The Art of Language Invention Quotes

“If the actors speaking Dothraki or High Valyrian or Castithan or whatever make a mistake, who would know but the creator? Who would care? The truth is probably one in a thousand people will notice, and of those who do, maybe a quarter will care. In the 1980s that amounts to nothing. In the new millennium, though, one quarter of 0.001 percent can constitute a significant minority on Twitter. Or on Tumblr. Or Facebook. Or Reddit. Or”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“[...] This is important to keep in mind when examining English, whose orthography was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“In the eyes of linguists, all dialects are equal, in that they all achieve the functional requirements of linguistic interaction.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“Acoustic economy is, simply, the idea that languages will conspire to take maximal advantage of the sounds available to human beings.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“[English] orthography was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“For example, the word inspiration has an odd meaning for its evolution. It began its existence as the Latin verb spirare, which means “to breathe.” By adding in- to the front, a new verb was derived that meant “to breathe in/into.” This was turned into the noun inspirationem, which came to us by way of French. It should mean “breathing in,” a generic noun, but it instead makes reference to an unseen deity literally breathing into a human being in order to give them ideas about stuff. That’s inspiration.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“He understood that language itself is inseparable from the culture that produces it (or “mythology,” as he put it), and he felt that if the languages he was creating had no place to breathe, they wouldn’t have any kind of vitality.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“The subjunctive is the onion of grammatical moods. Most of them are just old future tenses vainly clinging to relevance Sunset Boulevard-Style, anyway. Be gone with them, I say!”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“Noun case is easy. Verbs are tough. Verbs are a nightmare! Verbs are quite literally the worst thing to ever happen to human beings. Black Plague? I don't know, I'm vaccinated; I like my odds. If I ever actually have to learn the verb system of Japanese, though - and not for fun, I mean, but to actually be required to learn it - I will be forever and officially done.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“Below is the ideal ordering of elements for each type: Head-Initial: V-O, N-A, N-G, P-N, N-R Head-Final: O-V, A-N, G-N, N-P, R-”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“The first is that languages in general tend to place a lot more restrictions on codas than onsets. The second is that certain languages will pile up coda consonants—apparently because they think the word is done with and no one will notice or care.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“Most languages have between four and six vowel qualities (not counting long vowels as separate), and between twenty and thirty consonants.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“An invented script will have invented ligatures. When that happens, most word processors are just done. They can’t even. Just no. It’s as if they have some problem with us humans using a tool for its unintended purpose! (And eighties folk thought computers would take over . . .)”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“IPA is used to transcribe the sound of a word, regardless of its spelling. This is important to keep in mind when examining English, whose orthography was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“As for the other central vowels, do you know the song “Better Man” by Pearl Jam? (No judgment if not; they’ve done better.) See if you can find it on YouTube. Listen to the part of the chorus where Eddie Vedder sings “Can’t find a better man.” Hear how his voices changes—how it kind of sounds huskier? This is something you heard a lot in the nineties (Scott Weiland did it; Shakira does it a lot; Dave Matthews did a lot [or Dave, as his true fans call him]). What Eddie Vedder is actually doing is centralizing all the front vowels. His typical pronunciation of “can’t find a better” is something I’d transcribe as . Naturally, he doesn’t always sing this way. Every so often he simply feels the need to kick it into overdrive, and so he centralizes all the vowels. It’s a noticeably different sound. As for why, the only thing I can come up with is that it obscures a lot of the vocalic variety of English (there are fewer distinctions for central vowels than for front vowels), and makes it easier to hold a tone. It’s also why baby comes out babay a lot of times ([e] is lower than [i], which means your mouth is open wider). Anyway, if you’re trying to nail central vowels, remember Eddie Vedder (but hopefully for “Corduroy,” “Yellow Ledbetter,” “Black,” “Guaranteed,” “Oceans,” and “I Got Id” rather than “Better Man”).”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“To hear the effect of height, what you should do is mouth, in order, the vowels in meet [i], mate [e], met and Matt [æ]. Don’t actually pronounce them. While doing this, take your thumb and forefinger and flick the skin underneath your back jaw. This will produce a hollow popping sound (something like clapping your palm over an open bottle). As you move from the higher vowel to the lower vowel, the tone of that hollow popping sound will actually get higher. You can repeat the example with moot [u], moat [o] and mot and hear the same result.”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“Those who are able to do other accents well or who can make themselves sound like a native when speaking another language are incredible at imitating other vowel sounds. Consonants”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“This is important to keep in mind when examining English, whose orthography was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain. (“Ha, ha! I shall spell ‘could’ with an ell! They will be powerless to stop me!”)”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building

“One of the most significant things about our new interconnected world is that the internet can amplify a minority voice exponentially. Yes, few people, comparatively speaking, will care if an actor makes a mistake with their conlang lines. But thanks to the internet, those few people will find each other, and when they do, they’ll be capable of making a big noise. Every”
― David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building