Posts Tagged ‘Ta’agra’

29
Apr

Ta’agra Collab

by Geckat in Conlangs, Fonts and Keyboard Layouts, Minor

There is a phenomenon one tends to experience when he or she reconstructs fictional pseudo-conlangs or incomplete conlangs into working conlangs: often times, you aren’t the only one doing it.  This can be both a problem and a boon: a problem because it means there are different people with different interpretations who disagree with you and if you’re overly competitive like I am you feel like you are vying for some sort of conlang control, with the goal being the fanbase adhering strictly to your reconstruction; and a boon because you can collaborate with people if you can get over your competitive ego.

I am going to attempt to do exactly that.  About a year ago, Ra’Zakhar & Kiarash began work on what they have dubbed The Ta’agra Project.  They’ve been nice enough to credit me on their front page, but they have also taken some deviations from my rendition of the Khajiiti language, and have added many of their own words to the Ta’agra lexicon.  Despite this, we believe we can work together, so expect to see more and more Ta’agra coming that should, WITH OUR POWERS COMBINED, become that sought-after be-all of a fan language.

Sure, Justin, you always say you will be working on things, but what have you actually done?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  Apart from my struggles to convince my new collaborators that Ta’agra has case prefixes (the evidence just keeps pouring in, come on, guys!), one major stride these two have taken is to start on an alphabet.  Now, I’m not too fond of alphabets: they’re rare in the real world and because of this they take the immersion right out of a conlang.  But these two have an interesting philosophy that I often forget to include, and that is that this is a fan language.  A language for fans.  Not for linguists, not for the .01% of people in the world who would consider writing songs in Na’vi, but for people who like the Elder Scrolls franchise and think it would be neat to be able to, say, write their own name in Ta’agra.  They’re not going to be able to do that if it’s done in an abugida (much as it pains me), so an alphabet it is.

And to show my good intentions, I have started on a font for said alphabet based on the glyphs they already invented with a couple modifications and additions of my own.  It’s just got the letters so far, but check it out.

Wish us luck!