#lecizao

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I don't remember if I shared this directly when I was still working on Lecizao but I'm planning to start a new conlang (linked to that floating island spec ecosystem project I never got off the ground!) and while referencing the layout of the lexicon spreadsheets I've used in the past found this absolute gem, possibly my favourite word in the language

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...And now I'm thinking about the time travel conlang and how I might want that to work.

I looked up the phrase just to see if I could get inspiration from other time travel–related languages and found Mpiua Tiostouea, the language of all time. It's got some neat concepts, though it was designed to have an... interesting... phonology and I'd definitely make some different choices—which is good! It means I won't be copying ideas when I make my own conlang.

A conlang for time travellers needs to be able to express some complex and seemingly self-contradictory tenses. For instance, I might tell you this sentence:

"After I go to my date with the time worm, I'll text you how it went."

Except today is Thursday, and my date with the time worm, which I'm going to tomorrow, is Wednesday (yesterday), and I plan on jumping again afterwards, but I'm not sure in which direction or how long it'll take me to get around to texting you, and at any rate you only experience time forwards and will certainly receive the text in the next few subjective and objective days.

...Also, while I, the person talking to you, am going to be going to the date and sending the text, I'm not dating the time worm—the date is between myself from three years into the future (as opposed to an alternate version of myself whom I never have been and never will be), I'm spying on it, and also the time worm experiences all of time simultaneously in every universe and thus has no time clones or past/future selves.

...And the groupchat has like three versions of you in it.

A properly time travel–inclusive language should encode all of these things efficiently through the use of creative agreements, pronouns, and tenses.

It should also be inclusive towards people who experience time in reverse. Not those who've lived backwards all their lives—they can learn any language just fine, the same way everyone else does—but people who've found themselves temporarily moving the wrong way through time, despite having learned the language forwards. I think this can be settled by having two acceptable word orderings—one the reflection of the other—and employing asymmetrical particles that indicate important things like proper nouns and sentences, and maybe having a necessarily asymmetrical syllable structure.

Like CV. Every syllable necessarily has one consonant followed by one vowel, unless you're experiencing time backwards relative to your conversation partner, in which case all their speech will sound to you like every syllable is VC, and the same from you to them. That ought to work and to be simple enough that anyone, with any native language from anywhere across time, can pick it up with relative ease.

Then we get to pronouns. Mpieua Tiostoeia has an impressive set of seven grammatical persons, numbered 1–7. I understand and respect the reasoning behind such a choice (and a dedicated grammatical person for antimemes is pretty darn cool), but I'd rather go in the opposite direction:

1st person: I, the one talking to you. 1.5th person: Me, but a different instance of me than the one talking to you. 2nd person: You, the one listening to me. 2.5th person: A different instance of you than the one listening to me. 3rd person: That guy, the one I'm pointing to. 3.5th person: That guy, but an instance of them that's not right here. 4th person: The time worm, which experiences all of time and the multiverse simultaneously.

...Which coincidentally is also seven grammatical persons.

Due to the need to stress subjective and objective time experience for multiple entities, basically everything that can take agreement will agree with the person and gender of whatever it can agree with—most crucially, verbs, which might include tense markings that have to agree with any number of people:

"I'm having a party with these guys last week, do you want to come?"

Where I'm going to the party in the future and inviting you to come along in your subjective future (while acknowledging you may have already been), but some of the people I'm gesturing to have already been to the party and others have yet to go. Also one of them is the time worm. I think this party might be where we met... will meet.. whichever. Both.

Now, when I say gender, I don't mean male vs. female. Time travellers can come from any timeline. Some of them have only one acknowledged gender. Others have three. A few have as many as sixteen, or even more. Some of them plot gender on a four-dimensional spectrum encoded in the phonology of their gender pronouns. The only way to please everyone's idea of what gender trappings deserve encodement is to encode them all equally—that is to say, not at all.

Besides, we're all time travellers here. I don't need to specify how you identify with each word. I want to know if this is you, or your future self, or your evil alternate universe self. That's the kind of gender I'm concerned with.

Which means you can have a mixed-gender group (the three versions of you in the groupchat) that needs to be referred to with... essentially, it'd be something like you (2sg) and you (2.5pl), where you (2.5pl) is gendered both for your past self and for your alternate universe self, which are two different genders.

I think this ought to be my next conlang project. It's been way too long since I really got into one—right now, Yvelse is my only conlang that's not either dead or been in cold storage for the past year+.

[strixcattus]

Conlang Year Days 22 & 23

Had a productive time coming up with proto-forms for flora and fauna terms (especially fauna, there's like fifteen of them), and since my principles for what gets a proto-form were basically the same for both, these two days get their own post.

If you're time-travelling—especially if you're crossing large distances—having a basic word for a particular species of animal or plant is deeply useless. Let's say you have a word for "crow." If you're hanging around in our present day, that's all well and good. If you go back in time far enough, before crows evolved, it's a completely pointless word. If you go forward in time far enough, to the ages after the collapse of human civilization and the rise of corvid sapience, you might be able to keep using that word, but it's not exactly ideal for what you're dealing with.

And what if you veer off into a completely different timeline? What if you end up somewhere where reptiles occupy most of the niches mammals fulfill in our world, and you're hanging out with the lizardfolk learning to take care of their giant lizard cattle and how to avoid the four-foot-tall crocodilians that hunt in packs? Where are your words now?

No, time travellers don't need or want a word for "crow." They need words that encompass three things:

What does it look like and/or do, generally? Is this a tall plant, or is it more of a shrub? Is this a big animal, or is it too small to pay much mind to? Does it fly or swim?

Is it going to kill me? If so, how?

Can I eat it?

Day 22: Flora

There are a couple kinds of "flora" particular to time travellers. Aside from those, basic roots for plants and plant parts say nothing whatsoever about the specific kind of plant, painting them in more general terms.

*sali: Translates as "grass" generally, but it encompasses all small, ground-covering flora—grass, moss, lichen, even small flowers. *nene: Fruit, seeds, nuts, and root vegetables. Essentially, any plant part that can be eaten safely and which isn't a leaf or flower. *kota: The opposite of *nene. All plants and plant parts that are poisonous. *jumini: Trees and other tall plants *pida: Leafy, low plants *jilu: Flowers (or other colorful markers a plant may have) *zaso: Leaves or similar (conifer needles, for instance) *maju: "Lichen" in translation, a kind of flora that is usually imperceptible within a timeline but which can cause major alterations in the events or physics of a timeline *zomo: Timeline Rot

Day 23: Fauna

I'm under no illusion that these two lists are complete. I added three proto-forms to this one while writing up this post. Still, I feel I've covered most anything that I'll need, and if I do end up creating some more forms, I can add them to the final proto-forms post, which... I haven't been closely looking at the preview of each week's prompts, but it seems that'll be in a couple days.

You'll notice that several of these forms are grouped by the general shape of the creature, differentiated by how dangerous the animal in question is—or why it's dangerous.

*kaja: Bird of prey (a note: "bird" does not necessarily mean "bird and bird alone." Anything that flies and is larger than the average insect might end up under one of these first three categories.) *denede: Small bird, like a songbird, for instance *date: Gamebird or large bird in general *jopo: Pest of humans (like an insect which drinks blood) *suti: Pest of food (like a mouse which sneaks into grain stores or a squirrel which attacks garden produce) *zitu: Pest of plants or structures (like a larva which bores into trees, an insect which eats the leaves of crops, or a woodpecker which has decided to set up shop on the side of your house) *kuna: Harmless small invertebrate (pay it no mind) *napa: Large carnivore (might eat you) *kalopo: Large herbivore (might be good food for a group) *mika: Small nonvenomous animal (might be good food for one person) *najato: Small venomous animal (proceed with caution) *kolo: Poisonous animal (never mind, this one isn't food) *dopu: Aquatic animal *poju: Harmless microbe (the average time traveller understands germ theory) *tino: Harmful microbe (and appreciates having a basic word for the things that cause disease) *medu: Outsider (anything that typically doesn't enter into linear time, except for:) *pekule: Time Worm (there it is) *siza: Humanoid (that's you! And pretty much anyone you'll ever talk to!)

[strixcattus]

Adding some new vocabulary to Lecizao and I've created a word that I find rather pretty, but doesn't seem to fit any of the words on my list to create.

It's giving very strong verb vibes but I can't think of a meaning for it that feels right and isn't something I already have. Any suggestions from the people in my computer?

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Conlang Year Day 34

Today was a light day, all considered—I felt like taking a bit of a rest, so I only tested a few compounds, trying to brush on the context-dependent sound changes. I also did this, which I'll explain under the cut:

Same chart as yesterday, now up to 40% or more harder to read.

The chart is now split into a few different stages of Conlang's development, as follows:

Proto-forms: The original. Unchanged. What I've been compiling lists of for the past while.

Stage 1: Some basic consonant shifts that set the stage for stuff down the line. None of them can affect one another, so they're a good grouping. This is also the stage where both stress-dependent changes (steps 2 and 3) take place.

Stage 2: Glide deletions. Even though the former step can totally mess with the latter, I've kind of been lumping them together when I think about the sound changes—they basically do the same thing, after all.

Stage 3: I could say something like "they're thematically similar because they're both fortifications, which is why they're together," but I'm not a fan of lying. Step 6 gets put here because I didn't feel like putting it with its sister sound changes. Step 7 gets put here to even out the numbers. They don't do anything to mess with one another. That's all.

Stage 4: The "foregone conclusion" section of the chart. This is where sounds that have to die go to die. Worth noting that, since no syllable can begin with a vowel, forms that combine at the start of Stage 4 will always produce the same result as if they combined after Stage 4.

Modern forms: The new, shiny, finished product. All hail.

I tested a few compounds out today as well (three. I tested three.) and might try a few tomorrow, since I'm not sure how much I'll have left to do for that day's prompt. I'm documenting as I go already. Here's the two that were actually interesting (in the modern romanization for ease of reading):

*poyo + *deni (that's "harmless microbe" and "shift in multiversal currents" as a refresher)

This combo was picked to prod at the stress-sensitive changes in Stage 1. In isolation, both proto-forms have stress on their first syllable, like so: poyo deni. When combined, however, stress ends up on the antepenultimate syllable—poyodeni—leaving syllables po and de vulnerable to the changes that only take hold in unstressed syllables.

If combined before Stage 1, the resulting form is lologeni. If combined after, the resulting form is polodeni.

*tapi + *yadi (the latter meaning "to create" and the former being a new form I created today for the purposes of this compound, meaning "light")

This compound was meant to set off the condition in step 10, depending on when the forms were combined. The syllable ya on its own wouldn't see any changes, but iya would become the diphthong ia and force the by then–reduced p to remain a consonant.

If combined before Stage 1 or 2, the resulting form is taciadi. If combined before Stage 3, the resulting form is taijadi—the diphthong still triggers step 6. If combined after Stage 3, the resulting form is tailadi.

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Testing out comparative adjective forms; we'll see if these end up looking good or if I just decide to create regular suffixes instead.

The form the comparative takes is dependent on final vowel, so I've snagged words that end up ending in monophthongs and diphthongs for all five vowels. Because I apparently have a glut of adjectives ending in -i and a dearth of adjectives with diphthongs ending in any other vowel, some of these words will merely be pretending to be adjectives for our purposes. (They don't make much difference, given that -i diphthongs are the only ones formed after the suffixes finish reducing, but for completeness's sake.)

There are both "more" and "less" comparative forms, derived from lena and mato, "head" and "foot," which you may recall are also used to mean "above/top" and "below/bottom."

Mimi—Clean More clean: Mimia Less clean: Mimio

Lakui—Afraid More afraid: Lakucia Less afraid: Lakucio

Sui—Happy More happy: Sucia Less happy: Sucio

Luoci—True More true: Luocia Less true: Luocio

Kudona—Alone More alone: Kudonai Less alone: Kudonao

Nocia—Six (numeral) More six: Nocialia Less six: Nociamao

Sizige—Angry More angry: Sizigia Less angry: Sizigio

Nodie—Put, place (verb) More put: Nodia Less put: Nodiemao

Logo—Bad More bad: Logoi Less bad: Logao

Dizou—Liver (noun) More liver: Dizoulia Less liver: Dizomao

Tosu—Blue More blue: Tosia Less blue: Tosuo

Kijou—Love (romantically) (verb) More love: Kijoulia Less love: Kijoumao

I'm still deciding, I think. Though I'm going to have to make up my mind sooner rather than later if I want any chance of catching up before October's out.

[strixcattus]

I want to make a list of everything that needs to agree with something in the time travel conlang, just to get my thoughts organized.

The guiding principle here is: Everything that might have cause to agree with something, does so. A Watsonian explanation for this would probably be something like, "there are a lot of ways time distortion could drop information or cause someone to miss it, and they would really like to know whether they're talking about their friend or an evil future version of their friend." The Doylist explanation is absolutely that I think it would be funny and fun and also I've never done any sort of agreement in a conlang before and have a lot to make up for.

The numbers this conlang inflects for are: —Singular (needs no explanation) —Monogender plural (a given group of one gender) —Multigender plural (a given group of multiple genders) —General plural (used for blanket statements that may or may not have exceptions, such as "stars give off heat" or "cats have fur")

The grammatical genders of this conlang are: —Null (always and exclusively used for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th person) —Former (past variant of myself, you, or a familiar 3rd person entity) —Future (future variant as above) —Alternate (alternate-timeline variant with a branch point in the past) —Split (alternate-timeline version of a future variant, with a branch point in the future) —Dopple (they're not a past or future version, our lives are identical, but somehow we exist separately at the same time and I need to gender them somehow)

(The distinction between 3rd and 3.5th person can get complicated. If I'm friends with someone named, say, Alice, and her future self travels back in time to now, then regardless of whom I'm speaking to, Alice is referred to in 3rd person and future-alice as Future 3.5th. If, however... let's say Nikola Tesla. If Tesla were to time-travel to 2023, and I met him, I would refer to him in 3rd person, because he would be the only Tesla I am familiar with and the only Tesla in this time frame.

On the other hand, if my grandfather were to travel through time as a young adult, and we met in the present, I would refer to him in 3.5th person, because I already know my grandfather as someone else. However, if I did the time-travelling, and met my grandfather in the past, I'd refer to him in 3rd person, and the version of him who is my grandfather in 3.5th... unless I happened to bring my present grandfather with me, in which case my present grandfather would be referred to in 3rd person and the past version in 3.5th.

Get it? By default, the native version of a person in the current time frame is referred to in 3rd person and all interlopers in 3.5th... unless they do not exist in that time frame, in which case the one with the greatest familiarity to the speaker is referred to in 3rd and all others in 3.5th, or if the speaker is travelling with the native version of that person to their time frame (or another person native to the same time frame who also knows the person), in which their native version is referred to in 3rd and all others in 3.5th.

As a sidenote: If my young grandfather (3.5th) time-travelled to a point after his death, but within my life, I would be well within my rights to refer to him in 3.5th person, even if he is the only version of himself in the current time. Those who did not know my grandfather at his current age, but met my time-travelling grandfather, would be well within their rights to refer to him in 3rd person and my present-day grandfather in 3.5th (future gender—or alternate, if my present-day grandfather didn't do any time travel in his own life).

(I don't know what you would do if Nikola Tesla showed up in 2023 in his time machine, then took you back in time to meet his self from a few years later in that self's native time. Leave it as exercise for the reader, I guess.)

—Adjectives agree with gender of the nouns they modify, by way of suffixes. If they need to agree with multiple genders, the suffixes are stacked in a set order. They're also inflected for number and for person, because you can expect to have an adjective attached to a 1.5th, 2.5th, 3rd, 3.5th, or 4th person noun/pronoun (e.g. in 1.5th person, "the evil me").

—Adverbs agree with the verbs they modify in terms of objective tense, again by way of a suffix.

—All persons of noun and pronoun that have multiple genders inflect for gender and number.

—Verbs are conjugated first for tense in objective time, then affixes are attached (these can be prefixes or suffixes) which encode person, gender (if applicable), and subjective tense for the subject and object. The positioning of these affixes is fluid, but they each point towards the nouns they're agreeing with.

—"No tense" is a valid objective tense for a verb whose objective tense is unknown, but whose subjective tense is known. For instance, if I know I'm going to mail you a letter, but I'm not sure when in time I'll be when I do so, I can refuse to inflect the verb for tense.

—A particle (which may act as an adjective or an adverb) can be constructed to indicate objective and/or subjective time for something not normally indicated. For instance, it might be attached to the noun "his texts" to indicate that the texts have not been written yet, or that whoever "he" is hasn't written them yet, but the texts themselves exist already, or to a verb to indicate that some third party (with which it agrees in number, gender, and person) has already experienced an event which is in the future for all other players in the sentence.

Verb objective tense conjugations tend to indicate the subject's person in some way. Some objective tenses lump 1st person with 1.5th person and so on, and others distinguish between them. I haven't decided yet, but this may be dependent on the base form of the verb. Like French! But worse.

[strixcattus]

If you've seen my posts from before I was busy being consumed by a media, you might remember the time travel conlang I talked a little about. Good news on that front—I've actually been working on it through @quothalinguist 's Conlang Year prompts. Given what I already had sketched out, the prompts are making me slow down a little at the moment, but they're also forcing me to think about in what capacity this language exists in a conworld.

I mean. Obviously it's meant to exist in our world. But it also exists in our world four hundred years in the future, and four hundred years in the past, and in an alternate timeline where World War II never happened, and in an alternate timeline where some nobody choked to death on a piece of fruit in 7 BCE and it had unforeseen cataclysmic effects.

It also exists in a timeline that diverged in 2013, but which somehow developed wormholes within the past eleven years—wormholes that completely fail when brought to our own world.

The first step was creating a framework for time travel. Something that could be used to explain how things worked and serve as a jumping-off point for beings that interacted with time in an odd way. I included the time worm in my original post half as a joke, but it did end up with its own gender and person when I started sketching those (though it is possible, if not likely, that such things will change some when we reach that point in the year).

Time is like a tree. It's like a tree in a more literal way than necessary. At the base of the trunk lies the Big Bang, and the trunk itself is the stretch of time afterwards where not enough was going on to form any real branches. Eventually, as star systems (and more importantly, life) began to form, time started to split off into new possibilities. Every event that could proceed in multiple ways has the potential to branch off several new timelines, but for the most part this doesn't happen—the smaller the consequences and the less likely an alternate outcome, the less likely a new branch will form. There is definitely a branch where WWII never happened, and some where it ended differently, but there isn't a branch for every possible outcome of the war, until the time travellers get involved.

If a time traveller heads back in time a few years just to hang around, they probably won't create a new branch unless their presence itself is enough to noticeably alter events. If they actively cause changes, though, they're guaranteed to form a new branch.

The tree can be navigated in a couple different ways. Time travellers take the slow, responsible route—they pick their way up and down the timelines to explore new eras and branches. There is also, however, a school of universe-hopping—essentially, not bothering with time and simply flinging oneself out into the branches and hoping one has aimed right. This is risky.

If time is a tree and people can fling themselves between branches like some sort of sugar glider, there must also be things living in the space between those branches already. Some of them are benevolent. Some of them choose to settle down in linear time, either for a season or permanently. Some of them bore into the branches of timelines and eat away at them until they fall apart. Some of them knock universe-hoppers off course and prey on them. Some of them are plants.

Some of the key inhabitants of this space that I've outlined:

Time worms: I already mentioned these things. They're really big purple worms that inhabit a branch of a timeline and experience all of time within that branch simultaneously. Each worm has a "birth date" where they start existing in the branch, but it's unclear if they are capable of death within a timeline—any attempts to kill a time worm just branch off a new timeline where the worm does not exist. Time worms are sapient beings and also a sign of a healthy timeline—if a time worm has time to grow, the nearby space outside time must be safe, and mature time worms prey on most pests that could bring harm to a timeline.

Outsiders: A general term for beings that live outside time, both flora and fauna. Some of them are capable of entering linear time for a while, and some even choose to give up outsider status, but they all live, generally, between the timelines. For this reason, time worms are excluded from this classification.

"Hawks" and "Borers": Euphemistic terms (which may change later on). Their true names have been lost due to superstition that speaking it would summon them. "Hawks" are outsiders that attack and prey on hoppers, and "borers" are outsiders that burrow into timelines either to prey on their inhabitants or to eat away and eventually destroy the timeline itself.

Dragons and Faeries: Not exactly what you picture, but pretty close. "Dragons" are outsiders which typically only travel between timelines to find new places to live, and do their actual living and hunting within linear time—and, sure, most species do look like dragons if you're willing to make some concessions. Faeries are humanoids which live outside time, but many of their clans give up outsider status to live within linear time, seemingly as a means of protection from "hawks."

"Lichen": Or "Moss." It's debatable what term should be used when translating into a linear-time language, since there's no good analogue to the name. Point is, these are flora that grow on timelines and alter the laws of reality within them, for better or for worse. Think of them as a little like bacteria: some of them will do their level best to kill you, some are beneficial to your survival, and most of them just hang around doing neither good nor harm. "Lichen" spread into the past of a timeline backdates the appearance of their effects, but doesn't measurably change the events of the timeline, and can create worlds where "the magic vanished" if it doesn't cover all branches after where it's spread.

The Rot: Death. An infection that completely destroys any timeline where it takes root. The only known killer of time worms. If a timeline is infected, it cannot be saved—its inhabitants must be sanitized and evacuated if at all possible.