I was reading the appendices of Lord of the Rings yesterday, and in the part listing languages it said that Sauron invented the Black Speech, so Sauron is canonically a conlanguer which I find extremely amusing.
Imagine if this story being told as a twisted children’s fairytale and the languages were derivative of the parents’ secondary languages. Now Sauron makes sense, eggy-smelling eye and all.
If I didn't know anything about Sauron and just saw the name, I'd guess it had something to do with lizards. It's similar to saur, like dinosaur, sauropod etc.
10:28 no, but also yes. See, the dozenal system was invented in Valinor. The decimal system was used by the elves who remained in Middle Earth (who also developed their own script called “Cirth”). While a Quenya-speaking group of elves eventually returned to Middle Earth, their language and numerals were subsequently banned. Although the human nation of Numenor later resurrected the Quenya language as a courtly and ceremonial tongue: they did not use the dozenal numeral system, since their native tongue used a decimal system. Thus they invented a way of writing decimal numbers in Quenya.
The duodecimal numerical system goes all the way back to Primitive Quendian - according to the _Cuivienyarna_ the Elves developed a duodecimal numerical system because a total of 144 Elves awoke in Cuivienen, and each group awoke in multiples of 12.
In English we have eleven < anleven < one left over, twelve < twaleven < two left over, implying a preceding base 12 counting system that was superseded by a base 10 one. Tolkien must have known this as an Anglo-Saxonist and so it would not have seemed odd to him at all that such a change of counting base could happen in a culture.
When I was a teenager familiarizing myself with Tolkien for the first times, I was somewhat disappointed on Quenya. Because of its role as the Elf Latin, it was supposed to be cooler than e.g. Sindarin, but to me it was more boring and uglier. Now I understand that was just because its aesthetics are based on my native tongue, so of course it didn't seem sufficiently exotic to me.
Tbh I feel like that is how Latin is irl. All of the Latin derived languages sound so much prettier when spoken, especially Italian and Spanish. And when I took Latin, as a Spanish speaker, it felt like the language was just a more bulkier and less mobile Spanish.
@@MutohMech 100%, I wish I included portuguese in my original post because I think its one of the most beautiful languages in the world. My family is from Colombia and when they moved to the US my aunt was best friends with the brazilians that she worked with cus our languages are so similar haha.
@Matthew Romero, funnily enough, I (being likely part of a small minority) am of the opposite opinion. I really like Latin but find all its descendants to be less interesting grammatically and less euphonic.
One aspect of Tolkien's work which I feel is important to note when talking about the real world influences on his fiction is that Middle Earth was never meant to be an entirely imaginary place, but rather an imaginary prehistory for north-western Europe. Although he never really explained how he envisioned Middle Earth would become Europe, the stories were meant to fill in the gaps he saw in Old English mythology, and a lot of the Silmarillion was meant to be the "real history" that inspired our myths and faerie tales.
That was a beautiful ending. I’ll miss Season 3 and also I love that the Viossa people have their names right next to Jason Momoa in the credits and the special thanks to Anthony McCarthy and Hatsune Miku
When I'm conlanging, every so often I think to myself "What would jan Misali think of this?" It is actually surprisingly helpful in making the language more fleshed out, unique and just overall 'better'. Thanks!
The lyrics of kulupu jan tenpo being in all the writing systems this season is such a great touch. Season 3 has been the best by far. Cannot wait to see what season 4 has in store!
@@amandacapsicum686 well it's not SUPPOSED to be real latin 🙄🙄🙄 it's just supposed to sound like latin, and I think she does a great job for a Japanese robot singer
I need a full kulupu jan tenpo ASAP, this song is unbelievable. I also need 12 days of sona pi toki pona And other dumb ugly mashups And any unrelated stuff that happens to get published God, I love this channel so much
The number changing names things is very common in natural languages. Ie, in french , 80 is usually pronounced four-twenty, because of changing number systems.
Ah yes but those numbers were largely used by illiterate speakers. Base-10 numerals are easily incorporated into a Base-20 language which developed from a Base-10 language---Latin. The Elves, the most advanced society, had a fully functioning Base-12 number system that just.... disappeared.
@@jacksonp2397 not all the elves, just the elves of Valinor, and the Noldor that returned. the local Sindar and Silvan elves of middle earth used a base-10 system.
It is not common at all except for cases of colliding cultures. The French example came with a full change of the language, Celtic been replaced by Latin and only a few traits left. There's no example of a culture keeping its language untouched but suddenly changing its number system.
@@jacksonp2397 The duodecimal counting system also pretty much disappeared quite recently from the English language and it still has distinct non-composit words for numbers up to twelve. Nobody counts in dozens and grosses anymore. All that remained in somewhat common use with primarily older folks nowadays is "dozens of sth." as a synonym for "many". You could say it just … disappeared. ;)
Cant wait for season 4! gotta say, never thought you’d get to a hundred thousand subs, but alas, here we are, and i cant wait to see what you have coming next! lets all keep being cute frauds together.
@@mollyr2692 I'm lucky we get to pick most of our books ourselves, and Tolkien was one of the options. I wouldn't be surprised if we're gonna do Shakespeare in the future, though.
The thing of note about the difference between the use of Tengwar between Sindarin and Quenya is _why_ the vowels are placed differently: since Quenya is based on Finnish, it has a lot of word-final vowels and thus placing vowels on top of the preceding consonant makes many Quenyan words shorter to write, as it reduces the need for vowel carriers at the end of words. You can actually see this in action in the writing comparison in this video, too. I think this adaptation of the writing system is another great example of how Tolkien made the Elvish languages feel natural.
I wish you made your videos longer and included all those things there ”isn’t enough time for”. Although, I mean, this video length has been very successful, I always find myself wishing you had gone into more detail.
As one of the Viewers that got introduced to you by the Hangman Video, seriously thank you for this series! I loved the insight in a topic otherwise completely unaccessible to me prior to this!
I hope one day that my languages will be reviewed on Conlang Critic. I'm building not just a language, not just a family of languages, but a world of families of languages, heavily inspired by the advice of DJP's videos, Conlang Critic, and various people and resources from the community. This series especially has been a huge help for me to get a *sense*, a *feeling* of what's normal, what's strange, what's rare but really appreciated, what's common and annoying, etc. Often times it's just a throwaway comment about how "it's rare for a language to distinguish X and Y but not A and B" and those kinds of comments are the absolute lifeblood of my success. I hope you continue this series and that it is for you all that you want it to be, but know that it certainly is all that I could want it to be, and more.
The number development went the other way around, according to Tolkien. A more basic decimal system was devised first, based on hands and finger-counting (ten etymologically means 'full, complete, all', i.e. 'all ten fingers'). Later a duodecimal system was developed, 'for general arithmetical reasons; and eventually beside the decimal numeration a complete duodecimal system was devised for calculations, some of which, such as the special words for 12 (dozen), 18, and 144 (gross), were in general use' (this is from the appendix 'The Eldarin numerals' to _The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor_, published in Vinyar Tengwar 42, p. 24). He goes on to emphasize that 'this appears to have been a relatively late development'. Of course, Tolkien being Tolkien, he had a hard time settling on the details, and a different version of this is published in a different note called _Neter, Kanat, Enek_ (section 4; Vinyar Tengwar 47, p. 16; also note 74, p. 42), but this agrees in the broad outlines of decimal first, duodecimal later.
Really enjoyed this series, also really excited on what else you have planned. This channel isn't just good, it's so unabashedly playful and niche I keep going back to it no matter how long it's been or whether it's a CC or "w". Enjoy your break jan Misali, I'd say you've earned it.
I feel like this is a sign I need to get working on my second conlang showcase again... In all seriousness, I love this series and I've learned a lot about conlanging just from watching you dissect other conlangs. Early Nuqrian thanks you!
This last episode of Season Three feels like kind of the end of an era maybe it’s jus Kulupu Jan tenpo at the end idk. Anyway I have an idea. Everyone could record themself singing kulupu jan tenpo, and put it up with like #kulupujantenpoCommunityEdition or something like that, and we could combine a lot of clips and have a community song.
I am Feeling Something... thank you so much Jan Misali, this series has brought so much joy, and I’m so happy to have been here watching! Keep making your amazing content, and I’ll be here to support whatever projects you make in the future!
This is a really useful episode as a conlanger myself because it's one of the few conlangs you've really liked, and it's quite helpful to not just get a sense of what doesn't work and why, but of what works and why. Good stuff!
J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist and a scholar before he was a storyteller. He created The Lord of the Rings for Middle Earth and it's many languages, not the other way around. That's one of the reasons why his lore was so rich.
These videos are special in that instead of playing video games while watching videos at the same time, here I feel the need to pay attention the whole time
There was a list of requirements for language submissions for season 4, somewhere in a previous video. Can someone help me find that and link to it? Thanks! EDIT: Never mind, here it is: ruclips.net/video/4-Oa4I91iyg/видео.html
Elvish languages being designed with aesthetic in mind makes sense, because the beings speaking them live forever, and I can totally imagine the elves in Valinor not having a care in the world spending the ages coming up with ways to make their language more beautiful.
Great episode! I had always thought that Tolkien drew inspiration for naming his Finnish-influenced conlang "Quenya" from Kven, a northern variant of Finnish with considerable Norwegian influence. Certainly sounds possible, but not sure if he himself ever admitted such a relation.
Ever since Hangman video I still have no idea what means what half the time, but you clearly have passion for it and its very contagious. I just want to stand in there back in a corner and listen to you rave about conlangs. :) And sometimes you talk about stuff I never heard of and so unusual, but also so much easier to get, so it's a win-win for me. Have a good New Year period.
I love Quenya for its phonotactics and phonaesthetic principles! And, although Tengwar is Featural, it's a bit more unique than most Featural systems. By mode, it can be an alphabet, abjad, or abugida, and different modes do not have to have the same graphemic features associated with the same phonemic features. If you want a bit different of a Tolkien language, although it is not very well documented, I'd take a look at Khuzdul, the Dwarf language, it was based on Semitic languages.
@HBMmaste 3 notes from a Quenya speaker (though I'm a bit late) 1) You can only use object suffixes for the 3rd Person. Thus not *tompessen, but 'tompesse ni' 2) The Elves originally started with a base 10 numbering system based of the hands, which reflects in the names of the numbers. This continued as the colloquial counting system forever. *However*, the Elves, being smart like that, developed quickly a base twelve system as a modification of the base 10 system, which was used in writing, lore, and mathematics. Tolkien wrote a brilliant and involved series of essays about this, called 'Eldarin Hands, Fingers, and Numerals,' but since it was focused on the earlier base-10 roots, we never got a full base-12 system. (As well, past 20 most of our numbers are reconstructed from very early (real-world) forms of Quenya) 3) The 'standard' way of analyzing Quenya phonetics is basically to look at the Tengwar and their usage. Based on that, one gets 5 series: The Labials: p, (m)b, f, v, m, w, hw The Dentals: t, (n,r,l)d, s (þ), n, r, l, hr, hl The Palatal(-dentals): ty, (n)dy, sy (þy), ny, ry, ly, y, hy The Velars: c/k, (n)g, h, ñ, w (again), The Labio-velars: qu, (n)gw, hw (again), ñw, w (again) In each series is a voiceless and voiced stop (which may have very limited distribution depending on dialect), a voiceless fricative, a nasal, and some sort of approximant/liquid (both voiced and unvoiced). The voiced fricative 'v' is related to 'w' and often considered the p-series' approximant instead, and archaically the dental and velar series both had 2 fricative (s/þ and h/x) but one died out (depending on time and dialect) Best resource for Quenya learners: eldamo.org/content/language-pages/lang-q.html
Also, the quality difference in long vowels is a hotly debated topic, but it seems it was likely there is some form (at least for e/o, basically e: / ɛ and o: / ɔ )
I'd love to see you do a conlang critic for Marc Okrand's Atlantean. I want to see if, in your opinion, he's learned from the terrible mistakes of Klingon.
I signed on cuz of the Hangman video, but I'm super glad I stuck around for the linguistics stuff? Man, I should revisit the conlang I made my sophomore year...
I see neo-sindrian as the “Latin” of Elvish whereas “Quenya” is like the Koine Greek of Elvish. Whereas Latin was the workaday language of ancient Rome and Greek was the older, cerebral and educated language for the Romans (Marcus Aurelius wrote the “Meditations” in Greek, for instance.) So in the way Latin speakers are using it conversationally in our time, and Koine Greek speakers are just starting to do the same thing, we sadly don’t (yet) have Elvish conventions where no English is spoken (at least I’m not aware of any). Let’s get those Quenya Middle Earth events going!
I discovered this channel recently, but had been told to watch it for at least a year. The regular polyhedra video was what got me to watch a week or two ago, and since then, i'm hooked. Tom Scott's language files made me realize that linguistics are interesting, but conlang critic made me realize just how deep it goes and just how invested I can be. I'm going to college next year, and will be taking any linguistics courses I can because it's one of the few things that is interesting enough to study academically to me. Here's to season 4!
If you're looking for a conlang to review, I'd LOVE to see Doyle's work on kryptonian get a look! I've been casually interested in it since I learned most things just transliterate the original language, or use spoken Esperanto and was thoroughly disappointed there wasn't "official" kryptonian.
So I was semi-binging Conlang Critic a while back and slowed down with season three due to the longer episodes. After Lingwa de Planeta I unintentionally, just, sort of stopped. Then yesterday I came back and now I've finished and - request deadline for season four was *yesterday*? I honestly didn't realize you took requests from non-Patreons. Well, it's still 23 February in Hawaii, so I guess this is worth a shot! Whether it counts as a conlang is perhaps an edge case, but I'd be really interested to see your thoughts on Natural Semantic Metalanguage. A quick Google suggests that it hasn't been mentioned on your subreddit or anywhere like that. Thanks for a great channel!
in season 4 or 5 my conlang is definitely getting in the show. it’s GARBAGE. edit: i mean maybe even VÖTGIL LEVEL GARBAGE. it’s a clone of english that kinda NEEDS YOU TO KNOW ENGLISH to speak it. AND A SPECIFIC DIALECT(S) OF ENGLISH! I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW THIS CAN BE AN AUXILIARY LANGUAGE. WE HAVE REACHED POLIESPO LEVEL.
3:37- Upon rewatching after a long while, I realised that Quenya has the “conlang diphthong,” as I like to call it: [eu]. I’ve never run into it in my bouncing around trying to learn secondary languages. At least it’s overshadowed by something that’s harder for me, [ui], because I wanna make it /wi/, like in French. Can’t show it textwise because I’m just on my phone and I don’t know if the Unicode superscript W would even show up.
Dutch has the [eu] diphthong. It's the sound made by the letter combination "ui" in many words like "huis", "muis", and "duizend" meaning "house", "mouse" and "thousand".
Not having read what, if any, Tolkien wrote on this, my guess would be that the base-10 system is the older one that is used regularly and the base-12 one was made spesifically for mathematics or something. ....also do Tsolyáni for season 4.
I'm kind of surprised you did not at any point talk of the other big (morpho)phonological feature that makes Finnish quite distinct aside from the vowel harmony - consonant gradation. While Quenya doesn't have it either as far as I can tell, I'd've expected at least a mention of that fact, especially as Tolkien did take the Celtic consonant mutation from Welsh for Sindarin
Would be interesting to see next season you delve into Star Trek again and look at Vulcan, specifically Golic Vulcan, as that seems to be the most documented one. Other Trek languages have some good documentation, but Vulcan seems like the most logical to look at. But I've even seen some documentation that tries to parse out the Star Wars languages, which is no easy task. One thing I like to do is translate my webcomic's logo into different languages (translate the title and make the logo in that language--it's actually surprisingly fun) and out of the Wars languages, I've managed to translate it into Ewokese, Huttese, and Mando'a (Mandalorian). Thinking of Middle Earth languages with this video, though, I forget if you've done Khuzdul. I can also think of Black Speech and Quendarin, but Khuzdul seems to be the better documented of the remaining he made.
As much as I love conlang critic, and it's the reason I subscribed, I did love the other big videos like w, hangman, and h.p. Lovecraft's math textbook. I think it's great that you can focus on other projects you want to do, instead of just doing conlang critic and smaller videos in-between
was great, it would have been nice if you used someone elses reading of Markirya because you didn't get the stress right, and the stress patterns are imo the most beautiful about good Quenya poetry
I was reading the appendices of Lord of the Rings yesterday, and in the part listing languages it said that Sauron invented the Black Speech, so Sauron is canonically a conlanguer which I find extremely amusing.
The Black Speech is a parody of IALs.
@@SamAronow okay
@@SamAronow okay
@@SamAronow what are you doing here lmao, love your channel btw
@@SamAronow okay
9:30 I was not prepared to find out that the adjective form of Sauron's root translates his title to "Lord Smelly"
Imagine if this story being told as a twisted children’s fairytale and the languages were derivative of the parents’ secondary languages. Now Sauron makes sense, eggy-smelling eye and all.
Sauron is a derivaive of the word Sour.
It's the Elvish word for him, he doesn't like it
Fear... *Lord Smelly.*
If I didn't know anything about Sauron and just saw the name, I'd guess it had something to do with lizards. It's similar to saur, like dinosaur, sauropod etc.
10:28 no, but also yes.
See, the dozenal system was invented in Valinor. The decimal system was used by the elves who remained in Middle Earth (who also developed their own script called “Cirth”). While a Quenya-speaking group of elves eventually returned to Middle Earth, their language and numerals were subsequently banned. Although the human nation of Numenor later resurrected the Quenya language as a courtly and ceremonial tongue: they did not use the dozenal numeral system, since their native tongue used a decimal system. Thus they invented a way of writing decimal numbers in Quenya.
The duodecimal numerical system goes all the way back to Primitive Quendian - according to the _Cuivienyarna_ the Elves developed a duodecimal numerical system because a total of 144 Elves awoke in Cuivienen, and each group awoke in multiples of 12.
In English we have eleven < anleven < one left over, twelve < twaleven < two left over, implying a preceding base 12 counting system that was superseded by a base 10 one. Tolkien must have known this as an Anglo-Saxonist and so it would not have seemed odd to him at all that such a change of counting base could happen in a culture.
quenya's consonants are: /m/, DEAFENING ADVERTISEMENT
So not just me, then. 😂
I can relate to that. 🤣🤣🤣ϖϖϖ
same
AdBlock is your friend
@@NoHandleToSpeakOf desktops are for chumps mobile is the future (/s kinda)
Me: Sees consonant inventory for the first time
“Wow! That’s small!”
Me less than a minute later:
“Ok. Never mind” 😳
The phonology section doesn't even start until a minute and a half in!
@@Supertimegamingify I corrected it
@@nzubechukwu lel
When I was a teenager familiarizing myself with Tolkien for the first times, I was somewhat disappointed on Quenya. Because of its role as the Elf Latin, it was supposed to be cooler than e.g. Sindarin, but to me it was more boring and uglier. Now I understand that was just because its aesthetics are based on my native tongue, so of course it didn't seem sufficiently exotic to me.
Tbh I feel like that is how Latin is irl. All of the Latin derived languages sound so much prettier when spoken, especially Italian and Spanish. And when I took Latin, as a Spanish speaker, it felt like the language was just a more bulkier and less mobile Spanish.
@@tlaloqq as a Portuguese speaker, that's definitely my experience with Latin as well haha
@@MutohMech 100%, I wish I included portuguese in my original post because I think its one of the most beautiful languages in the world. My family is from Colombia and when they moved to the US my aunt was best friends with the brazilians that she worked with cus our languages are so similar haha.
@Matthew Romero, funnily enough, I (being likely part of a small minority) am of the opposite opinion. I really like Latin but find all its descendants to be less interesting grammatically and less euphonic.
I think latin looks much prettier than other romance languages, specially spanish.
When your Toki Pona phonology turns into Ithkuil in matter of seconds
Ithkuil still had a smaller inventory than Drsk.
@@GoldenSandslash15 it only passes with 2 consonants (53 vs 55) but ithkuil has vowels sooooo...
Muhteşem Siyanür Fair enough. If you include vowels, tones, and stress, Ithkuil is larger.
Ithkuil is TP with sound quality issues.
@@lyricalcarpenter sounds legit
“Additional thanks to: Anthony McCarthy” oh my god...
Where would we be without him? Well, we wouldn't be cute frauds, that's for sure.
And Hatsune Miku.. nice
The most superficial commentator of con-langues since the idiotic B. Gilson
@@cheese6782 that’s actually Jan Misali’s Spotify bio
@@vanderkarl3927 Is that the official name for jan Misali fans? If not, it should be.
Seeing the lyrics of the closing song in the scripts of the conlangs you've reviewed was a very nice, unexpected treat!
I got surprisingly emotional at that ending. The transcription was fantastic.
ikrrr.... i luv the ending. i also laughed my butt off
GOD ME TOO
lol Jules , arent u the one joined in this collab song?
@@Что-ю3ъ i sure am! i think that's why the ending affected me so much
What... are there transcriptions on ALL OF THEM???????
"Special thanks to...
Anthony McCarthy"
Of course. Where would we be without him?
"Hatsune Miku"
Wait what
[involuntarily grinning as the credits pull a "Bring It In, Guys!" of all the languages from this season]
IKR!!! it's so beautiful
Is that an undertale reference?
@@CompactStar Indirectly, I guess? The Undertale track's title was actually a reference itself to an earlier thing, which is what I had in mind
@@MenloMarseilles What was that earlier thing?
@@danielle5160 a famous 2008 forum post by a gentleman named GamemasterAnthony. Screenshots are available if searched for.
Both NativLang and jan Misali upload on the same date? Are we having an early Christmas?
Curious, this happened at least once before.
NativLang’s up too?!
bro what is this
@@kaandx2731 bro what are you
@@xmvziron zenci
This is the nif-th episode!
:))
I clicked confusing it with Sindarin
But then I saw "6 minutes ago"
One aspect of Tolkien's work which I feel is important to note when talking about the real world influences on his fiction is that Middle Earth was never meant to be an entirely imaginary place, but rather an imaginary prehistory for north-western Europe. Although he never really explained how he envisioned Middle Earth would become Europe, the stories were meant to fill in the gaps he saw in Old English mythology, and a lot of the Silmarillion was meant to be the "real history" that inspired our myths and faerie tales.
Robert E. Howard created the Hyborian Age (and the age which preceded it) from that same idea.
Read his biography. WW1 had a huge influence as well on the milieu.
That was a beautiful ending. I’ll miss Season 3 and also I love that the Viossa people have their names right next to Jason Momoa in the credits and the special thanks to Anthony McCarthy and Hatsune Miku
and me!
(im kate)
@@kate-os5ww hi kate
When I'm conlanging, every so often I think to myself "What would jan Misali think of this?" It is actually surprisingly helpful in making the language more fleshed out, unique and just overall 'better'. Thanks!
YO THE ENDING SONG LET'S GO! :D
what is it from? it sounds extremely familiar
@@beachinwinter "Dreams of Our Generation" from Rhythm Heaven Fever, translated to toki pona.
The lyrics of kulupu jan tenpo being in all the writing systems this season is such a great touch. Season 3 has been the best by far. Cannot wait to see what season 4 has in store!
jack eisenmann to tolkien ratio: 3:2
i think
Yep
Priorities
"additional thanks: Hatsune Miku"
honestly yeah
She made Minecraft after all
@@mrelephant2283, True.
@@mrelephant2283 and wrote harry potter
idk about that. the worldbuilding in her books is kinda shabby. the spells aren't even real latin ffs
@@amandacapsicum686 well it's not SUPPOSED to be real latin 🙄🙄🙄 it's just supposed to sound like latin, and I think she does a great job for a Japanese robot singer
Ah, a kind of language where it's pointless to say "show me the bibliography" and reasonable to ask for literally everything else.
I need a full kulupu jan tenpo ASAP, this song is unbelievable.
I also need 12 days of sona pi toki pona
And other dumb ugly mashups
And any unrelated stuff that happens to get published
God, I love this channel so much
I love your passion and enthusiasm!
The number changing names things is very common in natural languages. Ie, in french , 80 is usually pronounced four-twenty, because of changing number systems.
Ah yes but those numbers were largely used by illiterate speakers. Base-10 numerals are easily incorporated into a Base-20 language which developed from a Base-10 language---Latin. The Elves, the most advanced society, had a fully functioning Base-12 number system that just.... disappeared.
blaze it
@@jacksonp2397 not all the elves, just the elves of Valinor, and the Noldor that returned. the local Sindar and Silvan elves of middle earth used a base-10 system.
It is not common at all except for cases of colliding cultures. The French example came with a full change of the language, Celtic been replaced by Latin and only a few traits left. There's no example of a culture keeping its language untouched but suddenly changing its number system.
@@jacksonp2397
The duodecimal counting system also pretty much disappeared quite recently from the English language and it still has distinct non-composit words for numbers up to twelve. Nobody counts in dozens and grosses anymore. All that remained in somewhat common use with primarily older folks nowadays is "dozens of sth." as a synonym for "many". You could say it just … disappeared. ;)
Cant wait for season 4! gotta say, never thought you’d get to a hundred thousand subs, but alas, here we are, and i cant wait to see what you have coming next! lets all keep being cute frauds together.
Excellent video and conlang, that outro was absolutely beautiful too!
Finally, Quenya! Im actually reading the Hobbit for English class right now, so this is perfect :)
I wish I got to read anything by Tolkien for school... All I got to read was Shakespeare or biographies...
@@mollyr2692 I'm lucky we get to pick most of our books ourselves, and Tolkien was one of the options. I wouldn't be surprised if we're gonna do Shakespeare in the future, though.
The thing of note about the difference between the use of Tengwar between Sindarin and Quenya is _why_ the vowels are placed differently: since Quenya is based on Finnish, it has a lot of word-final vowels and thus placing vowels on top of the preceding consonant makes many Quenyan words shorter to write, as it reduces the need for vowel carriers at the end of words. You can actually see this in action in the writing comparison in this video, too. I think this adaptation of the writing system is another great example of how Tolkien made the Elvish languages feel natural.
I wish you made your videos longer and included all those things there ”isn’t enough time for”. Although, I mean, this video length has been very successful, I always find myself wishing you had gone into more detail.
maybe if he ever gets on nebula
You can usually look up the language yourself (exception: poliespo), and read sources he links.
never clicked so fast. i love Tolkien's languages. even though I've never read the books or watched the films😅
Mate you GOTTA see those and read the books. They are pure art
@@JoeyGirardin and the movies are probably the best adaptations ever
@@Lacie9 I disagree. The films are great as films but they aren't very faithful to the source matierial.
That outro with the lyrics in the writing system of each language reviewed made me smile.
As one of the Viewers that got introduced to you by the Hangman Video, seriously thank you for this series! I loved the insight in a topic otherwise completely unaccessible to me prior to this!
I hope one day that my languages will be reviewed on Conlang Critic. I'm building not just a language, not just a family of languages, but a world of families of languages, heavily inspired by the advice of DJP's videos, Conlang Critic, and various people and resources from the community.
This series especially has been a huge help for me to get a *sense*, a *feeling* of what's normal, what's strange, what's rare but really appreciated, what's common and annoying, etc. Often times it's just a throwaway comment about how "it's rare for a language to distinguish X and Y but not A and B" and those kinds of comments are the absolute lifeblood of my success. I hope you continue this series and that it is for you all that you want it to be, but know that it certainly is all that I could want it to be, and more.
So when dat Khuzdul (Dwarvish language) episode comin out? Also this is a great video, just like all of your other stuff!
There's way too little documentation to say anything relevant about it I'm afraid
I wish... :')
Ah yes, Dwarf Hebrew, honestly probably the most blatant of Tolkien's... Influences. Still fascinating, what little there is of it.
The aesthetics of the Tengwar alone, before I knew anything of linguistics, was enough to make me fall in love.
The number development went the other way around, according to Tolkien. A more basic decimal system was devised first, based on hands and finger-counting (ten etymologically means 'full, complete, all', i.e. 'all ten fingers'). Later a duodecimal system was developed, 'for general arithmetical reasons; and eventually beside the decimal numeration a complete duodecimal system was devised for calculations, some of which, such as the special words for 12 (dozen), 18, and 144 (gross), were in general use' (this is from the appendix 'The Eldarin numerals' to _The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor_, published in Vinyar Tengwar 42, p. 24). He goes on to emphasize that 'this appears to have been a relatively late development'. Of course, Tolkien being Tolkien, he had a hard time settling on the details, and a different version of this is published in a different note called _Neter, Kanat, Enek_ (section 4; Vinyar Tengwar 47, p. 16; also note 74, p. 42), but this agrees in the broad outlines of decimal first, duodecimal later.
Really enjoyed this series, also really excited on what else you have planned. This channel isn't just good, it's so unabashedly playful and niche I keep going back to it no matter how long it's been or whether it's a CC or "w". Enjoy your break jan Misali, I'd say you've earned it.
I'm just going to listen to the credits a few more times.
congrats on 100k!!
I feel like this is a sign I need to get working on my second conlang showcase again...
In all seriousness, I love this series and I've learned a lot about conlanging just from watching you dissect other conlangs. Early Nuqrian thanks you!
Those credits were so cool! Love the different writing systems!
This last episode of Season Three feels like kind of the end of an era maybe it’s jus Kulupu Jan tenpo at the end idk. Anyway I have an idea. Everyone could record themself singing kulupu jan tenpo, and put it up with like #kulupujantenpoCommunityEdition or something like that, and we could combine a lot of clips and have a community song.
YEEEEES WEEEEEEEEEEEEE FINALYYYY AAAAAAAAAAAAAA I MISSED YOU THANKS FOR THIS
I am Feeling Something... thank you so much Jan Misali, this series has brought so much joy, and I’m so happy to have been here watching! Keep making your amazing content, and I’ll be here to support whatever projects you make in the future!
This is a really useful episode as a conlanger myself because it's one of the few conlangs you've really liked, and it's quite helpful to not just get a sense of what doesn't work and why, but of what works and why. Good stuff!
18 views, 60 likes, and everything is right with the world
J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist and a scholar before he was a storyteller. He created The Lord of the Rings for Middle Earth and it's many languages, not the other way around. That's one of the reasons why his lore was so rich.
"it's hard for me to get excited about something quenya has in common with iqglic (with a q)"
just thought this might be worth pointing out
These videos are special in that instead of playing video games while watching videos at the same time, here I feel the need to pay attention the whole time
There was a list of requirements for language submissions for season 4, somewhere in a previous video. Can someone help me find that and link to it? Thanks!
EDIT: Never mind, here it is: ruclips.net/video/4-Oa4I91iyg/видео.html
Tolkien is the saint of conlangers, thank you for this!
>18 seconds ago
>No views
>3 likes
lets go
Edit:
2:46 But what about toki pona?
Edit: oh, SINCE Sindarin. nevermind
i would request one of my langs but ive already screamed at them
oh yeah i do have a toki pona ripoff
Elvish languages being designed with aesthetic in mind makes sense, because the beings speaking them live forever, and I can totally imagine the elves in Valinor not having a care in the world spending the ages coming up with ways to make their language more beautiful.
love your work man, all of it. found you after kaybop, and I have not once been disappointed by one of your videos
how to get conlangers to *ring* the bell icon
Hi
Hey
hi
oh hey there
Those credits were so great, I watched them twice.
Great episode! I had always thought that Tolkien drew inspiration for naming his Finnish-influenced conlang "Quenya" from Kven, a northern variant of Finnish with considerable Norwegian influence. Certainly sounds possible, but not sure if he himself ever admitted such a relation.
Winner for best outro ever
Ever since Hangman video I still have no idea what means what half the time, but you clearly have passion for it and its very contagious. I just want to stand in there back in a corner and listen to you rave about conlangs. :)
And sometimes you talk about stuff I never heard of and so unusual, but also so much easier to get, so it's a win-win for me.
Have a good New Year period.
I love Quenya for its phonotactics and phonaesthetic principles! And, although Tengwar is Featural, it's a bit more unique than most Featural systems. By mode, it can be an alphabet, abjad, or abugida, and different modes do not have to have the same graphemic features associated with the same phonemic features.
If you want a bit different of a Tolkien language, although it is not very well documented, I'd take a look at Khuzdul, the Dwarf language, it was based on Semitic languages.
@HBMmaste
3 notes from a Quenya speaker (though I'm a bit late)
1) You can only use object suffixes for the 3rd Person. Thus not *tompessen, but 'tompesse ni'
2) The Elves originally started with a base 10 numbering system based of the hands, which reflects in the names of the numbers. This continued as the colloquial counting system forever. *However*, the Elves, being smart like that, developed quickly a base twelve system as a modification of the base 10 system, which was used in writing, lore, and mathematics. Tolkien wrote a brilliant and involved series of essays about this, called 'Eldarin Hands, Fingers, and Numerals,' but since it was focused on the earlier base-10 roots, we never got a full base-12 system. (As well, past 20 most of our numbers are reconstructed from very early (real-world) forms of Quenya)
3) The 'standard' way of analyzing Quenya phonetics is basically to look at the Tengwar and their usage. Based on that, one gets 5 series:
The Labials: p, (m)b, f, v, m, w, hw
The Dentals: t, (n,r,l)d, s (þ), n, r, l, hr, hl
The Palatal(-dentals): ty, (n)dy, sy (þy), ny, ry, ly, y, hy
The Velars: c/k, (n)g, h, ñ, w (again),
The Labio-velars: qu, (n)gw, hw (again), ñw, w (again)
In each series is a voiceless and voiced stop (which may have very limited distribution depending on dialect), a voiceless fricative, a nasal, and some sort of approximant/liquid (both voiced and unvoiced). The voiced fricative 'v' is related to 'w' and often considered the p-series' approximant instead, and archaically the dental and velar series both had 2 fricative (s/þ and h/x) but one died out (depending on time and dialect)
Best resource for Quenya learners: eldamo.org/content/language-pages/lang-q.html
Also, the quality difference in long vowels is a hotly debated topic, but it seems it was likely there is some form (at least for e/o, basically e: / ɛ and o: / ɔ )
Additional thanks: Hatsune Miku
honestly, same
Is it ok if I cried with the outro?
yes, yes it is...
i love the credits on this ep
quenya and sindarin
this is the dialectic
new conlang critic episode woop woop 🙌🏻
Congrats(pl) on getting to 100k bro
I'd love to see you do a conlang critic for Marc Okrand's Atlantean. I want to see if, in your opinion, he's learned from the terrible mistakes of Klingon.
I wonder what the Zurafa-Sese branch of Eisenlangs is like.
For other requests, I’d like to see your opinion on Lincos or Atlantean.
but, but, who's gonna get facts wrong about my favorite conlang now? T.T
Nai ilyë quendi hantar le!
Translation: may all Elves thank you!
I signed on cuz of the Hangman video, but I'm super glad I stuck around for the linguistics stuff? Man, I should revisit the conlang I made my sophomore year...
My finnish ass loved how many times you mentioned finnish🇫🇮🇫🇮🇫🇮
14:55 "w taŭa ŭasw"
Damn, Poliespo's orthography sure is unintuitive!
Best ending in the history of media, I got emotional there.
I like how Misali includes Anthony McCarthy in additional thanks
4:55 losing my mind over the pronunciation of diaeresis
Thats how Id say it if I didnt already say umlaut
I see neo-sindrian as the “Latin” of Elvish whereas “Quenya” is like the Koine Greek of Elvish. Whereas Latin was the workaday language of ancient Rome and Greek was the older, cerebral and educated language for the Romans (Marcus Aurelius wrote the “Meditations” in Greek, for instance.) So in the way Latin speakers are using it conversationally in our time, and Koine Greek speakers are just starting to do the same thing, we sadly don’t (yet) have Elvish conventions where no English is spoken (at least I’m not aware of any). Let’s get those Quenya Middle Earth events going!
I discovered this channel recently, but had been told to watch it for at least a year. The regular polyhedra video was what got me to watch a week or two ago, and since then, i'm hooked. Tom Scott's language files made me realize that linguistics are interesting, but conlang critic made me realize just how deep it goes and just how invested I can be. I'm going to college next year, and will be taking any linguistics courses I can because it's one of the few things that is interesting enough to study academically to me. Here's to season 4!
Do some of the biblaridion conlangs! Oh and Oa too
thank you for making 2020 a little less horrible
nice quarantine content incoming...
i was very confused for a moment when you displayed "pilin" and "arrow" on top of each other
If you're looking for a conlang to review, I'd LOVE to see Doyle's work on kryptonian get a look! I've been casually interested in it since I learned most things just transliterate the original language, or use spoken Esperanto and was thoroughly disappointed there wasn't "official" kryptonian.
THIS IS THE QUALITY CONTENT I LIKE TO SEE
So I was semi-binging Conlang Critic a while back and slowed down with season three due to the longer episodes. After Lingwa de Planeta I unintentionally, just, sort of stopped. Then yesterday I came back and now I've finished and - request deadline for season four was *yesterday*? I honestly didn't realize you took requests from non-Patreons.
Well, it's still 23 February in Hawaii, so I guess this is worth a shot! Whether it counts as a conlang is perhaps an edge case, but I'd be really interested to see your thoughts on Natural Semantic Metalanguage. A quick Google suggests that it hasn't been mentioned on your subreddit or anywhere like that.
Thanks for a great channel!
in season 4 or 5 my conlang is definitely getting in the show. it’s GARBAGE.
edit: i mean maybe even VÖTGIL LEVEL GARBAGE. it’s a clone of english that kinda NEEDS YOU TO KNOW ENGLISH to speak it. AND A SPECIFIC DIALECT(S) OF ENGLISH! I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW THIS CAN BE AN AUXILIARY LANGUAGE. WE HAVE REACHED POLIESPO LEVEL.
3:37- Upon rewatching after a long while, I realised that Quenya has the “conlang diphthong,” as I like to call it: [eu]. I’ve never run into it in my bouncing around trying to learn secondary languages. At least it’s overshadowed by something that’s harder for me, [ui], because I wanna make it /wi/, like in French. Can’t show it textwise because I’m just on my phone and I don’t know if the Unicode superscript W would even show up.
Dutch has the [eu] diphthong. It's the sound made by the letter combination "ui" in many words like "huis", "muis", and "duizend" meaning "house", "mouse" and "thousand".
Not having read what, if any, Tolkien wrote on this, my guess would be that the base-10 system is the older one that is used regularly and the base-12 one was made spesifically for mathematics or something.
....also do Tsolyáni for season 4.
I'm kind of surprised you did not at any point talk of the other big (morpho)phonological feature that makes Finnish quite distinct aside from the vowel harmony - consonant gradation. While Quenya doesn't have it either as far as I can tell, I'd've expected at least a mention of that fact, especially as Tolkien did take the Celtic consonant mutation from Welsh for Sindarin
Would be interesting to see next season you delve into Star Trek again and look at Vulcan, specifically Golic Vulcan, as that seems to be the most documented one. Other Trek languages have some good documentation, but Vulcan seems like the most logical to look at.
But I've even seen some documentation that tries to parse out the Star Wars languages, which is no easy task. One thing I like to do is translate my webcomic's logo into different languages (translate the title and make the logo in that language--it's actually surprisingly fun) and out of the Wars languages, I've managed to translate it into Ewokese, Huttese, and Mando'a (Mandalorian).
Thinking of Middle Earth languages with this video, though, I forget if you've done Khuzdul. I can also think of Black Speech and Quendarin, but Khuzdul seems to be the better documented of the remaining he made.
As much as I love conlang critic, and it's the reason I subscribed, I did love the other big videos like w, hangman, and h.p. Lovecraft's math textbook. I think it's great that you can focus on other projects you want to do, instead of just doing conlang critic and smaller videos in-between
You should check out one of Biblaridion’s conlangs! You could even possibly make a colab out of it?
The Chad ancient quenya
Has phonemic ŋ
Dental fricative written as þ
The virgin third age quenya
I like how every dead conlanger except J.R.R. Tolkein is "late".
I think Tolkien cultural relevance today is severely understated, whether it’s direct acknowledgement or otherwise
was great, it would have been nice if you used someone elses reading of Markirya because you didn't get the stress right, and the stress patterns are imo the most beautiful about good Quenya poetry