#sondiv

[dedalvs]

Hello David, love your work! Is there any chance that there might be more available someday for the Sondiv language? Or is that still stuck in legal limbo since Star-crossed got cancelled?

We're getting stuff up here:

It's just been slow going because the language is difficult. It has been a while, though. Maybe I can share that one. I'll think on it.

[dedalvs]

You once mentioned having had only a three week period to create one of your languages (Sondiv I think? Yay/nay?). What about the process of creating that one was different than your other projects? Were there any shortcuts you took to get the most out of such a short timeframe?

Here’s the thing. When you’re creating a language, you can do it all in your head—and on the fly. It’s possible. The issue is remembering it all and getting it right once you’ve settled on grammatical choices. To remember it it’s best to write it down and write it down accurately. That’s what takes time. Additionally, there are natural changes that occur to a conlanger once they’ve undertaken a bit of translation. With such an abbreviated timeline (and yes, it was Sondiv), I didn’t have time to translate stuff that wasn’t in the script—to get a feel for the language. The result is that the translations that appear in the first episode of Star-Crossed are simply not as good as the translations that came later.

In that particular instance, I also enlisted my wife @thisallegra to help me with documentation and the lexicon, and I was grateful for it. The lexical entries she came up with were among the very best in the entire language. For my part, it is helpful to have more structure if you have less time. That is, if your verbs have a dozen forms, then you don’t have to worry so much about how to handle a given translation; you just go to the right cell in the paradigm. I had a large structure in Sondiv for deriving lexical items (to help Erin), and had a complete, rather than open-ended, case system (i.e. it was always clear exactly what case each argument should have).

It’s also not possible to change anything you might not like if you’ve already sent off translations—stuff you usually catch if you have the language to play around with, for a bit. For example, in Sondiv, whose intended word order is SVO, the prefix on the verb is copied as a suffix on the subject, and the suffix on the verb is copied as a prefix on the object. I thought it was a pretty clever way of doing things, but what I didn’t anticipate was that this was happening a lot (these are just dummy words);

Ila avasi imu.

Oki inidu uze.

Edu uyuba ara.

Etc. The same vowel routinely occurred next to the same vowel when going from subject to verb and verb to object. Depending on what other words or structures were in the sentence this was naturally broken up sometimes, but not enough to prevent readings from being awkward. Had I spotted this early I likely would have changed the grammar, but since I didn’t, I ended up producing natural OVS word order. Basically, the tintinnabulation made a word order switch more attractive, with the object dragged out front and the subject deemphasized—or dropped when understood (there’s no person agreement in this language). It’s similar to what I imagine happened with Hixkaryana, which has subject and object agreement as a prefix and suffix, respectively.

tl;dr Shorten the time, and the possibility for mistakes and inconsistencies increases.

[dedalvs]

I cannot find the information anywhere (or at least, what I've found is pretty inextensive), so do you mind posting something like a summary of the Sondiv language? I find what I've seen fascinating and would like to learn more.

This is likely for the future, but I need to figure things out on my end (how I want to do that). Watch my website or this place where I post all my work.

[dedalvs]

had NO clue you did work on star-crossed— that’s one of my favorite forgotten shows!!!!

Aw, I had fun working on that show. :) Loved that writing system.

[dedalvs]

Of all your languages - work or personal - which would you say is: The one you’re happiest with? The most difficult one to create? The easiest one to create? The one that took longest to create? The one that took the shortest to create? The most difficult to pronounce? The most difficult for you to translate into? The one that was the hardest to get actors to pronounce correctly?(stress, phonology, tone, etc...) Thanks in advance 😁 love your work!

Huh. Let’s see… In order…

(Hard. Finding fault with every single one…) High Valyrian.

Indojisnen.

Trigedasleng.

Low Valyrian.

Sondiv, by default. (I had like a week.)

Kamakawi or Castithan.

Indojisnen.

Kinuk’aaz, on average.

And since you didn’t ask, the easiest one to pronounce is Övüsi. Interesting ask! Wonder if my answers will change years from now…

[dedalvs]

The way you conveyed vowels in the Kwandon abjad is so inventive and cool :D

Thank you! That’s one of the things I’ve done that I thought was pretty innovative. Glad someone liked it. :)

[dedalvs]

For someone who asked for it: This is Courtney in Sondiv’s Kwandon script.

[dedalvs]

Please how write Teri by Kwandon script ???

That’s one I’ve done before. :) Here it is: