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 two left over, implying a preceding base 12 counting system that was superseded by a base 10 one.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.
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
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!
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. ;)
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
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
Some errata to note in the phonology section: while Quenya does have as /nʲ/, the letter ñ represents a velar nasal, not a palatalised alveolar nasal. /w/ does appear in places other than after liquids, such as in the words wilya and wilwarin. Initial represented /x/ in Old Quenya, but later on became /h/. As a corollary, is actually /ʍ/. isn't just /c/, but /cʲ/. is when following a, o, or u, and /çt/ when following i and e. As for grammar, you forgot the perfect tense, the non-extended infinitive, and the imperative. For the verb "to go" (the stem is tul-), we have, respectively, utúlië, tulë (same as basic stem aorist, except they don't turn into an i with other endings), and tula (obviously barring certain exceptions, such as apantië, firië, á carë, etc.). The possessive case ending is "-wa" when added to words ending in a consonant. You can, of course, add an E between the core and the ending. With Quenya vowels, the quality is not exactly known, but they are close to /ɑ ɛ i ɔ u/. Only e and o change quality when lengthened, to /e/ and /o/. Sure, Finnish doesn't change quality with gemination, but Italian and Spanish do iirc, and Quenya's vowels are meant to be more inspired by them. The labialised consonants are definitely their own phonemes. I don't think /nʷ/ is, but /ŋʷ/ definitely is. I've never seen Quenya described with ʎ before. Interesting.
@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 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.
Re who invented maths in Middle Earth, I'd guess the dwarves, because living in underground cities makes geometry a bit more life-and-death for them than everyone else. I'm loving these videos btw.
Not sure what I want to say. Loved the episode. Sad to hear Conlang Critic is taking a break. Looking forward to whatever's next. Finally: O Gorithm who art in the Cloud, lead us not into demonetization, but deliver us from obscurity.
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.
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.
I really like the our generation cover/translation in the end. Was that in all the conlangs this season? (I really can't recognize any of the languages when hearing them [probably not even by seeing them romanised], so I don't know.)
the song is translated only to toki pona, the visuals i don’t know if they are toki pona written in other styles or actual translations of the lyrics here's a video compiling the bits from other reviews ua-cam.com/video/HlIEDQ6EPN8/v-deo.html (sorry for the broken english, not my first language)
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'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
i'm gonna be completely honest, as a person who transliterates stuff into tengwar and writes in tengwar a lot, the main reason why i prefer quenya over sindarin is because the placement of the vowel diacritics. fuck placing it on the following consonant fjsldkfj
>beautiful mellow piano notes of familiar melody >VÖTGIL but I have to agree with the other commenters, that was a beautiful way of ending season three, cant believe its already over
So in your chart of possible consonant clusters, you listed hl and hr as h+l and h+r, but those were actually digraphs for voiceless l and voiceless r in Quenya before becoming voiced through a sound shift. They maintain the orthographic distinction but are pronounced the same as their h-less counterparts.
Tolkien wrote about how he saw himself as translating the stories of Middle-earth from their original languages into modern English, maybe the base 12 to base 10 issue could be seen as an artifact of Quenya translated into Common by Hobbits and later into English by Tolkien. I could see the nuances of elvish math being lost along the way.
Wow, it's amazing how many people misapply the words "understated" and "overstated." But, et tu, Conlange?! 11:20 "The significance and impact of Tolkien's world-building cannot be OVERSTATED"!
That's... That's what that word means... That a correct application of that word. o·ver·state /ˌōvərˈstāt/ 1. express or state too strongly; exaggerate If something's importance cannot be overstated, that means that it is so important that it is literally physically impossible to exaggerate about how important it is. No matter how hard you try to express its importance, its true importance is still more than what you have portrayed it to be. The expression would become basically meaningless if you used the word "understated" instead. You are confusing the word "can" for "must". "Can" describes what you are capable of doing, whereas "must" describes what you are allowed to do. "It *can* not be _overstated_" means basically the same thing as "It *must* not be _understated_" It's kinda strange that you are making an argument in favor of prescriptive linguistics in on channel like this of all places, but even stranger that you're doing it from an *incorrect* notion of what should even be prescribed.
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.
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???????
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
“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.
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.
This is the nif-th episode!
:))
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
I clicked confusing it with Sindarin
But then I saw "6 minutes ago"
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!
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
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. ;)
The aesthetics of the Tengwar alone, before I knew anything of linguistics, was enough to make me fall in love.
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!
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!
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.
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.
I'm just going to listen to the credits a few more times.
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!
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.
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.
That outro with the lyrics in the writing system of each language reviewed made me smile.
YEEEEES WEEEEEEEEEEEEE FINALYYYY AAAAAAAAAAAAAA I MISSED YOU THANKS FOR 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.
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!
Tolkien is the saint of conlangers, thank you for this!
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.
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.
thank you for making 2020 a little less horrible
The end bit makes my heart sing. Thanks you, Misali!
the ending of this video somehow feels like bringing together the greatest of everything done on this channel to date and it gave me goosebumps
That thing at the end with all the different writing systems was so cool!
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.
I'll miss coming home after school and see a new conlang critic video on my feed, or at least I'll miss it for some months.
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!
omg I've been waiting for this for so long
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!
I think Tolkien cultural relevance today is severely understated, whether it’s direct acknowledgement or otherwise
wow ok im emotional as hell that this is the end of season 3
Some errata to note in the phonology section: while Quenya does have as /nʲ/, the letter ñ represents a velar nasal, not a palatalised alveolar nasal. /w/ does appear in places other than after liquids, such as in the words wilya and wilwarin. Initial represented /x/ in Old Quenya, but later on became /h/. As a corollary, is actually /ʍ/. isn't just /c/, but /cʲ/. is when following a, o, or u, and /çt/ when following i and e.
As for grammar, you forgot the perfect tense, the non-extended infinitive, and the imperative. For the verb "to go" (the stem is tul-), we have, respectively, utúlië, tulë (same as basic stem aorist, except they don't turn into an i with other endings), and tula (obviously barring certain exceptions, such as apantië, firië, á carë, etc.). The possessive case ending is "-wa" when added to words ending in a consonant. You can, of course, add an E between the core and the ending.
With Quenya vowels, the quality is not exactly known, but they are close to /ɑ ɛ i ɔ u/. Only e and o change quality when lengthened, to /e/ and /o/. Sure, Finnish doesn't change quality with gemination, but Italian and Spanish do iirc, and Quenya's vowels are meant to be more inspired by them.
The labialised consonants are definitely their own phonemes. I don't think /nʷ/ is, but /ŋʷ/ definitely is.
I've never seen Quenya described with ʎ before. Interesting.
i love the credits on this ep
Is it ok if I cried with the outro?
yes, yes it is...
Those end credits were top notch. Also congrats on 100k
What he does at the end is cool:
He wrote the lyrics in the different alphabets of the conglangs he reviewed!
Looks like I'll just watch the vötgil episode over and over until season 4 starts
Also: congratulations to 100k subscribers!
Great finale to a season of a show about a topic which you make extremely interesting despite me knowing almost nothing about the study of linguistics
@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 )
Nai ilyë quendi hantar le!
Translation: may all Elves thank you!
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.
new conlang critic episode woop woop 🙌🏻
Really great work Jan Misali. Congrats on putting together so many interesting episodes. Best of luck with your next project :-)
Now that's a season finale! Great music and great transcription. 10/10 Will hear it again!
Hooray! 100th episode!
Man, great as always. I can't wait for your future projects.
New year, new conlang!
No way just learnt The alphabet yesterday and look what's in my recommendation, love this community
Iconic outro
Congrats(pl) on getting to 100k bro
No more Conlang Critic? Finally! /s
I love that you credited Anthony McCarthy in the Credits
2:46 But what about toki pona?
Edit: oh, SINCE Sindarin. nevermind
I like how Misali includes Anthony McCarthy in additional thanks
Re who invented maths in Middle Earth, I'd guess the dwarves, because living in underground cities makes geometry a bit more life-and-death for them than everyone else. I'm loving these videos btw.
Not sure what I want to say. Loved the episode. Sad to hear Conlang Critic is taking a break. Looking forward to whatever's next. Finally: O Gorithm who art in the Cloud, lead us not into demonetization, but deliver us from obscurity.
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.
The ending gave me goosebumps, this is amazing! :)
>18 seconds ago
>No views
>3 likes
lets go
Edit:
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.
You know that feeling when you finish a great game or movie? That ending did it to me.
Happy 100k!!!
I really like the our generation cover/translation in the end. Was that in all the conlangs this season?
(I really can't recognize any of the languages when hearing them [probably not even by seeing them romanised], so I don't know.)
the song is translated only to toki pona, the visuals i don’t know if they are toki pona written in other styles or actual translations of the lyrics
here's a video compiling the bits from other reviews ua-cam.com/video/HlIEDQ6EPN8/v-deo.html
(sorry for the broken english, not my first language)
All of it was in toki pona, but the ending was transcriptions of the lyrics using the writing systems of all 12 conlangs reviewed this season.
Yes
the ending is beautiful
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 like how every dead conlanger except J.R.R. Tolkein is "late".
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
Wow, you reviewed all the conlangs? Daaamn!
that was beautiful
every single part
i'm gonna be completely honest, as a person who transliterates stuff into tengwar and writes in tengwar a lot, the main reason why i prefer quenya over sindarin is because the placement of the vowel diacritics. fuck placing it on the following consonant fjsldkfj
FUCK YEAH I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS I LOVE YOUR CHANNEL
>beautiful mellow piano notes of familiar melody
>VÖTGIL
but I have to agree with the other commenters, that was a beautiful way of ending season three, cant believe its already over
luv this channel
Congrats to 100k subs
nice quarantine content incoming...
finally another episode
i just saw it you have flat out 100k sub!
Congratulations!
And 100 episodes of Conlang Critic (the really reason he is taking a break is because he reached nif)
So in your chart of possible consonant clusters, you listed hl and hr as h+l and h+r, but those were actually digraphs for voiceless l and voiceless r in Quenya before becoming voiced through a sound shift. They maintain the orthographic distinction but are pronounced the same as their h-less counterparts.
Tolkien wrote about how he saw himself as translating the stories of Middle-earth from their original languages into modern English, maybe the base 12 to base 10 issue could be seen as an artifact of Quenya translated into Common by Hobbits and later into English by Tolkien. I could see the nuances of elvish math being lost along the way.
The credits are amazing
YAY! 100K SUBS! CONGRATS!
This episode was made in November 28th
Sindarin in November 30th
WAW
Wow, it's amazing how many people misapply the words "understated" and "overstated." But, et tu, Conlange?! 11:20 "The significance and impact of Tolkien's world-building cannot be OVERSTATED"!
That's...
That's what that word means...
That a correct application of that word.
o·ver·state
/ˌōvərˈstāt/
1. express or state too strongly; exaggerate
If something's importance cannot be overstated, that means that it is so important that it is literally physically impossible to exaggerate about how important it is. No matter how hard you try to express its importance, its true importance is still more than what you have portrayed it to be.
The expression would become basically meaningless if you used the word "understated" instead.
You are confusing the word "can" for "must". "Can" describes what you are capable of doing, whereas "must" describes what you are allowed to do.
"It *can* not be _overstated_" means basically the same thing as "It *must* not be _understated_"
It's kinda strange that you are making an argument in favor of prescriptive linguistics in on channel like this of all places, but even stranger that you're doing it from an *incorrect* notion of what should even be prescribed.
Additional thanks: Hatsune Miku
honestly, same
Nice video
I rushed to the video after I saw the notification.
Same
I loved the video ending it was so awesome
Do some of the biblaridion conlangs! Oh and Oa too