Τëξëνι

Dream language in the real world

This page contains information on the meta aspects of the dream language, the influences in the real world that shaped it to be the way it is and the way I, as the language creator, have interacted with it.

The creation process

Background

I decided to try out Jessie Peterson's conlang year, it is basically a series of daily prompts that guide you through the process of creating a new language, by the end of the year you will end up with a conlang that is developed enough to participate in relays and lexember, you can find it on quothalinguist.com

Despite the fact that it looks like conlang year is geared towards languages that were designed with the diachronic method of conlanging, (i.e. first an ancient stage of the language was made and then a process of linguistic evolution was simulated to arrive at the final result) the language I'm making is not designed to be naturalistic at all, but I'm following conlang year for this project because think I can make it work, adapting the prompts that don't fully fit my conlang shouldn't be too hard.

I think some important context is that I haven't been feeling great lately, I won't go into details, I'll just say that it can be difficult to manage your emotions when the world seems to be in such a terrible state, living through historical events is not easy.

I know there's some people who say you have to be constantly staying informed on every bit of news because if you don't you're a bad person, but that's not a sustainable way to live. It's important for us to keep ourselves sane, if you're going to help others through turbulent times you have to make sure you have your own feet on firm ground. I won't be of much help if I'm having a crisis, so taking care of my own mental health is important, and for many of us that can include a bit of escapism and using art as an outlet, using art as motivation to keep going and enjoy life despite the circumstances. This conlang is my escapism.

There's this quote from Lord of the Rings that I like a lot which is relevant to this

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I think another important bit of context is the fact that for some reason I've always felt drawn to surrealism as an art form, I don't understand why but I like a lot of surrealist art, not all of it, some of it is so uncanny that it crosses over into being creepy or unsettling, but there's a certain quality to surrealist art that I find pleasant.

Basically the main audience is me, I hope that future me will be able to look at all the different translations, grammar choices and vocabulary I made and feel like it's a fun language that still brings me some joy in some way or another, even if I don't keep working on it for much longer after the conlang year has ended at least I hope it was a positive experience.

I also want to share the language online (on my Tumblr sideblog for conlanging and on this website) mostly because I'm hoping that at least one person is going to look at my conlang and feel inspired, or maybe it will make them smile too, so I'm going to try to describe all the features in a way that is understandable for other conlangers.

Goals

Here's my 2 main goals for this conlang:

1: I want this language to make me smile

I want to create something that helps me to find some beauty and hope in the world, I want the choices I make with the language to make me smile, and I want to be able to have fun while working on it, without having to worry too much about how naturalistic it is or anything like that, so ideally I'd also avoid comparing this to other conlangs.

If we compare this to visual art, I'd say this is less like trying to create an awesome painting with perfect perspective, colors and composition, and it's more like me doodling in a sketchbook that is meant primarily for me, but I also want to share it with others in case they find it to be at least mildly interesting or it helps inspire them in some way.

It's not like my other conlangs don't bring me joy, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this time I will try to design the language without worrying about things like naturalism or trying too hard to make my worldbuilding interesting or deep, it's just a canvas where I can throw paint and let myself go wild, trying out things I normally wouldn't, and making choices based on my personal preferences instead of what I think I "should" do, so I guess that makes this is a personal language.

2: This is going to be a surrealistic conlang

I have already decided who the speakers of my language will be, I'll elaborate more in the following prompts but I currently call them "dream angels" because they're basically benevolent beings that exist in the world of dreams, and because of this I want to try my hand at making a surrealistic conlang.

A surrealistic one fits particularly well into the dream world idea, it will also allow me to fulfill my first goal fairly easily; making something that makes me smile without having to worry about naturalism and letting myself experiment. I've always been drawn to surrealism for one reason or another, not entirely sure why but I know this is something I'm excited to work on.

I'm not expecting this to be the best surrealistic conlang out there, but it doesn't have to be, it just has to be fun for me, and it will work as a learning experience regardless, so if I want to try again at some point I will have a better idea of how to approach it. I'm sure someone out there will make an amazing surrealistic conlang one day and I'll be excited to see it when it happens.

Inspiration and aesthetics

General aesthetic and idea

Of course I'm taking a lot of inspiration from surrealist art in general, I really like the work of Remedios Varo in particular, but also David J. Peterson has written an essay on Fiat lingua about what a surrealistic conlang might look like, and I keep coming back to it because I find it to be a fascinating concept.

Even before that essay was posted I remember thinking of what conlangs might look like if they were inspired by different art movements, I guess I'm just interested in the different areas of conlanging that fall outside of the typical naturalistic fictional language you see everywhere, those are fun to make, but there's so many possibilities that haven't been explored yet and I'm very curious of what different things are possible.

The speakers

In the case of the design of the speakers of my language, the beings I call "dream angels" I chose to take inspiration mostly from various sea creatures because they help to convey this kind of ethereal and weirdly beautiful aesthetic, when I look at jellyfish I often wonder how those are living beings that exist in our world, they look more like they're inanimate objects drifting in the water and yet they're alive, and they're so mesmerizing and fascinating, like a living nebula.

I think the dream angels might look a bit intimidating or scary to some people, after all surrealist art can be a bit unsettling at times and I'm sure the line of what is unsettling in surrealism is different for everyone, but I personally find them to be fairly beautiful, even if they're weird.

The setting

For the setting where the dream angels live I'm also taking some inspiration from the work of M.C. Escher who, despite not forming part of the surrealist movement, has made some really fascinating images that have a dream-like quality due to how confusing they are or how much they defy logic.

I chose for the climate in the setting to be cold (sometimes cold enough to snow) because I find the cold to be a lot more comfortable than warm weather, you get to wear more layers of clothing (which I enjoy) and if it's too cold you can always cover up more, but when it's too warm there's not much you can do about it.

I also decided to include rain in the setting because I like it a lot, but rather than a regular weather pattern it's more based on emotions, the same applies to snow.

I'm not very familiar with how different types of flora and fauna work in real life so some aspects of the ecosystem in this setting might not be super realistic, but then again this is meant to be surrealistic and weird so that kind of works to my advantage in this regard.

Since the dream angels for this conlang project are mostly based on aquatic creatures I think it makes sense for a lot of the native fauna to also be similar to fish, so that's why a lot of them are fairly aquatic in appearance.

Phonoaesthetics

In terms of the phonology of the language I chose features and sounds based on my preferences, I didn't try to make my conlang sound like any other language and I didn't try to go for any particular vibe.

I included clicks mostly because I like them, but I also feel a bit of emotional attachment to click consonants because one of my personal languages that I worked on for a long time had clicks, and I considered it my "main language" for a few years (the conlang I focused on the most and basically my favorite out of all my languages).

That personal language had no other purpose other than just being beautiful to me, and to this day the writing system I designed for it is one of my favorites I've ever made, it's a bit of a shame that I ended up abandoning it but at this point if I go back to it I'd probably make so many changes that it'd be kind of unrecognizable, maybe one day I'll revisit it. The point is that the clicks in this conlang are a bit of a tribute to that language.

I added contour tones because I like how tonal languages sound, but also because a close friend of mine speaks a tonal language and in a way giving tones to the conlang felt like a subtle connection to her in my work. My friend also helped me to come up with the actual tones of the language, so that's yet another connection.

What I'm currently working on

I'm currently following the prompts of conlang year to develop this language, this is what I'll be doing for the forseeable future, I do plan on working on this language even after I'm done with the conlang year prompts but for now I'll just be following the steps laid out by Jessie.

I'm currently in the first month of conlang year.

Conlang year entries

I'm posting the entries for conlang year 2025 on my Tumblr sideblog for conlanging. Here's all the links to the individual posts: