Have you ever taken a moment to listen to what your own words sound like?
I don’t mean in a narcissistic way; I mean their vibrations. How they escape your vocal chords and resonate in the air. With enough concentration and aptitude, especially if you’ve learned another language, you can partition your perception of your own words, and hear them as a foreigner would. It becomes easier to do with the more languages you learn.
Do you know what English sounds like? It’s not something I can express in English to only-English speakers.
I’ve rebuilt my cultural language to have the mechanics of each of the major business languages of the world. However, how I choose to express those sounds in the formulation of new words is based on their perceptual beauty.
I love the sound of my language. It gives me great pride to speak it. Whenever the communicative patterns of an expression don’t sound quite right, I make a note of it so that we can talk about making edits to the grammar rules or mechanics later.
What sounds “right” is just a feeling. You can feel if you say something meant to be angry in a yelling voice if the way the vibration leaves your chest doesn’t feel quite right. You may want to change a word or two to have a harder consonant expression, or to set up your mouth with the first syllable with an upward tone to exhale a harder downward tone for the right “feeling” of anger.
“Ba” doesn’t sound as harsh as “Da,” for instance. The way your lips form the “B” sound sets the mouth in a different position than having the “D” sound straight from the unification of tongue and teeth. Thus, I could have set an algorithm leading me to express an emotion with a “Ba” syllable. It may not sound right in actual real-time execution; so, I’ll change it to “Da” or some other syllable that…sounds right for the intended emotional expression.
The Japanese have a very unique yet clean way of expressing anger. I like the way the vibrations sound. Though, their expressions may involve too many syllables for a simple statement for my tastes. And their manner of expressing love doesn’t sound quite right to me.
Meanwhile, I love the way Norwegians express love. They have softer “ou” sounds and “r”s that roll more romantically than English, yet not as potently as Spanish. Some vowel sounds in Norwegian and Mandarin Chinese vibrate with the same (I want to say…) “wavelength?” (I’m not sure) as Mandarin Chinese. Some of the mechanics of Norwegian and Chinese phonemes meet in wavelength form if spoken at the same volume. Even if they have nothing to do with each other in meaning, Norwegians and Chinese people not understanding each other.
So, I’ll take some of the phonemes of Japanese for certain emotional expressions, but keep the Chinese for others. The algorithm I’ve come up with just sets a precedence to guide the standard direction of the language like primer paint on a car. Then, after testing what the algorithm produces in real-time, I make fine tweaks to the words like you would add the final touches of paint to the car on top of the primer layer.
The end result is…beautiful. To me, at least. There are deliberate patterns set to vibrate from my mouth that match the target emotional expression, which makes my chest feel good, even if it’s anger that I’m expressing. This is because
Meanwhile, when expressing something softer, something more romantic, it doesn’t sound corny, cheesy, or overdone. It sounds…right. To speak it uplifts
I don’t think most people think that far into their own language.
The Vanno I speak now is not the same as the Vanno that existed two years ago. Those of you who heard the two updates on SoundCloud have heard the difference, I’m sure. The first one sounds like a clumsy haphazard overshoot between Japanese and Russian. The second is much smoother, yet includes mechanics from Ancient Norse.
It’s going to continue to evolve throughout the years. In my opinion, it’s a wonderful bit of cultural inheritance to bequeath to my children. Because there are elements of Russian, English, Japanese, and Chinese in it…they’ll be set to skip learning curves in those languages easier if they ever want to go into international business.
For instance, the four tones of Mandarin are only difficult
Vanno is one of the best forms of cultural wealth I can think to give my children to help them prepare for their futures. I remember I was made fun of so hard by so many when I started developing it, but…there’s value to it I don’t think many people see. More value than people
I recommend taking the time to stop and listen to your own language for a