#sdefa

[levunalangs]

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The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

That line is from one of my favorite books of all time, Piranesi. This short song is a translation of the line into my musical conlang Sdefa!

Piranesi is a fantastic short novel by Susanna Clarke, who also wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes … well, actually, to anyone. I mean, when have you ever seen anything like this on a Wikipedia page before:

Below, I’ll show how the music works, with some specific translation notes!

Sdefa is a musical language: the notes of the melody convey meaning. In this particular song, it’s the violin that is “speaking” in Sdefa, while the piano is there to provide harmony and structure.

If you want to know more about Sdefa, you can watch an introduction video here or check out my Sdefa tag here on Tumblr. I’ve been making new Sdefa words for Lexember this year, and four of them so far have been words I needed for this translation!

A more literal re-translation of the Sdefa text would be “The House’s Beauty cannot be measured; the House’s Kindness lacks an end.” Here’s an interlinear gloss, which shows exactly which notes carry which bits of meaning. Rhythm doesn’t have meaning in Sdefa, so it isn’t shown.

The various -3s with subscripts are third-person pronoun suffixes. The first time you see each one, it’s suffixed onto a noun. After that, it appears on verbs and adjectives to show that the verb’s subject or object is that noun, or that the adjective modifies that noun. The prefix NOM- indicates nominalization; that is, it turns “beautiful” into “beauty” and “kind” into “kindness.” Since “beauty” and “kindness” are nouns, they also get third-person suffixes (-3₂ and -3₃ respectively), which are then treated as the objects of verbs (“measure” and “lack”).

The IRR- prefix is for “irrealis.” It’s sort of an all-in-one subjunctive, hypothetical sort of mood marker. When combined with the -IMPRS (impersonal) suffix, it means something like “it is possible for someone to do this.” Add the NEG- (negative) prefix, and you get “this can’t be done.”

Finally, here’s what the text looks like in Sdefa’s two writing systems:

[dedalvs]

What is a music conlang? Have you done one before? Sounds very cool :0

As it happens I’ve done an entire video on the subject:

[levunalangs]

Sdefa Sdaturday #21

My first youtube video is now live!

This is a video all about my musical conlang Sdefa! You’ll hear some music, learn the basics of how the language works, and go through a few examples in detail!

I couldn’t get into too much detail in a short(ish) video, so I didn’t cover Sdefa writing, but I plan to in a future video. The main example in the video is what I showed in last week’s post, but here it is again in both writing systems:

That means “You’re hearing Sdefa, a musical language that I made.” Now you get to actually hear it!

[levunalangs]

Lexember 2: G A♭ B♭ A♭ G

If you saw yesterday’s Lexember post you might be thinking “that doesn’t look like a Valya word!” That’s because it isn’t—it’s Sdefa. I didn’t say I’d only be using Valya! I’ll be alternating between the two languages this month (and I may even throw in another one if I feel like it later).

Sdefa words’ etymologies work a little different from those in my other conlangs. There’s no proto-Sdefa language that they’re derived from, but every Sdefa word does have a specific origin. They’re not just random notes or melodies!

Instead, each one is a short musical reference, a quote of four or five notes of some pre-existing song or other piece of music that has to do with that meaning. For example, the word for “star” is the beginning of the theme song to Star Trek!

Because I’m a huge Sondheim fan and I know a lot of his lyrics by heart, his music is my go-to for new Sdefa words. Almost half of all Sdefa root words are Sondheim quotes, and that includes today’s word.

This sequence of pitches (with no specific rhythm, which is why the rhythm isn’t shown above) means “measure,” “calculate,” or “count.” It comes from the song “Liaisons” in the show A Little Night Music. The line is “It’s but a pleasurable means to a measurable end,” and the notes to five of those syllables (“to a measura—”) are {G A♭ B♭ A♭ G}. I started and ended it there instead of one note later (“a measurable”) because the next note is D♭, and ending a word with {G D♭} in Sdefa violates two separate phonotactic rules!

At the top of the graphic above is the word written out in both of Sdefa’s orthographies. I always think of the left one as the “little creatures” orthography and I don’t think that’s ever been more appropriate than for this word! That wasn’t at all intentional, but the fact that the word is a palindrome made it look symmetrical in that writing system.

[dedalvs]

This month's Fiat Lingua is a write up of the beautiful song @levunalangs (Jonathan Kane) wrote in anticipation of the first Kopikon at Georgetown in their musical conlang Sdefa. It's honestly wonderful! You can read the description or listen to it here:

And as a reminder Kopikon II is just around the corner! On October 10th at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland we're all getting together again, and we'd love to see you there! You can register here:

[levunalangs]

I was in another conlang relay, using Sdefa! This one was the 2025 Youtube Conlang Relay, hosted by @conlangery. The linked video is all about my leg of the relay, and will premiere this Monday, October 20 at 11:22 AM EDT. The weird time is because all the participants are premiering their videos in order: the first video premieres at 11:00, and then everyone goes from there to the second livestream, and there to mine, which is third! And then to the fourth participant, and the fifth, and so on until the relay is over.

So join us in chat this Monday as we all find out what the original text was and what happened to it! The whole playlist is here, but it’ll start with this video so you can just go there at 11 AM on Monday and be swept along with the rest of us.

Or if you’re reading this on October 21, 2025 or later, it’s all available already for you to watch in whatever random order you’d like!

[levunalangs]

The Sdefa word you gloss as "end" in your translation of the beauty of the house (DEF♯A) is different from the word you glossed as "end" in your translation of the left hand of darkness (A♭GD♭C), is this a deliberate vocabulary change, a synonym, or accidental?

Good catch! There are, as far as I can tell, four ways of saying “end” in Sdefa, with slight differences.

One reason for this is to allow for greater flexibility: say you’re writing a bit of Sdefa and so far everything fits nicely into D major, but then one word doesn’t fit so well within that key. You could pivot and make a key change, or have one chord that’s a bit out of left field… or you could choose a different word that fits better in that key.

Also, I do sometimes make mistakes and make a new word when I already have one with that meaning. Usually if this happens I try to differentiate them in some way after the fact, though.

Anyway, here are the different words for “end”:

The one in the translation of The Beauty of the House (from Piranesi) is {D E F♯ A}. This refers to the end of an event or period of time specifically. The most literal interpretation of “[the house’s] kindness [is] infinite” using this word would therefore be that the house is kind forever, that it will never stop being kind.

The one in the translation of The Left Hand of Darkness, {A♭ G D♭ C}, is “end” as in “goal” or “destination” (think “means to an end”). You could use this interchangeably with the first one if you’re talking about the end of a journey, for example, but it would still be the destination of that journey even if it was never completed. And this word wouldn’t make sense in the Piranesi quote, because it doesn’t refer to kindness being without a goal. I think you could make a case for one of the other words working in the LHoD quote, but the pairing of “end” with “way” in that case makes me think of this sort of “end” first. I guess that just means it’s a bit of wordplay in English that doesn’t translate directly into Sdefa.

Another word that could be translated as “end” is {D E F E}, which is also “edge” or “boundary.” I think you could also interpret the original quote from Piranesi as meaning “it has an infinite supply of kindness,” in which case this word might be a more literal fit than {D E F♯ A}. However, I think both work and that one was a better fit musically. Or maybe I just didn’t think of this word at that time.

Then there’s “end” as a verb, {E G D B}. Obviously that wouldn’t work directly if you want “end” as a noun, but there’s always the nominalizing prefix so {F D E E G D B} would work to mean “ending,” “completion,” etc.

Thanks for the question!

[levunalangs]

Lexember 12 and 13: {A B D B} and gwunda

Two Lexember words today, to make up for yesterday!

First is the Sdefa word {A B D B}, meaning “animal.” This one comes from the Simon & Garfunkel song “At the Zoo,” specifically the words “the animals” in the line “And the animals will love it if you do.” I’m trying to vary my sources just a little bit, while still drawing on music that I’m very familiar with. This word is also for a short upcoming translation, which I will hopefully have time to post before Lexember’s over.

Next is the Valya word gwunda, meaning “watch” or “be careful.” The latter meaning is from a shortening of either of two phrases, gwunda zaku or gwunda tüka, both roughly “watch around” or “watch out(ward).” In Old Valya *gaa was “see” and *guumida was “look at” or “watch,” so like in English it was more or less a difference in how intentional the action was.

In Modern Valya, though, ga is used for both meanings, and gwunda is rarely just “look at” outside of some specific contexts. Usually if it does mean “watch,” it’s more like “watch closely.” It is more often used intransitively to mean “be careful,” but it can also have that meaning when used transitively, either “be careful of” or “be careful with.” Its object might be a danger you have to watch out for, or something that you have to care for. It’s entirely up to context which of the three meanings it is!