Viossa

This article is about the constructed pidgin. For Albanian-Greek river, see Vjosa.

Viossa (IPA: /vi.ˈoʊ.sa/, /vi.ˈɒ.sa/) is an experimental, community-created, constructed language (conlang) and an artificial pidgin, created in 2014 by the digital community of r/conlangs in Reddit, who wanted to simulate a pidgin. The language is created to examine the contact between languages and is classified as an engineered language.

The flag of Viossa

Viossa is said to be a “conpidgin” rather than a conlang due to its similarity to pidgins. From the beginning, its development has been driven exclusively by conversations between members of its community, where only three mandatory rules are followed: that English cannot be spoken; that as long as one is being understood, they are speaking or writing the language correctly; and there are no standards for semantics and phonetics of the language.

History

The project was launched on December 24, 2014, by members of the Skype group associated with the subreddit r/conlangs1. The language was developed via video conference, which allowed its creators (who were geographically isolated) to simulate the natural conditions of pidgin formation. In the video calls, each participant selected a mutually unintelligible language from as many others as possible, and the use of English was generally prohibited.

Being a constructed language or conlang, Viossa has influence from several languages which contribute to the language's vocabulary. These contributing languages are divided into "major contributing natural languages" and "minor contributing natural languages".

The major contributing natural languages are:

• Russian
• Finnish
• Albanian
• Greek
• Japanese
• Norwegian
• Swiss German

The minor contributing natural languages include, among others:

• Irish
• Swedish
• Northern Sámi
• Ainu
• Old English
• French
• Latin

Viossa was the second attempt at creating a constructed pidgin by the r/conlangs group. The first, titled NEA (No English Allowed), failed because the speakers ended up simply speaking in each of their languages instead of mixing them.

Linguistic data

Viossa is characterized by its lack of standardisation, particularly in grammar and spelling. Each speaker of the language develops a personal idiolect, with syntax, vocabulary, and spelling that correspond to both personal preferences and social context. The language operates on the principle that 'if it can be understood, it's Viossa.' As a result, only generalizations can be made about the language's use, which may not reflect the usage of all individuals. Since personal varieties are strongly influenced by a speaker's native language, Viossa is sometimes described as an interlanguage.

The majority of Viossaphones use a Subject–verb–object word order (SVO), although Subject–object–verb word order (SOV) and Object–subject–verb word order (OSV) are used by minorities. Grammatical case is generally not marked, but verbal agreement has been observed, inflecting for grammatical person and number (although compound subjects are exempt from this). Pronouns distinguish between person and number but generally do not show any distinction of grammatical gender.

Spelling in Viossa varied greatly among speakers and is considered by many to be a form of self-expression. The most frequently used script is Latin, often with the use of diacritical marks and rare letters, although speakers have also devised writing systems based on Cyrillic, Hebrew, Kana, and Chinese characters.

There are no standardised rules for spelling, as spelling is said to not be important as long as the speaker is understood. For example, the word for "hello" has at least three spellings (jaa/ya/iá), and other spellings are also accepted.

Community

The Viossa speech community functions almost exclusively online. It is primarily based on Discord, where it is learned and taught through immersion. Translation between Viossa and other languages is largely prohibited, except in circumstances such as academic studies of the language and artistic translations of media.

Viossa is a community-driven, international and decentralised language taught in a dedicated Discord server of thousands of fellow speakers. It is said to be taught in a "fully immersive" manner where no languages other than Viossa are permitted to be used for teaching. Learners are expected to form their own conclusions on the meaning of other members’ messages based only on their existing knowledge of the language, and visual aids in the form of emoji and images.

A Viossa wiki called Vikoli, using the MediaWiki software, exists. Original music has been created in the language, including the album Korohtella released in February 2022 by DJIMA. Several podcasts in Viossa also exist, notably Davi Hanu! and K'Slucj, both of which are published sporadically.

Flag

The flag of Viossa often represents the language and consists of a bird inside a white circle on a blue background. The bird that appears on the flag is a dove or pigeon (in English, a pun with the word 'pidgin'), placed similarly to the letter V, the first letter of the language's name. The flag was created in 2016 by Reddit user u/clausangeloh, and it uses a color palette of #00bbff and #fff.

See also

• Valyrian languages
• Esperanto
• Klingon language
• Toki Pona
• List of constructed languages

External links

• Ka du Hanasu? - Speech by Sascha M. Baer on the creation of Viossa
• Conlang Critic - Viossa - Video about Viossa (particularly the phonology), with interviews.
• Vikoli - Wiki in Viossa
• Reddit Post on Original Announcement of Viossa - by u/salpfish