For May’s language of the month, I wanted to spotlight a constructed language project that I feel demonstrates the Internet’s unmatched ability to refute the statement “I would love to do [X], but I don’t think anyone else would want to.” Many throughout history have created their own languages; these constructed languages or conlangs for short date back to at least the 12th century with St. Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua Ignota. Even communities centered around conlangs like LOTM alum Esperanto existed long before the advent of the Internet. But perhaps only in the age of the Internet could a community-driven, international, and truly decentralized conlang like Viossa emerge.
Currently, the Viossa community, hundreds strong, resides on a bustling Discord server that anyone can join. Upon joining you’ll find a friendly group eager to teach all who are willing to learn. The learning experience is, critically, fully immersive. No other languages are permitted to be spoken in the channels meant for learning and teaching. Since its inception in a Skype group in 2014, total immersion has been paramount to the Viossa experience.
There’s a definite feeling of sportsmanship when it comes to the learning process. Speakers will tell each other off for cheating, and new learners are told to avoid “spoilers” i.e. direct translations—each word is treated as a puzzle waiting to be solved. Learners must draw their own conclusions on the meaning of the other members’ messages based only on their existing knowledge of the language and visual aid in the form of emoji and images.
Viossa is often called a “conpidgin” rather than a conlang. In linguistic terms, a pidgin is a simplified language that arises out of necessity when those not sharing a common language must nonetheless communicate. The resulting pidgin will have a simple grammar with a small vocabulary jerry-rigged from the lexicons of its speakers’ native languages. Similarly, no single person sat down and created a standardized grammar or vocabulary of Viossa. From the beginning its development has been driven exclusively by conversations between members of its community. There are only two concrete rules:
- No English
- If you are understood, then you’re speaking correctly
The result is less a language and more a nebulous mass governed by loose consensus that feels both strangely familiar and entirely foreign. It’s a hodgepodge of words drawn from so many source languages that anyone who has learned a language will be able to identify at least a few words here and there. Any way of spelling a word can and will be immediately contradicted, even by the same speaker. Therein lies what I see as the experiment’s most fascinating quality: there is no single Viossa.
The explicit acceptance of variation and rejection of standardization has led each user to develop their own preferences when it comes to orthography, pronunciation, and syntax. The message greeting you when you first join the server provides 3 separate spellings for the word meaning “hello” (jaa/ya/iá), and declares that spelling is not important. Orthography especially is ripe for self-expression; writers develop their own style based on how others in the community spell, existing real-world orthographies, and their own innovations. Viossa is simultaneously collectivist and individualistic. The democratic and decentralized ethos is unlike any other conlang project I have encountered.
I’ve left out concrete examples in this article on purpose in keeping with the community’s no-spoilers spirit. Viossa is something you should experience for yourself! Learning Viossa isn’t so much a means to an end as it is the end itself. Only online can you find hundreds of other language geeks willing to spend time learning, teaching, and developing a made-up language just for fun. It’s the kind of experience that would be impossible without modern technology’s redefinition of what it means to be a community.
Check out this video if you’d like a deeper look at Viossa’s founding and more information on how it works through interviews with its community:
More information:
Vikoli (Viossa Wiki)
Audio example: an episode of Davi Hanu, a Viossa podcast
Link to join the Viossa Discord server
Additional sources:
Lingua Ignota — The Earliest Known Constructed Language? | The Language Closet
Viossa, an experimental pidgin, one year in the making. Ask us anything! : conlangs
Like the National Museum of Language, Viossa has a flag. known as Flakka fu viossa. Click on the image for more information (in Viossa).
