Shadowscent: The Darkest Conlang

Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom and Shadowscent: Crown of Smoke together compose the Shadowscent Duology (beware the Amazon Affiliate links!), the debut work of author P. M. Freestone. Shadowscent is a secondary-world low fantasy adventure set primarily in the Empire of Aramtesh, whose culture puts huge emphasis on scent, olfaction, and perfumery technology.

This would seem like the perfect sort of novel to incorporate a conlang, and I first found out about it via the Lingthusiasm podcast because one of the hosts, Lauren Gawne, actually created a conlang for it, which she gave a presentation on at the latest Language Creation Conference!

To my minor disappointment, there is not much actual Aramteskan language shown in the text, apart from proper names, so there's not a whole lot to analyze in my usual manner. We do, however, get one sentence of Old Imperial, the mother language from which modern Aramteskan descends, which comes up during a debate over what its proper translation into the modern language actually is:

masaat asytaa amidak snalu masaat kiregtaa traalapaame

While the full translation would potentially constitute a spoiler, we get a little bit of explanation with more repetitions of the Old Imperial words in this excerpt:

"We still use marsat for 'cloud', but the other terms have no modern equivalent. If we were to be literal, masaat asytaa and masaat kiregtaa translate to 'wet cloud' and 'dry cloud', more or less."

This is just plain old diagetic translation, but it does a nice job of almost-lampshading the implicit translation convention between the modern Aramteskan that the characters are "actually" speaking and the English that the reader can see. (As well as demonstrating phonological evolution between the archaic words and a modern equivalent.) And this causes me to wonder how direct that translation should be assumed to be, at least in this instance, because the speaker almost certainly would not have actually said the equivalent of "we still use the word 'cloud' for 'cloud'". Are there perhaps multiple modern words for "cloud", such that a different one was substituted in the latter case? Or did he really just say "we still use the word 'cloud'" with the extra "for 'cloud'" being added in "translation"? Something to keep in mind when crafting dialog that's supposed to be a translation--similar to the "it just happens to rhyme in English" trope. (This excerpt also tells us something about noun-adjective order in Old Imperial... but since syntax as well as phonology can change over time, we can't be sure that the same applies to modern Aramteskan! So you'll just have to wait for the grammar to be published. UPDATE: The grammar of Aramteskan is now available through Fiat Lingua.)

While I don't have a whole lot of Aramteskan text to analyze in context, though, I did manage to get an interview with Lauren Gawne for another behind-the-scenes look at how the language influenced the books.

Q: There was very little Aramteskan that actually made it into the text, aside from proper nouns. Was simply using it as a naming language the originally planned extent of its usage? If so, do you know the reasoning behind that? If not, and there was a plan to exhibit more of the language, what caused the change?

A: There’s one phrase-length string of Old Aramteskan in the first book (see above). Other than that, the language appears either directly as a naming language or indirectly in a variety of in-world structures, such as the way people greet each other, insults, socio-dialectal dynamics and the way the currency is structured.

This was the extent the language was always intended to feature in the books. The additional depth to the language was something I worked on in part for my own interest. PM Freestone is a long-time colleague and collaborator, and they brought me into the worldbuilding on this project really early. I don’t normally get the chance to work with authors so early in the process, normally there’s a world, characters and/or plot already in place. Being on board from the start was a chance for me to build something more structured while also helping to build out the world for the books.

While of course I always like to see the actual language in a secondary-language situation, I think this is an excellent addition to the list of Reasons Why You Need A Conlang; a simple naming language already adds a lot, and Shadowscent is a demonstration of how thinking about the language, even if it never makes it to the page, can feed back into informing the culture and character interactions.

Q: Was there any consideration of including a pronunciation guide in the books?

A: Not that I’m aware of. I’m very sanguine about the fact that there are names and words that people will bring their own pronunciation to. I try to structure the language and the names to minimise the likelihood of that, but it happens and it’s ok.

My conlanging for other people’s work always accounts for the medium and the audience when it comes to the sound and the structure of the language. A conlang is there to enrich the experience, not to pull people out of the world.

A related excerpt from the forthcoming Aramteskan grammar:
Aramteskan was created with the aim that it be easy to read for English speakers, using the Latin alphabet. I have deliberately avoided using diacritics or other markings. Aramteskan mostly exists in the written medium and so I have avoided using sounds beyond English phonology, since people will encounter the language as written rather than spoken.
...
Stress is free, based on how English speakers find the words best to pronounce. A more consistent stress system can be developed if this needs to become a spoken language.

Q: What was the editor/publisher's opinion on developing a conlang for the books? Did they even have one?

A: I think what is immediately apparent in PM Freestone’s work is the general depth of worldbuilding that underpins the fast-paced narrative. The language building is just one element of the cultural and physical world building that they bring to their work, so I don’t think it was something that was singularly noticed in the work process. The publisher trusted them to deliver a rich and fulfilling story and I’d like to hope that the language helped them accomplish that.

Q: At what point in the writing process was the language "finished"? Did it develop more between books 1 and 2?

A: There are still so many things I’d tinker on, but there are more projects to do then there are hours in the day. Putting together the materials I have to publish with Fiat Lingua (forthcoming) is part of trying to draw a line under Aramteskan now that the books are finished. The structure of the language was broadly in place by the end of book one, and then for book two it was mostly about adding vocabulary and tweaking a few things, including fleshing out the pronoun paradigm to make sure Rakel’s chat with another character (spoilers!) about pronouns and gender make sense within the structure of the language.

Q: Are you aware of reader feedback specifically about the linguistics content? Is it practically nonexistent, generally positive, or generally negative?

A: I haven’t seen too much, but then I am happy to not spend time delving into the bookwebs (either as a creator or a reader!). A lot of the positive feedback has come from linguists and authors. When it comes to authors they love hearing about how building a rich conlang can help give motivation to narrative, characters and the world they’re building. Linguists enjoy hearing how conlanging can be a creative way to highlight the constraints of what we know about existing language typologies, for example almost a quarter of the world’s languages have a grammar feature that shows the source of evidence for a statement (in English we use additional, optional phrases like ‘I saw’ or ‘I heard’), but none of those languages have a distinct category for scent-based evidentials. I always like to find one or two ways to push against my own tendency to be very focused on naturalness, and deliberately build in features unattested in natlangs. Linguists appreciate the humour and creativity in that.

So there you go! It's just not just me who likes linguistic content in books! But if you, current reader, happen not to be a linguist or another author, but you have opinions about the linguistic content in Shadowscent, leave a comment or @ me on Twitter! More data is always good!

And finally, a bit of con-historical linguistic nerdery:

Q: Have I correctly interpreted the grammar as indicating that "ph" represents an aspirated p in the language of Doskai, but was loaned as /f/?

A: That’s pretty much how it goes. This is one of those moments where the conlang builds itself around the constraints inadvertently created by the author. Aphorai was a place that was named by PM Freestone in early drafts, and I never managed to budge that <ph>, even when they were happy with the phonology of the language in general. So, /f/ as <ph> became a sound in the language specifically in that region, and specifically loans from a long lost older language. You’ll also notice that it pops up in names from that area, such as Sephine. This kind of chaos would stress me out when I started creating languages, now I appreciate the way it builds in more texture and natlang style layers.

And I think there's a useful lesson there in how artistic creativity can be sparked by constraints!

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The Mandalorian & Tusken Sign Language

A long time ago, in a language community far, far away, a bounty hunter negotiated with some desert nomads in a sign language....

Two episodes of Disney's The Mandalorian feature on-screen portrayals of a constructed sign language: Tusken Sign Language or Tusken Raider Sign Language. Since Star Wars is a Disney property now, and it is in fact Disney's The Mandalorian, I suppose this makes TSL Disney's fourth actual conlang, after Atlantian, Kumandran, and Barsoomian. The Star Wars franchise, however, is not really known for its linguistic sophistication (Greedo, whom Han shot, for example, just speaks random phrases of garbled Quechua; portrayal of alien languages in Star Wars generally has been the domain of sound designers rather than linguists or conlangers), and this bit of conlang representation came about essentially by accident: sign language was specified in the script, and someone on the crew suggested that, if they are going to portray signing, they really ought to get an actual Deaf person to consult, and that Deaf person (one Troy Kotsur, who also plays one the Tusken Raiders) decided to come up with a conlang!

Essentially all of the publicly-available information about this process comes from one almost-8-minute video interview (with English transcripts) done with Troy by The Daily Moth, a dedicated ASL news site. Of course, information about the language itself is also extractable from the scenes in which it occurs, and a Tusken Raider Sign Language Facebook group has been established to study and decipher it; as of now, very little deciphering has actually occurred, but Troy is a member of that group, which gives it some legitimacy, and leaves open the possibility that one might actually get authoritative answers if one asks questions there.

Of course, none of this would've happened if some sort of sign language had not been specified in the script in the first place, which raises the question of why anybody thought that signing should be in the script! George Corley of Conlangery suggested to me that it might be because the Tuskens' vocalizations were already established as the sounds of braying donkeys, which doesn't really lend itself to a proper language--but that presupposes that the writers actually cared about portraying a plausible language in the first place, an assumption that I find heavily suspect given the portrayal of Frog Lady's supposedly-linguistic vocalizations in the same show. Wookiepedia claims that the Tusken language is a multi-modal combination of vocalizations and sign, but that seems to be a retcon to explain the appearance of sign language in The Mandalorian, not a reference to a common source that The Mandalorian may have drawn from, and the questionably-canonical Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know (updated edition; note that these are, as usual, Amazon Affiliate links) already claimed consistent English translations for particular (transcriptions of) Tusken vocalizations. The most plausible explanation to me comes from this tweet by Star Wars Autograph News, which claims that it is "undoubtedly" a reference to Plains Native American Sign Language.

So, how is this new language actually used? As with Disney's previous use of Kumandran and The Dragon Prince's portrayal of ASL, The Mandalorian completely eschews the use of subtitles in favor of a combination of Making it Obvious and diagetic translations / explanations (with the shortage of direct translations in the on-screen source material making fan decipherment rather difficult!)

Unlike Raya and The Dragon Prince, The Mandalorian is clearly not aimed at a child audience, so they don't need to worry about the literacy level of their viewers. Why then, would they avoid subtitling? I expect a large part of it is just the biased expectation that audiences won't like them, but whether or not it was actually on purpose, I think the decision actually worked out for the best in this context. One could argue that subtitling of Tusken would be appropriate because Mando speaks Tusken and Mando is our viewpoint character--but, Mando is not a first-person main character, and there is essentially no dramatic irony in the series as far as Mando is concerned. If we, the audience, know something, then Mando also knows it, but the converse is not true; we do not know everything that Mando knows, and that is on purpose. He is supposed to be a mysterious figure. If The Mandalorian were a serial novel rather than a TV show, it would be told in limited third person, not first. Thus, we shouldn't necessarily have subtitles for the same reason that we don't get voiceover narrations in this show: we are not supposed to be inside Mando's head. If someone else in the scene is confused, we should be confused.

That said, let's get finally get into the nitty-gritty stuff!

Tusken Sign Language first shows up briefly in Chapter 5: The Gunslinger, with this conversation:

[Mando signs to the Tuskens.]
Calican: "What are you doing?"
Mando: "Negotiating."
[More back-and-forth signing.]
Calican: "What's going on?"
Mando: "We need passage across their land."
[More back-and-forth signing.]
Mando: "Let me see the binocs."
Calican: "Why?"
[Mando tosses the binocs to one of the Tuskens.]
Calican: "Hey! What?"

This already shows that mix of diagetic explanation and Making it Obvious. While some of the signs are pretty iconic, Troy is probably the only person who can give us a complete literal translation, but the context makes it easy to reconstruct a basic outline. Mando is negotiating, he hands over the binocs, they conclude--he must have agreed to trade the binocs as payment for passage across Tusken land.

While there's not much here, this minimal interaction is narratively necessary to establish in a low-stakes setting the fact that Mando knows the Tusken language and has reasonably amicable dealings with them, so that that skill can be employed with much higher stakes later on, and there is indeed considerably more representation of Tusken Sign, along with Tusken vocalization, in Chapter 9: The Marshal.

Initially, we see some signing with Irrelevant content during the desert crossing montage shot, while Mando sitting around campfire with Tuskens. This is just showing us the language for flavor, and to remind the audience that Mando has that skill.

For the most part, the remaining Tusken language is handled with minimal diagetic explanation, with the audience taking the point of the view of Cobb Vanth. E.g.,

[Mando engages in multi-modal communication with Tuskens]
Cobb: "Hey partner, you wanna tell me what's goin' on?"
Mando: "They want to kill the krayt dragon, too."

and later: 

[Tuskens add more tokens to their battle map.]
Cobb: "That's more like it. Where are they gettin' the reinforcements?"
Mando: "I volunteered your village."

with a few instances of what may be more direct translation in the form of indirect reported speech:

Mando: "He says your people steal their water, and now you insult them by not drinking it."
"They know about Mos Pelgo, they know how many Sand People you killed."
Cobb: "They raided our village! I defended the town!"
Mando: "Lower your voice."
Cobb: "I knew this was a bad idea."
Mando: "You're agitating them."

and direct reported speech:

Cobb: "What are you telling them?"
Mando: "The same thing I'm telling you. If we fight amongst ourselves, the monster will kill us all."
Mando, SimComming with English, slowly: "Now, how do we kill it?"

And in one instance, they actually exploit the unique capacities of the visual modality to allow Mando to report on someone speaking in sign at an extreme distance, via binocs:

[Tusken signing at long distance]
Cobb: "What'd he say?"
Mando: "He says it's sleeping. If we listen carefully we can hear it breathing."

I somehow doubt that the show's writers planned ahead to introduce a sign language just to allow that one scene to work (if they hadn't, a walkie-talkie would've served just as well), but hey, now you know that that's something you can do! 

So, that's Tusken Sign Language in The Mandalorian! If you liked this post, please consider making a small donation!

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Into the Night of Language Diversity

Into the Night is a 2020 Belgian Netflix-original series (apparently inspired by the Polish sci-fi novel The Old Axolotl [beware the Amazon Affiliate link!], although I see very little resemblance myself; it feels to me more like an SCP Tale in the 001 Daybreak canon, just without the shambling blob monsters), which has an ensemble cast of characters from a wide range of linguistic backgrounds--and it fully embraces that fact! There is no single language shared by all of the characters (although between French and English we have them all covered), and no on-screen translation convention; everyone is portrayed as speaking the language they would really be speaking at any given moment. The official language of the series as indicated by Netflix is French, and that does seem to be the most common language spoken throughout the series (which is sensible, given that the story starts in Belgium), but I'm not actually sure it's a majority--and if it is, it's clear that other languages are not treated as second-class. If you don't turn on the subtitles, you have to just know every language that's spoken in order to follow the plot; like War & Peace, it does not have a primary language with affordances to make secondary languages accessible--it just is fully multilingual. As such, there is not much to say about the techniques it uses for language affordance; it's just subtitled! You could maybe make an argument for a couple cases of Making It Obvious, but they're not really trying; and I can think of one case of diagetic translation, but that's because the original speaker was mumbling and would've been unintelligible otherwise regardless of the audience's linguistic prowess.

Unlike War & Peace, however, the sheer diversity of languages represented on screen (French, English, Flemish, Russian, Arabic, Italian, Turkish, German, and a throwaway bit of Mandarin right at the beginning) means that you can't actually expect any significantly-sized audience to actually know all of them. No matter who is watching, you will need subtitles at some point--so Into the Night just goes all out and subtitles everything, uniformly. So, given a sufficient number of subtitle tracks, it does not need to assume its audience speaks any of the featured languages--the viewer can pick whatever linguistic representation they need, without changing the video. At the moment, Netflix only offers subtitles in English, French, and Chinese, but all three language groups are in pretty much the same boat. Which leads me to the intriguing conclusion that this is a bit of story-telling media with no primary narrative languages.

Now, there are ways of telling stories with no spoken or written language at all--wordless picture books, mime shows, LEGO assembly instructions--and that's a whole interesting area of study to get into on its own. Heck, you could probably do interesting stuff with a series of statuary forming 3D "frames", although I don't know of any examples myself. And if that interests you, I must recommend the work of Dr. Neil Cohn, the Visual Linguist, and his Visual Language Lab, which looks at conventions of graphical representation and how they support storytelling either in conjunction with or in absence of written language across different cultures.

But that's not really my thing. My thing is explicitly analyzing the narrative use of secondary languages. And while, as I have just explained, Into the Night doesn't really do the secondary language thing, the way that it manages to not do it is fascinating. I can't imagine that this is the first bit of media to do something like this, but it's the first one I've noticed, and it just blows my mind, even if for no other reason that helping to better define the boundaries of my area of interest. And what it is doing is something that I just cannot imagine working very well in any other medium. You could imagine, for example, a multilingual opera with the libretto printed in a variety of languages in the play book for the audience to follow along, but that suffers from dividing the audience members' attention between page and stage. I am told that modern opera productions sometimes display the translations on screens for the audience, but then you are implicitly choosing a privileged language for at least that performance--the whole audience, regardless of background, is forced to rely on a single language chosen for the cinematic captions. And since subtitling relies on multimodal perception, or at least multichannel perception--you can read the subtitles while listening to the actors' spoken dialog, or read subtitles in your foveal vision while remaining aware of signing on another part of the screen (although Into the Night in particular does not happen to feature any sign language), you really can't do it in print or audio. (Although, perhaps the War & Peace trick of having a audience-language foreground track superimposed over a uniform diagetic language background track might work for audio format? I don't know how annoying that would get if used so continuously; someone should try it!) This form of storytelling is something that is just fantastically well suited to the very specific medium of home-viewed video with selectable subtitles. It's not specifically a streaming video thing; you could imagine this being done on DVD, for example. But has anyone?

So, anyway. That's a thing you can do with video, apparently.

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