Unicorn Language

[SasQ 1,375]

Welcome back!

It was a long time I was absent on this forum due to some problems with my Internet connection.

But during that time I was not idle: I worked (among other things) on the Unicorn Language and Alphabet I once described in this thread. (I'm going to post some new stuff there too, so stay tuned.) And now the time has come when I decided to start sharing my ideas with you.

 

In this thread I will present my ideas and inventions about the Unicorn Language and discuss them with you, because for some ideas I have several options to choose, and I'd like to know which of them do you think would be the best.

 

(I'm also working on a tutorial, but I'll wait with publishing it yet some time until it solidify enough.)

 

Alphabet and phonetics

 

OK, so first of all, there's the alphabet, which I described quite in detail in my previous thread already, but there are some new details I'd like to show you here. The table below summarizes all one needs to know about the alphabet (click to enlarge):

The first column is the original book form of each glyph, as seen in Twilight's old copy of "Predictions and Prophecies" in the very first episode of the series (S01:E01). This form is used mostly in books, where readability and precision is required.

 

Unicorns are best-suited for writing pretty glyphs since they can levitate pencils or quills with their Magic to manipulate them more precisely. But there are times when chiseling down those complex symbols every time a pony wants to write something wouldn't be much comfortable. Therefore, for faster communication, simplified cursive forms of these symbols (also called hieratic) has been invented. They are better-suited for hoof-writing, and they can be easily scribbled with a pencil held in mouth, or even by scratching them on the ground with a hoof. This is the form you can encounter in scrolls and hoof-written inscriptions. Such form is shown in the second column of the table. This column also shows how these lines evolved with time to become simpler and simpler.

 

You might have noticed a peculiar property of these scribbles: some of them are very similar to the letters of our Latin alphabet used to write down English. This is not a coincidence! Some old legends say that long time ago, when humans and ponies lived together and inhabited the same world yet undivided, humans had peeked some of these symbols and used them to build their own alphabet upon them. After the Great Divide, when both worlds had become separated, human version of those letters evolved in a very different way than in the equine world. But one can still notice some resemblance of the original letters.

 

For now, ignore the third and fourth column about phonetics, since it is an old version where I was still experimenting with different sounds for these letters, and it is wrong. I think I already solved the phonetics, in a different way, and I'll show you in a minute how it works. You will be excited when you see it

 

The next column describes what the particular glyph depicts by its shape. This will be a basis for deciphering its meaning.

 

Nothing is known about the correct alphabetical ordering of these letters, so I put them in such an order that they begin from a pony, then there are several important body parts of a pony (from head to tail), and then there are the glyphs related to the pony's environment: first two are related to the Heavens above, and the last one in this group (a thunder) is about the sky. The last one in the table is a rope, which is the most primitive tool used by ponies since the prehistoric times of G1 ;-J

 

We don't know if this is the entire alphabet. Perhaps there were some other symbols too, but it is quite unlikely – if there were any more symbols, why wouldn't they appear in the sample we've seen in Twilight's book?

 

I once had this idea that when Ancient Alicorns came to Earth and taught ponies their language, they gave different parts of their alphabet to different races of ponies: there's a common subset for all of the races, but each race has a bunch of their own symbols particular to their race. E.g. Pegasi could have symbols of a wing, a cloud, or a rainbow, because those are things they usually deal with. Earth Ponies could have symbols for a tree (or a general plant), an apple (or a general fruit), a seed etc. Other races can express those ideas, too, but they need to combine other symbols into words to make these meanings. It's just that some races can write down these ideas shorter, since they use them all the time. The common Equestrian language and writing could be based on this common subset of symbols, or it could be a completely separate thing.

 

Meanings and how to combine them

 

Now, each glyph of the Unicorn Language has its own meaning. These basic meanings could be combined together into longer sequences called "words" to make new, more sophisticated meanings. E.g. if the thunder means "loud", and the head means "thought", then together they mean "loud thought" which is "speech". Similarly, if the horseshoe means to make a mark, and the head means "thought", then together they mean "idea leaving a mark", which is "writing".

 

This way one can combine simple meanings into more complex meaning and create longer words. And the whole language would make a big tree of meanings, with the most general meanings at their roots, and the more specific words branching from them. I'll discuss this root-branch tree-like structure later.

 

This is how all ancient languages (like Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit etc.) worked, and it is a very neat idea, because when you encounter some new word you've never seen before, you can still figure out its meaning by looking at what symbols it is made of and combining their meanings. You can also guess a new word when you want to express some meaning but you don't know any word which says that. This is contrary to how modern languages (like English) work, where the letters of a word would tell you nothing about its meaning, and you need to remember a whole lot of dictionary (or carry it along wherever you go) to be able to communicate.

 

Position is everything

 

Now here's another interesting feature of the Unicorn language:

Each of these alphabetic symbols, or words made of them, can have different meanings depending on where in the sentence they appear (but these meanings are still somehow related). This way one doesn't need to remember different words for different occasions, because the same word can perform different roles depending on whether it is a noun (that is, a name of something), a verb (a word describing action), or an adjective (describing a property or trait). For example, the same word can mean "a ruler" when used as a noun, "to rule" when used as a verb, and "ruling" when used as an adjective.

 

This trick allowed me... erm, I mean, allowed Unicorns to slim down their vocabulary and move that weight somewhere else: into grammar. That is, instead of having a large dictionary of thousands of words, they can go with less words which can have different meanings depending on where they appear in the sentence, and the grammar rules will do all the rest.

 

Prefixes and suffixes

 

These symbols can also be used as affixes, that is, they can be attached before or after other words (as prefixes or suffixes) to modify their meaning a bit. For example, you can turn a concrete word, such as "friends", into a more abstract idea: "friendship", by prefixing it with the head symbol (meaning a "thought" or "idea"; a thought of being friends is friendship). (You can see an example of that in my signature at the bottom of my every post.)

 

Fun fact: You might have noticed in my signature that to make the word "friends", a pony needs to connect two symbols of a pony facing each other, with a rope between them symbolizing the emotional bond which connects them as friends. But there is no way to make a word "friend" in singular! This is not a mistake, but it reflects the idea that there are two to tango. So, for example, Applejack can say "Me and Rarity friends" ("I'm friends with Rarity"), but she cannot say "Rarity is my friend" nor "I'm a friend of Rarity", because friendship has to be mutual. A pony cannot declare friendship one-sidedly, either way. She can say "I like Rarity" at most. If she said "Me and Rarity friends", it is implied that the relationship is mutual.

 

You might have also noticed that in my table the meanings become gradually dimmer and dimmer. This shows the progression from concrete ideas to more abstract ones.

 

This table is a second version, evolved from the first one I presented in my other thread. It seems pretty firm, but it can still change a bit in a future, so keep this in mind.

 

Now let's talk about phonetics, that is, how these letters could sound.

 

Phonetics

 

The following image shows an anatomy of the vocal tract of a pony:

 

DISCLAIMER: No pony has been hurt in making this illustration ;-J This is a result of a special "see-thru" spell, which causes some parts of an object to become invisible and fully transparent, still being there at their usual place. Pretty cool, eh? ;-J

 

As you can see, the vocal tract of a pony has a similar structure as in humans (yeah, Nature likes to reuse good & attested designs ;-J ). This means that ponies are capable of producing all the same sounds humans can. But the Unicorn Language is meant to be simple and easy to pronounce, so it uses only a bunch of sounds separated far away from each other in the vocal tract so they could be easily distinguished by ear.

 

Consonants and vowels

 

There are two distinct types of sounds which can be produced: consonants and vowels.

 

Vowels are the sounds which are produced with an unobstructed air flow through the vocal tract, and can be sustained deliberately long (well, at least until the breath ends). They are easy to produce, and they are the very first sounds every living animal can produce (if it can produce any sounds at all). But they are also easy to confuse, because they all sound very similar.

 

Consonants, on the other hand, are produced by making obstacles in the vocal tract and "disturbing" the air flow in different ways. They have very distinct sounds so they are easier to recognize by ear. This makes them perfect for communicating meanings through speech.

 

Vowels are the "carrier wave", which is being "modulated" by the consonants. That's why it is the consonants in a word that matter and carry the most of the meaning. They make which is called a "root" of a word. Vowels between the consonants, on the other hand, can change, and this doesn't change the meaning of the word, only slightly (e.g. changing its mood, or tense, things like that).

 

That's why the Unicorn Language originally used alphabetic symbols only to write down consonants. But if there could be some confusion about the meaning of the word, some of these consonantal sounds has been reused to double as vowels. But before I'll jump into the details, let me tell you first how I finally figured out the phonetics puzzle.

 

Solving phonetics (cool story)

 

As you could have seen in my previous thread, I had a great difficulty with figuring out what sound to associate with each of these letters. I was banging my head for a long time, trying different combinations of sounds. I was thinking about what sounds could be natural to produce for ponies, and I even once invented a somewhat exotic sound which, in my opinion, would be easy to produce by horses, but doesn't appear in any human language: a strange "prr" sound horses sometimes made. Later it turned out that there actually is such a sound in the International Phonetics Language (IPA), and it is called "bilabial trill". If you want to hear how it sounds, there's a sound sample on Wikipedia. Pretty funny, eh? Unfortunately I couldn't incorporate this sound in the language, it didn't fit well with other sounds, so I dropped this idea. Let's say this sound has been used by primitive ponies when Ancient Aliconrs taught them their language for the first time, but with time it's been simplified to just "p" or "b" sound.

 

Up to that time, I tried lots of different combinations of sounds, but none of them worked well. So I decided to summon Twilight Sparkle in my mind and ask her what their letters sound like. Unfortunately, Twilight wasn't much helpful, she avoided my questions with the smile of Mona Lisa ;-J But she told me that this is a magical language, so I need to understand Magic first, to understand the language :-J

 

So I did.

 

I took the two symbols for "bright" and "dark" (that is, the Sun/star and Moon), and combined with the symbol of a Unicorn horn, which symbolizes Magic. I also attached the head suffix to make them abstract ideas (of Magic as an idea) instead of some concrete "stuff" (magical energy). This way I made two important words: Bright Magic and Dark Magic – the basic driving forces of the whole Universe. In our world, they're called Yin and Yang by the Chinese. I thought that if these symbols mean the same in Unicorn, they should sound somewhat similar.

 

I already had some words invented, but no matter how I tried to assign some sounds to the Bright Magic and Dark Magic words, the same sounds didn't fit in these other words ;-/

 

And then I've got another idea: What about reusing some letters as vowels?

And it turned out that this works magically!

If I assign the "j" sound (as in "jaw" or "judge") to the horn, and the "n" sound to the head, and then use vowel sounds for the Sun and Moon – the "a" sound (as in "arm") for the Sun and the "i" sound (English "ee" as in "bee", or "yi" as in "yield"), then see what we get (and hold on to your hooves):

 

horn + star + head = j + i + n = jin (pronounced as "geen")

horn + moon + head = j + a + n = jan

 

See? They sound very similar to those Chinese words "yin" and "yang" for Dark Magic and Bright Magic! Moreover, the first one (for Dark Magic) is related to "genie", a mischievous magical spirit captured in a bottle which uses Magic (supposedly the dark one) to make your wishes come true.

 

When we combinine Bright Magic and Dark Magic to make Harmony:

 

star + horn + moon = a + j + i = aji (pronounced somewhat like "agee")

 

Now look what we get when we add a symbol of a pony in front of it, to make it mean a pony who mastered both sides of Magic, Bright and Dark, and can use them in harmony:

 

pony + star + horn + moon = m + a + j + i = maji (!!!)

 

Guess what the Ancients called those wise men who knew a lot and supposedly could use magical powers: they were called Maggi In modern English there are words based on that old word, such as "magician" or "mage".

 

Also, when one assign the obvious clopping sound ("k" or "q") to the horseshoe, we can attach it at the end of this word to get "majiq", which means "a mark made by the pony who can harmonize bright and dark energy", or in short: a magical inscription, a spell.

 

So it all fits perfectly!

 

As you will see later, these sounds also fit well with other words I invented before, relating to family. But I'll talk about that later, when I'll be explaining you the vocabulary.

 

Now let's get back to phonetics of the letters.

 

Names of the letters and default vowels

Each consonant letter has its own name, which is simply a one-syllable word. This word isn't random, it has a meaning: it means the same thing which the shape of the letter depicts. This one-syllable word is also a hint about the pronunciation of that letter, and it has a default vowel associated with it. Here are the names of the letters, their pronunciation, their consonant sounds, and their default vowel sounds:

 

a pony = mah = m

a head = nah = n

a horn = jah = j (as in "judge")

an eye= voh = v (as in "void"); vowel sound: o (as in "vote")

a horseshoe = qu = q (as in "quiet"); vowel sound: u (as in "put" or "foot")

a tail = i don't know yet; perhaps "r" or"l"

the Sun = 'ah = ' (yes, this is a consonant, so called "glottal stop", more on that below); vowel sound: a (as in "hat")

the Moon = yi = y (an approximant consonant, as in "yeti" or "young"); vowel sound: i (as in "meet")

a thunder = dhah / zhah = dh / z (I haven't decided yet; but it has to have a buzzing sound and somewhat violent and explosive)

a rope = heh = h (as in "head"); vowel sound: e (as in "head" or "Equestria")

 

As you can see, some of the sounds are still to figure out, but I pretty much have them all in place.

 

As to the "glottal stop": it is a sound made when you close your glottis and stop the air flow (that's where the name comes from). A similar sound to when you're about to cough. If this description is not clear enough, I'll try to record some sound samples later.

 

If you're a bit confused with all this pronunciation stuff, don't worry. At the end of this post I'll put a link to a website I'm currently constructing, with a simple Unicorn-English dictionary, where you can see some example words: how they are written in Unicorn alphabet, how to transcribe them in PEGASCII, and how to pronounce them, and there you can hear the pronunciation of each word by clicking on it.

 

Vocabulary

 

Speaking of the vocabulary, I already invented a whole bunch of words in Unicorn Language. But when the rules of creating them would be settled enough, I'll invite you to the fun and maybe together we can work faster to complete the whole dictionary. But for now, let me show you what I've got already.

 

Family relations

 

The following picture shows a bunch of words Unicorns use to name their family members:

 

 

It all begins in the "Generation 0". When a Unicorn is born, the first ponies he or she meets are his/her parents, of course ("Generation -1"). The words to name them should be short, simple, easy to distinguish, and easy to pronounce by an infant pony. And that's how I made them. "Mei" is "mother", "Me'ah" is "father", and "meh" is "parent" in general (gender-neutral). The names of other family members are longer, but still quite simple to pronounce.

 

If you look closely at this picture, you should notice a whole lot of patterns.

First of all, each of these words contains at least one rope symbol. That's because the rope symbolizes a bond, either emotional or a bloodline. But this symbol appears at different positions. And there's a pattern in that, too :>

 

Imagine you are the pony who speaks about his relatives. Imagine you and your family are standing in a line, ordered by generations: the ponies from previous generations are behind you (or up the tree), and the next generations are in front of you. And you are holding a rope which symbolizes the bond connecting you to some other pony.

When you speak about your parents, the rope is behind you, and more behind is a pony which is your parent. So, in the correct order of appearance in a word, they are: a pony, a rope, and you (which is the default, so you don't need to symbolize it with any picture).

If, on the other hand, you want to speak about your children (the next generation), then the rope leading to them is in front of you, and then there's a pony. So the order in a word is this: you (default, not written), a rope, a pony. So a child (gender-neutral) is "'em", a colt is "'emah", and a filly is "'emi").

For ponies which are more distant in generations (grandparents before, and grandchildren after), you simply use more rope symbols between you and the pony you speak about.

 

You can also see that each of the words has a gender-neutral form, which is modified to specify a gender by attaching one of the two "natural opposites" symbols: the Sun or the Moon. The Sun is for masculine forms, because males like to spread their presence all around and be visible, so as the Sun. The Moon is for feminine forms, because it attracts water with its gravity, causing tides, and females are attractive and attract other ponies. They can also pull them by their "gravity of love". You know what I mean... That's how it works for me, and that's how these symbols were used by humans in ancient cultures, so let's simply reuse it for ponies too.

 

Below each of the words there's also its plural form. You can see that it is made by doubling some particular symbols and their syllables in a word. The rule is: If there's any pony symbol in a word, double that. If there isn't, double the last syllable of the root before attaching any prefixes or suffixes.

 

You can also notice some oddity in this diagram: Ponies from the same generation (i.e. your siblings) have single rope. Why is that? Well, there must be at least one rope to tell that we're speaking about a family member (a pony which is connected to me with a bond). Two ropes would be too much, since it would suggest a pony from two generations apart. So we end up with just one rope. But then it conflicts with parents, which are one generation above. How to differ them from siblings, which are on the same generation level?

Well, I had some trouble with it, but finally I figured out that I can simply reverse the pony symbol so that it would be facing towards me. This makes him a bit "closer" to me than my parents or my children. When you want to pronounce such a word with a reversed glyph, simply reverse the syllable: put its default vowel before the consonant instead of after it.

 

There are other familym members beside those shown in the above illustration. But they can be easily described by joining words together. For example "grandma's mother" is "great-grandmother". "Father's brother" is "uncle" etc. Since the words are short, they can be easily joined this way.

 

Remember the "Baby Cakes" episode where Mr. Cake was describing the family relations of some of his family members? In English translation it sounded long and complicated, but in pony language it was shorter and more structured, so ponies have no troubles with understanding these connections.

 

Personal pronouns

 

Repeating one's name in a sentence over and over when addressing him would be cumbersome. That's why personal pronouns has been invented in almost every human language. They are short words used in place of longer nouns to facilitate referencing them in sentences. For example, instead of saying "Spike hungry, Spike wants some gemstones", Spike can simply say "I am hungry, I want some gemstones." Or, Instead of saying "This is Twilight Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle is smart.", one can simply say: "This is Twilight Sparkle. She is smart.", and everyone understands that "she" refers to Twilight Sparkle.

 

There are personal pronouns in Unicorn language, too. And you will be surprised how easy they are to use! (I deliberately made them to be that way.)

 

First of all, the words for personal pronouns evolved from simple nouns. For example, a noun "pony" (which is a one-symbol word – just a pony symbol! pronounced "mah") can be reused to mean the same as "one" or "someone" in English ("somepony" in Unicorn language). This form is the gender-neutral one, which is missing in English (unless one considers "one" to be this word). When a pony wants to distinguish the gender, it's enough to attach the Sun (star) or the Moon symbol at the end of it. Then it will mean "he" or "she" (pronounced "mei" or "me'ah"). Those are all third person singular pronouns.

 

So what about first person and second person singular?

Well, you can turn the third person into second person by turning the pony symbol to its mirror image. Now the pony is facing you, so it means "you" (or "the pony I talk with", contrary to "the pony I speak of" when it is turned backs to me).

For first person, I decided to use the head symbol, because it reminds me "myself". The head is where my consciousness is located, and where my eyes and ears and mouth are located, it's the "origin of my world", so it quite fits as "I" (or "the pony who speaks that").

 

As to the plural forms of personal pronouns, ponies doesn't have them. This might seem surprising to you at first, since in English, and many other human languages, there are such plural forms. How can a pony say "we" if there isn't a word for it in his/her language?! Well, the pony can simply say "me and you", or "me and him", or "me and her". Since these personal pronouns are so short (one to two letters!), they can be easily bunched this way. One can even consider such a pair of words as one word, and ponies often write them down this way (they even join them with following words as prefixes if it is not ambiguous).

 

If you still have issues with that, think of it this way: In English, when you say "you" or "they", there's no information about the gender of the particular members of the group! In other languages, like Polish or French, there are different forms for masculine or feminine groups. But this is ridiculous! If you don't see why, then imagine a group of mixed gender: are they "them males" or "them females"? None of them fits, since the group contains both males and females! But languages which use such forms, force one of these genders, usually masculine, as if one male in the group "plagued" the whole group by his masculinity This is very chauvinistic or sexist rule, and ponies don't like chauvinism or sexism – they prefer tolerance and equality. That's why they don't force genders where it doesn't fit, and distinguish gender where it should be distinguished instead of mixing it. If they don't want to specify gender, they use gender-neutral forms (lacking in many human languages). If they need to specify gender, they mix the appropriate gender-specific personal pronouns together.

 

Of course, the concept of gender applies only to animate words (i.e. living things), which actually have gender. For inanimate objects, distinguishing gender doesn't make any sense, so for such objects Unicorns use separate pronouns. For example, the symbol of a horseshoe, which means "it", and is pronounced "qu" or "ku". (Interestingly, a similar words means "thing" in Chinese, as far as I know). This form doesn't have gender-specific forms.

 

Why a horseshoe for that? Because it represents a hoof, and ponies hold objects, touch them, grab them and point at them with their hooves. Makes sense? ;-J

 

Human languages often enforce some artificial gender to inanimate objects, which is very confusing, because one needs to remember not only a word, but also its gender. To make it even more confusing, different languages assign different gender to the same things (e.g. a spoon in Polish is "she" and a fork is "he", but in Italian it's the other way around). There is a reason for doing this trick in human languages: this artificial gender is used along with gender-specific personal pronouns and gender-specific endings of adjectives to let you know which one is connected to which. But this works as far as there aren't words with the same gender in the same sentence, so it has a limit anyway. That's why I don't introduced such pesky rules in Unicorn language. For matching adjectives with their nouns, and pronouns with the nouns they replace, other rules are used, which I'll describe some other time.

 

Here's a table which summarizes these personal pronouns in the Unicorn Language:

 

 

As you can see, they're very simple and regular. They're also short, so they can be bunched together or connected with other words (so called pronomial affixes). So they are much easier to use than in human languages and you should be able to learn them easily.

 

Oh, I almost forgot:

Here's the Unicorn-English dictionary I was speaking about previously, all with spelling and pronunciation, so you can hear how these words sound by clicking on them.

 

The website is a work in progress. If anypony wants to help me with it (especially with the graphics design – it still begs for some cool banner), send me a private message.

 

OK, let's call it enough for now. I'm curious how you see these ideas, so all comments and suggestions are welcome. Next time I'll answer your questions (if you have any), and I'll try to post some more stuff.

Edited November 4, 2014 by SasQ

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

I am so very very very happy that you're back!

 

Also, you've done brilliant work. I'm impressed, but I wouldn't expect less of you.

 

My interest in conlangs has been dead for some time, however this just might be the thing to spark my interests again.

 

Right now I'm going through a transitional life stage, but sometime in the near-ish future I might help you with some graphic design stuff.

[sweetolebob18 728]

You read Tolkien's  of the Rings.  Go on, confess.  He started this stuff, he is to blame.  It happened because when he wrote LOTR the publisher told him it would have to be 3 volumes.  Vol 3, Return of the King, (for those who have only seen the movies, he covers the return to the Shire & what happened to the characters & some of the villains like Saramon & Worm Tongue).  It was still a little short, so he put in language & history for most of the races.  Scifi authors have been putting in a few alien words since "Doc" Smith's days, but AFAIK, he was the 1st to get serious about it. He is to blame

 

Seriously, I've read some stuff about this over the years.  Polynesian is the simplest human alphabet.  It has 8 consonants & 3 vowels.  The A sound in father is in every known human language.  Babies make the same sounds the world over & just about every human language uses something like "ma" for mother because of this.  No human language uses every sound human's are capable of making & we lose the ability to distinguish the ones we don't use.  In English the "Th" in three isn't used in many tongues nor is the "L" in lollypop.  This is why foreigners have accents.

 

Every tongue has expressions & figures of speech which don't always translate well.  George Carlin used to do some humor on that.  For instance, in America you park in a drive way & in England you drive on a parkway.  Cattle live on a range, but you shouldn't have a cattle drive on a driving range.  You say "take a shit" but unless you are 1 sick puppy, you don't take anything, you are leaving it & so on.  Anyone learning a language, I recommend Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language" which is Appendix D in one of his books (either A Tramp Abroad or The Innocents Abroad, sorry I can't remember which)

 

Finally, according to The Guinness Book of Records (who asked the Berlitz language people).  The 2 hardest languages for adults to learn are English (more exceptions to rules than anyone else) & Japanese (more rules about  which form to use when). Every language has irregular verbs.  Turkish has the fewest (1) & English the most (over 800).  600 years ago (just before Europeans started going everywhere) there were about 600-800 million people on Earth & 10,000+ languages in use (some by only a few hundred folks).  Today, 7 Billion+ people & 5,000- languages.  In the next 100 years or so, we will be down to under 1000.  This is partly because of TV, but also because conquerers tend to forbid the conquered their own language (We Americans did it to most of the Indian tribes). 

The most common languages today are English & Mandarin Chinese (both about 1.2 billion)

.

In Eric Flint's The Mother of Demon's, humans use Arabic as a battle language because it was the hardest for the aliens to speak.  In The Languages of Pao, they use language as a form of thought control (they try to do the same in 1984).  In one of the Oz books, Scarecrow assumes he won't be able to understand folks from another kingdom & has Jella Jamb (mis)translating for him.  In Robinson's Star Dancer, they are using ballet dancers in free fall to talk to the aliens (like bees, they use dance as language).   One of the dancers tells her boss.  "That was a translation error.  They didn't say they were going to conquer Earth, they said they'd already done it"  There are plenty of other exceptions, but as a rule writers tend to ignore language differences & just assume you can talk to the critters so you can get on w the story.

[CloudFyre 848]

I am genuinely impressed. I attempted something like this a year or two back, but not nearly to this scale.

Kudos to you!

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

Going over this again, I really like the way you figured out how to make a system that compacts so much meaning into 10 syllables.

 

The issue I have is...how do I know when to read something as a vowel vs a consonant?

 

[star, Horse] could either read as [am, nak, or nag.]

 

There might be an inconsistency because in your graph on the post has "you" just being the horse, and in the website its [star, horse] but that might have to do with gender if I'm reading everything right.

 

*headache*

 

Still...doesn't hurt as much as it does for a dyslexic trying to read tengwar.

 

Its just confusing knowing how to read these things.

 

--edit: I'm guessing its contextual. Positioning like you said.

Edited November 5, 2014 by Minister KelGrym

[SasQ 1,375]

You read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Go on, confess.

Sure, I have read it, twice (two different translations), I loved it, and I'm not shy of it.

I can read Tengwar and I studied Sindarin a bit.

But Tolkien's works are not the only one I read or watched with constructed languages in it.

 

He started this stuff, he is to blame.

What is there to blame? Constructed languages are cool and they introduce more depth and realism to constructed worlds and their histories, because it is very unlikely that inhabitants of other worlds would speak English. It's not even the case on our planet, contrary to what many Americans could think. If they were more willing to study languages of other cultures, instead of just invading their countries and throwing their democracy and language down their throats, they might notice how ric, diverse h and beautiful is our planet.

 

It happened because when he wrote LOTR the publisher told him it would have to be 3 volumes. Vol 3, Return of the King, (for those who have only seen the movies, he covers the return to the Shire & what happened to the characters & some of the villains like Saramon & Worm Tongue). It was still a little short, so he put in language & history for most of the races.

I don't know where did you get this information, but it seem apocryphal to me. Tolkien played with inventing constructed languages long before he even started writing "Lord of the Rings"; as early as in his childhood. He learned it from his young cousins, Mary and Marjorie, who invented their own language (they called it Animalic), to be able to call themselves names (usually comparing themselves to animals, so the name) without their parents knowing Later they evolved this language into something more sophisticated, called Nevbosh (which meant "new nonsense" in Nevbosh). Since then, inventing new languages become Tolkien's hobby. He invented many other languages, and he had the basics of Quenya and Sindarin put down long before writing "Lord of the Rings". According to some sources, "Tolkien had been inventing languages since early childhood. And he repeatedly stated that he invented his world for the one purpose of having a setting where his "Elvish languages" could exist, though others found this hard to believe."

 

If this source is right (and I hardly doubt it, since its author walked a long path to investigate the history of all these invented languages and Tolkien's works), then how could it be possible that Tolkien "put in language & history for most of the races" to fulfill the publisher's requirements and make the story longer? He might have been asked for some editing, but I really doubt it could be about the languages and history, because he had it all ready before starting to write "Lord of the Rings".

 

Scifi authors have been putting in a few alien words since "Doc" Smith's days, but AFAIK, he was the 1st to get serious about it. He is to blame

Blame him if you wish. I prefer admiring his marvelous and detailed work, because no human so far reached to the same level of sophistication. You can as well blame Leonardo da Vinci for sketching so much detailed artworks of his inventions instead of just simple stick figures. But try to reproduce his achievement, and you'll understand why it's so admirable.

 

As to the rest of your post, I don't see how is it relevant to what I wrote. There are some things I wouldn't agree with you, but I don't want to discuss it in this particular thread to avoid littering the discussion with unrelated stuff. if you wish, we can start a separate thread, or just PM me.

 

This is awesome, dude. Seriously, I want to learn about this. If I had the time, or even just a a reason to use it, I would. Such a damn cool way to make a language.

I'm working on a tutorial, but it's not ready yet. I need to tidy up some stuff before publishing it, to make it more ordered and simpler to learn. My other goal is to make the rules of the language clear enough, so that every Brony could use these rules to extend the language on his/her own.

 

In ancient Hebrew Kabbalistic tradition, there's a legend that Adam, the first Man, received the first language on Earth from the Gods (so called Enochian, Adamic, or Angelic language), and they commanded him to name all the things in the Eden garden. Gods wouldn't give Adam this mission if they weren't sure that he won't mess it up. And the only way to have this certainty was to make a set of rules which Adam could use to produce these new words (names) for objects, by reflecting their properties and meaning in the construction of the words.

 

I have a theory that the famous "fruit from the Tree of Knowledge" was actually a mechanical device, with ancient Hebrew letters inscribed on it, and moving parts which could rotate similarly to a Rubic cube, but it has a spherical shape instead. Adam could rotate these dials to set up meanings, and then read out a Hebrew word on its equator; and vice versa: set up a Hebrew word on the equator, and read out the meaning from the dials. So this "fruit" was a key to the language, which was structured in a tree-like manner, with 2-letter roots in its base, 3-letter roots as its branches, and longer words as its leaves. And all words in one branch had similar meaning, so knowing the position of a word in this tree, or its numerical address, one could understand its meaning. So it was the Tree of Knowledge indeed! It allowed Adam to understand the language of Gods, know their plans etc. And some of them might not be happy with that, so they banned him from Eden. There are even some descriptions of this device in Kabbalistic "Book of Forming", or "Sefer Yetzirah", something about rotating spheres and 231 gates of knowledge. I can tell you some more about it later, if you like, since it is a bit related to Unicorn Language (actually, when working on Unicorn Language, I solved the mystery of this number 231 )

 

And I would like to figure out such a clear set of rules for the Unicorn Language, too, so that any Brony could be able to use these rules to invent new words (in a systematic way, so that other Bronies could still understand them, or invent the same words independently). But this is still work in progress...

 

Going over this again, I really like the way you figured out how to make a system that compacts so much meaning into 10 syllables.

Yeah, it wasn't easy. Hebrew uses 22 letters for that, each with its own meaning. It's like inventing a set of numerical opcodes for a microprocessor: There is a limited number of numerical codes available for those operations, so one needs to choose such operations which would be "orthogonal", or independent of each other, and minimal, but powerful enough that they could be combined to perform any operation one could need from a computer (think Turing machines and Turing-completeness of a language). Later I'll try to write some more on that, about how I chose these particular meanings for those letters and why. I also promised to write some more about the root system (the Tree of Knowledge).

 

The issue I have is...how do I know when to read something as a vowel vs a consonant?

The rules aren't yet so clear for me too, I only grasp them intuitively for now, but I'm working on identifying the rules and describing them for you, so that you could figure out the spelling on your own (that's a part of what I've written above). But I think the rule is somehow related to syllables: Ponies tend to have their words short, in writing and in speech. So when there are two consonants, and one letter in the middle which can work as a vowel, then they read it as a vowel, by simply taking the default vowel associated with that syllable, and dropping the consonant. I'll let you all know when this rule will clarify, for sure.

 

but that might have to do with gender if I'm reading everything right.

Yes, the Sun (star) and Moon symbols are the natural opposites (bright and dark, day and night, fire and water, masculine and feminine) which together make Harmony, when combined in equal proportions. Gender is an extension of this natural Yin/Yang philosophy, so it was natural to me to reuse them for marking up gender of words (where it is applicable). They're used as suffixes, that is, attached to the end of a word. (It's also a form of negation, reserved for things which have natural opposites which are equal. But I'm going ahead of myself now.) That's why I marked them up with a different color, to make it more clear that they're suffixes, and not a part of the root.

Edited November 5, 2014 by SasQ

[SasQ 1,375]

And how do you express ideas like colour, or numbers?

Excellent question! I encountered this problem already when preparing my tutorial, because I for explaining grammar I needed some useful adjectives, and colors are perfect for that. Numbers are useful too. Wen trying to invent these words, I realized that I don't know where these words came from in human languages I know either. This started an interesting journey for researching the etymology of names for colors and numbers in different languages; as much interesting as fruitless, because it turned out that no one actually knows where those names came from! Linguists usually just sent me to PIE roots (= Pra-Indo-European), which are "reconstructed" from how they sound in modern languages (read: invented out of thin air). But there's no information about their original meanings in PIE; the etymology just ends up there

 

Fortunately, I managed to figure out some clues on my own, by comparing their meanings with similarly sounding words (assuming that they have common roots). I also found an interesting clue for the colors in the Pirahã language.

 

Pirahã people don't have any special words for colors. When they want to say that something is, for example, red, they say that it's "like blood". When they want to say that it's blue, they say that it's "like the sky". And it turns out that this pattern works for other languages, too! For example I realized that in Polish (my native language), the word for blue is "niebieski", which is related to "niebo" (the sky), and it actually means "like the sky", similarly as in Pirahã. For the red color we have "czerwony", which sounds similar to the name of one of our months: "czerwiec" (June), whose name came from the maggots which were used to produce red tints and they reproduce rapidly in the summer months, especially in June. The name for yellow is "?ó?ty", which came from "?ó??" – the yellow liquid produced by the liver. And "zielony" (green) is from "ziele" (weed).

 

You can observe a similar pattern in English or other languages. The names of colors usually are taken from nature, from some objects which have such color naturally, and they are then used as a reference when comparing the colors of other objects. So we can use the same trick for the Unicorn language, too.

 

But what natural objects to use as those references?

 

My first idea was to use the colors of some popular gemstones, such as ruby for red, emerald for green, sapphire for blue, onyx for black etc. Gemstones seem to kick around all over the place in Equestria ;-J But it might be somewhat cumbersome to use by people who are not experts in gemology. Also this poses another problem: how to name those gemstones? Some gemstones are actually called after their color or similarity to some other natural object, so we're going in circles...

 

Therefore I think it would be better to use some more natural phenomena & objects. The sky is actually a good reference for blue, the Sun (or maybe sunflower) for yellow, grass for green, rocks for gray, for black... coal maybe? or the night sky? snow is good for white, etc. And I think it would be much easier to find names for such "primitive" phenomena than for gemstones, or something as abstract as "colors" themselves. So if one knows how to say "snow", calling something "white" is easy: just append an eye symbol after this word, which would mean "snow-like", or more literally "looks like snow", and voilla, you've got an adjective for that color

 

As to the numbers, I noticed that in the languages I know, the words to name numbers are similarly related to some natural reference objects which naturally come in this number. For example, for the number "two", there are words related to hands, eyes, couples (man + woman), or other things that naturally come in pairs. For the number "one", there are words related to singular objects which are unique, such as the Sun, or the Moon, or a single man. E.g. Polish "jeden" came from Slavic "adin" or "odin". From the same root came the word "odyniec" which names a male boar which lives alone in a forest. "Odin" was also a Slavic god, the most important one among other gods (like Jupiter for Romans or Zeus for Greeks). Another word for one, "raz", also means "one strike", from the word "razi?" (to strike). Polish word for "the second one" is "drugi", which is related to Slavic "drug" which (interestingly) meant "a friend" It is related to the word "ruki" ("arms"), so "drug" or "druh" actually meant "someone at hand". Interesting, isn't it? The word for 5 is "pi??", which is similar to "pi???", which means a fist. And we all know how much fingers (or digits) is in a fist

 

(Fun fact: Unicorn in Old-Church-Slavonic is "inorog" )

 

This idea can also be easily applied to Unicorn Language. I just need to find some objects which are unique for "one" (I thnk of using a horn for that, since every Unicorn has only one horn, and it is also a single stroke, very similar to Arabic digit "1"), something which come in pairs for "two" (maybe the Harmony? you know, Bright and Dark in perfect Balance... or the eyes maybe?) etc. For the number four, a pony symbol could be used, since every pony has four legs. There are many possibilities, but first I need to have words for those primitive things, and only then I could reuse them for numbers and colors and other stuff.

 

As for writing numbers in a more systematic way, there are two options:

 

One is to use alphabetic ordering of the letters to assign numerical values to each alphabetic symbol, as Greeks and Hebrew did. They could write numbers by combining their alphabetic letters and putting a special marker before or after the number (usually an apostrophe ', a double quote ", or small dots before and after the number as in medieval Italian mathematical books). Unicorns could use the horn symbol for that (which is related to Magic and art of knowledge), or a symbol for zero, which I chose to be the eye (because it is round and it is the "point of origin" for vision/perception).

 

Another option is to use place value system, as "our" Indo-Arabic digits (by the way, the word "digits" once meant "fingers"). Coincidentally, there are ten glyphs in Unicorn alphabet, precisely the same as the number of decimal digits. But I don't know if ponies would use decimal system. More fitting would be a quaternary system (base four), since they have four legs, or an octal system (base 8) if we utilize the idea of friendship between two ponies some more (2 times 4 legs = 8 in total). This system would fit from other reasons, too, but it is a whole another story, related to my attempts to crack the "Nightmare Moon" inscription. (Long story short: the number 1000 in base 8 pvs would fit one of the sequences in the inscription.)

 

Are there any simple symbols like dots or lines to represent when to read it as Verbs or nouns

They aren't needed. The role of the word depends on its position in a sentence, that is, it belongs to grammar. Similarly as in English you can say "I spread my wings" where "spread" is a verb, or "The spread of her wings is 2 meters" where "spread" is a noun this time, or "Her spread wings take too much room", where the same word is used as an adjective to describe the condition of the wings.

 

But if grammar rules wouldn't be enough, perhaps I'll introduce some slight modifications in spelling to distinguish these words in their different roles. (In Hebrew, for example, it is made by changing vowels in a root; nouns have different vowel patterns than verbs, and there are several different vowel patterns for tenses of a verb.)

 

or even what the root is

Roots... are a whole another story. I'll try to explain it some more at some later time, when I'd have my roots table more complete. But if you're curious and cannot wait, then here's a sneak peek of some old version of this table, so you can get the idea:

 

 

But keep in mind that it is very outdated, incomplete, and most of it can be wrong.

 

I'll tell you more about the structure of this table next time (and as a bonus I'll tell you how it helped me to crack a fragment of "Sefer Yetzirah", the Kabbalistic Book on Formation.)

 

And what about punctuation marks?

Unicorns don't seem to use any, beyond spaces to separate words. They seem to group paragraphs together and enclose in colorful frames, but they might be separated by a single empty line as well, so they don't need a period / full stop. As for commas, perhaps conjunctions could be used instead (and / or).

Edited November 5, 2014 by SasQ

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

 

 

Pirahã people don't have any special words for colors.

 

If I'm not mistaken, neither does Aramaic. It does exactly as Piraha does.

 

There is also some african tribes that have two or three color words. The word for red would apply for orange and yellow, while the word for blue would apply to all cool colors.

 

Very simplified.

 

A few other thoughts.

 

When dealing with a language that has a minimalist alphabet or phonetic table (like Polynesian languages) reduplication can be employed to expand vocabulary. Do you think there may be a place for this trait in the Unicorn language? Would it be necessary?

 

Also, I gave some thought to you choice of consonants. You have a choice between expressing a plosive phonetic or a stopping phonetic in some of your hieroglyphs. Have you given any thought to having the pronunciation of either the plosive or stop indicative of mood or some other grammatical function?

 

Just a thought...might just be adding uneeded bells and whistles.

[sweetolebob18 728]

I was just joking about Tolkien, I kid because I love it.  Must have read it 30 times or more back in the 70s & 80s.  As you may know, it was one of the main sources of inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons (They are called Halflings, not Hobbits for copyright reasons)  But, I never took it as seriously as some of my friends did.  Pissed some folks off by reading the description of lembas, for instance, saying "That's a Twinkie" (IIRC, "light brown cake, cream filling, keeps good a long time if the wrapper isn't broken")

 

As to Tolkien, I'm bad at names & dates but there was a program on PBS about Tolkien & writing LOTR.  It was a sequel to the Hobbit, of course, & some of his friends gave him advice & help (somebody or other advised him to draw maps of everything & not try to keep it all in his head, for instance)  As Tolkien said "The tale grew in the telling".  Back then, SF books were pretty rare & the publisher wouldn't take a chance on that long a book.  So, it was divided into parts.  Part 3 was a little short & so he put stuff in from his notebook.

 

I am relying on my memory for this (usually a bad idea) & I admit I could have it wrong.  IIRC, The Hobbit was the best selling SF book of all time (pre Harry Potter, of course) & The Simarillion was the 1st SF novel to sell 1 million in hard cover (Tolkien's notebook, published after his death in the 70s)

 

Back to this thread, more random thoughts

 

Where does the verb go?  In English, it's buried in the sentence & you're job, Mr Phelps, is to find it.  (Perhaps a dowsing rod will help).  In some languages, the verb the last word is.  Find it always, you can.  Sound like Yoda, you will.  Other languages, the subject of the sentence is in the verb.  Spanish, for instance, you say Soy (I am) & usually you don't say Yo soy (I am).

 

Also, the more crowded a society is, the more formal it tends to be.  Some societies, it is considered very rude to contradict someone or to refuse a request.  I remember some episodes of Northern Exposure, they got into this about Eskimo society.  In our culture, somebody is being too pushy, you just push back.  For them, this is an even bigger no-no than the 1st guy made.  + Dueling cultures tend to be very formal & reserved.  Showing someone you are upset means "I am angry enough to kill you."

 

Plus, some societies have degrees of formality & language forms for intimates & strangers.  Spanish, for instance, "su" means "you".  "Tu" means the same, but is reserved for close friends & relatives.  In English all we have on those lines are being on a 1st name basis w someone, but a lot of societies go a lot further.

 

Societies tend to have more words about things that are important to them & fewer about stuff that isn't (I recall reading that Eskimos had a lot of words about snow, telling stuff like How useful for making igloos? & how dangerous to be out in it? How easy to track animals in it? & so on. No idea if that's true. But, we have a lot of words dealing w money)  So, I'd bet just about every pony society has a word for "getting your cutie mark" & maybe a word for "celebration you throw for getting your cutie mark" (I remember Diamond Tiara using it, but can't recall what it was.  But, I'd bet that's close to universal)  As to money, I don't recall ever seeing a pony pay for anything except w gems, so I'd guess few words for money.

 

Subgroups tend to have their own slang & specialized vocabularies.  You youngsters have a lot of computer slang that an old fogey like me has no clue about.  I'd make a fairly substantial bet that Pegasi have a lot of words for technical aspects of flying & maneuvers.  Words that other ponies don't use, or don't use in the same way. (For instance, what's an Immelmann?) Unicorns, the same for magic.  I'd make a small bet they have a word for "cast a spell" & perhaps modifiers to tell who cast the spell & type of spell (combat, scrying, etc) + maybe a word for "amulet spell"

 

Also, isolated subgroups tend to have dialects of their own (Jar Jar Binks, anyone? Or, listen to "Convoy" on Youtube).  TV is wiping it out, but in the USA you used to have New York, Western, Southern & Midwest plus subgroups in that.  Because of TV, Midwest is becoming dominant & the others are dying out.  I've heard it is the same in England w BBC gaining dominance.

 

Finally, groups that deal with others tend to have a simplified pidgin version of their language.  As a kid, I remember reading "White Witch Doctor" by Stine (Her experiences as a missionary).  From what I remember, there where only 4 words for buildings (kraal, hut, cottage, & dukas (any building where stuff is sold)) & all animals were "beef" (ponies, dogs, cats & snakes included).  "Chop" meant "food, bite, or eat" So, "This beef he chop man?"  means "Does this dog bite?" I could go on, but I'll spare you.

 

My favorite was the term for the moon "kerosene lantern  him belong Jesus Christ".  I might be misremembering this, but I swear I'm not making it up.

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

@@FluxerCry,

quinceañera

Its a Latin American celebration for when a girl hits 15.

Edited November 6, 2014 by Minister KelGrym

[sweetolebob18 728]

Yes, but I'd bet the pony version is more like a bar mitzah, a coming of age ceremony. (Or, at least, it was originally. Like Xmas, it may have been commercialized & lost some of its religious value)  

 

In fact, now that I think about it, I'd make a small bet every pony society has 1 word for "cutie mark" .  Probably a short one, because it is in common use (like automobile being shortened to auto).  Plausibly, there are modifiers for "getting your cutie mark" . Cute-ceanera is possibly another modifier to the base word.

 

Oh yeah, while we are talking of Diamond Tiara.  "Blank Flank" is probably 1 word.  Perhaps the base word for cutie mark + the modifier for "not" or "none".  Literally translated, it (perhaps) means something like "child" or "youngster".  However, from context it seems to mean something like calling someone a baby.  It is clearly used as a term of contempt (at least, as used by DT)  

[Adorkable 2,737]

The real secret? I'll tell you the real secret. Unicorns speak Korean, anyone watched Adventure Time? Lady Rainicorn speaks Korean, she's a Unicorn. Boom! Mystery solved. ^^

[sweetolebob18 728]

Back to language

You have more words about the stuff you talk about most & fewer about stuff you don't talk about.  Also, most folks don't know every word.  I'd bet a fair number couldn't tell you the difference between an epidermis and an epiglottis despite having 1 of each, it just never comes up.

 

I'd bet a fair amount that Pegasi have a lot of technical terms for flying & the wing positions you use in flight maneuvers.  Dash could tell you what an Immelmann is & describe the exact wing positions needed.  Fluttershy, maybe not but she would be able to understand Dash's explanation.  So would a dragon (well, allowing for the fact that D would be speaking pony.  Dragon would have words that meant the same & for the same reasons)  But, AJ would be "What in tarnation are you talking about?"

 

I think it likely that Pegasi have special symbols for their special "wing words".  These are NOT in the standard pony alphabet! They have special symbols for the same reason sheet music has special symbols or a math textbook has special symbols for various things.  It is probably part of what you learn in flight camp. IMO, it is like Summer School. The parts seen in the show are like gym class (& Fluttershy, I, too, always hated gym class)

 

They also probably have slang expressions for stuff like Dash in Read It & Weep.  A phrase that means "I fell down & went boom + got an owie while trying to show off by doing something stupid"  Back when I was young, bikers talked of "road rash" & my uncle was in the navy & I heard him say "violated its structural integrity" for "sprung a leak".  Slang is partly to describe special things & partly to make outsiders feel stupid, so I'd bet it is close to universal

 

Unicorns probably have something similar for magic.  They might have a term for "the innate spells a Unicorn knows without being taught"  & words for master/student (I mean a magic teacher, not just a general teacher like Miss Cheerilee)

 

As to consonants sometimes being vowels.  It is like "Y" in the English language, it can be both. As to multiple meanings for the same word, depending on context.  Run has the most meanings of any word in English, I think 23.  Or, in Texas, "barbecue" can mean meat prepared a certain way, the cooking of the meat, the event at which the meat is prepared, the device on which the meat is prepared, or the sauce you put on it.  So, at the barbecue, you barbecue on the barbecue, then you take the barbecue off the barbecue, put barbecue on it & eat it.

 

As to your alphabet, I remember reading that Hebrew text didn't have vowels, it was just constants with a mark to indicate where there was supposed to be vowels.  In English, we capitalize names & the 1st word in each sentence.  We also have cursive script for folks in a hurry.  I read a newspaper article saying cursive is becoming a lost art, nowadays folks just text.  I say, GOOD!  Learning 4 ways to write each letter is flat out stupid & I hope Ponies are too sensible to get involved in that nonsense.

 

But, in every language there are exceptions to the rules & they are the curse of the student because they must be rote memorized.  I recall reading that it takes about 800-1000 words to sort of get around in a language (+ the rules for grammer. Verb forms, singular to plural, etc)  You pick up the most common 1st & the least common after a life time.  For instance, the sound between measure & mesher, that is about the only time in English it matters.  Again, this is why foreigners have accents.

[CameoShadowness 251]

Any updates? I really love this and want to know if anyone continued it.