January 20, 2025 • 51 mins
Today, ZeWei joins us to talk about their music and conlanging, as well as the Cursed Conlang Circus and more. ZeWei’s channel.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So sometimes I havea lot of difficulty finding,
a rhythm that feelsotherworldly enough.
Maybe that's not the right adjective.
But still sounds good to us.
[INTRO MUSIC]
(00:29):
Welcome to Conlangery,the podcast about constructed
languages and thepeople who create them.
I'm George Corley.
And with me today isZeWei, a YouTube creator,
musician, and conlangerout in California.
How are you doing?
(00:50):
I am doing all right.
How are you doing?
Good.
So I brought you on because I had noticedyour channel.
And not all of your stuff is conlang,but it seems like...
Increasingly, you've incorporatedconlanging into your songs.
Yeah.
(01:10):
And I want to talk a little bit about,like, how you came to that decision,
how you came into conlanging and how itblends into your music.
Mhm, mhm.
Yeah, yeah.
I definitely am increasing the conlangcontent.
I have plans to do that over the nextyear.
(01:31):
Mostly just going to be focusing on theconlang stuff.
Obviously.
The music on top of it.
Conlang. Music.
It's what I'm doing.
Yeah, yeah.
I had kind of beeninterested in both conlangs
and music for a longtime, like, separately.
It was only a couple of yearsago when I actually found
(01:54):
the conlang community andthis thing called conlanging.
Like, I didn't know it was a thing forages.
That I thought, hey, youknow, I have these, like,
a bunch of these languageprojects lying around.
And I have, you know, this... I likemaking music.
And I might as well just slap those thingstogether.
Because it gives me something to use theseconlangs for.
(02:17):
Because I'm not writing a book oranything.
Yeah.
I mean, so how did you get into conlangingin the first place?
Like, where was your path to getting intothat?
Yeah.
It's... I would say it's a bunch ofoverlapping things that kind of...
eventually built up into the path that Ihave.
(02:39):
So when I was... I want to say it was,like, 10 years old.
Me and my friend, we were like,"Oh, well, let's make a language."
Like, this was a crazy idea.
We're going to make a language so that theadults can't understand what we're saying.
And so that was, like,you know, it was just a
relex of English in termsof grammar and stuff.
(03:01):
And she and I had done it for,like, two days.
And then kind of dropped off.
But for a while, Iwould think about it and
be like, "Oh, that was acool idea that we had.
Like, I want to do that again at somepoint."
And then, excuse me, I was playingSplatoon.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with theSplatoon series.
(03:22):
I've heard of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it came out in 2015.
It's been nine years now, which is crazy.
The game features a lot of world buildingin, like...
There's so much language everywhere.
There's no functional conlang in there.
But there's so much writingaround graffiti on the walls
(03:43):
and the billboards and adson the TV screens in there.
Brands for, like, the clothing you can buyall have that writing on it.
There's a lot of music in the game intheir, like, glorble gibberish squid speak.
So that was really inspiring to me,especially as someone who was working on...
(04:05):
learning indie game dev.
I was like, oh, well, I need to make musicand I need to make, you know, this game.
And I have these these conlangs that arelying around so I can incorporate that
idea that my friend and I hadinto a game that I have made
to make the world feellike a lot more alive, I guess.
(04:25):
So that's that's where the conlanging camein and then eventually the music as well.
I think there are a lot of people who comeinto conlanging
having played with language ininteresting ways, very young.
Yeah, yeah.
It's it's interesting that youit seems like you were doing
(04:46):
some conlanging stuff beforeyou were aware of the community, then.
Yeah, I didn't know the term conlangingwas a thing.
Yeah, you were just inventing a languagethat that's.
Yeah.
But tell me about your journey with withthe game development.
Are you still?
Working on developing a game or are youshifted mostly just to music?
(05:11):
As of about a year ago,I've mostly just shifted
to the the music andthe and the video stuff.
Previously, I had gone to college for gamegame development.
I worked on Rocket League, if you'refamiliar with that game.
Okay.
And it was kind of a passion that I hadfor for a very long time.
(05:32):
And I still do.
But making a game.
Is complicated and it takes a long,long time.
So, you know, I've had aton of, like, game ideas that
I've wanted to do, andI've made a bunch of stuff.
And of course, in college, you know, Iwas working on game projects all the time.
But at the moment, I'm I've kind of realized,like, I I'm a one bird show over here.
(05:59):
I can't I can't do it all in a timelymanner, at least.
So the music and theconlangs was was a way for me to
keep making stuff whilestill like I have an idea.
I can finish it in a timely manner.
Yeah.
Get it out.
Yeah.
So currently, I'm not doing the game stuffat the moment, but I would I would love to.
(06:21):
I would love to go back.
That that that is that is the thing is theit's an entirely different sort of problem.
Oh, yeah.
I keep I keep telling.
David Peterson.
David Peterson is making these languagesfor a board game.
I keep asking him, "When is the board gamecoming out?"
(06:41):
"I don't know.
These things take years to figure out."
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm sure a video game is isthe same kind of thing.
You just have endless work on noodlylittle rules to to figure out.
Right.
Yeah.
But but it is interesting to hear that yougot this.
(07:04):
This pipeline from like game dev to musicto conlang music.
Yeah.
Let's talk a little bit about now.
I have interviewed other people who dolike combine music and conlang.
Yours is a different genre than what Ihave encountered before.
(07:29):
So like.
Margaret Ransdell Green.
She created whole music theory systems forher con cultures.
Jasper Charlet did a chamber, a chamberopera.
Yeah.
And you.
(07:50):
You are doing like electronic music.
I don't know fine genres there,but.
I don't know what to classify my stuff aseither.
Honestly, like some people ask.
They're like, oh, what genre is this?
I'm like, you tell me.
I don't know.
(08:10):
I mean, it's it's definitely under thebroad category of electronic music.
Yeah.
It's probably computer music.
You're doing some very interesting thingswith.
I saw one of your shorts.
You talking about how you built.
It seems like it like at the base of it'sjust like a base.
(08:32):
It's a basic arpeggio.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
With all the effects added to it.
The pattern does not repeat for the entirethree minutes.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
And that kind of thing.
It's some experimental stuff going on.
Actually, is that experimentalnature in your music at
(08:54):
all linked to your interestin including conlangs in it?
Especially since like your conlangs seemto be set.
Yeah.
In sort of a sci-fi multiverse whereyou're shifting to other dimensions and
meeting aliens and speak these languages,right?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of them are more advancedtechnologically.
(09:18):
I would say I think some of theexperimental music stuff and the
experimental like conlang stuff,I guess, is intentional.
Some of it is kind of just me being drawnto the weird stuff.
I've always enjoyedwhen something's kind of
(09:40):
breaking the norm atconvention and things.
So I think inherentlythat's led me to do that
kind of thing with aconlang and with music.
But of course, I do...
If I'm working on conlang music,I will consider that and how that can kind
of affect the... the musicof the culture and stuff.
(10:02):
Do you find...
When you are making music with yourlanguages, do you find like different
kinds of melodies anddifferent kinds of rhythms
fit better with certainlanguages or others?
(10:23):
Or do you construct features of thelanguages
In order to like fit to particular musicalstyles?
I definitely do the conlang first.
So the language and the world are like...
That's the first thing that I'm thinkingabout.
And then I'll make music for it.
In terms of like the melodies and stuff,it really depends on the language.
(10:47):
Like if you have a...
If you like have a stresstimed language, like that'll
totally change how therhythm works and things.
Or if you had a... A tone registers orcontours, like that might change things too.
If the culture respects them in music.
Because some contourlanguages just completely throw
(11:10):
them out the window ifyou're writing a melody, right?
So it can really be anything.
I often find that like, especially whenI'm working with languages with like a
stress timed system or along vowels, that really
changes how themelody needs to go, really.
(11:33):
And so if I have a melody that I've madelike beforehand, and then I need to like
insert lyrics onto, it's a lot harder if Ihave like long vowels, because I need to
make sure that those longernotes fit in with the longer
vowels and the shorter notesfit in with the shorter vowels.
And sometimes they don't.
And we just have to deal with it.
(11:53):
But yeah, definitely influences a lot.
Syllable weight is definitely like a thingthat gets into it.
Because like, even withlike English with the weight
variation, you see thathappen in melodies in English.
(12:16):
And if you see translations, there's allkinds of things.
Other languages mightactually add extra beats for
extra syllables, where Englishwould have one syllable.
And it's just because of the structure.
Sure, that is a thing in English as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(12:36):
But like, you know, I just use English asan example to illustrate your point.
But like, I also find that like, thereason I'm thinking about that is like.
..
In real languages, you see this kind ofthing.
I find that...
(12:56):
I always feel like Mandarin Chinese is veryversatile, actually, in what it can do.
Because you tend...
There is actually length variation, but youkind of ignore it and not have a problem.
And you will have like, you know, you justhave to count the syllables and be good.
(13:20):
Right?
Yeah.
Whereas like, I've listened to Spanishrap.
And Spanish doesn't really work for rap.
That's a hot take.
No, I mean like...
I listen to a lot of Rap Italiano,but also some Spanish too.
(13:43):
Yeah.
It is different.
Like, you know, just the natural rhythm ofthe language.
Yeah, it has to be different.
I think that...
I don't listen to a whole lot of rap,but it feels like...
English language rapis tending to do like an
(14:04):
iambic rhythm, like alot of English poetry.
And then other languages are going to haveto do something completely different.
Yeah.
The same way they do something differentwith poetry.
Do you spend a lot of time, actually,with your languages, developing poetic
(14:25):
conventions that you can then take intothe songwriting?
Because I watched oneof your videos explaining
your process, andyou talked about rhyme.
And, you know, youjust briefly mentioned that
different cultures willdefine rhyme differently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, do you spenda lot of time on those
(14:48):
conventions in order tofigure out lyric writing?
Yeah, yeah.
I probably don't spend as much time as Ishould, frankly.
That video, I want to redo thatwhole video because I missed
so many things in there, likethe stress time and the tones.
But, yeah, like the rhyming is one part ofit.
(15:10):
You know, it depends on what you'rewriting.
It depends on what your, like,vowel system is.
Like, if you've got three vowels orwhatever, you know, it'll be, it might be
easier to find rhymes just because there'sless vowels.
But if you have, you know, like a whole,you filled up the entire vowel space and
that's your phonemic vowels, like,it might be easier to find slant rhymes
(15:33):
that are more accepted in the culture,like /i/ and /e/ or something.
In terms of, like, the rhythm and the,and the, that kind of thing.
Like, that's definitely something I thinkabout.
And it's, it's kind of hard.
Because it's, it's easyto just lump everything
(15:56):
into, oh, well, thatkind of sounds Englishy.
Because I'm just so usedto something inherently as,
like, particularly if it's in4-4 time, you know, as well.
Right.
So sometimes I have a lot of difficultyfinding, like, a rhythm that feels...
otherworldly enough.
(16:16):
Maybe that's not the right adjective.
But still sounds good to us.
Because, you know, I don't want anything,I don't want to make music that would be,
like, fit for this culture that,like, we wouldn't like as well.
Right.
Well, that's, that is a thing.
Realistically...
Yeah.
(16:36):
If you're talking about alien music...they could, they could definitely have...
different instincts that drive them tocompletely different musical structures
that would not sound...maybe we couldn't even hear it.
That's what, yeah, yeah, yeah,exactly.
That's like...
they probably have acompletely different, you
(16:59):
know, range of frequenciesthat they can hear.
So I've kind of, I've kind of...
accepted it as, this is an interpretationof what it would sound like to them.
Perhaps.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because otherwise, you know, it's just,it's just not going to sound good to us.
And frankly, we are the audience.
So I want to make sure that it sounds...
(17:21):
listenable.
By any means.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, your, your music is,is great.
It's not always...
Oh, thank you.
You know, it's not the, it's not the thingthat I usually listen to.
But it, it, it's really, it's veryinteresting, very cool to, like, pop on.
Thank you.
(17:41):
Let's actually listen.
So you sent me, thisis, this is a little sneak
peek of something thatshould be coming up.
Yeah.
And I will, I'm goingto jump to a part where
we have some, somevocals so we can hear.
(Music)
Pahnyeina pabeiden hei
(18:03):
Heken hekei chakei
Pahvennyaheipe yhngnyem dah krwgennw
Dei pechwchem Krwnne Seingwng dah krainyem
Krimi ni seinyem ni kragei
Kriri nyenisse nifh hwkemen
(18:24):
Chwm yeheinahen mw Hen Yahmnye maht
Paradais hei pipeyahfen
Krairwkh chwm heiken nifavap
Krwnne hei dah hen dah seise
So that's interesting.
I'm going to jump ahead a littlebit because there were some
things I wanted to talk aboutthat I heard later on here.
(18:49):
(Music)
Pahberegafei pahdegrimi ngi, sanye
Pepsadeikricha chwv, fi
Phfihekkei phpe nyemwn ni
Yhng nyepei php pahnyeina pibehre
Penyeigi hen hei nyem ya
Pepsadeipinirh, nirh ka
(19:11):
Pemw phpenye yhng
Ni phchw seipekrh sessadeirhkre ka
Chav dehchw sa shpiken
Chav dah hi krahgei senein hei
Nyeigise kri fanivan ka sa php
Nirh sahdeki hei pei sahdere
Yeah,
so I wanted to get that section too,but because like...
(19:35):
Me...
Just...
All I can...
All I can really get is phonology fromhere, but listening to that, I can see
you're not afraid of like going out intomore unusual things and things that,
(19:56):
you know, might be challenging for you topronounce.
Because like, youknow, I hear a lot of the /ɯ/
vowel in there, but Ialso hear... I hear...
It sounds like you have a syllabic uvularfricative.
Is that right?
Yes.
It's like somewhere velar or uvular.
(20:17):
Yeah.
Depending on the speaker and the context.
But yeah, it's a syllabic velar or uvularfricative.
It only occurs between voicelessconsonants.
Or...
/j/, /r/, and /ŋ/ become devoiced.
(20:38):
So, to allow that to occur between thoseas well.
Yeah, it's a little strange, but it camefrom the vocalization of mantises.
I was looking at that and they makesomething that sounds similar to a velar
fricative, at least it soundedlike it's something... Oh, okay.
So, this is for the mantis-like aliens.
(21:03):
So, that's interesting.
So, you actually... You actually, like,listened to mantis vocalizations in order to...
Yeah.
Vocalization.
You get it.
Singular.
They have one vocalization.
At least that's what I was able to find,but this was also several years ago,
and honestly, I probablyshould have done a little
(21:24):
more research before Imade that whole thing.
But no, I did do alittle bit of research for
sure, and like their oralanatomy and whatnot.
Yeah.
That is...
That is... That is interesting.
I kind of assume that you're sort oftranscoding, like, their... whatever their
(21:46):
physiology for producing sound is intohuman sounds in a way, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's an approximation.
Yeah.
It's not... It's notgonna be exactly, but...
Or, you know, in a way... Yeah.
It's art.
(22:06):
You're just... You're just gettinga vibe for something, right?
Yeah.
Honestly.
But it is... Yeah.
It is... It is interesting to... Ijust feel like singing with those...
If you don't speak alanguage that has them,
because there are humanlanguages that have these.
If you don't speak a language that hasthose syllabic fricatives like that,
(22:29):
I can imagine that being challenging tosing.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Because you're gonnalose the pitch, and also you
have to be very fluidin actually producing it.
Do you do a lot of practice before yourecord, or how do you deal with that?
(22:52):
Yeah.
I would not consider myself a singer forthe... to start off with that one.
It's a lot of recording the same thingmany, many times.
And eventually getting something thatsounds decent enough.
Thankfully with the medium that I use,all I need is one good take, and I can
(23:13):
enter things a little bit here and thereif I need to.
Right.
In terms of the pitch of the syllabicfricatives, or the lack of pitch,
I should say, yeah,that's another thing that
I've had to think aboutwith the melody and such.
I can't have a really cool sounding highnote on that one.
(23:35):
Because I have to say something like /pxp/,which does not have a tone on it.
Yeah, so you do... so it'll figure intothe melody a little bit, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have to think about it, where I placethat.
Yeah.
It is another interestingthing in your process video
(23:57):
you were talking about,is like, you were saying...
You know, if you don't have the word youneed, sometimes you can just coin it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's super convenient.
Which is kind of... it's helpful.
I kind of... I have todo a little bit of poetry
(24:20):
for my project, where I'mmaking spell incantations.
And you know, for some ofthe longer ones, I want to do
like couplets or like a four-line poem or something.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
If you have a long enough casting time.
But I actually try to avoid coining newwords just to fit in.
(24:42):
Mm-hmm.
Just because, like, I feel like I'mcheating.
You are!
That's because you are, really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I'm also like, I havethis word that, you know, I...
or I should say this meaningthat I want to put in here.
And say I'm missing the verb or something.
(25:04):
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm like, well, the melody needs liketwo syllables.
Like, you know, two rhythmic beats orwhatever.
Like, okay, I'll justtry to find a derivation
that obviously, ofcourse, makes sense.
Like, I prioritize the fact that thederivation makes sense and stuff.
And then I will evolve it.
(25:25):
And I'll see how that feels.
And I'm like, okay.
Well, that sounds... that sounds like itfits.
You know, I'm definitely, like,I definitely prioritize it being realistic
when I'm coining newwords, when I'm making the
lyrics over, you know,oh, that sounds good.
(25:46):
That sounds good.
Yeah.
So it'll just work.
It'll just work.
And, like, how much, like, documentationdo you have on these languages?
Mm-hmm.
And how much development do you have?
I mean, clearly, from what I have seen,you clearly are definitely not...
(26:07):
You're not doing relexes here,definitely.
No.
You're doing full-on grammar stuff.
But I just want to know, like,how much do you develop the languages
beyond what's needed for a particular songor what you're working on at the moment?
Yeah.
Honestly, I develop the languages as muchas possible.
(26:27):
In a sense, the musicis a bit of an afterthought
because I'm like, wow,I've made this whole thing.
Oh, what am I going to do with it?
So I'll just... I'llmake music with it.
I... The language for the Mantis peoplethat we were just talking about, that was...
That's kind of my baby.
I've been working on that since,I think, 2021.
(26:47):
It was my first, like, big conlang projectthat I felt was up to at least some
standards that I... ThatI now set for myself.
So I have, like, a whole... It's a massivespreadsheet of documentation for me.
I'm currently workingon getting, like,
actual public documentationthat doesn't suck.
(27:11):
Like I currently have for the one in myfirst conlang video.
That's really cool.
I want to switch tracks really quick.
Mm-hmm.
Um...
Because you, in some ofyour earlier stuff that was
(27:31):
before you leaned into theconlanging aspect a lot
You had a lot of songs that were talkingabout...
Well, you had a few songs that weretalking about queer identity.
Mm-hmm.
And how has that been important in yourmusic?
And has that affected how you approachedconlanging?
(27:55):
And is there... Are there...
Are there things about that in the moreconlang-centric music as well?
Mm-hmm.
That's a great question.
Probably not intentionally.
Um... You know, like, I could probablymake some, like, connections of, like,
oh, it was because of this and this kindof broad semantic word.
(28:22):
But honestly, I mean, they're kind ofseparate things.
I like...
I make music to make music a lot of time.
And sometimes, you know, I have an ideaof, like, oh, I'll...
I'll release some kindof album on Pride Month
that's, like, based onthe colors of the rainbow.
And it's about my experience being LGBT.
(28:43):
And I'm like, how can I fit a conlang inthere?
That wouldn't make sense.
So I just... I just didn't.
Um... Yeah.
No, it's not... It'snot really related.
Uh...
And I think in a way, like, I kind of likethat freedom that I can write music in
English or Japanese or something elsewithout having that expectation of,
(29:08):
like, oh, their next song is going to bein a conlang.
And it better be.
Um...
Right.
Right.
But I definitely, like, am now starting tofocus on the conlang stuff.
Because...
One, because I enjoy it.
And two, people seem to like it.
And that's cool.
Well, I mean...
(29:28):
You know, the business of being onYouTube, you got to have a gimmick, too.
So... Yeah.
I have a bit of a niche.
Yeah.
I... The reason I askedthat question particularly
is, like, a lot of myaudience is queer.
A lot of people in the community are queer.
Yeah.
Um... You know, I ran... Iran a conlang relay this year.
(29:52):
Yeah.
On... On YouTube.
And...
Yeah.
I saw that.
Like...
So...
And, like...
This...
Maybe I'm a little too old.
And I didn't think about this beforehand.
But I realized I had to add a pronounscolumn in my spreadsheet, so I could keep
track of everybody'spronouns... Oh, yeah.
(30:13):
...and not make mistakes.
But, like, just... It wasnot, like, totally deliberate.
I mean... Not inwho I contacted.
Mm-hmm.
In fact, there were people I didn'trealize.
But there are quite a few trans people inthat playlist.
Yeah.
And, um, trans and nonbinary people inthat playlist.
(30:37):
And it's... So, it's just... That's howthe community is, and it's, kind of...
And it, kind of...
It's, kind of, you know...
Algorithm.
Because of who getshigher in algorithms, you're
not necessarily going tosee that on YouTube itself.
(30:59):
If you go into, like,Reddit and the Discord
communities, you'll findlots of people, of course.
But, you know, some of the more prominentvoices, including me, are not necessarily
representative of the community in thatway.
So I just wanted to voice that.
Yeah, yeah.
(31:21):
Yeah, I've definitely seen a lot of queerpeople in the community.
Honestly, I'm not super involved in thecommunity.
Like, I try to keep up.
But from what I see, the queer presence isvery strong.
Right.
And if I was smarter, I maybe would tryand make some kind of correlation.
(31:45):
But I'm...
I'm not going to pull something out therethat I'm not confident in.
But it is really cool tosee, like, that community
for people who aremarginalized in that sense.
Yeah.
So I'm glad to be a voice in that,I suppose.
But, well, anyway, let's...
(32:07):
Moving back into, like, your conlanging,I really...
Now, I'm not sure if I...
The Cursed Conlang Circus may becompletely over by the time I get this
out, because we're recording this earlier,folks.
(32:29):
But I do not have a whole lot of time todo editing.
And I also, like, want to give space tosome other things.
But this should come out, like,first of the year.
But I saw your entry in particular.
Mm-hmm.
And it was really... Itwas really interesting.
It was one thing that...
(32:49):
I was already, like,checking out your music
and being interestedin interviewing you.
But, like, that particularidea with the, like, very
amped up, like, over-the-toppoliteness system...
(33:11):
Yeah.
With so many different layers,like, historical layers to it.
...was very impressive to me.
Oh, thank you.
Could you tell me, like, where did youget the idea for that?
Mm-hmm.
And, like, the whole story for it,and also, like, the way that you developed
(33:35):
with the history ofthe language and the
differing levels offormality and 600 pronouns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I actually don't knowwhat the real number is.
It's definitely over 600.
And that's, like, not counting the caseforms of each of them.
(33:56):
Yeah.
So, I had the idea forthat language, I want
to say, like, a yearand a half beforehand.
And by that, I mean I had a shell of it.
Like, it was, like, I had the idea of,oh, I would like to make a language with a
Polynesian -style-type phonology,and it's polysynthetic.
And I made...
(34:17):
Like, a beta versionof the syllabary for it,
and then it kind ofcollected dust for a while.
And I wanted to join theCursed Conlang Circus.
So, eventually, that got announced.
I was like, okay, well, what am I going todo?
I need to figure out what I'm doing.
And I had always wanted to do a conlangshowcase, but I never really did.
(34:41):
Something about it just didn't feel right.
I wanted to do something different,something interesting.
So, the theme for... Well, one ofthe themes was tell a story in there.
And I was like, ah, that's how I can doit.
Because I wanted to do it somehowdiegetically, rather than, like,
omnipotent God explaining how the wholeregion and all the languages work in there.
(35:06):
So, I ended up thinkingabout, like, how can I make
something that would workstill like a conlang showcase?
But incorporate the language and the worldinto some kind of plot.
"Plot", in quotes.
(35:27):
Right.
And so, I ended up coming with...
I had this shell of a language that I hadmade before.
And I was like, oh, cool.
I'll develop that for this.
And it turned into the whole formalitything when I was thinking of, oh,
well, what if I wasgiven the... The...
The... The... Basicsof the language.
(35:49):
And then, turns out that was the informalversion.
And I've been rude to them the whole time.
And then that kind of snowballs as itdoes.
Yeah, yeah.
As it does.
And I kind of kept thinking about,like, how can I take this formality thing,
like, to the extreme while still beingnaturalistic?
(36:13):
Naturalism is something that I reallyenjoy.
And I haven't seen a ton of conlangs.
It would go in the cursed category.
That's, like, inherently naturalistic.
So, I wanted to do something like that.
So, I thought about formality and,like, relationships and things.
So, that's where I came up with therelationship forms for each of the names.
It came from Japanese.
(36:35):
Aka-chan, aka-kun, senpai.
All of those kind of endings.
And I was like, well, how can I push thisto the extreme?
And...
That's when I thought about, oh, I caninclude that as part of the other things.
And that's where theetymology of all of those
verb forms and adjectivalforms came from.
(36:58):
So, I...
It really started withthe, like, tell a story
as something that Iwanted to do for a long time.
So, that's... I guess that'swhere that kind of came from.
What I'm understanding is, like,you had the prompt, tell a story.
(37:18):
And the idea was, how can you make thelanguage itself the conflict of the story?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, from there, you decide,oh, we'll do a politeness system.
And that becomes, like, a plot point inthe thing.
(37:43):
Because, you know, you have to actuallylearn the politeness
system in order tointeract with people.
Right.
Right.
And then, you make it cursed by addinglayers of historical cruft to it.
And, like, way too many forms to memorize.
(38:04):
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tons of suppletion.
Yeah.
All of those things.
All with the CV structure.
Normal, quote, "normal" phonology.
And, yeah, because, like, I had an idea ofbuilding on that with, like, oh,
(38:27):
you know, what if I'vegotten this far, but I've
called this person thewrong form of their name.
And then I'm back to square one of,like, well, I don't know anything anymore.
Yeah.
But that was a great thing about thatvideo, is that it just, like, keeps going.
Yeah.
Like, at first, it's like, okay, you getthese notes from the Chinese researchers.
(38:52):
And then you go to that dimension.
And you find out, well, the sounds are alittle bit different because they're tree
people, but we'll just represent it thisway.
And then, well, actually, I've been usinginformal forms the whole time,
and I need to learn the correct forms inorder to not offend people constantly.
(39:14):
Yeah.
And then from there, it's like,oh, okay, there's, like, this,
like, historical underlayer to thepoliteness registers.
And then there's some words that arealways polite, always informal.
And then it goes into, oh, and then thesecyborg trees have a completely different
(39:35):
register that cannot be understood byhumans.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It just keeps going.
Yeah.
And going and snowballing.
Yeah.
And I think that that makes the story evenbetter.
Yeah.
Part of the idea was, I want to makesomething that you have to keep going
(39:57):
through different layers in order to getto the right meaning.
And that's where the idioms came from aswell.
Because I wanted to kind ofobscure meaning as much as
possible while somehowstaying, quote, naturalistic.
Yeah.
So we had all ofthe different...
So we had all of the differentforms on anything, plus
(40:17):
the polysynthesis ofeverything, plus all the idioms.
I go through the steps.
That's where that came from in the video.
And, like, you say you don't actually knowhow many pronouns there are.
I don't.
Like, is there, like, is it an open classof pronouns?
(40:38):
And you just, like, haven't made all ofthem?
I just haven't made all of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've counted.
I've counted.
There has to be at least 600.
I've made... Actually, I don'tknow how many I've made.
You can look on the,Lughati Portals
website, slash 78H, inthe pronouns section.
And I've made all of the pronouns relativeto the first and the second person.
(41:00):
All the pronouns relative to the thirdperson, I haven't made yet.
Because, I mean, we haven't done enoughresearch on those yet to...
to...
to put them down in the graph yet.
Because they take so long.
Because I have to historically evolve eachof them and think about their evolution of
(41:25):
all those things and add supletion and addthose exceptions and things.
And I'm like, well, this... Isthis a homonym of anything?
It's a homonym of this word.
Okay, what is this?
Lots of... Lots of steps.
So, there's at least 600.
I have done the math to figure that out,at least.
Yeah.
Another thing about yourwork that I find interesting is you
(41:50):
have a particular way ofgoing about constructing scripts.
In that you basically...
You say that you basicallytake a font and you just, like,
change some things, deletesome things, modify some things.
Yeah, yeah.
Can you talk about, like, how did you comeup to that idea for making your scripts?
(42:13):
Yeah, yeah.
Not all of mine.
Two of the languagesin my next video are
going to be, like,fully, like, I drew that.
Stuff like that.
But...
So, I was doing that for a little bit.
I was working... I use Birdfont,which is a font program.
It's free, which is incredible.
(42:35):
And, like, that was all fine and good andI was doing that and it was fine.
But I found that I'm not a vector artistby any means.
I can draw, like, ahandwritten font in Photoshop
and then, you know,convert it to vectors.
But if I wanted somethingthat was a little more
techie, per se, like thefont in O'EAIĀ, you don't...
(43:01):
You know, you can't just, like,write that out in Photoshop.
That's not going to look techie enough,at least in my experience.
So, I was like, well, Birdfontallows me to import fonts to just
look at and edit anddo whatever I want with.
(43:24):
So, I, you know, went on Google Fonts,fonts that are free for commercial
personal use, commercial and personal use,I should say.
And, you know, you look attheir license and stuff and they're
like, you can modify this fontand use it however you want.
So, I've been doing that.
It's a lot easier for me because I'm,like I said, I'm not a vector artist.
(43:49):
And honestly, like, the fonts are somangled to a point where, like,
I had a couple of people find the originalfont for O'EAIĀ and they were like,
this feels so weird looking at it inEnglish because it just feels so different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, like, I imagine, like, you arefinding...
(44:12):
You're finding characters that...
Oh, yeah.
...are approximate, like, approximatelywhat you want in modifying them.
But, like, the underlying system is,like, a fully realized conscript that you.
..
that is built for that language,right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, I make the script beforehand.
Like, I scribble it out in Photoshop.
(44:34):
I'm like, okay, this is this syllabiccharacter or whatever, this shape because
it came from this logogram or, youknow, whatever the history is behind that.
And then...
I take that shape thatI've decided is going to
be the letter, the glyphis the correct term.
And then I look atthe font and all of the
(44:55):
glyphs that areavailable to me in the font.
And I say, okay, whichone of these can I modify the
easiest to look likewhat I want it to look like?
Generally, I'm able to get it close enoughwith...
Sometimes with a lot of modification.
(45:15):
But, yeah, it always starts with,like, this is what I want it to look like
because this is where it historically camefrom.
And then I modify stuff to make it looklike that.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if it's a process,it works.
And that...
I did not know that piece of it.
(45:36):
So, you are, like, doingthe work of even drawing
it out and doing thehistorical development of it.
But then you take an existingfont and you find something
that you can turn into thecharacter you already drew.
Yeah.
That's an interesting way to go about it.
(45:59):
And something that, youknow, maybe some other
conlangers out there mightwant to do something similar.
This can be an inspiration for people whowant to get into making scripts.
But are not...
I'm not as confident about free drawing inSVG programs.
(46:21):
I know that I have some...
First time in a long time doing a script.
I did scripts earlier on, but let's nottalk about that too much.
But, like, for Ndăkaga, like, I intentionallywas choosing something where I...
(46:44):
where I would havelimited, like, strokes that were
easy to create in orderto make that first script.
Next one... Nextone is for fae.
Yeah.
I'm not going to be able to do that kindof thing for myself.
(47:06):
That sounds squiggly.
I'm going to have to...
I'm going to have to think about what kindof aesthetic I'm going to do for that.
But... Yeah.
Depending on what youwant, that seems like it
can be an effective,like, method for doing it.
So it's really interesting.
And it's a different process than what Ihave seen other people do.
(47:29):
Which is, you know, that's a great thingto highlight.
Because there are many different ways todo conlanging.
Like, do you... It seems like youdo do some historical development.
You do, like... Historicalmethod for conlanging.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Honestly, that's, like, probably myfavorite part.
(47:49):
Is, like, making aproto-language and then trying
to see how I can get it toevolve in different ways.
It's really fun.
Yeah.
But...
Yeah.
So... A lot of people do that.
Not everybody.
But, yeah.
And it's interesting to see different waysof doing things.
(48:11):
You did say...
You have said...
In...
Before... That you tend to writeyour melodies first and then lyrics.
Mm-hmm.
And...
So, when you are writing the melody,are you still...
Are you already thinking about,though, what kinds of melodic structures
(48:35):
work best for the language you're going toput to it?
Generally, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I will think about, like, certain...
Word patterns.
Like, if I have... I havea language that's...
The stress is always at the end of theword.
Or the... Yeah.
Like, the...
The last syllable in the word,I should say.
(48:57):
So, I think about the melody and I'm like,okay, well, if I want this kind of melody
to sound like this in thislanguage, I need to make
sure that I have wordsthat will fit in that structure.
So, it's a little bit of back and forthsometimes.
But, for the most part, I do do the melodyfirst.
With that, at least broadly in mind.
I...
(49:19):
It's a lot easier to getsomething sounding musical
than it is to get somethingthat sounds like...
I have a text that I've already written andI need to put it to some kind of melody.
At least in my workflow, it's easier tohave the melody first.
And then... Yeah.
Get stuff that fits.
(49:40):
Yeah.
So...
And then you can sort of...Write the lyrics to match it.
But...
That is interesting.
Sort of...
I can imagine you talked earlierabout, you know, if you have
differences in vowel length,differences in syllable weight.
Yeah.
That can affect, like, youneed to put some longer
(50:03):
duration notes intothere on those syllables.
Or if you've got... I imagine, like,initial stress versus final stress.
Mm-hmm.
That would affect where you would put anaccent in a line.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
Where it would go in the rhythm.
Yeah.
(50:23):
If it's an on-beat, then that's going tosound more stressed.
Even if the...
It's said with equal stress.
It being on an on-beat will feel morestressed.
Right.
Because of how we interpret rhythm andstuff.
So...
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's...
Music theory.
on Conlangery here.
Yeah.
Music theory.
(50:45):
But it is... It isvery interesting.
Do you...
So, I mean, you kind of mentioned,like, you want it to sound nice to humans.
But do you actually think about,like, whether these aliens have any
differences in theirown conception of music
(51:09):
theory that wouldmake it into your music?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you were talking earlier about thecyborg register in ʻŌʻiʻeʻa.
That video, I talk about the seven-tonepitch system that's in there.
So, normally in...
(51:29):
Normally in musictheory, we have 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,12 notes per octave.
And that's just the standard for Westernmusic.
But...
You know, that's... It's notentirely an arbitrary number.
Trying to put this back.
It's not entirely an arbitrarynumber, but really, I mean,
(51:50):
cultures can come up withany ways to divide the octave.
So, 7 just made sense for them.
They have base 8.
So, all of their music is in this seven-tone system.
So, they only have seven tones per octaveinstead of the 12 that we do.
So, it might sound a little weird andwonky to us.
(52:12):
So, it's 7 and not 8?
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh.
So, it's like less than... So, ithits the octave at the seventh one?
It hits the octave at the eighth one.
Oh, okay.
So, it's like A, B, C, D, E, F...
(52:35):
Wait, yeah.
E, F, A.
Okay.
But it's not those notes in the way thatwe would know them.
Okay.
But it's different from a diatonic scale.
Let me Google diatonic scale.
(52:59):
It's different from a major or minorscale.
Oh, yeah.
Well, yeah.
In a sense, yes.
Because it's just those seven notes.
There's no divisions of it.
As you can see, I am very well versed inmusic theory.
No, it's fine.
But, yeah, it is different.
Yeah.
(53:20):
So, that is interesting.
Right.
So, there's like a little bit of adifference in how they construct a scale.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And so, that by itself can work.
(53:44):
I was just interested because,yeah, you can have...
I mean, there's lots ofdifferent scales in the
real world, in our ownvarious different cultures.
There are different ideas about rhythm.
There tend to be some universals that Ithink probably would carry over.
(54:06):
But there's a lot of variation,right?
Yeah.
I try to get that balance.
Yeah.
The song that we were playing earlier is agood example of the rhythm thing.
That's in the... it's like one,two, three, four, one, two, three,
four, one, two, three, one, two,three, four.
And that pattern continues, which isn'tvery conventional in this in this dimension.
(54:27):
Yeah, I figured that would be anotherexample to pull out real quick.
Right, so one, two, one, two, three,four.
It's fifteen.
Fifteen.
So it's like a 15/16 like thing?
It can be interpreted as 15/16 sort of,but it's more like four beats,
(54:52):
four beats, three beats, four beats.
Okay.
But it can also be interpreted as fivebeats of 3/4, or three beats of
5/4, depending on how the song iskind of structured rhythmically.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that kind of makes it sound at leastlike that three-four part makes it sound
(55:12):
not as odd to us, but thenstill hits you with like, oh,
oh, and you get that littleotherworldly feel in there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is interesting to just throw that inlike a slightly different rhythmic
structure that I don't think that's supercommon to take out that...
(55:40):
that particular way.
If it is, I've not heard of it.
Yeah, but yeah, let's... well it's beeninteresting talking to you.
And yeah, we're recording this beforehand.
I don't know what the result of...
(56:00):
the Cursed Conlang Circus is going tobe, but good luck on that part.
And good luck with your channel.
Thank you.
It seems like it's... Yeah.
It's doing very well right now,but it's, you know, it's a process.
It's a process.
It takes a while.
(56:23):
But it was really greatto talk to you about your
music and about howyou fit conlangs into it.
Anything, any last thoughts you have?
Anything you want to point people to?
Anything I want to point people to.
(56:43):
Let's see, I've, I've got a new videocoming.
I guess I will.
Yeah, I'll talk about this.
I got a new video coming out.
Probably February.
I'm not sure yet.
By the time this video comes out,hopefully I will be more sure.
But it will be a continuationof the same kind of
format that I did in in theCursed Conlang Circus video.
(57:06):
I'm making that into aseries and I'm going to
have a bunch of musicthat I'm going to play.
That comes out with each episode.
At least that's the plan right now.
So keep an eye out for that.
I'm working on a lot of stuff,a lot of music, lots of conlang stuff.
Are we going to havemore of you as as your
(57:26):
bird avatar shifting todifferent dimensions?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm hoping that there will be anoverarching plot.
That is that is kind of the plan rightnow.
On something for that.
But the.
We'll see, that's currently in the,in the in the works.
(57:47):
That's that's great.
Well, any any final thoughts for for foreveryone out there?
Any advice you have toother colleagues, maybe advice
to other musicians whowant to write conlang music?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you.
(58:08):
Oh, advice.
If you want to, if you want to makesomething, like, Google it, search it up
on YouTube or somethinglike chances are there's
there's going to besomething out there for it.
Because like, I didn't know conlanging waslike a thing until I, after like 10 years
or whatever, actually searched it up andfound so much stuff.
(58:30):
And now I'm making stuff that I wouldn'thave thought to make before.
So there's the wholeinternet of resources out
there as long as you havean internet connection.
So if you want to make something,search it up.
Someone's probably already taught you how.
Yeah, that's, that's definitely my take onthings.
(58:52):
Or maybe things, maybe sometimes thingscome to you.
Because like, I like, I started, I startedmaking some of my own music a little bit.
I just do instrumental stuff.
I haven't done conlang stuff with it.
Yeah, I've heard it.
Yeah.
But that was just from megetting suggested music theory
(59:17):
videos on YouTube, andthen going down a rabbit hole.
And I'm like, I'm just gonna write somestuff.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's fun.
I'm always making stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that's, that's really good advice.
And thank you ZeWei for coming on.
Thank you.
Go to, go, go to find ZeWei on YouTube.
(59:39):
If you're watching thison YouTube, I'll have,
have the, the, thechannel, like, added there.
But, yeah, thank you for coming on.
And happy conlanging.
Thank you for having me.
Happy conlanging.
Special thanks to my patrons on Patreon.
If you go over there right now,you can get early access to episodes.
(01:00:03):
You can get access to scripts for my soloepisodes.
And you can... You can go get access toexclusive polls for Tongues and Runes.
Thank you to...
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Conlangery's theme music is by NullDevice.
Conlangery is distributed undera Creative Commons Attribution
Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
So sometimes I havea lot of difficulty finding,
a rhythm that feelsotherworldly enough.
Maybe that's not the right adjective.
But still sounds good to us.
[INTRO MUSIC]
(00:29):
Welcome to Conlangery,the podcast about constructed
languages and thepeople who create them.
I'm George Corley.
And with me today isZeWei, a YouTube creator,
musician, and conlangerout in California.
How are you doing?
(00:50):
I am doing all right.
How are you doing?
Good.
So I brought you on because I had noticedyour channel.
And not all of your stuff is conlang,but it seems like...
Increasingly, you've incorporatedconlanging into your songs.
Yeah.
(01:10):
And I want to talk a little bit about,like, how you came to that decision,
how you came into conlanging and how itblends into your music.
Mhm, mhm.
Yeah, yeah.
I definitely am increasing the conlangcontent.
I have plans to do that over the nextyear.
(01:31):
Mostly just going to be focusing on theconlang stuff.
Obviously.
The music on top of it.
Conlang. Music.
It's what I'm doing.
Yeah, yeah.
I had kind of beeninterested in both conlangs
and music for a longtime, like, separately.
It was only a couple of yearsago when I actually found
(01:54):
the conlang community andthis thing called conlanging.
Like, I didn't know it was a thing forages.
That I thought, hey, youknow, I have these, like,
a bunch of these languageprojects lying around.
And I have, you know, this... I likemaking music.
And I might as well just slap those thingstogether.
Because it gives me something to use theseconlangs for.
(02:17):
Because I'm not writing a book oranything.
Yeah.
I mean, so how did you get into conlangingin the first place?
Like, where was your path to getting intothat?
Yeah.
It's... I would say it's a bunch ofoverlapping things that kind of...
eventually built up into the path that Ihave.
(02:39):
So when I was... I want to say it was,like, 10 years old.
Me and my friend, we were like,"Oh, well, let's make a language."
Like, this was a crazy idea.
We're going to make a language so that theadults can't understand what we're saying.
And so that was, like,you know, it was just a
relex of English in termsof grammar and stuff.
(03:01):
And she and I had done it for,like, two days.
And then kind of dropped off.
But for a while, Iwould think about it and
be like, "Oh, that was acool idea that we had.
Like, I want to do that again at somepoint."
And then, excuse me, I was playingSplatoon.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with theSplatoon series.
(03:22):
I've heard of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it came out in 2015.
It's been nine years now, which is crazy.
The game features a lot of world buildingin, like...
There's so much language everywhere.
There's no functional conlang in there.
But there's so much writingaround graffiti on the walls
(03:43):
and the billboards and adson the TV screens in there.
Brands for, like, the clothing you can buyall have that writing on it.
There's a lot of music in the game intheir, like, glorble gibberish squid speak.
So that was really inspiring to me,especially as someone who was working on...
(04:05):
learning indie game dev.
I was like, oh, well, I need to make musicand I need to make, you know, this game.
And I have these these conlangs that arelying around so I can incorporate that
idea that my friend and I hadinto a game that I have made
to make the world feellike a lot more alive, I guess.
(04:25):
So that's that's where the conlanging camein and then eventually the music as well.
I think there are a lot of people who comeinto conlanging
having played with language ininteresting ways, very young.
Yeah, yeah.
It's it's interesting that youit seems like you were doing
(04:46):
some conlanging stuff beforeyou were aware of the community, then.
Yeah, I didn't know the term conlangingwas a thing.
Yeah, you were just inventing a languagethat that's.
Yeah.
But tell me about your journey with withthe game development.
Are you still?
Working on developing a game or are youshifted mostly just to music?
(05:11):
As of about a year ago,I've mostly just shifted
to the the music andthe and the video stuff.
Previously, I had gone to college for gamegame development.
I worked on Rocket League, if you'refamiliar with that game.
Okay.
And it was kind of a passion that I hadfor for a very long time.
(05:32):
And I still do.
But making a game.
Is complicated and it takes a long,long time.
So, you know, I've had aton of, like, game ideas that
I've wanted to do, andI've made a bunch of stuff.
And of course, in college, you know, Iwas working on game projects all the time.
But at the moment, I'm I've kind of realized,like, I I'm a one bird show over here.
(05:59):
I can't I can't do it all in a timelymanner, at least.
So the music and theconlangs was was a way for me to
keep making stuff whilestill like I have an idea.
I can finish it in a timely manner.
Yeah.
Get it out.
Yeah.
So currently, I'm not doing the game stuffat the moment, but I would I would love to.
(06:21):
I would love to go back.
That that that is that is the thing is theit's an entirely different sort of problem.
Oh, yeah.
I keep I keep telling.
David Peterson.
David Peterson is making these languagesfor a board game.
I keep asking him, "When is the board gamecoming out?"
(06:41):
"I don't know.
These things take years to figure out."
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm sure a video game is isthe same kind of thing.
You just have endless work on noodlylittle rules to to figure out.
Right.
Yeah.
But but it is interesting to hear that yougot this.
(07:04):
This pipeline from like game dev to musicto conlang music.
Yeah.
Let's talk a little bit about now.
I have interviewed other people who dolike combine music and conlang.
Yours is a different genre than what Ihave encountered before.
(07:29):
So like.
Margaret Ransdell Green.
She created whole music theory systems forher con cultures.
Jasper Charlet did a chamber, a chamberopera.
Yeah.
And you.
(07:50):
You are doing like electronic music.
I don't know fine genres there,but.
I don't know what to classify my stuff aseither.
Honestly, like some people ask.
They're like, oh, what genre is this?
I'm like, you tell me.
I don't know.
(08:10):
I mean, it's it's definitely under thebroad category of electronic music.
Yeah.
It's probably computer music.
You're doing some very interesting thingswith.
I saw one of your shorts.
You talking about how you built.
It seems like it like at the base of it'sjust like a base.
(08:32):
It's a basic arpeggio.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
With all the effects added to it.
The pattern does not repeat for the entirethree minutes.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
And that kind of thing.
It's some experimental stuff going on.
Actually, is that experimentalnature in your music at
(08:54):
all linked to your interestin including conlangs in it?
Especially since like your conlangs seemto be set.
Yeah.
In sort of a sci-fi multiverse whereyou're shifting to other dimensions and
meeting aliens and speak these languages,right?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of them are more advancedtechnologically.
(09:18):
I would say I think some of theexperimental music stuff and the
experimental like conlang stuff,I guess, is intentional.
Some of it is kind of just me being drawnto the weird stuff.
I've always enjoyedwhen something's kind of
(09:40):
breaking the norm atconvention and things.
So I think inherentlythat's led me to do that
kind of thing with aconlang and with music.
But of course, I do...
If I'm working on conlang music,I will consider that and how that can kind
of affect the... the musicof the culture and stuff.
(10:02):
Do you find...
When you are making music with yourlanguages, do you find like different
kinds of melodies anddifferent kinds of rhythms
fit better with certainlanguages or others?
(10:23):
Or do you construct features of thelanguages
In order to like fit to particular musicalstyles?
I definitely do the conlang first.
So the language and the world are like...
That's the first thing that I'm thinkingabout.
And then I'll make music for it.
In terms of like the melodies and stuff,it really depends on the language.
(10:47):
Like if you have a...
If you like have a stresstimed language, like that'll
totally change how therhythm works and things.
Or if you had a... A tone registers orcontours, like that might change things too.
If the culture respects them in music.
Because some contourlanguages just completely throw
(11:10):
them out the window ifyou're writing a melody, right?
So it can really be anything.
I often find that like, especially whenI'm working with languages with like a
stress timed system or along vowels, that really
changes how themelody needs to go, really.
(11:33):
And so if I have a melody that I've madelike beforehand, and then I need to like
insert lyrics onto, it's a lot harder if Ihave like long vowels, because I need to
make sure that those longernotes fit in with the longer
vowels and the shorter notesfit in with the shorter vowels.
And sometimes they don't.
And we just have to deal with it.
(11:53):
But yeah, definitely influences a lot.
Syllable weight is definitely like a thingthat gets into it.
Because like, even withlike English with the weight
variation, you see thathappen in melodies in English.
(12:16):
And if you see translations, there's allkinds of things.
Other languages mightactually add extra beats for
extra syllables, where Englishwould have one syllable.
And it's just because of the structure.
Sure, that is a thing in English as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(12:36):
But like, you know, I just use English asan example to illustrate your point.
But like, I also find that like, thereason I'm thinking about that is like.
..
In real languages, you see this kind ofthing.
I find that...
(12:56):
I always feel like Mandarin Chinese is veryversatile, actually, in what it can do.
Because you tend...
There is actually length variation, but youkind of ignore it and not have a problem.
And you will have like, you know, you justhave to count the syllables and be good.
(13:20):
Right?
Yeah.
Whereas like, I've listened to Spanishrap.
And Spanish doesn't really work for rap.
That's a hot take.
No, I mean like...
I listen to a lot of Rap Italiano,but also some Spanish too.
(13:43):
Yeah.
It is different.
Like, you know, just the natural rhythm ofthe language.
Yeah, it has to be different.
I think that...
I don't listen to a whole lot of rap,but it feels like...
English language rapis tending to do like an
(14:04):
iambic rhythm, like alot of English poetry.
And then other languages are going to haveto do something completely different.
Yeah.
The same way they do something differentwith poetry.
Do you spend a lot of time, actually,with your languages, developing poetic
(14:25):
conventions that you can then take intothe songwriting?
Because I watched oneof your videos explaining
your process, andyou talked about rhyme.
And, you know, youjust briefly mentioned that
different cultures willdefine rhyme differently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, do you spenda lot of time on those
(14:48):
conventions in order tofigure out lyric writing?
Yeah, yeah.
I probably don't spend as much time as Ishould, frankly.
That video, I want to redo thatwhole video because I missed
so many things in there, likethe stress time and the tones.
But, yeah, like the rhyming is one part ofit.
(15:10):
You know, it depends on what you'rewriting.
It depends on what your, like,vowel system is.
Like, if you've got three vowels orwhatever, you know, it'll be, it might be
easier to find rhymes just because there'sless vowels.
But if you have, you know, like a whole,you filled up the entire vowel space and
that's your phonemic vowels, like,it might be easier to find slant rhymes
(15:33):
that are more accepted in the culture,like /i/ and /e/ or something.
In terms of, like, the rhythm and the,and the, that kind of thing.
Like, that's definitely something I thinkabout.
And it's, it's kind of hard.
Because it's, it's easyto just lump everything
(15:56):
into, oh, well, thatkind of sounds Englishy.
Because I'm just so usedto something inherently as,
like, particularly if it's in4-4 time, you know, as well.
Right.
So sometimes I have a lot of difficultyfinding, like, a rhythm that feels...
otherworldly enough.
(16:16):
Maybe that's not the right adjective.
But still sounds good to us.
Because, you know, I don't want anything,I don't want to make music that would be,
like, fit for this culture that,like, we wouldn't like as well.
Right.
Well, that's, that is a thing.
Realistically...
Yeah.
(16:36):
If you're talking about alien music...they could, they could definitely have...
different instincts that drive them tocompletely different musical structures
that would not sound...maybe we couldn't even hear it.
That's what, yeah, yeah, yeah,exactly.
That's like...
they probably have acompletely different, you
(16:59):
know, range of frequenciesthat they can hear.
So I've kind of, I've kind of...
accepted it as, this is an interpretationof what it would sound like to them.
Perhaps.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because otherwise, you know, it's just,it's just not going to sound good to us.
And frankly, we are the audience.
So I want to make sure that it sounds...
(17:21):
listenable.
By any means.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, your, your music is,is great.
It's not always...
Oh, thank you.
You know, it's not the, it's not the thingthat I usually listen to.
But it, it, it's really, it's veryinteresting, very cool to, like, pop on.
Thank you.
(17:41):
Let's actually listen.
So you sent me, thisis, this is a little sneak
peek of something thatshould be coming up.
Yeah.
And I will, I'm goingto jump to a part where
we have some, somevocals so we can hear.
(Music)
Pahnyeina pabeiden hei
(18:03):
Heken hekei chakei
Pahvennyaheipe yhngnyem dah krwgennw
Dei pechwchem Krwnne Seingwng dah krainyem
Krimi ni seinyem ni kragei
Kriri nyenisse nifh hwkemen
(18:24):
Chwm yeheinahen mw Hen Yahmnye maht
Paradais hei pipeyahfen
Krairwkh chwm heiken nifavap
Krwnne hei dah hen dah seise
So that's interesting.
I'm going to jump ahead a littlebit because there were some
things I wanted to talk aboutthat I heard later on here.
(18:49):
(Music)
Pahberegafei pahdegrimi ngi, sanye
Pepsadeikricha chwv, fi
Phfihekkei phpe nyemwn ni
Yhng nyepei php pahnyeina pibehre
Penyeigi hen hei nyem ya
Pepsadeipinirh, nirh ka
(19:11):
Pemw phpenye yhng
Ni phchw seipekrh sessadeirhkre ka
Chav dehchw sa shpiken
Chav dah hi krahgei senein hei
Nyeigise kri fanivan ka sa php
Nirh sahdeki hei pei sahdere
Yeah,
so I wanted to get that section too,but because like...
(19:35):
Me...
Just...
All I can...
All I can really get is phonology fromhere, but listening to that, I can see
you're not afraid of like going out intomore unusual things and things that,
(19:56):
you know, might be challenging for you topronounce.
Because like, youknow, I hear a lot of the /ɯ/
vowel in there, but Ialso hear... I hear...
It sounds like you have a syllabic uvularfricative.
Is that right?
Yes.
It's like somewhere velar or uvular.
(20:17):
Yeah.
Depending on the speaker and the context.
But yeah, it's a syllabic velar or uvularfricative.
It only occurs between voicelessconsonants.
Or...
/j/, /r/, and /ŋ/ become devoiced.
(20:38):
So, to allow that to occur between thoseas well.
Yeah, it's a little strange, but it camefrom the vocalization of mantises.
I was looking at that and they makesomething that sounds similar to a velar
fricative, at least it soundedlike it's something... Oh, okay.
So, this is for the mantis-like aliens.
(21:03):
So, that's interesting.
So, you actually... You actually, like,listened to mantis vocalizations in order to...
Yeah.
Vocalization.
You get it.
Singular.
They have one vocalization.
At least that's what I was able to find,but this was also several years ago,
and honestly, I probablyshould have done a little
(21:24):
more research before Imade that whole thing.
But no, I did do alittle bit of research for
sure, and like their oralanatomy and whatnot.
Yeah.
That is...
That is... That is interesting.
I kind of assume that you're sort oftranscoding, like, their... whatever their
(21:46):
physiology for producing sound is intohuman sounds in a way, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's an approximation.
Yeah.
It's not... It's notgonna be exactly, but...
Or, you know, in a way... Yeah.
It's art.
(22:06):
You're just... You're just gettinga vibe for something, right?
Yeah.
Honestly.
But it is... Yeah.
It is... It is interesting to... Ijust feel like singing with those...
If you don't speak alanguage that has them,
because there are humanlanguages that have these.
If you don't speak a language that hasthose syllabic fricatives like that,
(22:29):
I can imagine that being challenging tosing.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Because you're gonnalose the pitch, and also you
have to be very fluidin actually producing it.
Do you do a lot of practice before yourecord, or how do you deal with that?
(22:52):
Yeah.
I would not consider myself a singer forthe... to start off with that one.
It's a lot of recording the same thingmany, many times.
And eventually getting something thatsounds decent enough.
Thankfully with the medium that I use,all I need is one good take, and I can
(23:13):
enter things a little bit here and thereif I need to.
Right.
In terms of the pitch of the syllabicfricatives, or the lack of pitch,
I should say, yeah,that's another thing that
I've had to think aboutwith the melody and such.
I can't have a really cool sounding highnote on that one.
(23:35):
Because I have to say something like /pxp/,which does not have a tone on it.
Yeah, so you do... so it'll figure intothe melody a little bit, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have to think about it, where I placethat.
Yeah.
It is another interestingthing in your process video
(23:57):
you were talking about,is like, you were saying...
You know, if you don't have the word youneed, sometimes you can just coin it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's super convenient.
Which is kind of... it's helpful.
I kind of... I have todo a little bit of poetry
(24:20):
for my project, where I'mmaking spell incantations.
And you know, for some ofthe longer ones, I want to do
like couplets or like a four-line poem or something.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
If you have a long enough casting time.
But I actually try to avoid coining newwords just to fit in.
(24:42):
Mm-hmm.
Just because, like, I feel like I'mcheating.
You are!
That's because you are, really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I'm also like, I havethis word that, you know, I...
or I should say this meaningthat I want to put in here.
And say I'm missing the verb or something.
(25:04):
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm like, well, the melody needs liketwo syllables.
Like, you know, two rhythmic beats orwhatever.
Like, okay, I'll justtry to find a derivation
that obviously, ofcourse, makes sense.
Like, I prioritize the fact that thederivation makes sense and stuff.
And then I will evolve it.
(25:25):
And I'll see how that feels.
And I'm like, okay.
Well, that sounds... that sounds like itfits.
You know, I'm definitely, like,I definitely prioritize it being realistic
when I'm coining newwords, when I'm making the
lyrics over, you know,oh, that sounds good.
(25:46):
That sounds good.
Yeah.
So it'll just work.
It'll just work.
And, like, how much, like, documentationdo you have on these languages?
Mm-hmm.
And how much development do you have?
I mean, clearly, from what I have seen,you clearly are definitely not...
(26:07):
You're not doing relexes here,definitely.
No.
You're doing full-on grammar stuff.
But I just want to know, like,how much do you develop the languages
beyond what's needed for a particular songor what you're working on at the moment?
Yeah.
Honestly, I develop the languages as muchas possible.
(26:27):
In a sense, the musicis a bit of an afterthought
because I'm like, wow,I've made this whole thing.
Oh, what am I going to do with it?
So I'll just... I'llmake music with it.
I... The language for the Mantis peoplethat we were just talking about, that was...
That's kind of my baby.
I've been working on that since,I think, 2021.
(26:47):
It was my first, like, big conlang projectthat I felt was up to at least some
standards that I... ThatI now set for myself.
So I have, like, a whole... It's a massivespreadsheet of documentation for me.
I'm currently workingon getting, like,
actual public documentationthat doesn't suck.
(27:11):
Like I currently have for the one in myfirst conlang video.
That's really cool.
I want to switch tracks really quick.
Mm-hmm.
Um...
Because you, in some ofyour earlier stuff that was
(27:31):
before you leaned into theconlanging aspect a lot
You had a lot of songs that were talkingabout...
Well, you had a few songs that weretalking about queer identity.
Mm-hmm.
And how has that been important in yourmusic?
And has that affected how you approachedconlanging?
(27:55):
And is there... Are there...
Are there things about that in the moreconlang-centric music as well?
Mm-hmm.
That's a great question.
Probably not intentionally.
Um... You know, like, I could probablymake some, like, connections of, like,
oh, it was because of this and this kindof broad semantic word.
(28:22):
But honestly, I mean, they're kind ofseparate things.
I like...
I make music to make music a lot of time.
And sometimes, you know, I have an ideaof, like, oh, I'll...
I'll release some kindof album on Pride Month
that's, like, based onthe colors of the rainbow.
And it's about my experience being LGBT.
(28:43):
And I'm like, how can I fit a conlang inthere?
That wouldn't make sense.
So I just... I just didn't.
Um... Yeah.
No, it's not... It'snot really related.
Uh...
And I think in a way, like, I kind of likethat freedom that I can write music in
English or Japanese or something elsewithout having that expectation of,
(29:08):
like, oh, their next song is going to bein a conlang.
And it better be.
Um...
Right.
Right.
But I definitely, like, am now starting tofocus on the conlang stuff.
Because...
One, because I enjoy it.
And two, people seem to like it.
And that's cool.
Well, I mean...
(29:28):
You know, the business of being onYouTube, you got to have a gimmick, too.
So... Yeah.
I have a bit of a niche.
Yeah.
I... The reason I askedthat question particularly
is, like, a lot of myaudience is queer.
A lot of people in the community are queer.
Yeah.
Um... You know, I ran... Iran a conlang relay this year.
(29:52):
Yeah.
On... On YouTube.
And...
Yeah.
I saw that.
Like...
So...
And, like...
This...
Maybe I'm a little too old.
And I didn't think about this beforehand.
But I realized I had to add a pronounscolumn in my spreadsheet, so I could keep
track of everybody'spronouns... Oh, yeah.
(30:13):
...and not make mistakes.
But, like, just... It wasnot, like, totally deliberate.
I mean... Not inwho I contacted.
Mm-hmm.
In fact, there were people I didn'trealize.
But there are quite a few trans people inthat playlist.
Yeah.
And, um, trans and nonbinary people inthat playlist.
(30:37):
And it's... So, it's just... That's howthe community is, and it's, kind of...
And it, kind of...
It's, kind of, you know...
Algorithm.
Because of who getshigher in algorithms, you're
not necessarily going tosee that on YouTube itself.
(30:59):
If you go into, like,Reddit and the Discord
communities, you'll findlots of people, of course.
But, you know, some of the more prominentvoices, including me, are not necessarily
representative of the community in thatway.
So I just wanted to voice that.
Yeah, yeah.
(31:21):
Yeah, I've definitely seen a lot of queerpeople in the community.
Honestly, I'm not super involved in thecommunity.
Like, I try to keep up.
But from what I see, the queer presence isvery strong.
Right.
And if I was smarter, I maybe would tryand make some kind of correlation.
(31:45):
But I'm...
I'm not going to pull something out therethat I'm not confident in.
But it is really cool tosee, like, that community
for people who aremarginalized in that sense.
Yeah.
So I'm glad to be a voice in that,I suppose.
But, well, anyway, let's...
(32:07):
Moving back into, like, your conlanging,I really...
Now, I'm not sure if I...
The Cursed Conlang Circus may becompletely over by the time I get this
out, because we're recording this earlier,folks.
(32:29):
But I do not have a whole lot of time todo editing.
And I also, like, want to give space tosome other things.
But this should come out, like,first of the year.
But I saw your entry in particular.
Mm-hmm.
And it was really... Itwas really interesting.
It was one thing that...
(32:49):
I was already, like,checking out your music
and being interestedin interviewing you.
But, like, that particularidea with the, like, very
amped up, like, over-the-toppoliteness system...
(33:11):
Yeah.
With so many different layers,like, historical layers to it.
...was very impressive to me.
Oh, thank you.
Could you tell me, like, where did youget the idea for that?
Mm-hmm.
And, like, the whole story for it,and also, like, the way that you developed
(33:35):
with the history ofthe language and the
differing levels offormality and 600 pronouns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I actually don't knowwhat the real number is.
It's definitely over 600.
And that's, like, not counting the caseforms of each of them.
(33:56):
Yeah.
So, I had the idea forthat language, I want
to say, like, a yearand a half beforehand.
And by that, I mean I had a shell of it.
Like, it was, like, I had the idea of,oh, I would like to make a language with a
Polynesian -style-type phonology,and it's polysynthetic.
And I made...
(34:17):
Like, a beta versionof the syllabary for it,
and then it kind ofcollected dust for a while.
And I wanted to join theCursed Conlang Circus.
So, eventually, that got announced.
I was like, okay, well, what am I going todo?
I need to figure out what I'm doing.
And I had always wanted to do a conlangshowcase, but I never really did.
(34:41):
Something about it just didn't feel right.
I wanted to do something different,something interesting.
So, the theme for... Well, one ofthe themes was tell a story in there.
And I was like, ah, that's how I can doit.
Because I wanted to do it somehowdiegetically, rather than, like,
omnipotent God explaining how the wholeregion and all the languages work in there.
(35:06):
So, I ended up thinkingabout, like, how can I make
something that would workstill like a conlang showcase?
But incorporate the language and the worldinto some kind of plot.
"Plot", in quotes.
(35:27):
Right.
And so, I ended up coming with...
I had this shell of a language that I hadmade before.
And I was like, oh, cool.
I'll develop that for this.
And it turned into the whole formalitything when I was thinking of, oh,
well, what if I wasgiven the... The...
The... The... Basicsof the language.
(35:49):
And then, turns out that was the informalversion.
And I've been rude to them the whole time.
And then that kind of snowballs as itdoes.
Yeah, yeah.
As it does.
And I kind of kept thinking about,like, how can I take this formality thing,
like, to the extreme while still beingnaturalistic?
(36:13):
Naturalism is something that I reallyenjoy.
And I haven't seen a ton of conlangs.
It would go in the cursed category.
That's, like, inherently naturalistic.
So, I wanted to do something like that.
So, I thought about formality and,like, relationships and things.
So, that's where I came up with therelationship forms for each of the names.
It came from Japanese.
(36:35):
Aka-chan, aka-kun, senpai.
All of those kind of endings.
And I was like, well, how can I push thisto the extreme?
And...
That's when I thought about, oh, I caninclude that as part of the other things.
And that's where theetymology of all of those
verb forms and adjectivalforms came from.
(36:58):
So, I...
It really started withthe, like, tell a story
as something that Iwanted to do for a long time.
So, that's... I guess that'swhere that kind of came from.
What I'm understanding is, like,you had the prompt, tell a story.
(37:18):
And the idea was, how can you make thelanguage itself the conflict of the story?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, from there, you decide,oh, we'll do a politeness system.
And that becomes, like, a plot point inthe thing.
(37:43):
Because, you know, you have to actuallylearn the politeness
system in order tointeract with people.
Right.
Right.
And then, you make it cursed by addinglayers of historical cruft to it.
And, like, way too many forms to memorize.
(38:04):
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tons of suppletion.
Yeah.
All of those things.
All with the CV structure.
Normal, quote, "normal" phonology.
And, yeah, because, like, I had an idea ofbuilding on that with, like, oh,
(38:27):
you know, what if I'vegotten this far, but I've
called this person thewrong form of their name.
And then I'm back to square one of,like, well, I don't know anything anymore.
Yeah.
But that was a great thing about thatvideo, is that it just, like, keeps going.
Yeah.
Like, at first, it's like, okay, you getthese notes from the Chinese researchers.
(38:52):
And then you go to that dimension.
And you find out, well, the sounds are alittle bit different because they're tree
people, but we'll just represent it thisway.
And then, well, actually, I've been usinginformal forms the whole time,
and I need to learn the correct forms inorder to not offend people constantly.
(39:14):
Yeah.
And then from there, it's like,oh, okay, there's, like, this,
like, historical underlayer to thepoliteness registers.
And then there's some words that arealways polite, always informal.
And then it goes into, oh, and then thesecyborg trees have a completely different
(39:35):
register that cannot be understood byhumans.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It just keeps going.
Yeah.
And going and snowballing.
Yeah.
And I think that that makes the story evenbetter.
Yeah.
Part of the idea was, I want to makesomething that you have to keep going
(39:57):
through different layers in order to getto the right meaning.
And that's where the idioms came from aswell.
Because I wanted to kind ofobscure meaning as much as
possible while somehowstaying, quote, naturalistic.
Yeah.
So we had all ofthe different...
So we had all of the differentforms on anything, plus
(40:17):
the polysynthesis ofeverything, plus all the idioms.
I go through the steps.
That's where that came from in the video.
And, like, you say you don't actually knowhow many pronouns there are.
I don't.
Like, is there, like, is it an open classof pronouns?
(40:38):
And you just, like, haven't made all ofthem?
I just haven't made all of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've counted.
I've counted.
There has to be at least 600.
I've made... Actually, I don'tknow how many I've made.
You can look on the,Lughati Portals
website, slash 78H, inthe pronouns section.
And I've made all of the pronouns relativeto the first and the second person.
(41:00):
All the pronouns relative to the thirdperson, I haven't made yet.
Because, I mean, we haven't done enoughresearch on those yet to...
to...
to put them down in the graph yet.
Because they take so long.
Because I have to historically evolve eachof them and think about their evolution of
(41:25):
all those things and add supletion and addthose exceptions and things.
And I'm like, well, this... Isthis a homonym of anything?
It's a homonym of this word.
Okay, what is this?
Lots of... Lots of steps.
So, there's at least 600.
I have done the math to figure that out,at least.
Yeah.
Another thing about yourwork that I find interesting is you
(41:50):
have a particular way ofgoing about constructing scripts.
In that you basically...
You say that you basicallytake a font and you just, like,
change some things, deletesome things, modify some things.
Yeah, yeah.
Can you talk about, like, how did you comeup to that idea for making your scripts?
(42:13):
Yeah, yeah.
Not all of mine.
Two of the languagesin my next video are
going to be, like,fully, like, I drew that.
Stuff like that.
But...
So, I was doing that for a little bit.
I was working... I use Birdfont,which is a font program.
It's free, which is incredible.
(42:35):
And, like, that was all fine and good andI was doing that and it was fine.
But I found that I'm not a vector artistby any means.
I can draw, like, ahandwritten font in Photoshop
and then, you know,convert it to vectors.
But if I wanted somethingthat was a little more
techie, per se, like thefont in O'EAIĀ, you don't...
(43:01):
You know, you can't just, like,write that out in Photoshop.
That's not going to look techie enough,at least in my experience.
So, I was like, well, Birdfontallows me to import fonts to just
look at and edit anddo whatever I want with.
(43:24):
So, I, you know, went on Google Fonts,fonts that are free for commercial
personal use, commercial and personal use,I should say.
And, you know, you look attheir license and stuff and they're
like, you can modify this fontand use it however you want.
So, I've been doing that.
It's a lot easier for me because I'm,like I said, I'm not a vector artist.
(43:49):
And honestly, like, the fonts are somangled to a point where, like,
I had a couple of people find the originalfont for O'EAIĀ and they were like,
this feels so weird looking at it inEnglish because it just feels so different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, like, I imagine, like, you arefinding...
(44:12):
You're finding characters that...
Oh, yeah.
...are approximate, like, approximatelywhat you want in modifying them.
But, like, the underlying system is,like, a fully realized conscript that you.
..
that is built for that language,right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, I make the script beforehand.
Like, I scribble it out in Photoshop.
(44:34):
I'm like, okay, this is this syllabiccharacter or whatever, this shape because
it came from this logogram or, youknow, whatever the history is behind that.
And then...
I take that shape thatI've decided is going to
be the letter, the glyphis the correct term.
And then I look atthe font and all of the
(44:55):
glyphs that areavailable to me in the font.
And I say, okay, whichone of these can I modify the
easiest to look likewhat I want it to look like?
Generally, I'm able to get it close enoughwith...
Sometimes with a lot of modification.
(45:15):
But, yeah, it always starts with,like, this is what I want it to look like
because this is where it historically camefrom.
And then I modify stuff to make it looklike that.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if it's a process,it works.
And that...
I did not know that piece of it.
(45:36):
So, you are, like, doingthe work of even drawing
it out and doing thehistorical development of it.
But then you take an existingfont and you find something
that you can turn into thecharacter you already drew.
Yeah.
That's an interesting way to go about it.
(45:59):
And something that, youknow, maybe some other
conlangers out there mightwant to do something similar.
This can be an inspiration for people whowant to get into making scripts.
But are not...
I'm not as confident about free drawing inSVG programs.
(46:21):
I know that I have some...
First time in a long time doing a script.
I did scripts earlier on, but let's nottalk about that too much.
But, like, for Ndăkaga, like, I intentionallywas choosing something where I...
(46:44):
where I would havelimited, like, strokes that were
easy to create in orderto make that first script.
Next one... Nextone is for fae.
Yeah.
I'm not going to be able to do that kindof thing for myself.
(47:06):
That sounds squiggly.
I'm going to have to...
I'm going to have to think about what kindof aesthetic I'm going to do for that.
But... Yeah.
Depending on what youwant, that seems like it
can be an effective,like, method for doing it.
So it's really interesting.
And it's a different process than what Ihave seen other people do.
(47:29):
Which is, you know, that's a great thingto highlight.
Because there are many different ways todo conlanging.
Like, do you... It seems like youdo do some historical development.
You do, like... Historicalmethod for conlanging.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Honestly, that's, like, probably myfavorite part.
(47:49):
Is, like, making aproto-language and then trying
to see how I can get it toevolve in different ways.
It's really fun.
Yeah.
But...
Yeah.
So... A lot of people do that.
Not everybody.
But, yeah.
And it's interesting to see different waysof doing things.
(48:11):
You did say...
You have said...
In...
Before... That you tend to writeyour melodies first and then lyrics.
Mm-hmm.
And...
So, when you are writing the melody,are you still...
Are you already thinking about,though, what kinds of melodic structures
(48:35):
work best for the language you're going toput to it?
Generally, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I will think about, like, certain...
Word patterns.
Like, if I have... I havea language that's...
The stress is always at the end of theword.
Or the... Yeah.
Like, the...
The last syllable in the word,I should say.
(48:57):
So, I think about the melody and I'm like,okay, well, if I want this kind of melody
to sound like this in thislanguage, I need to make
sure that I have wordsthat will fit in that structure.
So, it's a little bit of back and forthsometimes.
But, for the most part, I do do the melodyfirst.
With that, at least broadly in mind.
I...
(49:19):
It's a lot easier to getsomething sounding musical
than it is to get somethingthat sounds like...
I have a text that I've already written andI need to put it to some kind of melody.
At least in my workflow, it's easier tohave the melody first.
And then... Yeah.
Get stuff that fits.
(49:40):
Yeah.
So...
And then you can sort of...Write the lyrics to match it.
But...
That is interesting.
Sort of...
I can imagine you talked earlierabout, you know, if you have
differences in vowel length,differences in syllable weight.
Yeah.
That can affect, like, youneed to put some longer
(50:03):
duration notes intothere on those syllables.
Or if you've got... I imagine, like,initial stress versus final stress.
Mm-hmm.
That would affect where you would put anaccent in a line.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
Where it would go in the rhythm.
Yeah.
(50:23):
If it's an on-beat, then that's going tosound more stressed.
Even if the...
It's said with equal stress.
It being on an on-beat will feel morestressed.
Right.
Because of how we interpret rhythm andstuff.
So...
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's...
Music theory.
on Conlangery here.
Yeah.
Music theory.
(50:45):
But it is... It isvery interesting.
Do you...
So, I mean, you kind of mentioned,like, you want it to sound nice to humans.
But do you actually think about,like, whether these aliens have any
differences in theirown conception of music
(51:09):
theory that wouldmake it into your music?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you were talking earlier about thecyborg register in ʻŌʻiʻeʻa.
That video, I talk about the seven-tonepitch system that's in there.
So, normally in...
(51:29):
Normally in musictheory, we have 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,12 notes per octave.
And that's just the standard for Westernmusic.
But...
You know, that's... It's notentirely an arbitrary number.
Trying to put this back.
It's not entirely an arbitrarynumber, but really, I mean,
(51:50):
cultures can come up withany ways to divide the octave.
So, 7 just made sense for them.
They have base 8.
So, all of their music is in this seven-tone system.
So, they only have seven tones per octaveinstead of the 12 that we do.
So, it might sound a little weird andwonky to us.
(52:12):
So, it's 7 and not 8?
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh.
So, it's like less than... So, ithits the octave at the seventh one?
It hits the octave at the eighth one.
Oh, okay.
So, it's like A, B, C, D, E, F...
(52:35):
Wait, yeah.
E, F, A.
Okay.
But it's not those notes in the way thatwe would know them.
Okay.
But it's different from a diatonic scale.
Let me Google diatonic scale.
(52:59):
It's different from a major or minorscale.
Oh, yeah.
Well, yeah.
In a sense, yes.
Because it's just those seven notes.
There's no divisions of it.
As you can see, I am very well versed inmusic theory.
No, it's fine.
But, yeah, it is different.
Yeah.
(53:20):
So, that is interesting.
Right.
So, there's like a little bit of adifference in how they construct a scale.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And so, that by itself can work.
(53:44):
I was just interested because,yeah, you can have...
I mean, there's lots ofdifferent scales in the
real world, in our ownvarious different cultures.
There are different ideas about rhythm.
There tend to be some universals that Ithink probably would carry over.
(54:06):
But there's a lot of variation,right?
Yeah.
I try to get that balance.
Yeah.
The song that we were playing earlier is agood example of the rhythm thing.
That's in the... it's like one,two, three, four, one, two, three,
four, one, two, three, one, two,three, four.
And that pattern continues, which isn'tvery conventional in this in this dimension.
(54:27):
Yeah, I figured that would be anotherexample to pull out real quick.
Right, so one, two, one, two, three,four.
It's fifteen.
Fifteen.
So it's like a 15/16 like thing?
It can be interpreted as 15/16 sort of,but it's more like four beats,
(54:52):
four beats, three beats, four beats.
Okay.
But it can also be interpreted as fivebeats of 3/4, or three beats of
5/4, depending on how the song iskind of structured rhythmically.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that kind of makes it sound at leastlike that three-four part makes it sound
(55:12):
not as odd to us, but thenstill hits you with like, oh,
oh, and you get that littleotherworldly feel in there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is interesting to just throw that inlike a slightly different rhythmic
structure that I don't think that's supercommon to take out that...
(55:40):
that particular way.
If it is, I've not heard of it.
Yeah, but yeah, let's... well it's beeninteresting talking to you.
And yeah, we're recording this beforehand.
I don't know what the result of...
(56:00):
the Cursed Conlang Circus is going tobe, but good luck on that part.
And good luck with your channel.
Thank you.
It seems like it's... Yeah.
It's doing very well right now,but it's, you know, it's a process.
It's a process.
It takes a while.
(56:23):
But it was really greatto talk to you about your
music and about howyou fit conlangs into it.
Anything, any last thoughts you have?
Anything you want to point people to?
Anything I want to point people to.
(56:43):
Let's see, I've, I've got a new videocoming.
I guess I will.
Yeah, I'll talk about this.
I got a new video coming out.
Probably February.
I'm not sure yet.
By the time this video comes out,hopefully I will be more sure.
But it will be a continuationof the same kind of
format that I did in in theCursed Conlang Circus video.
(57:06):
I'm making that into aseries and I'm going to
have a bunch of musicthat I'm going to play.
That comes out with each episode.
At least that's the plan right now.
So keep an eye out for that.
I'm working on a lot of stuff,a lot of music, lots of conlang stuff.
Are we going to havemore of you as as your
(57:26):
bird avatar shifting todifferent dimensions?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm hoping that there will be anoverarching plot.
That is that is kind of the plan rightnow.
On something for that.
But the.
We'll see, that's currently in the,in the in the works.
(57:47):
That's that's great.
Well, any any final thoughts for for foreveryone out there?
Any advice you have toother colleagues, maybe advice
to other musicians whowant to write conlang music?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you.
(58:08):
Oh, advice.
If you want to, if you want to makesomething, like, Google it, search it up
on YouTube or somethinglike chances are there's
there's going to besomething out there for it.
Because like, I didn't know conlanging waslike a thing until I, after like 10 years
or whatever, actually searched it up andfound so much stuff.
(58:30):
And now I'm making stuff that I wouldn'thave thought to make before.
So there's the wholeinternet of resources out
there as long as you havean internet connection.
So if you want to make something,search it up.
Someone's probably already taught you how.
Yeah, that's, that's definitely my take onthings.
(58:52):
Or maybe things, maybe sometimes thingscome to you.
Because like, I like, I started, I startedmaking some of my own music a little bit.
I just do instrumental stuff.
I haven't done conlang stuff with it.
Yeah, I've heard it.
Yeah.
But that was just from megetting suggested music theory
(59:17):
videos on YouTube, andthen going down a rabbit hole.
And I'm like, I'm just gonna write somestuff.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's fun.
I'm always making stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that's, that's really good advice.
And thank you ZeWei for coming on.
Thank you.
Go to, go, go to find ZeWei on YouTube.
(59:39):
If you're watching thison YouTube, I'll have,
have the, the, thechannel, like, added there.
But, yeah, thank you for coming on.
And happy conlanging.
Thank you for having me.
Happy conlanging.
Special thanks to my patrons on Patreon.
If you go over there right now,you can get early access to episodes.
(01:00:03):
You can get access to scripts for my soloepisodes.
And you can... You can go get access toexclusive polls for Tongues and Runes.
Thank you to...
Mintaka.
Kinnan Kigunda.
Connor Stewart Rowe.
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Jesse, Kaye
Alex Rossell Hayes.
Viren Patrick.
Tabby.
Alexis Hugleman.
Sylvia Sotomayor.
Grammar Antifa.
Wu Ming Shuai.
Grakka Grunk
Sigourney Hunter.
(01:00:47):
Iloivar Jaana Mentoleum.
Niclas Norblad.
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Artifexian.
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Paul Roser.
Lang Wyrm.
Our Table.
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asa.
Horn Bori
Conlangery's theme music is by NullDevice.
Conlangery is distributed undera Creative Commons Attribution
Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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