Hey I was wondering if I don't know anything about conlags, where do you think would be a good place to start? Ty!
Sorry it took a while to respond to this, I didn’t see it until this morning! I am a huge Conlang nerd, so this is right up my alley. I hope you get the info you need!
Conlang Resources
YouTube
Kayinth: How to Build a Language. I recommend starting here. He explains how to begin creating a conlang in a way that is understandable for beginners
Artifexian’s Conlang Videos were a huge help for me when I first started out. They explain a lot of things that beginners need to know when getting started, and continue from there to more advanced concepts.
The Perception of Colour in Language and The Perception of Time in Language, by Wesley Dean
Wikipedia
The International Phonetic Alphabet. In my opinion it’s a MUST to learn the IPA. It’s a chart of all known sounds produced in humans. You don’t need to memorise it, but you need to understand how to use it. There are plenty of tutorials available on YouTube for this!
Word Frequency Lists. These are lists of the most commonly used words in English. There are lists available for many other languages too. This will help learning what words to prioritise making for your language
Swadesh List. This is a list of tentatively universal words across human languages. It’s not going to be 100% accurate, but it’s a good starting point
Other
World Atlas of Language Structures. Shows the geological distribution and commonality of particular linguistic features. Very useful if you want to design a realistic language
Conlang Atlas of Language Structures. Similar to above.
Oxford 3000/5000. Another list of the most common English words, but on a larger scale.
Onelook Thesaurus & Dictionary. Great for English synonyms, antonyms, etc, and finding particular words. This was helpful for me because I frequently forget English words, and this provides a place to search for them.
Sentences to Test Conlang Syntax. A list of sentences to translate into your conlang. Has various sentence types, conjunctions, etc
Glossing Rules. Glossing breaks up a sentence into smaller parts, allowing you to work on your conlang’s grammar, etc
List of Glossing Abbreviations. Grammatical terms used in linguistic glossing. You will need to watch a tutorial on how to do glossing first. This is only a reference
Ogden’s Basic English. A simplified version of English. Another good place to pick words to translate for your lexicon
I also have a long list of resources I use for creating non-human and gestural languages, but I wasn’t sure to include it here.
I will likely edit this list a little later- adding more to it and fixing grammatical and spelling errors. This was only what I could put together in a short amount of time
If you have any other Conlang-related things you’d like resources for, feel free to ask. I didn’t include everything here
so i was doing some thinking about supernatural and the angels, and i kind of realized that we have origin lore for a lot of other supernatural creatures, and comparitively little on the angels. so i decided to change that. behold; my frankenstein combo of speculative biology, rudimentary astrophysics and chemistry, and my very spotty understanding of supernatural angels.
i've divided this into three sections (found below the cut). section one is my method for relating angels to their origins (which, for this, i've chosen to be supernovae). section two will be a few ideas on the science of angel grace/angelic powers. section three is my catch-all section, involving angel speculative chemistry/biology, a reason why iron and other metals affect supernatural creatures, and some more miscellaneous thoughts on angels and supernovae.
so without further ado, angel theory
section one: angels and supernovae
what i ended up doing was taking a list of the accepted classifications of supernovae*, and a seperate list of accepted classes of angels in the show, and i compared them. i sorted my angels into 6 tiers, and i compared their canon relative strengths to the light curves of supernovae (showing how bright they get, essentially). for this scenario, i imagine "wavelengths of celestial intent" to operate on a similar mechanism to waves of light, so the brightness of supernovae directly relates to the power and amount of angels released from the star
*an important thing worth mentioning for this section is that there is a type of supernovae known as type Ia. if archangels were not canonically older than the universe, this would be their attributed supernovae. however, given their age, i had to come up with an alternate theory to explain these supernovae, as they do not produce any angels. archangels are not discussed in this, because i don't have the mental capacity to go back to what possibly existed before the universe.
type Ib - this is my category for the grigori. these are the ones that were in heaven and got banished. these guys were the first ones to show up on earth so that's why they get this one. the light graph for this is not as bright as Ic, but it does last longer (hence the being on earth longer part).
type Ic - these are my seraphs. these are slightly more powerful than grigori so they get one that is slightly brighter. both these types are very very similar too (the only supernova difference is that one has helium being released, the other does not. this is relevant later in my chemistry section).
type IIn - these are my "high tier angels". that's not helpful as a category so i gave them my solid middle ground option. these are neat because there's some infrared activity going on, which makes me think it's some freaky angel thing i am actively choosing to ignore for the moment because i dont understand infrared enough (i may come back to this later).
type IIb - this type involves two types of angels. my reasoning for this (hear me out); their light curves have two peaks. i gave the smaller peak to the healing angels (rit zien, according to the wiki), and the second (and bigger) peak to the intel angels. the first peak is pretty normal, but the second peak is like a type Ib peak [this has to do with naomi and the intel angels having a similar deal as grigori; both morally shunned by various people].
type II-L - "low rank" angels. technically its max brightness is higher than IIb, but im chalking that up to the sheer amount of low rank angels that were formed at one time making that happen, despite being low power level.
type II-P - cherubs. nothing special here; weakest brightness = weakest angel class
section two: angel grace and angelic abilites
i'm assuming anyone reading this has some basic knowledge of chemistry. essentially you have protons, neutrons, and electrons. turns out, there are also these things called neutrinos that appear from things like supernovae or nuclear reactions. science is kinda sketch on them still because they're hard to replicate and actually measure on earth, but they are a thing. a huge amount of these get realeased from supernovae and my thinking is that the angels have properties similar to these neutrinos. exhibits to follow;
exhibit one: angel radio. angels can hear it, humans cannot. which must mean it gets communicated through some other means than just sound waves. solution ? neutrinos. we as humans have successfully used these particles to communicate through something like 800 feet of rock. obviously this could only be picked up by specific instruments, but the logic is there.
exhibit two: angel teleportation/speed. when a supernova occurs and the core collapses inward, it functions a bit like a black hole; it kinda sucks everything into it except for neutrinos and light (because their speeds are so very very similar). therefore, i can make the conclusion that neutrinos have a relationship to angels moving at near the speed of light to teleport and occasionally move(there are some scientific problems here in which neutrinos have been recorded at faster than the speed of light, which shouldn't really be possible. for supernatural, it's just another angel quirk in this universe, perhaps)
exhibit three: angel grace. i've taken a bit of a liberty here and thought of these like a recurring nova (small classical nova that reoccurs periodically). something in the angels from their supernova origins allows them to be able to do this (im not hung up on the details. its fantasy after all. again, i might revisit this later).
section three: catch-all on angel chemistry, speculative biology, etc.
point one; when a supernova occurs, the result is almost always one of two things. either it turns into a neutron star (second densest thing in the universe), or a black hole (y'all know these). there's a trend that i found with these angels. the weaker angels trend toward forming neutron stars, and the stronger angels trend toward forming black holes. this makes sense, because bigger stars typically form black holes over smaller stars, and you would theoretically need a bigger star to hold more powerful angels. there's exceptions to this (like to everything...). number one, cherubs have a tendancy for their stars to result in black holes on occasion. i'm assuming this has something to do with forming a large number of cherubs at once, so you need a bigger star to house them all. number two, you have seraphs and grigori occasionally forming neutron stars over black holes. this i'm attributing to forming a noticably less number of them at once than usual. therefore, smaller star needs less space. my "high level" angels can form either result at more or less random; again, this would be based on power level and number formed from one star.
point two; there is, in the actual astrophysics of supernovae, an energy transfer issue. when the star collapses into itself, there's a massive amount of energy required to make that happen and as of right now, we have...no concrete idea where it comes from. we do, however, think it's related to neutrinos (aha, angel grace ??? anybody ???). my theory is that the angels are the source of this energy. they pull it back into the star to slingshot themselves out of the star's orbit, and then once the star explodes, they ride that shockwave like surfing until they reach heaven.
point three; angel chemistry (this part was difficult, so be kind to me if there's mistakes). angels are weird, and i have reason to believe they may be partly a silicon based species (or, they are not, and the silicon simply fused into the star core like it does in real life. for my purposes, let's say that angels have a silicon component to their biology). i've found that the only type of supernova that doesn't result in angel formation is the type that has a silicon spectra (we can detect it, which means it doesn't get absorbed or fused). by that logic, i'm assuming the angels have to be somewhat silicon based. additionally, i have a theory that there's a sweet spot to layers used by the star when forming angels for their powers. having a helium spectra present (we can see helium given off by the star) results in a grigori. this means that having that one less layer has some sort of effect on their power levels. meaning that when we see hydrogen spectra given off from all the type II supernovae, that results in weaker angels because they're missing an additional layer (there are some issues with this that i don't know enough about atomic spectra to fully work through. i think it may have to do with some forbidden spectra that i don't fully understand. i may revisit later).
point four; elemental chemistry and the formation of heavy metals. so we know in the show that the boys use various metals to defeat/harm supernatural creatures (bronze, silver, etc.). the most important of these (for this at least) is iron, and here's my theory why. a while ago i made a post about iron being a "pure" element and that's why it works. i would also like to make this addition; type Ia supernovae produce iron-56 as a result of nuclear decay (iron-56 is the most naturally occuring isotope of iron on earth). it came to earth from when the planet formed, as the iron was floating around in a gas cloud that condensed into our planet. if you remember from earlier, type Ia is the only type of supernova that doesn't produce angels. essentially, it has so much happening that instead of forming a neutron star or black hole, it quite literally explodes itself apart until there's nothing left. my thought is that this amount of energy is too much for the angels and tears them apart. their angelic grace gets left to dissipate into the rest of the star, and when iron-56 forms in the core and enters the universe, it works so well against spirits because it has trace amounts of angel grace in it (same goes for the other metals that they use). this also explains the Si showing up from these stars, because instead of being in the angels, it's just in the universe.
theres a few other points about types of stars relating to angel strength before they even go supernova, but it's not super relevent to be truly honest. it doesn't tell you anything that i haven't already explained (although i am willing to explain it further). some of the other iron on earth comes from meteorites. they've related fallen angels to meteors in canon, so i am going to apply the same logic and say that when their grace gets altered in the fall, it imbues this iron with grace, and you get the same result.
if you made it to the end, congrats, you are now my new favourite people. questions are accepted and please PLEASE tell me if i screwed something up with my science. i am not an astrophysicist or a chemist; i'm just a molecular biology major with way too much time on my hands and unmedicated adhd
also, tagging those who were interested in this : @dontlistentodaisy, @bejeweledinterludes2, @aniresrene, @sorryitsmyfirstdayonearth, @clemeowntine, @reginaphalangelobster
Listening to the Project Hail Mary audiobook at work and
I am having the time of my life
Not only is it an excellent book, but I am surprising myself with the amount of science I'm UNDERSTANDING.
Astronomy last semester coming in clutch. Tbh if I wasn't already very determined to become an artist for film, I might be tryna become an Astrophysicist.
I'm content to ruminate on the inherent poetry of space in a way where I don't have to calculate *gestures wildly* All of That.
I couldn't get Wyrm's post about wing pennants and Shipfish's post about weighting dimorphism on the 'lower rank' spectrum out of my head, so...A very quick reversal of Wyrm's idea with added spikes!
(The idea here is that the neck plates get spikier/larger as you go down from gold, with gold just having small lumps, and the pennants stopping with brown have just very small little 'tab' like pennants and small colour flushes but I ran out of steam. Blues get more scars because they're catching those spikier greens!
Maybe the colours also only flush when dragons are rising/chasing or in rut/oestrus, who knows.)
Like, I cannot understate how much of our science is based around light.
Since they don't seem to give any special treatment to photons over other particles, do they even have "regular" microscopy? Did they just go straight to electron microscopy? Is this field so much more advanced in their society, resulting in them understanding materials and their structure so much better than we do, which is why their material science so advanced?
But like. We got to electron microscopy through quantum mechanics. And we kinda owe quantum mechanics to the study of black-body radiation. Which is electromagnetic radiation. Light.
How did the eridians develop their understanding of matter (which they clearly understand much better than us), without putting all this focus on light? Do they have completely different models to describe the things we describe by quantum mechanics? How did they come up with them?
I haven't read the book yet, so I guess some of it is probably talked about there. But in any case. Imagining the ways a creature who literally sees the world so differently from you, have developed their models for understanding it, is soooo intriguing.
Am currently writing an evil monologue* and I was wondering, theoretically, how much antimatter would a person need to create an explosion (or other suitably destructive devastation with a side of either incineration or annihilation) that could have a radius of several light years. (double digits is preferred) And would that explosion be bigger if that antimatter was condensed to the size of a pin head, à la a black hole's singularity. And if so, how different would the radius be? Science side of tumbler, please, help a writer out.
(containment, creation, and release of the antimatter will be handwaved as magic but scientifically plausible methods of the above would be appreciated. I really just want accurate numbers since a character will be explaining this.)
The Future Unscripted: Professor Nolan’s Musings on AI, NHI, and Humanity
Professor Garry Nolan’s conversation offers a profound exploration of the intersections between unconventional phenomena, artificial intelligence (AI), and humanity’s future. His personal anecdotes of unexplained childhood experiences serve as the catalyst for his professional inclination towards the unorthodox, underscoring the importance of considering unconventional data in scientific inquiry. By embracing anomalies, Nolan exemplifies the transformative potential of curiosity-driven research in the pursuit of novel knowledge.
Nolan’s scientific approach is notably inclusive, as evidenced by his exploration of Non-Human Intelligence (NHI), a term that broadens the scope of inquiry beyond traditional notions of extraterrestrial life. The analysis of enigmatic materials, such as Bismuth Magnesium, and the theorized capabilities of NHI, including mastery over anti-gravity and energy, prompt intriguing questions about coexistence. His analogy between human-ant interactions and potential human-NHI relations offers a thought-provoking perspective on mutual existence, shifting the focus from competition to symbiosis.
The future, as envisioned by Nolan, is intimately tied to AI’s development and application. He posits AI as a dual-edged solution: a tool for expediting scientific breakthroughs and resolving global crises, as well as a potential precursor to artificial superintelligence (ASI) that could embody a form of consciousness. This speculative horizon highlights the imperative of careful AI management to ensure equitable global access to education and growth. Nolan’s emphasis on AI-driven objective decision-making processes also presents a compelling case for reforming the current political landscape, which is often mired in tribal histories and scarcity mindsets.
A notable aspect of Nolan’s discourse is his critique of contemporary leadership and power structures, juxtaposed with the conflict resolution methods of bonobo chimps as a paradigm for more harmonious human interactions. This dichotomy underscores the urgent need for innovative, peace-centric approaches to global relations. Ultimately, Nolan’s optimism about humanity’s future, rooted in our capacity for crisis-driven ingenuity and the judicious leveraging of AI, presents a compelling vision of a world where challenges are met with collective brilliance and equality in education and growth becomes a universal reality.
Gary Nolan: Alien & UFO - The Critical Question Nobody's Asking (Gita Wirjawan, Endgame Podcast, December 2024)
