#conlanging

Yongasabi, Slugcat language of the Rain World Undergrowth AU

Yongasabi originally started as an attempt to turn Rain World's glyphs into a functioning writing system for the slugcats, and that eventually inspired me to make a language for the writing system to support. As it grew, it became increasingly intertwined with my own ideas for Rain World worldbuilding, and my own project, the Undergrowth AU.

Now I'm publicly opening my language to the Rain World fandom! Seven months of work from start to the official release, with fully functioning grammar and over 1500 documented words just at the time of writing this post, I'm excited to finally release this language for other people to view, and potentially even use.

Note that Yongasabi is made with the Undergrowth AU (which is an anthro AU) in mind. It presupposes that the slugcats are humanoid, and their technological development is further along than in the game. Despite that, the language should be otherwise applicable to regular slugcats.

While Yongasabi has been developed through the lens of my own projects (Rain World Undergrowth AU and its worldbuilding) and understanding of Rain World's themes and lore, it's something I want to be accessible to the entire community. Consider it something of a gift. Anyone has permission to use Yongasabi in their projects—credit would be appreciated, and I would actually be so excited if you messaged me to let me know what you were doing. If I'm available, I can translate things too, if you need, or explain concepts from the document. Just send it to me and I'll see what I can do! Good luck!

Documentation for the writing system is here:

Hey, uh, so, I'm worried that this particular Facebook conlang group is turning into a cult...

Maybe you want like.... 'ephemerality'.

How does that break down? Is it formed from other words combined, or is one base word altered?

State of change -> Changestateness

Change gives you a word for alteration, movement, time maybe.

State gives you a word for form, shape, the present.

You can break them down further now.

Forms and shapes, relates to the body. Body conveys material, flesh.

Movement, can come from walking, running.

Walking -> legs, feet.

Material -> crafts, harvesting, processing.

Now you have lots of words!

If you do it the other way round you will have a set of words that all come from a handful of basic words and so all sound the same and are bloated from using the same words over and over.

As you may have seen, it's now been publicly announced that LEGO has asked for the Bionicle: Masks of Power fan game by Team Kanohi to be shut down.

You can read the announcement letter from Team Kanohi here, and also view a walkthrough of the game demo on YouTube, with and without dev commentary. The demo would have been released on 8/10 of this year.

As I've posted about before, the game was slated to feature fully voice-acted lines in the Matoran Language conlang ("Matoric"), and I've been contributing Matoric line translations for this purpose for a few years now. This work amounted to nearly 800 individual lines of Matoric dialogue translated.

Needless to say, this was a very disappointing thing to experience behind the scenes, after the amount of work that Team Kanohi had put into the game, and (in my opinion) it's an extremely poor repayment from LEGO for the enthusiasm that the team has created in the Bionicle fandom over the years, although not unexpected or shocking on LEGO's part.

With that said, there is some solace to be found in the fact that many resources from the game, including 3D models, music, art, and other development materials, have been preserved by the team (for the time being) via Google Drive. This includes all of the individually recorded voice-actor lines in Matoric!

Here is a link to the full Google Drive.

Here is a link to the folder containing the Matoric line recordings.

Here is a link to a spreadsheet containing all of the written Matoric lines and their English translations (along with a few fun easter eggs).

Finally, here are the credits for the audio directors and individual voice actors whose excellent work was represented in the game:

Voice Acting Directors Tasch Ritter Gort (Garrett B)

Voice Acting Lewa ……………….. Dane Braddy Pohatu ……………….. Gianni Matragrano Gali ……………….. Tasch Ritter Onua ……………….. Ashley Quills Kopaka ……………….. Tom Schalk Tahu ……………….. Wes Wiggins Makuta ……………….. Justice Washington Mata Nui ……………….. Justice Washington Matoran 1 ……………….. Ethan Godwin Matoran 2 ……………….. Viator Matoran 3 ……………….. Lou Haroldson Matoran 4 ……………….. Tasch Ritter Matoran 5 ……………….. Mark (Markle) Stefely Matoran 6 ……………….. Anna Maguire Matoran 7 ……………….. SyntheticCharmVa Matoran 8 ……………….. Tabitha Bardall Matoran 9 ……………….. Mark Beischel Matoran 10 ……………….. Jordan (Jocool1231) Willis Matoran 11 ……………….. Quinn Stokan Matoran 12 ……………….. Abigail Adair Matoran 13 ……………….. Cody (MasterGir) Littlefield Matoran 14 ……………….. Zane Schacht Narrator ……………….. Justice Washington Announcer ……………….. David Michael Williamson

Sorry it took a while to respond to this, I didn’t see it until this morning! I am a huge Conlang nerd, so this is right up my alley. I hope you get the info you need!

Conlang Resources

YouTube

Kayinth: How to Build a Language. I recommend starting here. He explains how to begin creating a conlang in a way that is understandable for beginners

Artifexian’s Conlang Videos were a huge help for me when I first started out. They explain a lot of things that beginners need to know when getting started, and continue from there to more advanced concepts.

The Perception of Colour in Language and The Perception of Time in Language, by Wesley Dean

Wikipedia

The International Phonetic Alphabet. In my opinion it’s a MUST to learn the IPA. It’s a chart of all known sounds produced in humans. You don’t need to memorise it, but you need to understand how to use it. There are plenty of tutorials available on YouTube for this!

Word Frequency Lists. These are lists of the most commonly used words in English. There are lists available for many other languages too. This will help learning what words to prioritise making for your language

Swadesh List. This is a list of tentatively universal words across human languages. It’s not going to be 100% accurate, but it’s a good starting point

Other

World Atlas of Language Structures. Shows the geological distribution and commonality of particular linguistic features. Very useful if you want to design a realistic language

Conlang Atlas of Language Structures. Similar to above.

Oxford 3000/5000. Another list of the most common English words, but on a larger scale.

Onelook Thesaurus & Dictionary. Great for English synonyms, antonyms, etc, and finding particular words. This was helpful for me because I frequently forget English words, and this provides a place to search for them.

Sentences to Test Conlang Syntax. A list of sentences to translate into your conlang. Has various sentence types, conjunctions, etc

Glossing Rules. Glossing breaks up a sentence into smaller parts, allowing you to work on your conlang’s grammar, etc

List of Glossing Abbreviations. Grammatical terms used in linguistic glossing. You will need to watch a tutorial on how to do glossing first. This is only a reference

Ogden’s Basic English. A simplified version of English. Another good place to pick words to translate for your lexicon

I also have a long list of resources I use for creating non-human and gestural languages, but I wasn’t sure to include it here.

I will likely edit this list a little later- adding more to it and fixing grammatical and spelling errors. This was only what I could put together in a short amount of time