implement shortcode for interview question

content/articles/littauer-constructed_languages.md

@@ -8,7 +8,9 @@ summary: "Constructed languages, or conlangs, are the basis of a hobby, a scienc
 tags: [fiction, language, open source, software]
 ---
 
-*Can you tell me a bit about how you like to introduce yourself?*
+{{< i >}}
+Can you tell me a bit about how you like to introduce yourself?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Hello! I'm Richard Littauer. I use he/him pronouns. I have chronic ADHD and am probably on the autism spectrum, which means introducing myself is impossible. I saw someone recently on Bluesky who said, "My hobby is having hobbies," and that definitely applies to me.
 
@@ -18,13 +20,17 @@ I'm also a conlanger, which is the most common term I use. Sometimes I say const
 
 Xenolinguist is another possibility I've used before---*xeno* as in alien languages, from the Greek word *xenos*. I sometimes introduce myself as a classicist because I have formal training in Latin and Greek. I did five years of Latin in high school and two years of Greek in university. *Linguist* kind of subsumes classicist under it for some definitions, but not for others. Usually one of these terms is how I introduce myself.
 
-*How would you tell the story of your development as a conlanger? Where would you start that trajectory, and how did that beginning bring you to where you are now?*
+{{< i >}}
+How would you tell the story of your development as a conlanger? Where would you start that trajectory, and how did that beginning bring you to where you are now?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 There's this funny book---it's red with a black stripe down the side---called *The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth*. It's by Ruth Noel. I've had multiple versions because people keep giving it to me. There's an interesting bit where the author mentions that Tolkien's first conlang was the word *woc* for cow, which is just *cow* backwards. It's a really boring language since that's all we know. I'd argue that's not even a language---that's just a code word.
 
 That particular reference to Tolkien often comes to mind when I think about where I started with languages. One of the first things we do as humans is talk. I've been working with languages my whole life. My parents didn't teach me French even though I was homeschooled, which was a shame. They would talk in French over me with my sisters about my birthday presents. I was paid a quarter for every Latin name of a plant I learned when I was around six to ten, which was a great incentive. I probably got an easy buck that way.
 
-*Why was that important to them?*
+{{< i >}}
+Why was that important to them?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 For my mother, being literary was always very important. She wanted me to become C.S. Lewis---a preacher or academic writer about the kingdom of God.
 
@@ -48,7 +54,9 @@ I went viral in *The Sun*. I was a centerfold---they painted me and then libeled
 
 Over time, people would reach out asking if I could make a conlang for their game. I also joined the Language Creation Society, dedicated to building these things together as a consultancy for movie studios. I bombed out pretty quick because I had to make money. I had a master's program in computational linguistics, and I needed to pay off my student loans---I'm an American, so I paid my way through college.
 
-*Conlanging was not lucrative?*
+{{< i >}}
+Conlanging was not lucrative?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 No way. At one point, I estimated I made maybe $2,000 total from all the Na'vi stuff, which included interviews on radio and getting flown to California. It wasn't a very good use of time, but it was incredibly fun.
 
@@ -62,7 +70,9 @@ I also taught Latin at a small high school in Vermont, coming full circle. I tau
 
 At this point, I'm about as professional a conlanger as you can be without being David Peterson, who does this full time for major film studios. I've got an IMDB profile---I had to make it, but legally I was allowed to. I'm in the credits.
 
-*As somebody who has these dual interests of linguistics and computer systems, I'm curious about how you see parallels there. I see this concept of protocol as something that bridges both. Do you see working with computer languages as something parallel with building linguistic languages, or does it jog very different parts of your brain?*
+{{< i >}}
+As somebody who has these dual interests of linguistics and computer systems, I'm curious about how you see parallels there. I see this concept of protocol as something that bridges both. Do you see working with computer languages as something parallel with building linguistic languages, or does it jog very different parts of your brain?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 I have to be careful here because a lot of people say, "Oh, you know languages, you must be very good at programming and computer languages." But computer programming languages are quite different from conlangs. Conlangs tend to look like human languages most of the time. There are some that aren't, like Lojban, the logical language. There are some that really do, like Esperanto, which has about 100,000 native speakers---kids who've learned this language from birth.
 
@@ -74,13 +84,17 @@ What's interesting for me as a conlanger is that a lot of people discount constr
 
 These Latin names have really strict ways of being presented together, and for me it's just making a conlang.
 
-*By putting new rules around Latin names?*
+{{< i >}}
+By putting new rules around Latin names?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 It's not Latin, right? It's something that looks like Latin and that uses the Latin dictionary, but the rules they have and the protocol that scientists follow isn't actually Latin. It's another subset of Latin based on particular rules they put out. For me, that's very similar to prescriptivism---like saying, "Oh, you can't say, 'Me and my friends went to the mall,' you have to say, 'My friends and I went.'" All those things are just trying to make subsets of language for specific usages, so I see them as identical in terms of computational tools.
 
 It always becomes fuzzy for me because when I make conlangs, I use code to help me generate word lists and types of words by defining the phonotactic possibilities of the language. When I do that, I'm aware I'm making a subset of all possible languages that's actually unlike human languages, because human languages aren't perfect---we mess things up all the time. I live in an area of the world that has English as its language, New Zealand English, but there's also a suburb here called Ngaio because it's from Māori. You can't start words in English with "ng," but New Zealand doesn't care because it has Māori influences. That's kind of why conlangs aren't quite human---you try to set these strict structures.
 
-*Can you describe some of the process of how you go about developing a language? You talked a little bit there about the way you use computers as part of that process, and you also talked about walking around the room, flapping like an elephant. So how do you do this? Where do you begin?*
+{{< i >}}
+Can you describe some of the process of how you go about developing a language? You talked a little bit there about the way you use computers as part of that process, and you also talked about walking around the room, flapping like an elephant. So how do you do this? Where do you begin?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Let me scope this to how I professionally make languages for other people. I don't make a lot of languages for myself at the moment---I would like to, but I'm doing other stuff with my time.
 
@@ -100,13 +114,17 @@ Then I read out some sentences and translate basic things---"Joe saw the fox" or
 
 Remember that bit about flopping around sounding like an elephant? It becomes very difficult if the speakers don't have human mouths, so I have to figure out how it's going to work. Or with whistle languages---I've made a few of those now. How am I going to write that down? How's that going to work? I have to figure all that out. It's actually quite fun.
 
-*Have you done original written languages, like distinct alphabets?*
+{{< i >}}
+Have you done original written languages, like distinct alphabets?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 I haven't done a lot of them. I will be doing it for one contract I'm on right now. Written orthographies are really variable and different---that's a whole other subset of making things that's really fun and interesting.
 
 I made my own runes when I was an early teenager. I made my own set of futhark, but they were very dwarven. Let's face it, even Tolkien himself took all his stuff from other languages. A lot of conlangers just steal and then say, "Oh, I borrowed it." It's kind of fun.
 
-*You talked some about social dynamics in this process---your relationship with a friend where you are developing these together, or relationships with clients. What makes for a good collaboration in this context?*
+{{< i >}}
+You talked some about social dynamics in this process---your relationship with a friend where you are developing these together, or relationships with clients. What makes for a good collaboration in this context?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 I'm really bad at collaborating because I'm really scattered, and it takes me a while to get back to people. I've always been that way, and that's not going to change. I wish it could, but it's not. So I don't know what makes a good collaborator, except it's not me.
 
@@ -120,11 +138,15 @@ It's always fun to try to make that balance work because I try to make languages
 
 Trying to explain that to a client really helps. Back when I was a kid, it was the language that was most fun---we never actually bothered to make a world, we just made some languages and had a good time. The guy I did that mainly with went on to do a postgrad, and he's currently a postdoc at MIT studying gravity. You have to have a certain type of mind to really enjoy this sort of work. I just happened to know someone who had that kind of mind, which is great.
 
-*So what makes a conlang great art? What do you appreciate about a really beautiful language? What do you look for? And I'm sorry, I know any variant of "what makes art good?" is a horrible question.*
+{{< i >}}
+So what makes a conlang great art? What do you appreciate about a really beautiful language? What do you look for? And I'm sorry, I know any variant of "what makes art good?" is a horrible question.
+{{< /i >}}
 
 It's not a horrible question. I almost said "it's a good question," which is my least favorite thing to say when I'm interviewing.
 
-*Usually when people say "that's a good question," it means it's a bad question.*
+{{< i >}}
+Usually when people say "that's a good question," it means it's a bad question.
+{{< /i >}}
 
 It means they're stumped and don't know what to say. It's a really interesting question because it is hard to define the parameters of what makes art beautiful. I would say it depends on what I'm working on---it depends on what the goals are.
 
@@ -132,11 +154,15 @@ For me, a good conlang doesn't feel like a conlang. It doesn't sound like anothe
 
 A bad language is one where it's really difficult to pronounce. I made this language called Llérriésh (or Llama), and even I couldn't say it well. I mean, I tried really hard, but there were all these weird tone things going on. It was cool for me to do, and I think it ended up being kind of beautiful because it was really complex---I just wanted complexity at that point. But I would never curse anyone to try to learn that language, to try to speak it to other people. But it was beautiful to me.
 
-*How do you teach, say, an actor who has to speak a language that you've created?*
+{{< i >}}
+How do you teach, say, an actor who has to speak a language that you've created?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 First thing to do is go through some basic words and say, "Here's how this is pronounced, here's how that's pronounced." You have to make sure that your orthography is standard. You can't use English orthography because English orthography is the worst. You have to be like, "Okay, 'a' is always 'ah', it's never 'eh'."
 
-*Do you use a phonetic alphabet?*
+{{< i >}}
+Do you use a phonetic alphabet?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Yeah, so I try to use a pseudo-IPA. I don't really give them IPA because that's too hard. But I try to say, "This is always like this, and that's always like that." The j's are always j's, they're never y's, something like that.
 
@@ -144,19 +170,25 @@ It also involves accepting that when they mess up, that's part of the language.
 
 It's definitely difficult for some things. English speakers have a lot of weird stuff going on. English is not a normal language---it's a unique language, just like every other language. Our r's---the American r is a really rare sound in the world. It's not a common sound. So trying to convince other people that "Oh no, every r is"---it's tough. You have to explain that over and over again, like "Oh no, it's not 'Sauron,' it's 'Saurrron.'"
 
-*What are some of the most important decisions in creating a language?*
+{{< i >}}
+What are some of the most important decisions in creating a language?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 How many vowels are there? Is it tonal? How many tones are you going to have? What's the syntax going to be? That's always a really common one. Is it SVO, is it VOS---verb, subject, etc.? What's the order of words? Is this a language that's going to be written or not? Is this a language that's going to have a lot of things translated in or not?
 
 What format are you storing your lexicon in? How are other people going to be able to edit that format with you? How will you present the information to a client is one of the main things. I often use a tripartite interlinear gloss translation where I have the original writing, then each word written out with all the morphemes in it, then the translation. I always try to do that, at least, because otherwise you end up with them not knowing where to put the emphasis on words.
 
-*Do you generally deliver a dictionary and a grammar? How do you---what do you deliver? Say more about that.*
+{{< i >}}
+Do you generally deliver a dictionary and a grammar? How do you---what do you deliver? Say more about that.
+{{< /i >}}
 
 A .docx file, or maybe a Google Doc, with all the lines that have been translated or need to be translated, and a short dictionary of how it works, and maybe a short grammatical primer. Not massive. For the Mulefa language, I also had a whole two or three pages on how the finger movements should work for humans talking. I decided you just use your primary finger instead of a trunk---the great thing about humans is we don't have large proboscises. We don't have---it's really hard for me to signal with my nose "to the left." I don't know how I would do that, so it's like, just use your finger. So I had to explain how that works, and how the different variations would work---wiggling or harsh movements.
 
 For another language I made, it was really important that I explained the different types of weird sounds that a goblin might make, and what clicks are, and how those work together, and how you would write that because I was giving it to sound people who then had to implement this.
 
-*Is there a lot that you have to develop on the back-end that you don't show the client? Is there a more complex grammar?*
+{{< i >}}
+Is there a lot that you have to develop on the back-end that you don't show the client? Is there a more complex grammar?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Yes, but it's also smoke and mirrors. A lot of the time, because I'm a contractor and have to cut down on my hours at some point, I can't spend ages debating whether a word should be something. Sometimes I'm like, "Okay, here's the thing," and I just thought of that in two minutes---but that was the two minutes I had to give you.
 
@@ -168,7 +200,9 @@ You have to write these things down. Otherwise you end up completely confused be
 
 Writing all these things down really helps you out, and the best way I've learned how to do it is to do it ad hoc, but document it well. Then trust your earlier decisions and listen to them, and don't mess up.
 
-*How constrained do you think of the range of linguistic possibilities as being? I'm thinking here about the old Chomsky debates about whether language is a kind of cognitive structure as opposed to something that is an infinite playground. Even when you've developed languages for non-human beings---do you think of it like, "Okay, here's a checklist, there's a structure, there are some rules that you can't break"?*
+{{< i >}}
+How constrained do you think of the range of linguistic possibilities as being? I'm thinking here about the old Chomsky debates about whether language is a kind of cognitive structure as opposed to something that is an infinite playground. Even when you've developed languages for non-human beings---do you think of it like, "Okay, here's a checklist, there's a structure, there are some rules that you can't break"?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Yes, there's always some rules you can't break, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to signal. I have not yet written a language that's entirely identical to the HTTP protocol---I could do that, that is a language, it's a way of signaling information.
 
@@ -182,17 +216,23 @@ What helps me when I have to make these hard decisions around bizarre languages
 
 I have also tried to make languages that are impossible.
 
-*What do you mean by that?*
+{{< i >}}
+What do you mean by that?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 The less we talk about that the better. I mean, it doesn't really work because I'm human and I use a human brain. Languages that don't make sense according to normal human structures---it doesn't work at the end of the day. I haven't found a way to make one that doesn't make a ton of sense.
 
 Bird language is a good example. With whistling languages, humans are just never going to be able to do that well. I'm not pitch-perfect in the first place, but on top of that, it's just really difficult. You can make languages, but they're more like codes because they're never used to communicate effective things. I mean, Na'vi had a vocabulary of like 2,000 words last time I was using it, and we had long conversations. We translated *A Midsummer Night's Dream*-type things into it. But the conversations were mainly like "Hello! How are you? I'm good. I'm having some eggs with the rock that you get from the ocean where it is bitter"---because there's no word for salt, so you have to do these weird circumlocutions. We're always limited by our time and ability.
 
-*Is there something that, if you had infinite time, you would love to be able to do someday?*
+{{< i >}}
+Is there something that, if you had infinite time, you would love to be able to do someday?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 My immediate thought was, I would like to fix the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
 
-*Tell us about why it's broken.*
+{{< i >}}
+Tell us about why it's broken.
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Oh man, like there are agreement rules where adjectives have to agree with genera, but not if they're not a Latin or Greek word. And if it's a Greek word but it's been Latinized, then you have to change it---but they don't really talk about what Latinization is.
 
@@ -206,7 +246,9 @@ In terms of other stuff, if I had infinite time and infinite play---because play
 
 Malta is a really good example of what happens when you mix Italians and Arabs, and then you end up with Maltese. "Chocoholic" is one of my favorite words because it's the stem "chocolate" combined with "holik," which is Arabic. Why not make a whole language that's mixed like that? That would be really fun, just really weird. I'd like to have Algonquian languages spoken on the east coast again, so let's figure out how to do that really well. I like those sort of historical "what if?" questions. What if Hastings had never happened?
 
-*You've talked about a lot of histories as you're doing this kind of work. How do you think of yourself as part of these earlier legacies? I mean, you talked about Tolkien, and you talked about zoology and taxonomy---whose shoulders are you standing on?*
+{{< i >}}
+You've talked about a lot of histories as you're doing this kind of work. How do you think of yourself as part of these earlier legacies? I mean, you talked about Tolkien, and you talked about zoology and taxonomy---whose shoulders are you standing on?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 Everyone's shoulders. Patrick O'Brian wrote a really awesome series of books called the Master and Commander series---there's like twenty-one of them. I just finished reading them all for the first time a few months ago. They were truly exceptional, and one of the great things about the books is that they're character-driven. They're about the friendship of two men, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
 
@@ -220,7 +262,9 @@ I try to have more fun, because I think that people should have more fun in the
 
 Fundamentally, I try to think of myself as not being much different than being a dude sitting next to a fire 10,000 years ago and telling a story to the person next to them. Because historically, I haven't changed much. Evolutionarily, I'm basically that same person---maybe I'm a bit stupider and a bit less tall. But that's what I want to do with my time.
 
-*Finally, are there any lessons you think this practice of conlanging has to offer to the rest of the world? Is there anything that you wish other people understood that people in this world do understand?*
+{{< i >}}
+Finally, are there any lessons you think this practice of conlanging has to offer to the rest of the world? Is there anything that you wish other people understood that people in this world do understand?
+{{< /i >}}
 
 I think about this interaction I had a lot. I went to a friend's house---she's a mother of three or four kids, she was a birder in Vermont. I was having tea on her back deck, and I saw this little common grackle come by, a bronzed grackle, and I said, "Quiscalus quiscula," or whatever it is.