Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 49

My Little Pony

You might remember last week when I made up a language for My Little Pony. The process taught me a lot, but what matters is I got a pretty good grammar and lexicon for the Proto-Pony language.

In any case, after a bit more vocabulary-building and some spelling reforms, I’m ready to conclude this project with a translation of, what else, the My Little Pony theme song.  The syllables line up and everything!

Original

ahí ìmKíhhHí HHRāhhmPHàm!

PāmMHah:mMām HíPHāhh KìMíPHahHār MHāMíKa.

ìmPāhhMām HíPHāhh Hhí:rPHahHār HíhhKa.

ihMà:ri íhhHà QQWáíPHàm.

Mà:Hí BahBāhh ā:BíHàī: ā:ì:r.

PāhhārHàMām QihHàHíPHahHār HahíHSír.

Hhí:r ā:HHahHHàrMām HíhhHār HahíPHàm.

ahí ìmKíhhHí HHRāhhmPHàm!

Mahí ìmHà MHāmPHàm ahí!

Translation

Be little ponies!

I would often wonder about working toward friendship.

(Then) You all gave some magic toward that.

Danger is fun.

A lot of courage is beautiful and is strong.

We share kindness with each other.

Magic makes that gallop as a herd.

Be little ponies!

You are my friends!

Loose translation

My Little Pony, My Little Pony

I used to wonder what friendship could be

Until you all shared its magic with me

Big adventures

Tons of fun

A beautiful heart, faithful and strong

Sharing kindness is an easy feat

And magic makes it all complete

My Little Pony

Do you know you’re all my very best friends?

How to make a conlang

You might remember last week when I made up a language for My Little Pony. The process taught me a lot – I think I have A Method now for quick-and-easy language creation. Note that I haven’t actually done this yet, but for the next conlang I make, I’ll follow these simple steps…

1: Find (or write) a sample text in the conlang. The text should be culturally significant.

2: Make a google sheet with columns for conlang word (nothing yet), etymology (put basic vocabulary here, just as numbers for now), conlang word (see step 3), example sentence, gloss, and English translation of example sentence

3: Use the concepts in the text to set the basic vocbulary of the language. What concepts are default? What concepts are marked? Assign each concept a number

4: Figure out sentence structure of language: SVO, SOV, etc. Premodifying or post? Write example sentences with numbers (see step 3)

5: Figure out grammar: how do questions and tenses work? What concepts are default? What are marked? Write example sentences.

6: Figure out phonology. Use awkwords to generate basic words, and replace the numbers from (step 3)

7: Figure out word-formation. How do nouns become verbs etc. Generate new words. Make records in the etymology column.

8: Phonotactics. Figure out how sounds change depending on their surroundings. Copy etymology column into a seperate document and do a search-and-replace for these changes. Then past the results into the Conlang column.

9: Translate that original sample text into the conlang. Make a wacky literal translation back into English. Everyone will love it!

Now all that remains is to find that sample text! I’ve already done Trolls (the opening of “I Will Get Back Up Again“) and My Little Pony (the theme song). What do you think I should use next?

Clouds Pile on Mountains

Clouds pile on mountains.

Poppies float among the grass.

Soon there will be seeds.

The Rain on My Grass

The rain on my grass

Gives it what it needs to grow

And keeps the kids off

Grimm’s Law

This one is dedicated to Melissa Walshe

“Back in the days when it was still of help to wish for a thing,” muttered Jacob Grimm, “a younger brother dragged his elder brother deep into the wild woods in an attempt to work witchcraft.”

“Hush,” said Wilhelm, who was kicking at the root of an ancient apple tree. “And don’t use that word.”

“I’ll use whatever words I want in the middle of the night and the middle of the woods,” said Jacob. “If the wolves and owls hear me, let them bring the charge of blasphemy before the superintendent.”

Wilhelm’s foot struck stone. “Aha!” he said. “The hearthstone. We’ve found the house.”

“Did they even have hearthstones? Maybe it’s a sacrificial altar.”

“So what if it was? As long as there were people here, I’m satisfied.”

Jacob leaned against the tree and looked up at the stars through its gnarled branches. “Now that the wood has been firmly established as dark cold, and wild, we seek to prove it to be haunted as well.”

Jacob lifted his lantern, shining it in his brother’s face. “Where’s your word list? You didn’t forget it, did you?”

“No, I didn’t forget the damn word list.” Jacob pulled a folded piece of paper out of his coat pocket. “As if the ghosts we have back in Göttingen weren’t good enough.”

“They’re not,” said Wilhelm. “They’re too young and weak. There’s nothing in the records to indicate that any people lived on the River Gote even as late as the Caesars.”

“I suppose then I should be grateful you didn’t drag me to Rome,” said Jacob.

Wilhelm grinned behind his lantern. “Let the cardinals try to command the ghost of Cicero with their incantations. If you’re right about these sound changes, we’re going to make contact with people who were to the Romans as the Romans are to us.”

“The root, in fact, from which both our branches grow,” said Jacob, dryly. “I know. You don’t have to convince me. I convinced you that these sound changes were real, if you remember.”

Jacob unfolded his paper, although, he didn’t need it. The law that he had discovered was a simple one, and the sound changes it predicted should have been clear to anyone with a knowledge of German, Latin, and Greek.

“All right,” Jacob said. “Assuming that this place was once inhabited by the grandparents of the Romans and the Germans, they won’t understand us if we address them as Väter…” He paused, ears pricking. Nothing. Just a hedgehog snuffling in the leaves not far from his foot. “Nor patrēs…” still nothing, “nor yet patéres.”

“Yes, yes,” said Wihlem, “but if

becomes – ”

“It’s the other way around,” snapped Jacob, whose lower back ached abominably. “We’re working backward. The in Vater descends from a

in some earlier language, so the ancestors of the Germans, Greek, and Romans probably said something like patḗr...”

He held his breath. The wind blew through the apple tree, but no more strongly than usual.

“Is that all?” Wilhelm looked around, voiced raised as if berating the spirits of the local dead for their failure to understand. “Try again. Try something else.”

“Of course I will,” said Jacob. “Why would ancient people in Germany speak the old European language? They had already split from the ancestors of the southern people by the time they settled here, and their

sound had become . To them I would say…” he guessed at a vocative plural “…fadriz.”

A new wind stirred the leaves on the ground. It swirled around the brothers and the apple tree, stronger, colder, and unmistakably intent.

“I…think we’ve caught someone’s ear,” whispered Jacob. “Try another word. How about ‘kalt?’ Was it gelu? Gelidus?”

Jacob shook his head, showing his teeth to the ghostly wind. “No, that’s Latin again. Our forefathers kept the old sound…kaldaz!”

Jacob felt like he’d been hit in the face with a snowball. Ice crystals rattled against the paper in his hands.

“Damn, but that was a stupid thing to try.” He squinted at the list of words. “I know I wrote the derivation of ‘warm,’ here…”

“Thermos,” said Wilhelm. “Thermos, for the love of God!”

“That’s Greek. To these ghosts, we must say…” he pursed his lips, “warmaz!”

It was like stepping into sunshine. Wilhelm’s lantern steamed.

“So,” he said after the shock had worn off. “Would you say that’s a more powerful reaction than we’d get back in Göttingen?”

Jacob wiped melting frost off his eyebrows. “God in Heaven, Wilhelm, I think that was more powerful than the priests get in Rome.”

He slumped against the tree, peering blearily at his paper. “I think you’re right. Nobody has had knowledge like this before.” The of Apfel came from

so, “Aplaz?”

The tree did not grow a miraculous apple for him, but the bark did shudder under his touch, as if the powerful, ancient ghosts of this place were trying to rip the tree out of the ground.

And if I could find the ancestral European people who understood the word “hébōl,” they might be able to uproot entire orchards. Jacob stumbled backward, shivering now for reasons beyond the weather.

“My God, it worked,” Wilhelm said. “Nobody can trace a language back this far. Not the Romans, not the Greeks or the Arabs. Even the Hindoos and the Chinese depend on written records. They can’t…they can’t reconstruct words like this.” He held his hands out to the warm wind. “They could never talk to such old and powerful ghosts as these.”

Jacob swallowed and glanced down at the paper trembling in his hands. The combination should not have changed at all, but the in German had once been a …

“Sprek,” he whispered in the language of the people more than two thousand years dead. “Sprek, fader.”

And from the darkness, a voice answered.

Wisteria Leaves

Wisteria leaves

Cut away from holes of light.

New leaves will grow there.

 

A Stump is my Seat

A stump is my seat.

An aphid crawls on my sleeve.

My blood cleans itself.

Junction Radio Interview!

I appeared…was audible?…on Bulgarian National Radio last week, where I talked about my life and work in Bulgaria and my upcoming book, Junction! Junction, as I describe it, is Turns out the word for Junction’s genre in Bulgarian is about интересни чудовища, които изяждат хората по интересни начини, or “interesting monsters, which eat the people in interesting ways.” Also, it turns out the name for this genre is приключение-изучаване, or “adventure-science.” Yes! Yes, exactly! Az pisham za priklyuchenie-izuchavaneto!

Here’s the interview, and for those of you who don’t speak Bulgarian, my translation:

American author Daniel Bensen came to Bulgaria with his wife Pavlina in 2008. Bensen writes in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, while teaching English to middle-to-high-level adults. He is also trying to improve his pronunciation in Bulgarian, in order to teach people with a lower level of language proficiency.

Daniel met Pavlina at the University of Boston and lived with her for a year before moving to Sofia. He likes life with us, which he describes as “slower,” loves Bulgarian food, and his daughter is studying folk dances.

In second grade, Daniel Bensen began writing comics. His first more serious attempt at a novel was after graduating from university. He tried to write a fantasy novel, even though he could not find a publisher for it. Today, he has several successful entries in anthologies and a major upcoming project under his belt (literally “at his back”).

The book, which will be on bookstores soon, is called “Junction.” It will be available in April next year. It’s something like Michael Crichton’s books – adventure-science. The book is about a group of people who go to an alien planet and try to find their way back to Earth. There are politics involved, some people will be killed, and it is not clear whether their deaths are accidents or not. There are also many interesting monsters that eat people in interesting ways.

The genres Daniel Bensen writes are fantasy and science fiction. He has ideas in the “alternative history” genre, which is finding more and more supporters around the world.

“I like to write what I love to read. With what I write, I want to run away from reality. That is why I want to go as far as possible from Bulgaria, which is still connected with my normal life. But now I’m writing a historical fantasy, set in Bulgaria in 1500. I also talked to some historians about this project. So I touched my creativity to my real life.”

Thank you, Ivan! I’m looking forward to our next interview. Nyamam tarpenie. 

Follycon Notebook 6+7

(back to pages 4 and 5)

Nature Futures is a really cool page of science fiction ideas written by scientists.

This is me thinking about that “science in science fiction” panel. Thinking about alternate history as a tool to teach real history. AND THEN a seed that may really grow into a story: a story about a new scientific discovery, and people trying to turn it into technologies. Entrepreneurs of the future! At the moment, my wife (an entrepreneur) is turning the idea into a semi-autobiographical story.

But what about the technology?

That’s when I happened to sit next to Dr. Ana Rakonjac, an atomic physicist and Durham University, studying Bose-Einstein Condensates. Some of those diagrams are hers.

The point is that every atom in a Bose-Einstein condensate has to be in phase with every other atom. When the BEC is perturbed (the way Rakonjac’s team does this is to swirl the BEC in magnetic fields “like swirling wine in a glass”) wave functions change, cancel each other out (uh, I think?) and you get a vortex in the center, like the eye of a hurricane. The weird thing is that when you speed up that spin, two half-sized vorteces form. Spin it faster, and you get more, tiner holes, stacked next to each other like cells in a honeycomb.

So what? As of now, there aren’t many practical applications for BECs. They’re mostly used for research, because they’re good models for electrons and other things that are two small to measure. But with a BEC, you can just point a camera at it and take pictures (PDF). Anyway, BECs are, like, super hard to make.

But what if they weren’t? What if the groundbreaking new technology in my wife’s story was a way to make a room-temperature BEC (a RooTeBEC, if you will). What good would that do you? I made some speculations at the bottom of the page:

spin up the BEC so fast that it creates vorteces that the size of positrons? Then you could stop the mutual annihilation of virtual particles and GENERATE ANTIMATER!! (thunderclap!)

Or spin the BEC even faster so the vorteces are the size of electrons. You capture electrons that will then be released when the spinning stops. Bam. Eency Weency batteries.

Or maybe wormholes? eh? Those are nice.

Five Factor Warriors: Teddy

“Landsailor

Landsailor, sail on time

Rain or shine, I know you can.”

— Vienna Teng, “Landsailor”

Teodora Chorbadzhieva opened her medicine cabinet with pride.

It was the American kind, a metal box mounted on the wall with shelves inside and a mirrored door. Teddy had built it herself after taking a welding class and renting out the space to practice, because she saw these things in movies all the time and they looked useful.

Teddy’s version certainly was. She didn’t even need to look where her fingers were going. Habit guided them to the box of antihistamines that her calendar, marked with the blooming cycles for cottonwoods, maples, and the three most common types of grass, had warned her she would need.

She opened the box and popped a pill out of its blister with one hand, while the other grasped the sink-side cup and filled it with water. All of this happened automatically, the work of hands trained over many mornings to do their own business while Teddy’s mind was left free to think.

What she was thinking about this morning was the next item on her schedule: Receive the Mantle of Divine Warrior.

The event had appeared on Teddy’s calendar three weeks ago, replacing Breakfast (yogurt). The Divine Warrior event would not allow itself to be removed or deleted. It had appeared in every alternate calendar app Teddy had tried to use, even in the physical day book she had bought as an experiment.

This clear evidence of magic had surprised Teddy, even shocked her, but she had reshuffled her schedule to do some thinking about it and concluded that neither she nor the world had gone insane. She had simply made a discovery: magic existed, at least as far as calendars went. To believe otherwise would be silly.

It wasn’t much preparation, but Teddy could think of nothing else she could do to ready herself for the Divine Mantle. All she had were her allergy pills and her open mind.

A small bell rang behind her. Since Teddy owned no bells that she was aware of, she took this as a sign of the god’s arrival.

Teddy swallowed her pills and closed the medicine cabinet. In its mirror, she saw the branches.

They spread from a spot on the floor, where a thick,  green stalk split into two slender halves. These halves split again, and their halves again and so on, trunk becoming branches, branches becoming twigs, and twigs spiraling off into splinters too small even to see. Looking into those whorled depths, Teddy was sure that the branches went on forever, down below the level of atoms or quarks, driven by rules finer than the fabric of the universe. And in the same way, the tree shape in her bathroom must be only one minor outgrowth among infinitely many, joining together in a structure larger than galaxies.

She turned and faced the god. “Okay,” she said. “Go ahead.”

The branches rattled and a voice took shape in the air.

“Thus it is scheduled,” the tree intoned, “that Reden the Ever-Ramifying would at this time anoint a new hero: The Warrior of Conscientiousness.”

“Are you sure I’m not insane?” asked Teddy, thinking that she really hadn’t prepared very well for this.

“I anticipated you might ask that,” said Reden the Ever-Ramifying, “and I have prepared a simple demonstration of my reality.”

Teddy’s door buzzer went off.

“You should get that,” said the god.

Teddy did, thinking about what she ought to do before her next divine apparition. Set up cameras, obviously! And invite somebody over to corroborate the evidence. Maybe take a spa day first. This was all much more stressful than she’d thought it would be.

“Courier,” said the voice on the intercom, and that was certainly what the boy appeared to be when Teddy looked at him through the spy hole in her front door. He was holding a flat, yellow package and an electronic pad. No weapons, as far as she could see. Teddy grabbed the fireplace poker she kept by the coat-hanger and unlocked the door.

The courier did not transform into a monster or pull out a gun. He just held out his tablet and asked her to sign for the pa-what the hell was that thing?

Teddy looked around and saw the foyer of her apartment rustled with endless green boughs. Reden had followed her.

“He can see me too,” said Reden smugly.

The courier twitched. “Where’d that voice come from? What is that thing?”

“Don’t drop that package,” commanded the god. “It’s fragile.”

“I think it’s some kind of god,” Teddy explained, taking the package from the courier’s limp fingers. Something dense slid inside the cardboard.

“Um. Uh.” The courier backed toward the door, hands groping at the frame. “I should…I…chao! He turned and ran.

“Don’t worry about him talking,” said Reden. “Nobody will believe him. Not yet.”

“I could have hallucinated him too,” Teddy pointed out. “I could be hallucinating all of this.”

“I might as well say I’m hallucinating you,” said the tree. “Or we’re both figments of the courier’s imagination. Anyone could be hallucinating the universe at any time. A god in your apartment doesn’t alter that possibility. Now open that package.”

Teddy did. Inside lay a clay tablet. It was the size of an e-reader, but rather thicker, its surface incised with lines and stamped with tiny triangular markings.

“Cuneiform?” she asked aloud.

“As it was scheduled!” boomed the god. “At this time, to Teodora Krasimirova Chorbadzhieva the All-Conscientious, shall come the Tablet of Gilgamesh!”

“What?” Teddy was losing her patience. “What are you? What’s this Akkadian tablet?”

“Sumerian. And I just told you it’s the Tablet of Gilgamesh. So was it scheduled!”

Teddy waved the Tablet at Reden. “Scheduling something is useless unless you give me the information to prepare for it. What do you want from me? How am I supposed to deal with this?”

The Tablet moved under her fingers. The clay softened. The surface smoothed as if pressed flat by an invisible rolling-pin. New letters stamped themselves into existence.

Step One: say “please.” (

“Please?” said Teddy.

“I do appreciate politeness,” said Reden.

More letters, all in perfectly legible Bulgarian Cyrillic.

Step Two: repeat your question. (

“What do you,” Teddy lowered the Tablet, “want? From me?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” said Reden. “I am Reden the Ever-Ramifying and you are scheduled to become my Warrior on Earth and bring about an era of order and rules and conscientiousness.” The branches rustled self-importantly. “The first step is your receipt of the Tablet of Gilgamesh, which will guide you on your way. Just ask it, ‘How do I take over the world?'”

“Uh,” said Teddy. “I don’t want to…Wait. I have questions.”

“Of course,” said Reden. “I did schedule some extra time for questions.”

“You’re the what? The god of conscientiousness? What does that mean?”

The branches turned dark green. “There are no words in any human language to describe my domain. I value organization, efficiency, and predictability.” Darker yet. “As do you, Teodora.”

Teddy waggled her head. It was true. “So you chose me because I’m the world’s most conscientious person?”

“No, but, you are the most contentious person who would be the easiest to convince to take on my mission,” said Reden. “I chose you based on many metrics, including how long it would take me to devise those metrics and determine their values.”

“Oh,” said Teddy. “Neat.”

The branches glowed chartreuse. “A pun. I like puns.” They shook themselves. “But we risk falling behind schedule. I shall contact you again at the time I predict you will need me, Warrior, in 22 days. In the mean time, ask the tablet whatever you need to know.”

“In order to conquer the world?”

“Yes.”

“In three weeks?”

“Three weeks and a day and of course not,” said Reden. “That’s only Step One, which is killing the Warrior of Freedom. Just ask the Tablet.”

“Excuse me?”

“I really do have to go,” said Reden. “Ask the Tablet, ‘how do I kill the Warrior of Freedom?’ or just ‘How do I conquer the world?’ One is a prerequisite to the other.”

“Wait,” said Teddy.

“I know you can do it!”

She blinked and the tree was gone.

The Tablet in her hand was not.

Teddy stared at it for a long time. It was orange-brown and just as heavy as a slab of clay should be. It even had dusty cracks spreading from its edges as it dried.

What should she be doing? Teddy checked her phone, and found that her calendar was now blank. No, yesterday’s schedule was fine, but every event from now on had been swept away. The only thing after Divine Mantle was Ask the Tablet, scheduled for right now.

She had put a lot of work into her calendar. There were recurring events in there that interacted with each other and generated new variations depending on season, bus schedules, and Teddy’s predicted mood. The calendar was like part of her brain, the best part, and the god had wiped it all away.

Teddy should have been angry, but all she could do was look at her blank future and set herself to filling it back up. Ask the Tablet, her calendar instructed.

“How do I take over the world?” she asked and the Tablet’s surface smoothed. Three sentences stamped themselves into the clay:

Step One: kill the Warrior of Freedom. (22 days +/- 12 hours)

Step two: form alliances with Habit, Introversion, and Agreeableness and/or Neuroticism. (7 weeks +/- 3 days)

Step three: Defeat Enemies (8.5 years +/- 5 weeks)

Teddy refreshed her calendar, and the new events appeared there. Each was split into sub-events, and those into sub-sub events and so-on. Every ramifying. The very next event was Ask the Tablet about Step One.

“And how do I kill the Warrior of Freedom?”

New words appeared, but Teddy was beginning to think, and didn’t bother reading it.

“How do I use the Tablet of Gilgamesh?”

Step One: ask the Tablet a question beginning with “How.” (2 secs +/- 1)

Step Two: follow step-by-step instructions. (1 sec – infinity)

Step Three: Enjoy success. (1 sec – infinity)

Teddy checked her calendar again. Now the Take Over the World events were gone, except for Ask the Tablet.

“So, for example, how do I find the earring I lost yesterday?”

Step One: turn ninety degrees clockwise. (

Step Two: bend down. (

Step Three: pick up your winter boots. (1 sec)

The earring was right behind them.

“Okay,” said Teddy, straightening. “How do I achieve financial security?”

The Tablet blanked and printed itself with a list of low-risk investments. (20 years +/- 2)

“How do I achieve financial security today?”

The tablet gave her instructions on how to rob a bank. (10.5 hours +/- 9)

“Okay,” said Teddy. “Now again, how do I kill the Warrior of Freedom?”

Step One: arm yourself. (20 days +/- 1)

Step Two: find the Warrior. (1 day)

Step three: use appropriate tactics (see Step One). (5 minutes +/- 1 hour)

“Uh huh,” said Teddy, “and why do I have to kill this stranger?”

The Tablet did nothing.

Teddy didn’t bother to ask it how to decide whether she ought to kill someone named the Warrior of Freedom. Presumably, that person was the chosen one of some other god. The god of Freedom? And agreeableness, neuroticism, and so on…?

“Tablet,” she said, “how do I know whether Reden and the other gods have my best interests in mind or the best interests of humans in general?”

The tablet showed her a new list.

Step one: find someone who will reliably answer “no,” to questions.” (

“I see.” Teddy looked at the Tablet. “Thank you.”

Now what? “How do I protect humanity?” she might ask or “How do I overthrow the gods?” She could simply ask the Tablet “How do I know what I should do?” But she had a feeling she knew what the first step would be to all three plans.

“How do I make the Warrior of Freedom my ally?” asked Teddy, and refreshed her calendar. She couldn’t help but smile at what she saw there.

This one’s dedicated to @tex_maam and @EvilViergacht