Now, if you are not an H.P. Lovecraft fan you title of this post might look like absolute gibberish, however, it is in fact, an actual language, albeit a constructed one. The strange and very much unpronounceable language called R'lyehian was created by the esteemed American, horror author H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was well known for his very unique genre of Gothic horror, the eventual evolve into its own genre, Lovecraftian horror. Through his many works, Lovecraft often wrote many different stories that all belong within the fiction. So the R'lyehian language appears in many of his works, the most notable of which would be the short story, "The Call of Cthulhu". And yes, i'm spelling that correctly.

   You see, unlike many other constructed languages that exist, R'lyehian was not created for the intended use of human speech. In Lovecrafts stories, the R'lyehian language was spoken by ancient godlike monsters, who did not have traditional means of vocalization. In place of mouths and vocal chords these monster morally had an olfactory opening hidden by tentacles. As disgusting as this sounds, it brings to light a very interesting topic concerning constructed languages, and linguistics in general. What would a language sound like if it where spoken by creatures who had non traditional vocal arrangements? 

(Cathulhu, pronounced "Kathooloo" is an elder god within Lovecrafts fiction, and is an example of the type of creature that would speak R'lyehian.)

    While its easy to think of hundreds of different sounds we can make with our mouths to construct and language with, it becomes infinitely more complicated when we consider adding sounds that we cannot produce. This happens to be the case with R'lyehian. It is a language that no human could speak because we do not posses that physical anatomy to produce the sounds that a required to speak it. And reversely, any of Lovecrafts monsters, while possessing the ability to speak and comprehend language, would be unable to speak English, for they to lack the anatomy to produce the sounds it requires. 

(The Xenomorph from the movie "Alien" has very unique anatomy and is a prime example of non traditional alien vocal anatomy.)  

    As food for thought this is a very interesting topic. It brings to light a topic, those  of which who would seek to create languages should be aware of, as well as the idea of what it would be like for us to learn an alien language or vise versa. If in the vast expanse of the cosmos there is alien life and we where to meet it, there is a very slight chance we would be able to communicate through spoken language because of this reason, however unlikely this situation actually is. But within the context of constructed languages, it can be used as a powerful tool, to help one create a realistic and vibrant alien language. 

     

Git Rekt M8

As you may or may not know I am an avid video game player. I have been playing games ever sense I was a kid and in the last few years I've even tried my hand at competitive gaming and the E-sports scene. And as with being apart of any community, over the years I have picked up my fair share of gaming lingo. Just like any other group of people with a common interest video game players have their own dialect differences and unique vocabulary. One of the most interest aspects is that because so many people play video games that lots of these phrases have even carried over into everyday conversations. So for today's post I figured I'd just go over some of the most common and most unique jargon I use when i'm playing with other people online.  Almost every term on this list and most gaming lingo can be traced back to the game Counter Strike. Which is considered one of the first competitive online video games and the founding father of e-sports.

The first term I'll talk about is probably the most well known and most used outside of the gaming community, And that is the word "noob". Now there are many variations of this word (Scrub, newb, pleb) but they all  mean the same thing. Noob is a noun, it means someone who is very new to something and therefore not very good at it. In some cases it can also just mean someone who is very bad at something, though this is less common. It stem from the term newby, and is was so widely used in gaming that it bled over in to non gamer vocabulary. 

Second only in popularity to noob is the term "HP'. Standing for "hit points" this term actually comes from old school Dungeons and Dragons  (yes that game with the little miniature wizards figures and dice your dad played in high school) Hp refers to a characters health or how much life they have. 

"GG" is another very widely used gaming term. Short for good game it's mostly used as a polite pleasantry at the end of a match. Especially if the game was very close or dynamic and fun to play.  

"AFK" is another abbreviation used very commonly. Short for away from keyboard, it's used to tell you teammates that you have to get up from the game to do something. So that you will be away from your keyboard or controller and be unable to play or respond for a short time.  

A little less commonly used are the two phrases "Git rekt" and "Git gud". Both of these are different spellings of get good, and get wrecked. The triumphant battle cry of the victor, this is said to any player who you beat or won against with a significant lead. Usually in an embarrassing or shameful fashion for the loser.  

"Kiting" is a term used in certain video games to describe a type of tactical play. To "kite someone is to lead them away from the battlefield while slowly dealing damage to them. Usually this is done in a subtle way to make it seem to them that they are chasing you. By the time they realize it they are out of position and have taken a large amount of damage for them, allowing you or your team to finish them off.  

"RPG" is another term people see a lot today in the gaming community. Short of roleplaying game, this term is used to describe any type of game in which a large amount of choice and customization is given to the player.  'RPG's" let the player design how their character looks, what abilities they have, and what gear they use. "RPG's" also let players have large amounts of freedom, roaming around large maps with many different activities to do.  

"FPS" is another term to describe a type of video game. Short for First-person shooter, FPS games feature a first-person view of the action and are almost exclusively action packed games where your character fights their way through hoard of enemies with a trusty blaster. FPS games are one of the most popular gaming genres out there, with big names like "Call of Duty" and "Halo" being FPS games. 

Our final term for today is "Glass cannon". This is a term to describe a character in a game who is designed to have extremely high offensive capabilities and is able to deal exceedingly high amounts of damage. But as a drawback is fragile and has very low HP and weak armor. Obviously, an actual glass canon would be very fragile but still very dangerous.  

Most of these terms originate from the late 90s and early 2000s when online gaming became a big hit and really took off as a form of mainstream entertainment. And as stated before some of them have worked their way out of the gaming world and into regular conversation. These examples though just barely scratch the surface of the different words and phrases in the video game world that one picks up from playing a variety of games both casually and competitively. 

The Quirks Of Language And How To Use Them

Today I am finally going to start discussing something I have been dying to talk about since the beginning of this course and something I have been meaning do to for a very long time know. As I have mentioned before I have always been fascinated with constructed languages, and so it has been my dream for some time know to actually construct my own, and this course has given some of the preliminary knowledge to make that happen. So for today's subject we get to dip our feet into the process of actually constructing a language, and more specifically, the quirky attributes that languages naturally develop. 

              So the idea behind this is that when you are trying to create and constructed language, usually the goal is to fit it into some sort of fantasy world, so you are trying to make a language that seem like it has naturally developed over hundreds or thousands of years. So with this in mind, it’s a good idea to make sure when creating your language to include a fair number of linguistic, grammatical and syntactical quirks. Having grammatical rules that aren't universal, and adding odd exceptions to rules may seem odd at the time, but really adds a sense of depth to your language. A great example of some of these oddities in English is this poem I found. It wonderfully demonstrates how some things in a language just don’t make sense.

               Now as fun as it might be to make an odd and twisted language with conflicting rules, it is also important to show some restraint in a number of areas for a number of reason. firstly if you make you language too convoluted no one will ever be able to learn it or speak it fluently. But more importantly, if you want to make your constructed language realistic it is important to shy away from creating phonetic abstractions. Even though many languages have odd and varied syntactical rules, they almost always have an ironclad set of consistent phonetic sounds. Certain languages doesn't use specific sounds and highly use others, so while it's important to establish which sounds your language will and wont use (a great way to determine this is using the International Phonetic Alphabet) you must then maintain consistency with those sounds. 

               These are just two good examples, in my opinion, of universal linguistic rules and quirks that can really help establish realism in a constructed language. And I can assure you will be incorporated into my own. Which I am excited to say we will start to work on with my next post. 

Of Jabberwocks and Nazgul
For today's post I thought we would discuss the topic of word formation and the way different languages structure their words. But we are going to be looking at something rather different linguistically and that is gibberish words. That’s right we are going to talk about words that don’t exist and have absolutely no definition. The thing is, that even though they are gibberish words they can still carry meaning in our minds. This ties together very well with our theme of constructed languages as you shall soon see.  

To start things off I would first like to look at one of my favorite poems, Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll. Now as you can obviously tell there are quite a few words in the poem that are in fact gibberish, 27 to be exact. But despite the fact that the poem relies only mostly made up words to describe itself, you get a wonderfully vivid idea of the world Lewis Carroll has created. I'm sure for everyone it's slightly different, but can't you just picture something in your mind when you read about the slithy toves or hear the noise of the burbling Jabberwocky. 

This is because Lewis Carroll does a fantastic job of using the English phonetic system to his advantage. He creates words using only sound pairings and phonetic combinations that naturally occur in the English language. This allows us to feel that these made up words are real and imprint meaning to them. And the method by which we do this is also fascinating.  

For our next example we use the Ringwraiths from lord of the rings. Now while wraith is not a made up word, before it was brought to popularity by Tolkien in the early 50s, it was not a commonly found word, so many were unaware of its meaning. Now the word wraith is fascinating because it brings a slew of images to mind. It represents evil, death, twisted haunting spirits, and generally not good things. But why is this? 

If we look at the word phonetically it share similarities with quite a few other English words. One being "wrath" a severe burning hatred, and the second being, "wreath" a ring of twisted gnarled branches. Both of these word bring very clear images to mind as well. So when combined with "wraith" the word Ringwraith, while totally made up, brings about a very clear idea of what one of these foul creatures might look and feel like if you were to meet one.  

Going back to the Jabberwocky, all of the made up words Lewis Carol uses bring to mind very clear images because not only do they follow our phonetic rules, but though phonetic similarities they can bring to mind strikingly vivid images of things that have no actual connection to. This to me is truly fascinating.