#tutorial linguistic

also, what’s your opinion on isopods?

OKAY. so I made this account, and this title, way back before we saw the dancestors. We knew Gataca was how the chum handles worked and that John being EB ruined the pattern.

My thoughts were: I want his (my GHB) handle to be half fitting, and I wanted it to... seem meaningful. His language structure was based on AUSLAN, and on the subject object verb structure of the imperative mode: both put the thing you "most need" first, and the action last where it's the most present, the most threatening. Then Kurloz was mute! Worked well.

(Grand's actual chum handle is celebratoryTorture. Same letters as Gamzee, same order as Equius.)

I like isopods but don't understand the High Key Fascination with them.

Fun bonus I misremembered the word "hexapod" as "isopod" so please enjoy Artie's Second Longest Running Permanent Fixation Snippet.

OKAY SO. Way more than 48 hours later, here we are. 

The first thing about GHB’s speech as I do it is to make it sound like a bible and a Shakespearean era play had a child, and they are accustomed to giving orders. He uses a very old register, and while sometimes messing around with modern idiom, like “to clown down am” is fun, sometimes it just isn’t going to work. After 5 years writing with him, I am pretty good at even speaking his way, but the time of writing him gives me some space and leeway to experiment. 

The orders part comes across in his verb, subject, and object order. The Verb is the doing word, and it comes last, as in the imperative in English. Instead of 

“(Subject) I (Verb) walked to (object) the shops” 

It becomes 

“TO SHOPS WALKED” 

He omits the subject as much as he can, especially the personal subject, and tends to refer to people as belonging to themselves. This is a personal idiom and leaves room for personalisation in the form of, “My righteous self” or “her assertive self”. This is distinct in his speech because most often, the adjective or adverb comes after the noun or verb respectively. To return to our previous example: 

I walked quickly to the local shops 

QUICKLY TO SHOPS LOCAL WALKED. 

Break these rules when he’s upset, feels condescended to, or livid, or sometimes just when he’s asked. The important thing is that GHB knows he is difficult to understand and is perful enough that he can get away with not caring. Use the breaks sparingly, though: this is heartspeech, it is his way of speaking from the pusher. 

That’s the main thrust of his speech, with different terms of respect, like “Motherfucker” “sibling”, “Sempai” and Imperial, thrown in which you’d probably change a little depending on setting, and a whole lot of emphasis on the religious structures of his world propping it up. 

The main thing: the paint he wears is his face, his flesh face is his head. No one he does not trust should ever see his head. Little insistences like that go a long way in making a character for me.