.
I don't know.
He's rubbing his belly while
he's pointing, I guess.
But of course, what
you mean when you say,
oh, it's hard to
draw a human, you
mean it's hard to draw a
human that looks realistic.
It's easy enough
to draw something
that's basically a human.
Kids get it by the time
they're three or four.
Same is true of a language.
Easy to create a fully
functional language.
Difficult to create
a language that
actually looks like
a real language
that we speak here on Earth.
And so for me, the
real watershed moment
was when I found other
language creators online,
the early conlang community,
the conlang listserv.
This is an early photo.
And I'm sorry this
can't blow up more.
It was taken with an old camera.
From the first Language
Creation Conference in 2006,
where a lot of language creators
met for the very first time
in person.
Before that, it was
all online interaction.
But basically, I found
this listserv in late 2000.
I joined up.
I started reading some messages,
people talking about all
these different languages.
And I was like, what do you
mean Tolkien created languages?
The "Hobbit" guy?
I didn't know that.
Didn't know that
Klingon was a language.
I didn't know any of that.
And so at first,
of course, which
is what naturally
happens when you
think you've been doing
something really great
and you see something
vastly different,
you think, well, they're just
doing it wrong, of course.
I'm the one who's
really the cool person.
And I thought that
at the beginning.
But as I started to really
look at other people's work,
and study their work, and
follow all these conversations,
and see what was going
on, that was when I said,
oh, I think I understand
what I've done here.
And this literally
225-page dictionary
and reference grammar that
I've created for this language,
Megdevi, is total garbage.
And so it was then
on that it was
like that was my moment zero.
I started over, and
I started learning.
And that's basically what
I started in late 2000,
and what I've continued
to do even now.
And I think one of the
most important things that
happened to me when I
keyed in with the community
is I started to ask myself
questions that I had never
considered before, questions
that I'd never imagined before.
So I'll give you an example.
We have this word
"corner" here in English.
And so presuming--
there's no tricks here--
that this box is just an empty
box, how many corners have we
got here?
AUDIENCE: Eight.
DAVID PETERSON: There we go.
Eight.
I know somebody said
four, but yeah, we
have eight corners right there.
It's slightly different if you
ask this question in Spanish.
"Cuantos esquinas hay?"
Anybody who speaks
Spanish is probably
going to know what
the answer to this is.
"Esquinas" is essentially
a word for "corner."
And the answer to
this question is four.
There are only
four esquinas alla.
And they are those
on the outside.
If you ask a different question,
"Cuantos rincones hay?"
Then you get a different answer.
There are four, and they're
the interior corners.
Because, in fact, there
are two different words
for that concept in Spanish.
And if you think about it,
it's actually quite important.
When somebody says
something like,
oh, watch out for that
table, don't hit your hip
on the corner, you know
exactly what corner they mean.
It's hard, and
frankly, it would be
really impressive to hit your
hip on the corner of a room.
Like you'd have to
get it right in there.
It'd be really impressive.
It's like watching the little
DVD bouncing logo, right?
And you just keep watching it.
It's like, god, it's
gonna hit that corner,
it's gonna hit that corner.
Oh, it just barely missed it.
It's like, yeah,
that's an achievement.
So anyway, that's just
something that, if you
don't know Spanish, you never
would have thought of before
if your language was English.
Corners are corners.
Well, it turns out they don't
necessarily need to be so.
Another one, and this
is just phonologically,
we have these two words,
"spit" and "pit" in English.
They're actually different.
And you can tell if you
put your hand right up
in front of your face.
And focus on the P, and say
"spit," and now say "pit."
And if you'll notice
for the second one,
there is quite more
of a burst of air
because, in fact, the
second one is aspirated.
In English though, we don't
think of these Ps as different.
Like the P in
"spit" is basically
the same as the P in
"pit" and whatever.
Sound engineers know
they're different when
you have a handheld mic
in front of your face
because it's really annoying.
But otherwise, we think of
them as basically the same.
Whereas in other languages,
they can be quite different.
So these are two words of
Hindi-- "tal" and then "thal."
And they're completely
different words.
And you can see that they're
even spelled differently,
"tal" and "thal."
The first one means "postpone."
And then the second
one, I guess,
refers to some sort of a
place where you can buy wood.
I've gotten "wood shop," "lumber
yard," "lumber shop," something
like that.
I hope it's actually
still a word of Hindi.
If there isn't, somebody
can leave a nasty note
in the comments-- that's
not a word we use anymore.
It means something
totally different.
But anyway, it
illustrates the basic idea
that this aspiration, which is
just a background note of how
you properly speak
English, is functional
in a different language
like Hindi and very,
very important in order to
make yourself understood.
In fact, even this
past Monday, I'm
constantly learning new things.
This was an example
that somebody
from the conlang
community, William Annis,
found and showed me.
This is Amharic.
And it's an absolutely
fascinating little facet
that I never would have
even imagined as possible.
These are two sentences. "The
judge judged against Aster,"
and then "The judge
judged in Aster's favor."
They're basically opposites.
And what's happening is the verb
is at the end of the sentence.
And I want you to look
at these parts of it.
Essentially, the
verb is agreeing
with the little preposition that
means against somebody's favor
or in favor of somebody,
which is just wild.
I've heard of applicatives,
but usually, that
involves some sort of
switch up of the arguments
and changing the
structures and everything.
This looks just like agreement
with a really weird thing
to agree with.
And that's just awesome.
Oh!
It just gets me
up in the morning.
Anyway, so being a part
of the conlang community,
this is what I gained.
You gain, essentially, an
understanding of the ways
that languages
can and do differ.
And then once you have
that, you get to a point
where you realize,
basically, all right,
languages can do
pretty much anything.
So then when you sit down
to create a language,
you really are
saying, what is it
that I want to do
with this language?
I have all of the
options before me.
And now what am I
going to do with it?
And so for example, if
you ask me right now,
just a quick example,
what the word for "corner"
is in Dothraki, it's "kemikhof."
And there actually
isn't a distinction
between an interior and exterior
corner, but not by accident.
It's because I wanted
it to be that way.
And in fact, it has to do
with the unique etymology
of the word.
It ultimately comes from a word
"kem," which means "conjoined."
And so how the
word came to be is
that it's talking about
the meeting of two walls
or the meeting of two things.
And so that's what
it's focusing on,
not the interactional
properties of the human,
but actually what it
is and what it's doing.
And so that's why
there's only one
word for "corner" in Dothraki.
It was something I did on
purpose, not by accident.
So now that I'm here,
I wanted to give you
an in-depth example of
the type of questioning
I do when it comes to
translation and things
that I work with.
So this is a script page from
the first season of "Defiance,"
where this entire exchange
is in the Irathient language.
And we're going to focus on
this first sentence, which
is an elder Irathient is saying,
"It's how the Castis killed us
in the Great Diaspora.
Caves filled with chlorine gas."
So I got that, and I
think, well, of course,
I don't have a word
for "chlorine gas."
So what am I going
to do with that?
How am I going to
translate that?
To catch you up to speed, for
those who are not familiar
with "Defiance," I'm going
to need to introduce you
to some aliens.
First, there are the Irathients.
They look like this.
They have orange hair like that.
Their planet was previously,
before the show started,
conquered by the Castithans.
And basically, at some
time in the distant past,
it was like the Norman conquest.
They came.
They took over.
They became the
rulers for a while.
Now, they're on more
or less even footing,
but there's still some
tensions due to the history.
And then a third set of
aliens are the Indogenes.
The Indogenes are responsible
for pretty much all
of the technology that
the rest of the aliens--
called, collectively,
the Votans-- enjoy.
So they created all
of the spaceships,
all of the nanotechnology,
everything.
And they are, themselves,
an interesting creation.
They modify themselves
genetically.
They have implants
all over the place.
Their eyes can act
like microscopes.
Their hands can do really
fantastic little machinations.
So for example,
with their language,
their writing system is
actually a post-hoc creation.
Every single glyph
in the language,
whether it's for a number
or a syllable or whatever,
has these little
conjoined double hexagons.
This is nothing that would
ever arise in a natural context
because it's way too complex
to draw with your hand
and get it right.
But Indogenes can do it exactly
right every single time because
of their augmentations.
And so they actually
created this writing system
for themselves after
the point in time
where they started
augmenting themselves.
Anyway, so this is
their number system.
Their number system is base 7.
And you'll see why it's base
7 if you see how the number
system works there.
So you can see the
little tick mark
going do do do as
we go from azu,
kizu, fozu, dezu, nuzu, hazu.
And then that's
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
And then ama, you switch
the suffix, and you get 7.
So basically, their 7 is the
equivalent to our 10, like 1-0.
So I started with
them when I need
to come up with words
for the elements--
the periodic table of elements.
I reasoned that they would
be the ones to kind of codify
and then really
make use of this,
and they actually
invented a system
for referring to the
periodic elements.
They did it by protons.
So chlorine has 17 protons.
17 in base 7 is 23.
What that means is that the
digit 2 followed by the digit 3
equals 17 in base 7.
Then the word for
17, 23 in base 7.
You have kima which
is basically 20.
Remember, that's the number
2 with the ma suffix,
and now you see the
2 lines and then also
the straight line up
and down in the middle.
That's 20, and then 3
of course we know, fozu.
So 23, or 17, is kimafozu.
They also have a suffix, vun.
This was an older suffix.
Basically the word vun used
to mean just something like,
stuff way back when.
Now it's a suffix
you can add to things
to make a kind of
nominal compound,
and specifically they
add it to numbers
to create a word that
means "that element."
So when you add vun to
17 you get chlorine.
Kimafozuvun.
Kimafozuvun.
Yeah, sorry, I can say it right.
And of course you can
spell it like that
with the numbers
in front, or you
can spell it all the way out.
It's basically the equivalent
of this in English.
You know spelling
twelfth like that.
God I love it.
Oh, it stopped.
All right.
Anyway, so twelfth,
12, all right.
So we've created this
word now in Indogene,
or the Indogene language
which is called Indojisnen.
Next step is to borrow
that into Castithan.
And the reason is that
Castithan is essentially
the language of commerce,
politics, everything.
It's the English
of the Votan world.
So they borrowed all of
their scientific terminology
from Indogene, or Indojisnen.
So that gets borrowed in, and
it gets borrowed in pretty well.
So it's kimafozuvun
in Indojisnen and then
in Castithan it's kimafozuvuno.
You have to add the O suffix
on there to make it functional.
Then you have this
word in Castithan.
By the way there are some
quirks-- little aside
with this spelling because
Castithan spelling is kind of
slightly more
difficult than English,
but slightly less
difficult than Tibetan.
Tibetan I think is
the most difficult
that we've created
on the planet.
So just some notes.
Like for example, you could
write ki this way, or this way.
The reason is that there
are 2 different types
of K's in the history.
-So you have this older word,
which had a long vowel "li-ku,"
which is now pronounced ligo,
and it refers to some sort
of small animal.
That's using, essentially,
the traditional K.
And you'll see that the
traditional K is now pronounced
G in certain circumstances.
However, the old ejective K
which is here for the word
"ni-k'u" which is now
pronounced "nico," and it means,
kind of, lot or parcel.
That one is always
pronounced K no matter
where it is in the word.
So when they do borrowings they
tend to use that special K,
just to make sure that everybody
knows it's always pronounced K.
Same thing kind of here.
These are both
pronounced the same
but the one with the
longer vowel-- or that
used to be the longer vowel--
is always going to be pronounced
ma.
So we use that, just to be safe.
And same, the first
Z also changes
in certain circumstances.
The second Z does not.
So you use the second Z
when spelling things out.
That gets us kima and zu.
This one has a slightly
different explanation.
So these are the
non-sibilant fricatives
that have a different story.
F is pronounced F at the
beginning of the word.
It tends to be pronounced to
V in the middle of the word.
So for example we
have this word that
used to be pronounced that way.
It's pronounced fozwo, ritual.
It's a nice F at the
beginning of the word.
In between you had this
older word, hiifau,
which is pronounced hivo.
It's that word for shirt.
It's pronounced like a V
in the middle of the word.
But since there are
no other fantastic
ways of representing the
A, it's kind of known
that you have to swap out
for the sibilant fricative
since there's two
versions of each one.
There's 2 Z's and 2 S's.
There aren't 2 F's.
So you just use the regular
F in a borrowed word
and you know that rather
than being pronounced V
it's pronounced F
because it's a borrowing.
The same is true of the original
V, which is often pronounced H
in between vowels.
You know it's pronounced V
because it's a borrowing.
So that's how you get the
spelling of kimafozuvuno
in Castithan.
The reason we had
create it in Castithan
is because a lot of the
borrowings in a Irathient
that have to do with
technology come from Castithan.
Usually via Indojisnen,
but Castithan
is where they got a lot of
terminology because of the time
when Castithans were essentially
in charge of everything.
So that gets borrowed
into Irathient this way,
and it's now kimafozvun.
Notice that we lost a U there.
That's because they're used
to having to remove vowels
in between sibilants and
secondary consonants,
moving from Castithan to
Irathient because that just
happens a lot with
Castithan words.
So they saw this one and
said, well there probably
isn't a real U there.
Even though there
was a real U there,
they thought there
wasn't a real U there.
It's the same kind of thing
that happened with-- what's
a good example from English?
Like, nuncle.
I think it was
originally nuncle,
but now we call it
uncle because we
thought people were saying
"an uncle" as opposed to,
"a nuncle".
Really weird.
Anyway, so at it's
that type of a thing.
Now as for the
word itself-- this
is just another
kind of a fun aside.
Irathient has a
series of noun classes
that are indicated by
the initial consonant.
And it just so happens that
since this word begins with a K
it falls into the
dangerous animal class.
So klaidi is a dangerous insect.
Kombisi is a kind of a
tentacle beast comes from above
and sucks you up.
Then kangezi Is a word for like
the alpha of a pack of animals.
So for that reason they treated
this like this was the root.
That the root was actually
imafozvun and that
the K was incidental, and
indicative of a class 4
membership.
Which means that they created
this word, rimafozvun,
which means chlorine the
element, or the substance.
Then kimafozvun, which is
now the dangerous animal
and has the concept
of danger in it,
is used specifically
for chlorine gas, which
is what the Castithan's used to
kill them back in the old days.
And that is basically the story
for translating just that word,
in that sentence, in that
scene, in that episode,
in the show "Defiance."
So that's kind of the process I
go through when I create words,
and basically it's all
thanks to the education
that I had coming up through
the conlang community.
I know to ask questions that
I never knew to ask before.
And so one of the
things that I realized
when we had this great
shift in the internet
and how we interacted with it.
I don't know if it
was 2009, 2010, 2011,
but it was that time
where suddenly nobody
was using hand-coded
HTML anymore
for their own personal websites.
People kind of were going away
from listservs and bulletin
boards even, and
instead were interacting
through micro-blogging
platforms,
blogging platforms,
social media platforms.
I started to see a lot of
conlangers coming to the art,
especially with a lot of popular
media like "Avatar," and "Game
of Thrones," who knew those
shows but didn't know anything
about the old
conlanging community,
and who definitely
at this point in time
were not going to
join an email based
listserv where they communicate
with people via email.
Like, it's not even a part
of our vocabulary anymore.
And so, the thing was though,
I felt like the education
that I had, which I thought
was fantastic, was being lost,
and is essentially
irrecoverable.
Even though like you can
search all of the archives
on the conlang listserv--
they're publicly available,
there's great stuff there,
nobody's going to look at it,
nobody's going to
pull it up, nobody's
going to go through
and read old emails.
It's not going to happen.
And so that was
one of the things
I hope to do with this
book, "The Art of Language
Invention."
I'm kind of trying to rescue
some of that knowledge
and put it somewhere.
Oddly enough into old
media, hardcover, book form
because I think people that are
conlangers that are primarily
on Twitter and
Tumblr are actually
more likely to get
this book than they
are to actually pull up the
old archives of an email list,
or join it.
Which is a really weird
thing-- weird reality
we live in but it's
kind of where we are.
So that was kind of my
fondest hope and purpose
for this book is to kind
of capture that put it
somewhere so that other
people could benefit by it.
And so it's not
even like my stuff.
It's the stuff that I
learned and basically
just put into this capsule.
So anyway, that's the
story behind this book.
Thank you guys so much for
your time and listening,
and if you get it,
I hope you enjoy it.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: First of all,
thank you for coming.
There's this old chestnut
about cellar door being
the most beautiful phrase from a
phonetic standpoint in English.
Since the people who are
hearing your languages
aren't native speakers,
how does the sound
of the languages you create
play into their creation?
DAVID PETERSON: Of course
that's always the thing.
That was Tolkien that said that
most beautiful word was cellar
door, and of course he didn't
mean cellar door, he meant,
cellar door.
Which is how he would
have pronounced it.
So that was the thing
that was supposed
to be most beautiful to him.
Because for us cellar door
just sounds, I don't know.
And even so of course, that
thing is entirely subjective,
but you can tell
though, if somebody
thought cellar door
was really beautiful.
You can see how that really
informed Tolkien's languages.
When I'm creating languages,
especially for shows,
I know that the
bulk of the audience
is probably going to
be English speakers
and because of that
I know that they
have kind of the history
of cultural stereotyping
that exists for
English speakers.
That is, we have kind
of a predictable range
of which languages we think
are going to be beautiful,
and which languages we
think are going to be harsh.
So you can play with those.
So that if a producer
wants a language that
sounds harsh or
guttural, you know
what that means and
you can produce it,
but it's not actually
true that any language
is beautiful or ugly.
It's totally just basically
cultural stereotyping,
and just random resemblances
between a language you speak
and the languages you
think are beautiful.
So yeah, it's an unfortunate
byproduct of our existence,
but I can still use it to
my advantage if I have to.
AUDIENCE: You mentioned that
you created your first language
while you were studying
at UC Berkeley.
I was wondering how much formal
linguistics education you have,
and how that has helped or not
helped your language creating.
DAVID PETERSON: I
actually started
creating my first
language at the same time
that I started studying
linguistics, or I think I did.
I told a very-- I told a
very strange story in a lot
of interviews that when I'm--
I'm actually giving a talk
later at UC Berkeley and I
went back to my old notes
to photocopy some of them for--
this is for the linguistics
club-- to show at
that presentation.
And going through my
old notes I actually
discovered what I had
been saying in interviews
was factually incorrect.
So I thought that I created my
first language in the spring
semester of 2000 when
I was a freshman,
and when I was taking Arabic,
and Esperanto, and Russian,
and Linguistics 5.
It turns out I wasn't taking
those classes at that time.
I did take Arabic
and Esperanto, but I
took Russian and linguistics
the next semester
in the fall of 2000.
So I took Russian
and linguistics.
I had previously
taken a year of Arabic
and a semester of
Esperanto, and I
started creating my first
language at the exact same time
that I was taking my very first
introduction to linguistics,
which I had never
heard of before
and I only took because it
was a breadth requirement.
But I think it was
like 2 or 3 weeks
in-- I actually have the date
if I go back to my notes,
but I forget.
Anyway.
So I kind of started growing
as a language creator
as I was learning linguistics.
Oh, but I eventually did finish
out with a linguistics major,
and I also got my master's
degree in linguistics
at UC San Diego.
Definitely the study did
inform a lot of what I did
but at the same time
it was helpful to have
the background of
a language creator
so that I could know to, kind
of interpret what I was learning
in linguistics with more of an
artistic and also critical eye.
Especially a lot of
the theoretical stuff.
Like theoretical
syntax has not really
informed what I'm
doing at all, but a lot
of what I studied in
morphology, especially
like lexical morphology,
[? word and ?] paradigm
morphology, and a
lot of what I studied
in historical linguistics has
informed what I do enormously,
enormously, and definitely
phonology to, and typology,
typology is huge.
There was a lot
of back and forth.
But anyway, a lot of it came
in and definitely linguistics
was an important part of my
education as a conlanger.
But I would say equally
important, if not
more important, was my education
from other language creators.
AUDIENCE: I was interested
in birth of language.
Have you investigated that?
DAVID PETERSON: What,
like language at all?
AUDIENCE: Yeah like,
6,000 years ago.
What shreds we know, you know?
DAVID PETERSON: I think
we do know some stuff
about 6,000 years ago.
But you know essentially--
AUDIENCE: Hard consonants
and like how it directly
translates to an object.
You know phonemes.
DAVID PETERSON: I
don't really buy that.
I don't think that like the
earliest, earliest, earliest
forms of languages--
they were necessarily
like such great sound
symbolism like that.
There is sound symbolism that
exists throughout the world's
languages so often.
If you have vowel where
your mouth is closed,
like E, it's often
associated with small things,
and if your mouth is
wide open, ah, it's often
associated with large things.
But beyond that
there's not a lot
that isn't language specific.
So if you think about English
we have words like glean, glint,
glisten, glitter, glow.
You could probably
come up with others.
There are others.
And you'll notice those
all kind of have something
to do with shininess, right?
But there's nothing--
I mean that's
an English specific thing only.
It has nothing to do with any
other language on the planet.
There's nothing about Gla--
Glee, it means Glee-- no,
there's nothing about
Gla that tells you,
oh this has to do
with shininess.
It's just a bizarre cultural,
historical artifact of English.
Now having said
that, of course I
study the history
of languages a lot.
I don't think that
we're at a point,
and I doubt we'll ever be at
the point, where we can say this
is where language was created.
This is how it came to be.
I don't think we're
ever going to get there.
Honestly, we're pressing it
when we go back to things
like Proto-Indo-European.
There's a lot we know but
then there's so much we don't.
There are definitely
people out there
who have looked into doing this.
Like Joseph Greenberg who's
a famous, famous linguist
and made some
brilliant typological
discoveries was a big
believer in proto world.
That you could actually find
the commonalities between all
the languages on the planet.
I would say most linguists
don't accept that,
wouldn't even except some
of the less grandiose claims
like there were 10
original language families,
which I've also heard.
I'd say most don't accept that.
Most know that the further
back in history you
go the less and less certain
we can be about what we're
saying about these languages.
Though, but hey, from
here on out everything's
going to be recorded.
So that's nice.
AUDIENCE: Thanks for the talk.
Really interesting.
I'm curious, do you have
any particular features
of your languages, or
of languages in general,
that you feel are really
interesting, that you
feel really enamored with?
Like you mentioned
in the example
that you gave you
have noun classes,
you had spelling
variations, you had
this very systematic writing
system-- reminds me of Hangul,
for instance.
Is there anything that you
feel that you notice yourself
saying, like I can't put
this in another language
again, because I
do it all the time.
DAVID PETERSON: Yeah, well
definitely noun classes
are one of my most
favorite things.
It's so easy to create
words, and to create
really interesting
words that you never
would have thought of
if you had noun classes.
I love them to death.
But I've only ever-- the one
I did for Irathient, that
was like my second big one and
I haven't done that precisely
again, but I could
just do that all day.
Love noun classes.
Noun case is another
one I'm fond of,
but that you can get away what.
I mean, most languages have
noun case in some form.
But yeah, case systems
are loads of fun.
I think where I get into
trouble is not something
that I love but something
that's a weak point of me.
I just hate verbs.
It's so easy, it's so easy
to do a verb system that's
basically perfect imperfect.
Lots of languages
either are that way,
or started out that way.
Where there's just basically
a binary distinction
of perfect and imperfect,
so done and not done,
and it's so easy
to just do that.
Say, all right we're done,
but I kind of do it too much.
I know I shouldn't, but
verbs are just so complex.
They change by the decade
precisely how they're used.
Just watch a football
game and the guy
says during the replay--
it's like he'll say,
if he doesn't pick up
that block right there,
he doesn't run to the end zone.
That's all present tense
but that's not actually
the present tense.
I mean it's the
present tense, but it's
some sort of weird, bizarre,
hypothetical, counter-factual
tense.
We just use the present tense
for it in a sports context
only.
Right?
That happens, that's
real verbs right there,
and it just pisses
me straight off.
That's what it's the worst part
of learning any new language.
I don't care how simple a
language will tell you--
it's like, oh you have
these agreement patterns.
We don't have that in Chinese.
Yeah, I don't care.
I'm not learning
that verb system.
It's incredibly complex.
Just because the words
themselves don't change,
doesn't mean the
system isn't complex.
It probably means
it's more complex.
Verbs!
AUDIENCE: I'm curious
what's your favorite word?
What language is it in?
What does it mean, and
what was the context
that you like it used in?
Do you have a favorite word?
DAVID PETERSON: A favorite
word that I created?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, more likely.
You could tell us both.
The ones you like
that others created,
but I'm kind of
curious about yours.
DAVID PETERSON: I don't know.
I actually-- it's funny,
I get this question a lot
and I never have a very good
answer, and I'll tell you why.
The words that I
remember the most
are the ones that
I use the most,
and they tend to be
very prosaic words.
Like the word for "need
to" in Dothraki, zigerelat.
I know that one but it's there's
nothing very great about it.
I just use it all the time.
And actually I was just
talking about this.
There's a particular
reason I think
that I don't remember
a lot of the really
fancy, interesting words.
Like I'll give you
an example of one
that I know because
I used it recently.
[? "Hej" ?] is the word
for "sticky" in Dothraki,
and [? "hejov" ?] is a word
for a situation that is more
trouble than it's worth and so
you'll likely want to avoid it.
I thought that was a pretty good
word but I've never used it,
and the reason is
that-- especially
for these shows, the words--
I'm acting as a translator.
I get English
scripts and then have
to translate what's given
to me, and so the words
that I end up
using are the words
that the writers
come up with and they
don't think of these really
fantastic and interesting words
that exist in these languages.
Where perhaps if there
were native speakers,
they would find uses for them.
They would have different
patterns of use,
but instead we're working
with English patterns
of usage and words that the
English speakers come up with.
So consequently since my
most common interaction
with my own languages
is when I translate,
those words are the
ones I know the most.
So there are scores of
words that I have completely
forgotten about, and I
usually only run across them
when I'm looking for some
word in my dictionary
and it happens to be right
next to another word that's
really cool, I'm
like, oh my god, I
forgot I created that word!
It's so cool!
Now, here's the word for
belt. I go on from there.
I do have a least
favorite word in English.
Crafts.
That's the most hideous
word I've ever heard.
Just awful.
AUDIENCE: Do you have a
word aversion for that?
DAVID PETERSON:
First of all, crafts.
It's f-t-s right in a row.
That's barbaric.
And it just-- makes me think
of the term arts and crafts.
It's just weirds me out.
There was a-- who has the mic?
Over there.
AUDIENCE: You'd
mentioned complexity
in one of the
previous questions.
Are there-- in the
conlang community
are there any measures
of complexity,
or precision, or granularity
for different languages?
DAVID PETERSON: Yes,
but they're not applied
to artistic languages usually.
As languages created
for the purpose of art.
Usually where you see
things like that discussed
are creation of
auxiliary languages.
So, languages like Esperanto
that are built either
for international
communication, or communication
within a group.
They try to measure things
much more objectively so they
can say which one is better.
We tend not to do that
in the artistic language
community for the same reason
that you don't typically
go to paintings and say
which one is better,
and then come up with
objective reasons
for why one painting
is better than another.
There are certain
measures that exist
within linguistics, such as
the minimum word dependency.
I'm going to get this wrong.
Minimal length
dependency, I think it is.
There's a paper that just
came out of this-- a kid just
came out of MIT on this.
Where if you subscribe to
the theory of morphemes,
which I don't, but if you
do, you can chop up a word
and see how many of them there
are and come up with number
that tells you
something or other.
But I haven't used
it myself, and I
don't think it
enjoys a lot of use
within the artistic
language community,
but definitely within the
oxlang and perhaps englang
community, englang being
engineering languages
that don't necessarily
need to be natural.
AUDIENCE: As somebody
who had studied
a lot of languages and
studies a lot of linguists,
I'm sure you're aware that
there's some languages that
are-- although they have
their own vocabulary,
but structurally in
terms of lexemes,
they're very close to English.
You basically can do a
word for word translation
and maybe change the
word order a little bit.
There are other languages
where in that culture,
in that language, you just
express an idea structurally
completely differently.
You can't really say in
translating one sentence
to another that this
word corresponds to this,
and that to that.
When you do these construction
languages for TV and movies
that you know you're going to
be translating English scripts,
does that tend to make
you create languages
that are structurally
closer to English
so your translation
job will be easier?
DAVID PETERSON: No, not a bit.
No.
Not at all.
But of course, just a
comment, the languages
that are going to be closer to
English structurally are going
to be those that are
related English genetically,
like in the Germanic
languages, but even so, there's
a general tenant
that we pretty much
believe to be true that you
could translate anything
into anything.
When it comes to--
AUDIENCE: I'm not
saying that's not true.
DAVID PETERSON: But yeah,
like the word for word.
AUDIENCE: You know what
you're going to be doing
and to make it
easier for yourself.
DAVID PETERSON:
Yeah, no, not at all.
No.
Because that would be boring.
The reason I do this is I
love creating languages.
That's my fun.
I mean the closest thing
I've gotten to English
is actually Old
Trigedasleng in "The 100"
but that's because it's
actually supposed to be
an evolved form of English.
English 100 years later.
So it's like it's
really-- but there it's
supposed to be like English
because it's kind of supposed
to be English, right.
But other than that, no.
Honestly, the languages
couldn't be more different.
They range from marginally,
somewhat, kind of close,
to totally,
unrecognizably, out there.
That's how I have my fun.
AUDIENCE: So every year we
lose dozens, maybe hundreds,
of human languages
to extinction,
and we lose the cultural
payload with them.
How do you feel about the ethics
of conlangs going into-- people
running around geeking
out on Klingon when
we're losing real human
languages that they could
be learning.
And why do you not consider
using obscure human languages
for some of these shows?
Bring them back a little bit.
Give them a new life.
Make people aware
of them, rather than
artificial languages.
DAVID PETERSON: Let
me ask you this--
how do you feel about
people getting really,
really excited about novels
like "The Hunger Games," which
are stories about
fake people, when
we're losing the stories
of real people every day
that are dying?
AUDIENCE: Honestly, I think
that's sort of false analogy.
We have-- and I admit I come
from a very specific basis
on this.
But I guess I would
say, how do you
feel about ISIS
destroying antiquities
when we could make new stuff?
DAVID PETERSON: I'm
sorry say the last part?
AUDIENCE: How do you feel about
ISIS destroying antiquities
when you could make new stuff?
That's equivalent to yours.
Is it-- and I'm not saying
what you're doing is wrong--
DAVID PETERSON:
You're saying that I'm
destroying natural
languages in order produce--
AUDIENCE: I'm not saying you're
destroying natural languages.
I'm saying, could we not
use some of the energies
that people go into learning
conlanguages, geeking out
about con languages, going
to Klingon conventions.
I'll tell you I got very annoyed
when I see-- I saw even here
at Google recently,
people talking
about looking for
Klingon resources
to do something in Klingon,
and it's like great,
but let's put that effort
to saving a real language
because when we lose
those languages, when
the last speaker dies,
it's never coming back
as a living language.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah
so, of course--
and in fact if
they weren't going
to be doing Klingon they would
be doing the other thing,
right?
AUDIENCE: That's how it ends.
MALE SPEAKER: No, of course not.
So let's stop--
AUDIENCE: You could use
real human languages
for some of these--
DAVID PETERSON: You
certainly could.
Yeah.
We could have found
a-- for example,
we could have found some
very rarely spoken language
and given it to the
barbaric, Dothraki who are
ripping people's tongues out.
How would that have been?
AUDIENCE: I wasn't
necessarily saying Dothraki.
DAVID PETERSON: OK.
OK, but that's actually
the issue that comes up.
For example, there
are a lot of languages
that are dying out right now.
Not the majority of them but
certainly a minority of them,
that are dying
because the speakers
don't want other people
to use their language.
They don't want people
to write it down.
They don't want
foreigners speaking them.
Do we respect that?
Or do we just kind of sigh
and let the language die out
and respect the wishes of these
people who don't want contact
with the outside world?
It's a different kind
of ethical question.
But personally there are
two ways of looking at it.
One, artistically if you're
talking about a totally
fictional reality it
breaks the reality
to use a language that
actually is spoken
by other people on Earth.
It's kind of an odd thing.
I always find it
odd when people are
speaking English
when they oughtn't
to be-- like "Amadeus."
I mean it was a fantastic movie.
It was a fantastic
movie, but honestly why
were they speaking English?
Especially like, I don't know.
Well, it's actually kind of
a bizarre thing of movies
that we think that British
English would have been better
than American English.
I mean it wouldn't, it's the
same thing, but I don't know.
So artistically it
simply breaks it,
and honestly there's
no alternative here.
The alternative to using
creative language in "Defiance"
was English.
They were never, ever
going to consider
using any other
natural language,
or the expense involved
in finding somebody
to translate into
those languages.
And then furthermore,
if you think about,
especially some very--
some minority languages
that aren't spoken very
well-- by very many people,
and you start to translate some
of the dialogue in "Defiance."
For example, this
sentence that I showed you
about the chlorine gas.
Odds are that Piraha doesn't
have a word for chlorine.
So then it's a question
of what you do.
It seems doubtful that you
could get a speaker up there who
would have to learn and
understand English well enough
and perform on a deadline to
be able to translate into it,
so you need somebody else.
And undoubtedly they would
have to create words.
They would have to
create words either
by working with
native roots, or have
a whole load of English
borrowings in there, or worse,
create words they kind of
look like the real language
and use them in those scripts.
Which to me seems
really offensive.
Essentially you're
creating words
to plunk down into somebody's
actually existing language.
You're not a part of the
culture, and you're saying,
well we're going to represent
this as a word in your language
for the purposes of
this television show.
I just can't see that
being a good idea.
On a separate note, if you just
to kind of remove the created
language aspect entirely.
The fact, of course, that
there are dying languages
is terrible.
It's a question of what
one can do as an outsider
in order to either prevent it,
or to preserve those languages.
I'm not sure how a lot of
speakers of minority languages
would feel if there were,
say, a bunch of teenagers
from Southern
California who started
to learn their language
just because they thought
it was cool, and
funky, and it was
used for these quirky
people in this show.
That, at least for
me, that would make
me feel a little uncomfortable.
So I think that the
sentiment is well founded.
I don't think that the
solution you presented
is a good one, or feasible,
or necessarily respectful.
I also think that for standard
preservation of languages
there are people that
are trained to do that.
It's not an easy thing.
And of course I know
them, and in fact have
studied under them coming
through linguistics.
It's not just something
that anybody can do.
It takes a lot of
work with the culture,
and having worked with Hollywood
a bunch, it's a lot of work
that I know that nobody
would be interested in doing.
They wouldn't be interested
in paying for it,
they wouldn't be interested
in taking the time with it,
because they have
deadlines and they're
doing what they're going to do.
I'm not sure if that
answered every single aspect
of your question but if not,
I'm happy to talk about it
further because this
is an issue that
comes up every
single time created
languages are discussed.
So thanks.
[APPLAUSE]
