Jennifer asked David J. Peterson:

First, congratulations on both your forthcoming book, The Art of Language Invention, and on landing Penny Dreadful (perhaps the best show on TV)! So the Verbis Diablo. It does sound quite a bit like Latin (as remarked upon in "Fresh Hell" ). Did you begin with Latin or create Verbis Diablo from the ground up as your other languages? (Second question coming)

David J. Peterson Verbis Diabolo is different from anything I've ever done. First, it's a posteriori, which means that all the words and grammar come from other—in this case, real world—sources. Specifically, the sources were Arabic, Akkadian, Middle Egyptian, Attic Greek, Latin, Farsi and Turkish. Second, VD was not intended to be a language proper. I looked at the language as an art piece. VD is supposed to be a language twisted in form; wrenched from Earth's languages. Many words that meant something in a given language are taken and reversed phonetically to produce the equivalent VD word. Sometimes the reversal came with a reversal in meaning, as with justa, from Latin, which becomes atsüü, "vile". Also pieces of words from many different languages will often be combined to produce portmanteaux which may have nothing to do with the original meanings of any of the parts.

In addition, though there are patterns in the language, sometimes the patterns are broken for no reason. A word which has meant the same thing every time one has heard it will suddenly have a new meaning in a new sentence for no discernible reason. Words will change orders to subvert previously attested patterns; words will be pronounced differently for no reason at all; the auxiliary, one of the few bits of predictability in the language, will move or drop out entirely.

All of this combines to produce something that doesn't sound an awful lot like a language, and I think that's true. It defies attempts to learn it, meaning that the only way to actually speak it is to be touched by the devil. In effect, that was the point.

So yeah, I had a lot of fun with it! It's far different from anything I've ever done in the past. It sounds really weird. I've been pleased with the performances thus far. I'll get to your second question tomorrow. :)

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