Conlangery #97: Interview with Britton Watkins

Conlangery #97: Interview with Britton Watkins

Published: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 05:00:50 +0000 \

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Transcript

utterance-id1 [noise] [noise] oh computer bonfires cats boxer shorts and languages when people are really ah with me down the road way is william [noise] and we have a uh we we have no my today but we have a special gas with us but we're going to be talking to uh written walking [noise] from britain uh you'd be very involved in that but not me community um and also he was a a language consulting uh i guess basically a dialect first start crickets the darker berkeley huh yeah yeah and then and he is also recently made a movie with his husband josh <unk> thin and we're we'll we'll talk about that there's a <unk> huge corrupt that movie actually what there's several of them several uh will be getting through all of that so uh let's start out ah britain uh william wanted to start this oh we're talking about your your <unk> like background so your your background natural language is that sort of me in [noise] oh okay sure um i'm from a very small town in south carolina where there was very little foreign language i never heard any kind of non english language spoken [noise] at i was growing up but um moving from what at my school was middle school into the the high school between seventh and eighth grade i was exposed to latin very briefly through some private lessons given to me my by by my grandmother's best friend who was the only latin teacher and the entire town and she had just retired actually so uh i was about to have spanish is my first foreign language and the eighth grade but i got a smattering of latin before that and the first thing i ever learned was britannia <unk> yeah [laughter] and that went right along with my name so i figured there was something you know something in the cards there that was the first sentence and the book that i had so um [noise] so i started with a smattering of latin and then took spanish for uh several years in high school and went to spain for two summers so actually became rather fluent congress officially fluent in spanish <unk> high school [noise] and um [noise] they took a little bit of french in college uh i think french one o two and that was it and um primarily focused on japanese and my and my language schooling at university i spent a year at the university of hawaii because of the east west center there and was able to study things like you know uh <unk> uh bits about classical japanese and japanese linguistics and whatnot at the university of hawaii that i could not get in south carolina at the university of south carolina where my primary education happened so by the time i was out of school uh i had been relatively conversational fluent in spanish and was pretty good at every day life in japanese but had never actually lives there and ended up being in japan for um five and a half years in my twenties and became fluent professionally fluent in japanese and um [noise] during the second step back and japan in the late nineties i actually begin to learn tie so i did that was doing that as a hobby and my first instructors anti war bilingual and japanese anti so my i <unk> i started learning tie be a japanese switch [laughter] but um it didn't really make any difference because you know it doesn't matter what you start with you're trying to to learn that target language um and since then i've dabbled in especially the or soccer fee of uh tibetan uh sanskrit and of late i'm quite interested in cherokee and i'm trying to learn cherokee but finding it very difficult for lots of different reasons um so [noise] along the way i also had two years of mandarin so a little bit of mainland mandarin and a little bit of more uh-huh taiwan focus mandarin but so mandarin too so that's that's kind of an outline background oh that that is pretty wide and very few that you have lots of different types of languages yeah when it comes to kind of apology and everything you know there are quite um [noise] you know tie tie in chinese thai and mandarin or similar to each other or french and spanish or similar uh when we get to not be that kind of similar to japanese for me anyway so you know so they all have a lot of kind of differences but overlap too yeah yeah you have sort of the room and my [noise] and so you have sort of groups of languages but you you <unk> uh but that that's a very good <unk> starting point so i i wish i had that much sort of language experience when i was starting with <unk> <unk> i've only been studying spanish in high school [noise] um so let's get into <unk> how how did you get into the sort of <unk> in general and then later into creating your own language [noise] okay um i of course was aware of the existence of <unk> i probably didn't call them caught lines but i certainly knew about <unk> and i knew a little bit about it's history just because all language is interesting to me it doesn't matter what it is it's very very interesting to me i i will admit that that scripts north allegra fees are more interesting to me than spoken languages but um but only slightly more interesting i really just love languages in general so i knew about it <unk> and i actually have been a science fiction fan since i was a young child so windy original clean on dictionary came out when i was actually in hawaii at least the first time i saw it i was in hawaii studying mandarin and japanese and learning cookie and other crazy stuff like that but um i actually bought the the queen on dictionary and had it and read it and learn basically how the grammar worked and whatnot and i certainly understood that was a constructed language so i knew about constructed languages conceptual a. and specifically us bronco incline on but i did not learn clean on i didn't learn to <unk> converse in it and i did not become a part of the kind of pen pal group that originally emerged and then became they've <unk> online um that was never really a lot of what i did but i <unk> i did get very intensely interested in <unk> in the emergency of the <unk> on line community online and whatnot because of the not be an avid tar and um william will know that he and i met for the first time in the comment of uh a threat uh language law when paul are from posted about the not the language he gave up very <unk> you know the phonology and some of the some of the verbal stuff not a lot of it but um but i think he talked a little bit about uh attitude markers or or right but probably yeah <unk> most triggered a lot of questions did get answer to later [laughter] yeah exactly but that's where i'm at william originally in the in the comment literally in the comments section of that and those comments led me to learn <unk> dot org which is <unk> that was the the you know <unk> hold down which i fail but [laughter] and um it kind of nothing has been the same since then i i should do you <unk> before did you see the movie before you got interested um or did you hear something about the language before you saw the um the day before the film came out on that thursday uh josh yelled across the room at me to <unk> there's a constructed language in this <unk> movie that's coming out tomorrow and i had been aware that james cameron was making another film but i hate completely forgotten about it i had heard about it like six months earlier and i had because of work and other things i had just completely forgotten about it [noise] so and i had no idea there was a constructed language in it but because of things that were actually already on line the day before the movie came out um primarily <unk> out of um a word list out of the the uh book that is the kind of was the seminal thing that kicked it all off the um the a. s. g. [laughter] um the we <unk> and and i must have a lot of credit to the <unk> article that already that sit on the language that morning at eleven forty five when i heard about it for the first time i just went off and tried to learn as much as i could about the language with anything i couldn't find and paul was on ah n._p._r. speaking a little bit and on the new york times block with a recording and this and that and the other so i actually at about four thirty that afternoon wrote a letter hey like let her an email of like two lines are three lines in the most broken not be you can imagine [laughter] at all [laughter] and he responded while i was at a dinner party via email so all my i phone at seven thirty pm at a dinner party all actually responded to me and so that was that was how it all got started and i did not actually see the film lentil the following tuesday so i was involved with not be for four or five days before i ever saw this film and probably wildly <unk> logging and chatting away and engaging away all learn <unk> dot org before i ever saw the movie i wanna i wanna go back and just just sort of making opposition i find it interesting that you would william uh <unk> <unk> that's just like so much oh what what the <unk> i've only met like three <unk> in person one of them i met before i ever knew he was interested in in on like um and leader for the the sort of online friendship that mike and william and then there's a guy here man you who's who's sitting in the german department so it really is mostly like an online interaction thing oh i think the internet and just just radically transformed the nature of the coddling in community i mean it's an <unk> essentially not that it didn't exist at all before but it's really radically transformed the nature of the way people get to know each other and how relationships and it sort of created it because i write a lot of <unk> communities i've just been created on line [noise] sort of [noise] uh two bit in george for you to have <unk> three people is wildly inflated number many people have never met in person [laughter] right that's true and i have lots of you know going back and forth a lot of other <unk> i you know i recognize their names now on <unk> and stuff and i know who they are but i've never met them and sort of uh energy so ah let's get into a little bit so you're talking about uh not <unk> you say you you've also been involved with ah <unk> no that yeah yeah okay well i can i can tell you about that i mentioned earlier that i was [noise] kind of much more uh well not much more but more drawn to to or thought graffiti than i am necessarily morphology and syntax and whatnot so [noise] so i discovered by accident that there was already a fully flushed out local language that had alexa con of ten thousand plus items [noise] and i discovered this and some kind of half preserved remnant of the original website that that had language lessons for <unk> which was created by a gentleman named mark are gardner and his his group of friends and clap writers that went on during the title originally instilled do now again i think oh the vulgar language institute or the v. alive so they took uh the actual lines that were spoken on screen and the original star trek motion picture film and then the next um films that involves spoken vulcan language through the third film and now we <unk> was there's some of the original the first movie yeah the there's all kinds of master who that's where the the vast majority of all of it was <unk> kind of master explains to spa in in vulcan and the final cut that he has failed to achieve <unk> his fail to perjure to all of his emotion because he's distracted by his emotions and his <unk> attachment to the human beings calling him away to the expedition to discover feature so they're at the beginning of that movie there's actually i bought a minute and a half of the local master explaining to him why he's failed to achieve all in our and and that was originally all filmed in english of course and then they went back in uh in uh <unk> became the logical basis <unk> anyway um they don't at all in so mark art gardener and the rest of the club writers <unk> turn that into a really amazingly flushed out uh language so i i learned that language not perfectly fluently well of course but well enough to feel comfortable in it and be able to to exchange emails with people in it and [noise] and then um just came up with my own versions of a complete or soccer fee that would represent that phonology [noise] um they think that on the non grammatical non linguistic but purely artistic example though quote unquote vulcan writing that had showed up and all of the the different series on the big screen and on television over all the years so that's what my my interest in vulcan centered around so i made a point now that with a few other people are not very many people uh certainly there are probably more people who can communicate and not be then <unk> oh for them i'm aware but uh i do um i do write to people exchange emails with people completely and <unk> and they're all of course fans of the star trek french fries that's uh that's very interesting uh <unk> <unk> <unk> especially since like vulcan is not like playing on playing on has a lot of the studios work behind it and and mark <unk> working with the language [noise] mhm [noise] as far as i know this this vulcan aside from the initial things he pulled from is like a fan effort like uh like fanned fiction in a way yes it is and um it's a little it's a little more complicated than that even in that there's a mixture of things that mark did for the big screen um other people did for the big screen and chatting with mark about it he told me that not everything that was focusing on screen was necessarily something that he came up with and then there are the writings of ah different people who've explored the vulcan culture like diane lane and other other people who come up with bits and pieces of all can language over the years so they work or uh like official star trek novels um their official novels but again that doesn't necessarily mean that paramount or c._b._s. or anybody else behind the coining of these terms or remaining necessarily so there are a couple of words that come up <unk> for example the most common want it to high law and to highland mean something like a very closed dear friend and there's some question i think that's a weather gene roddenberry actually coin that term or not but um but that word is <unk> it's hard to tell exactly where it came from it certainly was not a word that was created by marko <unk> but it's very important to the community and there are other words like <unk> which means something along the lines of what is is you know it's it's a very thin approach to existence and that's not necessarily that was ever anything that was ever spoken on screen but it's still very much a part of the culture of the people who have an affinity for <unk> and their culture and language so it kind of a mix of lots of different things but ultimately yeah so i would say that if you're doing anything vulcan um you're likely to be doing so operating in something that is essentially fan fiction [noise] well you have any other questions were we move on to work with uh with star trek or [noise] oh sure um none of the cities so you have a website [noise] 'course <unk> warm devoted to <unk> especially um coming in was writing systems yes <unk> and i recognize some of the sources oh i always remember in the enterprise series um <unk> reading a book that has something looks like one of those groups you came up with [noise] what was it like trying to take the work of designers who have no concept of language you know necessarily mhm and extrapolate from that are using them rating system [noise] well that um they're actually three different writing system so the one that's the most interesting in most popular [noise] is um the one that some people call the musical writing system that the one that there was a graphic in the book that to poll was reading so that system um originally came i think exclusively from michael who to and you know everyone's familiar with the term <unk> probably because he's done all this work and creating all kinds of graphic art works of art work that's decorated the various you know federation shifts but also alien ships and whatnot so if there was ever a just a random alien riding system or something that showed up on screen michael it could have probably had something to do with it um but i was i basically just looked across all of those things with uh kind of your wrists dick um artistic i and then uh and took a took that or use that as a guy i didn't want to copy specifically the cliffs or what i might interpreted the glare done by done by michael oakwood uh or anyone else might have worked on assets for enterprise or or any of the other series so i i just kind of took uh an an artistic average if you will of what people referred to as that musical notation or whatever and thought about the actual phonology <unk> which was formalized again by mark or a gardener and <unk> and just tried to come up with a working system that that would make some kind of sense but also looked really nice because i think the original curly cue musical notation ask writing [noise] always look very nice and inspired people [noise] so it was in some ways challenging but it's just an alphabet you know like every every they're just confidence of vowels and some dark critic marks and whatnot so it's not it's not 'cause it's actually very complicated it just looks very complicated because it was inspired by artwork that was originally designed to look complicated and beautiful as opposed to being um oh practical tool for the spoken language yeah um but i would i would imagine like if you were to actually try to take the <unk> from from enterprise were from all of the series and tried to reconcile those little woke him that would just not be possible because you know you have part is sort of growing random symbols mhm no it would not be possible it is not possible i could tell you that yeah it would not <unk> you you you just see is <unk> anyway so [noise] um moving along so you moved from <unk> you know working in fame them to you actually work and the language consult with uh the movie star trek into darkness there's a scene where uh <unk> playing uh uh well i <unk> i forget that may <unk> <unk> <unk> yeah mhm yeah yeah playing <unk> have to talk to some planning on <unk> on <unk> you know she's a linguist anyway so what was what was that like sort of working on right that seems like <unk> would be the ideal situation were her people interested in things that we're <unk> yeah [noise] well it was it was an amazing adventure it really was i would i would hire basically as you mentioned earlier to be a dialect coach too to teach the all of the actors though we and and the other <unk> who were expected to perform on camera [noise] um to teach them their lines which of course we're all written by mark <unk> i mean he he does everything that's official for the films of course so i was hired simply because i was able to teach them the correct pronunciation and be there is a live person in classes i mean we had sessions with them i i live in san francisco but i went down to los angeles um on three or four different occasions to work with them just to get them comfortable saying all the line and saying them in different ways so that when j. j. a. rooms inevitably started directing them they would have enough kind of comfortable yes uh you know enough um general not necessarily ability to speak the language but general comfort with the lines of what the individual words men so that they could act them as opposed to just saying them on camera [noise] um and i again i went down there was also some meeting be a sky actually to to practice and then eventually i was on that on corona's and that's it was amazing i will tell you i mean it it to me it's more amazing that would actually the in the film i mean it <unk> it was amazing to be there on this uh but um but um i i was on that for about six days while they were filming everything that involved any kind of spoken calling on and some of that ended up in the film and some of it ended up on the cutting room floor as they say so um there was lots of different lots of different stuff and it was all fun and interesting and they all did a great job they really really all did a great job of of approaching something without phonology that unusual and just diving right in and and having fun with it we had lots of fun with it too it wasn't a burden some kind of [noise] oh my god i have to be clean on on camera kind of think it was a lot of fun for me and for them and playing on is really not <unk> just a little bit weird <unk> a lot of ways but so i remember watching that she <unk> they i i really did do very well you can judge like the accuracy better than i did but i <unk> <unk> better than i but <unk> my perspective they were very very fluid in ah the delivery and were able to very successful act through going on so [noise] well they did everybody who who learned anything did did an amazing job and they did they they were very believable to me i was actually there with you know what her called can earphones on listening to the dialogue and watching the watching the same as as they were performed if i was not actually write their onset standing up to the side somewhere and they did a great job they did an amazing job and it is hard to learn but one of the one of the actors who you know sadly for me does not end up in the final film [noise] he's actually a speaker of arabic and he can pronounce coming on better than i can tell you that [noise] oh oh yeah because there's there's the <unk> [noise] <unk> <unk> <unk> right <unk> lots of stuff back into the throat that he he did an amazing job well yeah i hope that uh so we still don't it as you get typecast uh we need to speak [laughter] she she was in an appetizer and then she did this she's going to be right oregon yeah she <unk> she's going to turn into one of the grand ladies of science fiction if she keeps keeps going this way she's she was makes u._t. in in the first i have a car and i looked at her i._m._d._b. and apparently they i don't know if they've actually confirmed it or this is something somebody added but they added like two three and four <unk> that was confirmed last week oh yeah she's yeah she's signed for all the additional movies you know so that that's going to be interesting [laughter] she's going back to her not be rude [laughter] but she she really is i mean she just she <unk> i think she really likes doing it though i mean i know she she certainly had a very open attitude and a wonderful approach to to tackling <unk> you know she was fearless about it and [noise] and i think that kind of <unk> how you have to be what's going on because it's just so different it it's not easily relate of all to any other language that anybody's speak so [noise] i i really appreciated her open attitude shoes hurry go get her about it it's interesting that you talk about you have to be fearless to do this i think that's really true 'cause i just remember the first time i ever studied a foreign language in high school [noise] was french and right now we're supposed to say instead of saying we're here for ten minutes we're supposed to speak infringing i honestly feel that little embarrassed yeah i <unk> yeah well i always feel a little embarrassed when i start speaking in a new language i remember very well you know needing to say things out loud and clap anti for the first time and and you know even now it's my grasp of cherokee is so poor that i feel incredibly self conscious every time i say anything like you know my name is or anything like that i just don't feel incredibly self conscious about it but i think that's just part of the profit that and you have to push through that and get through that and then once you do that and you get to the stage that you can repeat things very very comfortably regardless of what you're doing in your day then you're better and then the more those phrases into more of that command you add the better you feel about it but again when you're learning uh constructed language for a film you don't you're never going to have all of that you're only going to have whatever your lines are so um that's uh you know that's another special layer of complexity in challenge i thing because you're not actually learning to say things like i'm here or my name is you're all of a sudden you're talking about inter galactic terrorists you know [laughter] so it's a little it's a different level of that i think yeah and i feel like sort of the most successful actors doing that sort of thing for people who are like really excited by the prospect of speaking a different language [noise] but at least that's what i get from you know promotions and and from hearing about it uh everyone [laughter] it seems a parent but like you came through <unk> was like really into learning you know learning his those rocky lines of delivering them very well [noise] things like that so i think it's i i think you need a certain <unk> you need a certain enthusiasm <unk> character well unless your ah <unk> [laughter] [laughter] yeah i think it than it does yeah also bravery you know like it really is a certain type of braver that's necessary mhm now talking about since we're fond hotlines in movies anyway and i wanna ask a lead a question one okay so we're about to talk about this movie that you enjoy to me [noise] do you try your hand out language invention between getting into not be making this movie [noise] um i would say i dabbled a little bit here and there so there's there's one thing we really talked about it from time to time on the show in the past is there is a world of difference between being the fan cleveland or to not be in trying to learn the language as part of that or [noise] as identifying with those fictional cultures in some way [noise] <unk> the most part <unk> do not talk to the rest of <unk> <unk> <unk> right yeah right <unk> jump is when i'm asking you moved here [noise] well i you know <unk> of course i've been very involved in in the standard kind of group procedure for those of us who engage in expanding not me [noise] sure so i've been thinking very intent intensely and very kind of folk focus kind of way about [noise] so we had to we had ah some technical difficulties we're coming coming back from little outage so written you were explaining like ah what sort of <unk> you had done before you started doing sand yeah so i i've dabbled a little bit and some <unk> before us then of course uh the process of learning <unk> some awareness of coddling things as well but um [noise] but basically the <unk> the most experience i had was working with the other people who've been involved now for several years in a group effort to expand not be so there's a lot of thinking about not being culture there's a lot of thinking about um uh appropriateness of concepts to culture and uh the way that vocabulary may or may not be formed are constructed a filter expanded based on that so i i think the the vast majority of my experience came from specifically from that experience with what we call the uh language expansion program ah the the l._a._p._d. isn't it's commonly called into the not be community [laughter] ah but i also thought about uh things like what what might uh <unk> language involves what might be the cultural aspects related to a language in which that people live for several hundred or several thousand years and they have very complicated social hierarchy um what might be the complexities of not pronounce it so when to vampires or talking to each other versus a vampire talking to a familiar um so i've thought about all kinds of different ways that uh language might be interesting inappropriate to this cultural context [noise] um but <unk> the primary language and sin is actually just written so we of course used the concede that the audiences hearing uh the language the native language that the actors are speaking in their own culture when in fact they are hearing english because that is convenient for the audience and convenient for the film makers there's really no way that we could have had the entire cat uh speak and constructed language uh la [noise] thank you this you know [laughter] we were not for that um but we did write the language consistently visually everywhere that they wouldn't normally be some other language written in the film and that is all grammatical correct and eventually when we're able to release the film uh through video on demand or some kind of other media you will also be able to hear some of the scenes that we actually filled with the actors speaking uh in the language as opposed to speaking english so we do this for the bonus features of the film and i did want everything to be as grammatical correct as possible i'm sure some errors slipped in here and there and i'm willing to forgive myself for all of that but ah there are some relatively complex passages where pages in a book or printed there's an actual story there about an insect and [noise] the protagonists as reading it and actually <unk> radically correct language and and i think all cases maybe just most cases but anyway i i put a lot of effort into coming up with something that makes sense for for that that culture now again their culture as seen in the trailer any other way that you see it is not radically different from our culture but there are certain aspects of the nature of the political situation and the social hierarchy that mean that some things are quite different there's some concepts that they might have for things might be very very different from ours and [noise] a democratic society for example also [noise] uh i did try to to make the language even though it's written and not spoken and the primary film true to the world and there are two other fragments of language spoken at the beginning and end of the movies that are actually the dialect of the corporation that is the the original body that actually technically owns the planet on which the protagonist then live and then there is one other um very short scene and which another alien culture foreign to us and then everyone else in the movie um is shown on camera briefly and there are a couple of lines of dialogue and that and that was again in a different language that was [noise] so so much a language is just more what i think of is like a sound palate it was just um enough volume of syllables and something that sounded reasonable um to not really need a full grammar or anything behind it because it was never designed to be that it was simply designed to be a fragment of language to you or you know there was a tiny bit of grammar and that and then there's the focus is so there is a consistency into into the characters and talking to each other there is a vote could've marking on their names but otherwise um it's actually not grammatical but it it's simply there to fill in um the need for some meaning of the subtitles yeah and uh you you actually gave us um uh sort of privately i caught that um <unk> uh i guess i can't like those <unk> right now [laughter] [noise] um you could uh you <unk> oh sure you could like than the audio if you want it to absolutely sure okay so i will uh stick those in its uh first is the like in true <unk> and he liked it a little do be sorted out in in the the the corporations language and then have voice over in english and then there's a second team that's entirely in the these <unk> alien language right yeah so uh that that'd be right here [noise] <unk> [noise] like on the news [noise] [noise] the final item on our agenda <unk> [noise] this remote bath water was acquired over eight years [noise] so there are also songs in the movie mhm which language or those in those songs are in the language that cynwyd speak if you've heard him speaking his native tongue and um they are dramatically correct and they are specifically written to the context of the scenes that are happening there so um one of them the first one is actually the translation and to see <unk> the the name of the language that you see written all over the movie and it literally means written language um it's not <unk> necessarily thin and his his girlfriend caught up with call they're all language but that's what i refer to it because it is in the film [noise] ninety five percent of the film just uh uh written language so i called it written language and that's what see now i'm domains and their language um <unk> it to them it would literally mean writing [noise] though the name of the language is writing um and what is like the the the sort of <unk> that writing very interesting to me uh not not like something i've seen or [noise] [noise] well it's a it's an amount it's an it's an alphabet and it's an amalgamation of systematic things from a couple of different languages it's kind of like a <unk> and all of the um follow the vowel are kind of diet critics and they're all they all up here that need their confidence so everything that's on the main line is it consummate and everything below uh that's a defender is uh oh vowel [noise] and uh in that sense it's someone somewhat light korean as well because it is vowels and none of the continent have an inherent uh about little catholic value like an advocate uh but it's also different in that unlike korea and it doesn't clump together and blocks for example sometimes it does but that's only they look like blocks but that's only because you're dealing with it too syllable word so you know you got c. v. c. v. so that that that ends up looking like a kind of chinese character or korean block but that's coincidental they're also long longer where it's like the word senior <unk> for example would look like a long <unk> much more like an english work written out it would have forest uncle links to it so it's really kind of um [noise] arbitrary as to whether or work looks more asian or looks more not asian because of this square and having square nest or not having square now and i just basically wanted to take the pieces on parts that could be from any <unk> and and use them in a way so that you instantly without thinking about it recognized as as writing but <unk> fashion there would be no favoritism over someone who is a native speaker reader writer of korean versus arabic versus russian versus english versus burmese you know no one had any kind of advantage the [noise] the language on the screen is equally mysterious to absolutely everyone who watches the film with no prejudice towards or by us in any way so that was my ultimate goal what the way that the system look <unk> look like writing to anyone who sees it and be nobody should be able to read it you know long did it take you to work it out [noise] um i actually lived in winter [noise] for people quickly there's ah you talked about this and the design process for fun sort of in general [noise] you use <unk> um <unk> as an example um for talk for the most recent o._c._c. right i just i just was looking <unk> very oh sorry talk over you i'll <unk> i'll let you go [noise] oh no i'm um they'll process of coming up with how <unk> how it was going to <unk> to the phonology and whatnot was i don't know <unk> matter of days or something but i did create um to fully functional fonts one gothic one roman font um bite off it i mean something that san sarah [noise] and um and they're <unk> versions of that and i did that because we created just everything on screen that you see that has any writing on it isn't <unk> there's no roman alphabet at all unless there's a mistake i mean there may be a continuity errors here they're somewhere we didn't catch something but they're not supposed to be any writing that's not seeing 'em to an screen and that involved even digitally replacing those things that were cast metal parts a hundred years old from like plumbing and stuff like that [laughter] they're um several of the things that you see on screen where actually they ancient mysterious machines that we found um on cockatoo island in the middle of sydney harbor we happened to be there on vacation so we spend a day shooting there and wherever there was any kind of roman riding we've replaced it was you know uh and um so we needed a way to do that as quickly as possible and not ultimately meant that it was quicker for me to make fun for several that type places i don't know they're probably six or seven different type faces that up here in the movie maybe even eight or nine and some of those are are based on fonts and then some of them are one off that i i created the outline and i could still turn those things into thoughts but i haven't done it yet because of all the work involved and making a foreigner so right [noise] um [noise] but yeah we treated it as if it were working language so there would be all kinds of different stylistic variations as opposed to oh there's one set of glass and that is the only way to write the language i don't know of any real human language that works that way so even now for cherokee for example there all kinds of really talented people who are taking <unk> original designs and doing all kinds of fantastic things with cherokee typography and it's wonderful um is anyone come up with this <unk> for uh cherokee those are all the rage now i mean they're so pretty skinny ones yeah i don't know quite a skinny type are free we use for the tide lincoln center and i don't i haven't [noise] anything quite that skinny but it's only a matter of time [laughter] [noise] so how how did you go about um designing them language and i don't mean <unk> you know the more calming or <unk> i mean from <unk> did you have the streets before the language to use sort of works the language dream district or did you go off and trying to get something first and then go testing one degree testing okay so we're back again after another <unk> oh <unk> okay i know i was just asking britain how you approach this balance because especially for coming up with languages for movies and t._v. there's a question of how you progress do you come up with a language first and then you get the dialogue and you go with it but i'm guessing you might have had a lot of the <unk> before you even started so you might have <unk> toward the dialogue [noise] um yeah <unk> not really dialogue so much but just yeah everything that needed to be visual on screen so [noise] um [noise] we we had um for example i'll just take the posters for example we use several posters 'cause that was an inexpensive way and i'm flexible way to create environments that look like they might be real and um [noise] <unk> so joshua decides the director would decide well usually josh would decide what he wanted to posters to say in english and i would then start translating them and i already had a full phonology and one of those things that i do in my car line process is that i go and i create all possible civil and the language um using spreadsheets using excel so i i know but by looking through list what what i can have and what i cannot have and one of the features of the language is that the verbs like turkey are still quite <unk> and a lot of the now even the comedies now in the language are formed a verbal construct so i haven't subset of legitimate syllable that are all um listed on a sheet specifically for verbal ridge so looking at um [noise] looking at what the translation needs to say looking at i would actually type it out and see what it looked like so there are many cases um this is probably calling harris see [laughter] there there are many cases and which i actually decided what the <unk> was going to be because one thing that looked better than another one you know and it it ultimately was more important for the film when everything looked like that it was well it sounded like because again unlike stilts rocky or not be or clean on [noise] i don't expect us to be a language that a large number of people learn excuse for everyday communication so all of the roots are completely viable and they're completely okay but if something look better with a g <unk> instead of an s. and l. in it than i might have chosen g._n._c. over s._n._l. for example so [noise] so that was part of the process is incredibly artificial [noise] um in terms of creating oh constructed language that's similar to a natural language but again it's all fully pronounce a ball and all you know medically correct but the way uh word was gonna look visually very much influence in many cases the word that i chose to be fun to logically i know that's incredibly strange but that's actually that happened i suspect plenty of <unk> work that way even if they're working with all that no i have [noise] who knows why i have a strong aversion to the litter king uh-huh [noise] i use plenty of languages with it but if i could get away with using see like token did i probably would so there are other people who also um consider not just them but we were books on the page mhm so i don't think it's usually [noise] yeah it was kind of unusual in this case though in that because i don't know any of my letters in the same way that you know okay [noise] um i did i had to type 'em out first to see what they were gonna look like and it's really because of the way the vowel <unk> just send from the confidence these really interesting looking words end up appearing and again because my familiarity with my confidence <unk> are not as familiar as as you are i would be with k. for example i can't really see it in my mind oh i couldn't at the beginning of the process i should say now i can kind of imagine what any word looked like and i might without ever typing it out on the keyboard i might just rejected but at the beginning i had to type 'em out and see what they look like and if they were gonna fit really well poster and the place that we had to put them then sometimes that's what i went with and i you know i kind of guilt wesley did that [laughter] so how how big is <unk> how much from january you know if some data leaked out like it did for not be how quickly could people start writing letters you asking for more words oh wow well they probably could i mean we've had enough different scenarios with things like the you know all the different things on the posters and [noise] and specifically the translations that were done for the book you know because we were a couple of pages of tech that had to [noise] under scrutiny stand up um i ended up creating so far i don't know maybe i actually haven't counted i really don't know exactly i i think they're probably at least three or four hundred words and the the <unk> [noise] um and there may be a lot more than that i just because they are <unk> you know over time you started with nature of this would be a good and even if it's not necessary for the movie now i go at things in there um [noise] when you buy the d._v._d. for this movie [noise] have like an extra booklet booted with it when translation well i've already started um <unk> a p._d._f. of the of the kind of you know the overview of the language something that would be interesting to the <unk> community i don't think anybody else and care about reading it but um but i've already started doing that but it's uh i worked on it on airplanes to and from australia and what not and i haven't had a lotta time to work on it otherwise so it's kind of on hold right now but um [noise] we i will definitely put things about the alphabet there's even a kind of step by step uh struck tutorial for how to write all the letters that have gone to the bonus features and [noise] um [noise] <unk> one of the things that we will probably do although we haven't figured out technically exactly how to do it yet is you know how you can turn on closed caption <unk> well we hope to be able to turn on closed caption for all the all the posters and all the labels intact and other things that people see on the screen so that um [noise] so that you will be able to watch the movie with all the posters telling you what they say um yeah so you <unk> you wouldn't be able to hear it but you would be able to see written in english or or theoretically other languages too [noise] um what the poster say and what the tee shirts say and what the what the what the book titles says and all those other kind of things i mean we certainly won't you know we probably actually won't give the full translation of what's written in the book because that might end up being something else at a different time in the future but um yeah [noise] but yeah we'll we'll we've thought about doing that i think it would be a lot of fun and that would be fun for everybody not even <unk> you know not just calling people but everybody [noise] i'm trying to think if i have any other questions george junior <unk> uh no not not generally i think that i think uh just to <unk> uh why don't you britain sort of tell us sort of where people find out about and i know that it's sort of like limited release <unk> <unk> <unk> yeah you know you have any <unk> [laughter] well we don't have any specific distribution plant we are exclusively in film festivals and film festival light venues or so for example we've uh submitted the film to a couple of cons for example um so it's possible that you might be able to see it at a con if not at a specific film festival um but looking at the way the film festival <unk> circuit tends to to work i think it's likely that probably the earliest we would be able to release the film on video on demand or um the uh media like d._v._d. or blue ray or anything like that with likely be the <unk> fall uh of this year twenty fourteen [noise] um and we don't know how that will happen yeah we just don't know whether that might be through a distributor or whether we'll self release or maybe there'll be a brief theatrical run into there'll be a release we just don't know there's lots of question marks but for the time being uh anyone can go to send mission dot com website <unk> s. e. n. n. i. t. i. o. n. dot com and give us an email address i'll put you on the mailing list or you could go like us on face book and that's face book dot com slash finish and again the word <unk> s. e. n. n. i. t. i. o. n. and the explanation for what <unk> actually mean there's something that you really need to watch the movie first before you to understand it so um we're just sort of the time being ask you to type in those extra few letters u. r. l. and um and you can find out everything that we know about it we tend to post there so that's basically the [noise] whatever the status is there that's where it is okay we all have those leagues [noise] [noise] yeah you can you can do the shoes <unk> and get all the the the least you need [noise] me too ah [noise] get to that so [noise] uh if there's nothing else i think we can wrap up the show wonderful it's been a delight thank you so much both of you [laughter] i'm looking forward to seeing the on the list [noise] yeah me too [laughter] take your guys think you've written having gone [noise] thank you bye bye thank you for listening to congress you could find our archives <unk> dot com you can send questions comments more topics were featured language suggestions online agree i g mailbox [noise] to submit a con langhorn that line greedy for the top of the show see our contribute page for detail [noise] <unk> provided by the language creation society and our see music is by no demise [noise] number focus kind of way about what it means you have a language you're drinking you're <unk> culture to the extent that we understand that also being on hold on okay <unk> britain hello hello and i can't it can't and want to hear me [noise] [noise] [noise] [noise] [noise] [noise] [noise] [noise] oh [noise] [laughter] [noise] [noise] [noise] on the show yeah george what was the last thing you got recorded

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  1. Conlangery Podcast
  2. Podcast
  3. conlang
  4. Klingon
  5. language
  6. linguistics
  7. na'vi
  8. Senn
  9. Vulcan

Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery 97 Interview with Britton Watkins (last edited 2017-09-09 11:34:09 by TranscriBot)