CHirpie, a musical conlang

[Whitewings]

Chirpie

Chirpie, as the people of the neighbouring lands call it, is the native language of the Stillwater Archipelago. Unique among all the languages of the world, Chirpie is a musical language, sung rather than spoken, and its actual name is, using our terminology, either “3-1-2” or “mi-do-re.” The phoneme analogues are notes, the 21 notes (including sharps) of a typical one and a half octave singing range. Most common are what we would call quarter notes, known in Chirpie as simple a note; they also use double notes and triple notes, equivalent to half notes and whole notes in our terminology, for a total of 63 phonemes. Words are most often composed of anywhere from one to five notes, though some words can be up to seven or even eight notes. Singing more than eight whole notes on a single breath at a normal volume is impractical. Word breaks are indicated by note rests, and sentence breaks with double rests.

As people have different vocal ranges, teens and adults sing four ranges: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Children sing in treble. The position of the note within its range determines its “phonemic” value. The writing system superficially resembles modern staff notation, with six lines and eight symbols.

The symbols are note, double note, triple note, sharps, and single and double rests. As with modern staff notation, the lowest note is written below the lowest line, then successively higher notes are written upward, alternately on and between the lines. With 6 lines, and sharp indicators incorporated into the note shapes, up to 26 notes can be indicated with six lines.

The language is highly isolating; time signatures are not specified, but deduced. Generally, faster singing indicates more positive feelings, slower singing more negative. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of the language for new learners is that the notes very often have conventional sounds attached to them, but don’t actually mean anything. For example, the greeting is “upper 5, upper 6, upper 4, lower 4, upper 1,” or if you prefer, “sol-la-fi-(low)fi-do,” and the natives of one island will sing those notes as “sa-wa-la-la-oh.” On another island, they might sing them as “doo-wee-oo-loo-ah,” but they both understand each other perfectly because the sounds don’t matter. They’re just ornamentation.

One extremely unusual feature of Chirpie is the existence of chord-words, impossible for a single person to pronounce; these words are used in formal or ritual contexts, or in some cases to indicate closeness. A family might say “grace” with a five-note chord, or a congregation make a prayer with twenty voices. These words often indicate extreme emphasis, as they require rehearsal; if a craft master’s apprentice says “I have a problem” or even “we have a problem,” that’s one thing. But if all his apprentice gather and say “chord-we chord-have chord-grievance,” it’s a good sign there’s a real problem, and a very serious one.

Obviously this is just in the earliest stages of development, and any and all feedback is welcome.

[elemtilas]

This is awesomeness incarnate!

Musical languages appear here from time to time (I've even described one of mine), but it's always wonderful to hear of another.

One can only wonder what a debate or discussion sounds like in Chirpie --- I imagine not unlike a Mozart opera.

[HJH]

I would love to hear more of this!

[Whitewings]

The pronouns are the seven notes of the solfège scale:

do: 1st person
re: 1st person detached ("this one")
mi: 2nd person
fa: 3rd person masculine
sol: 3rd person feminine
la: 3rd person non-intelligent
ti: 3rd person intelligent non-gendered (angels, devils, elementals, etc)

These are the formal singulars; plurals are indicated by use of double notes.Intimate versions are indicated by sharps.

[Whitewings]

Generally, words of similar meaning have similar sounds, as with "mother," "sister" and "grandmother." "Mother" is "do-re," "sister" is "do-re" with double notes, and "grandmother" is "do-re" with triples. Similarly, "daughter" is "re-do," "brother" is "re-do" with double notes, and "granddaughter" is "re-do" with triples.

Generally, adverbs and adjectives are in the upper ranges, nouns and verbs in the lower.

[Whitewings]

Possession is indicated with the use of the possessive article, with possessor preceding possessed. The possessive article is “upper re,” used in much the same way as the English ’s or the Japanese no.

[Nmmali]

Generally, words of similar meaning have similar sounds, as with "mother," "sister" and "grandmother." "Mother" is "do-re," "sister" is "do-re" with double notes, and "grandmother" is "do-re" with triples. Similarly, "daughter" is "re-do," "brother" is "re-do" with double notes, and "granddaughter" is "re-do" with triples.

Generally, adverbs and adjectives are in the upper ranges, nouns and verbs in the lower.

So, if the quarter note gets the beat (i.e. one mora is one quarter note), is a double note two morae, like a half note, or is it two pitches in rapid succession, like eighth notes, that take up the same time value as the one quarter note?

You know, this is kinda cool because I could probably whistle it better than I could sing/speak it.

Hey. This is kinda just me, but are you going to have a thing like vowel harmony, but instead of vowel harmony it's like all the tones must fit in a chord structure? That'd be so cool. That would be awesome. And then you could tell grammatical categories by chord progession. Maybe, if it were OVS, the chord progression of a simple sentence might be one of those deceptive cadences or something, like IV (o), V (v), vi (s).
Just a thought.

[Whitewings]

So, if the quarter note gets the beat (i.e. one mora is one quarter note), is a double note two morae, like a half note, or is it two pitches in rapid succession, like eighth notes, that take up the same time value as the one quarter note?

You know, this is kinda cool because I could probably whistle it better than I could sing/speak it.

Hey. This is kinda just me, but are you going to have a thing like vowel harmony, but instead of vowel harmony it's like all the tones must fit in a chord structure? That'd be so cool. That would be awesome. And then you could tell grammatical categories by chord progession. Maybe, if it were OVS, the chord progression of a simple sentence might be one of those deceptive cadences or something, like IV (o), V (v), vi (s).
Just a thought.

A double note is two morae, like our half note, and a triple is actually four morae, like a whole note. And I have indeed been considering adding a vowel harmony analogue. Whistling would be a perfectly valid way to use the language, though it would be considered a bit eccentric. Instruments would not be considered to "talk," although the ambiguity would likely be exploited in various ways; a musician might sing a ballad about his lady-love, with the guitar accompaniment providing the girl's view.

[Shemtov]

Just a thought: Like the opposite of how tones work in English, you could have the phonetic structure that each note is sung with convey para-linguistic information

[Whitewings]

Just a thought: Like the opposite of how tones work in English, you could have the phonetic structure that each note is sung with convey para-linguistic information

I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting.

[kiwikami]

The idea of chord words is really interesting. Do all words have chord equivalents? How is a chord-word related to/derived from its non-chord counterpart?

For example, the greeting is “upper 5, upper 6, upper 4, lower 4, upper 1,” or if you prefer, “sol-la-fi-(low)fi-do,”

Very nice.

[Whitewings]

The idea of chord words is really interesting. Do all words have chord equivalents? How is a chord-word related to/derived from its non-chord counterpart?

For example, the greeting is “upper 5, upper 6, upper 4, lower 4, upper 1,” or if you prefer, “sol-la-fi-(low)fi-do,”

Very nice.

Not all words have chord equivalents; many words simply cannot apply to multiple people in the relevant way. For example, there's no chord equivalent to boat, or to cart. The chord concept can be applied to them, but only by singing the possessive as a major chord sequence. Chorded nouns are almost always abstractions, or non-specific, such as love, hate, sadness, grievance, joy, loyalty, and the like, and there are chords that simply do not translate into English. The chord-word for "family," as an example, means something both less and more limited: the chord-word derived from family has nothing to do with bonds of blood, at least not automatically, but it also excludes the idea of someone being barely tolerated as part of the group in question. Typically, a chord-word derives from the original by using the original as a base for the construction of a sequence of major chords, most often triads or dominant sevenths, though this can be modified to accommodate multiple ranges; a bass might sing the root, a tenor the major third, and a soprano the perfect fifth. Of course, chord-words can be sung by much larger groups so long as they all hit the appropriate notes.

There are exceptions: the chord-word for sorrow, for example, would likely use minor triads to amplifying the unsettling effects of the dissonant progression of its base, and the chord for "church congregation" doesn't map to the note-series word. It means a kind of sacred bond formed between the faithful by the act of worship and prayer, a bond which is strongest during services but endures between. For obvious reasons, the people of Stillwater don't really have church choirs :)

Mi-do-re words in general would, I think, follow the pattern that things viewed in a generally positive manner have assonant progressions and things viewed in a negative manner dissonant.

[Shemtov]

Just a thought: Like the opposite of how tones work in English, you could have the phonetic structure that each note is sung with convey para-linguistic information

I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting.

I mean using phonetics like prosody is in European Languages. There's two ways you can do this:
Every note is sung as a (C)V syllable. Plain V is normal speech, while the MoA of the proceeding consonant conveys paralinguistic information. So a glide or liquid (not a specific one, any) before every V could be asking a question, a nasal communicates irony etc.
Or you could divvy up the vowel space. if what's song is all vowels. A Schwa is declarative, front openish could be asking a question, front closeness could be ironic, back rounded could be angry. So, a do-re sung with do-ə re-ə means mother, do-ɛ re-ɛ means "Mother?" etc.

[Whitewings]

An interesting thought, but the language design is already quite demanding, so I’ll put it aside for now.

[Shemtov]

An interesting thought, but the language design is already quite demanding, so I’ll put it aside for now.

I'm actually working on an Australian-style language, and you've inspired me to make an initiation musical language that incorporates that idea.

[Whitewings]

Numbers are composed of the upper mi followed by one or more notes, from la (zero) to upper fa sharp (twelve). There are words for 144 (hundred-equivalent), 1728 (thousand-equivalent), 2,985,984 (million-equivalent) and 5,159,780,352 (billion-equivalent), consisting of upper mi double upper fa sharp, upper mi triple upper fa sharp, double upper mi double upper fa sharp, double upper mi triple upper fa sharp. There are also trillion and quadrillion equivalents.

[Salmoneus]

Is the intention here to have something 'naturalistic', or something that's just a joke, or a thought experiment?

It's obviously not naturalistic to have a tone-only language for humans, but it's not necessarily unnaturalistic to have a tone-only language for some sentient species, including perhaps for 'alternative universe humans'.

However, the really striking thing to me about this language, from a naturalistic point of view, is that combination of a very alien idea (a tone-only language) with something that could only exist inside modern Europe - fair enough if it's just a game or a thought experiment, but if I were serious about this, and to be clear it's an interesting idea one could take seriously, I wouldn't have it so closely wedded to modern European musical traditions.

Chirpie

Chirpie, as the people of the neighbouring lands call it, is the native language of the Stillwater Archipelago. Unique among all the languages of the world, Chirpie is a musical language, sung rather than spoken, and its actual name is, using our terminology, either “3-1-2” or “mi-do-re.” The phoneme analogues are notes, the 21 notes (including sharps) of a typical one and a half octave singing range.

21 "notes" in modern Europe covers an octave and a minor sixth, which is close to an octave and a half (although an octave and a half is actually only 19 "notes").

But the whole idea of these being the "notes" is specific to European musical practice, and specifically to modern Europe - 12-tone equal temperament was adopted gradually between the late 17th and the mid-19th century. If you asked a Byzantine how many notes were covered by an octave and a half, she'd say 108, not 19. On the other hand, if you asked a Thai, at least a couple of centuries ago, they'd tell you 10 or 11. And of course in cultures without equal temperament, it doesn't really make sense to ask how many notes are within a given range in the first place (there's an infinite number of notes in a given range, and different temperaments and keys/modes will use different ones).

Most common are what we would call quarter notes, known in Chirpie as simple a note; they also use double notes and triple notes, equivalent to half notes and whole notes in our terminology

It doesn't make sense to use our crotchets, minims and semibreves (I assume that's what you mean?) as a division of time, because a crotchet or 'quarter note' doesn't equate to a given length. A crotchet is simply one quarter of a measure in 4/4 time, or the pulse of a 4/4 measure. In a piece marked 'grave', a 'quarter note' can last around 2 seconds; in a piece marked 'presto', a 'quarter note' can last 1/3rd of a second. And the decision to call the pulse a crotchet rather than a minim or a semiquaver is part of a complex tradition of stylistic and notational conventions, not anything absolute that could be used to describe something outside modern European music.

, for a total of 63 phonemes. Words are most often composed of anywhere from one to five notes, though some words can be up to seven or even eight notes. Singing more than eight whole notes on a single breath at a normal volume is impractical. Word breaks are indicated by note rests, and sentence breaks with double rests.

As people have different vocal ranges, teens and adults sing four ranges: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Children sing in treble.

So when someone starts talking, how do you know whether they're, say, saying a low note in soprano, or a high note in alto? And why impose the four parts of modern European choral part-songs onto a non-European tradition? The four-range model doesn't even describe modern European classical solo singing (where there are usually six ranges, effectively), let alone other traditions. Indeed, why have a specified number of ranges at all? And sociologically, who allocates people to one range or another?

"Treble", fwiw, is not a range, but a voice type - the difference between a treble and a soprano is not pitch range, but timbre, and obviously anatomy. Similarly, countertenors and castrati can sing just as high as many sopranos and trebles, but they are neither sopranos nor trebles.

The position of the note within its range determines its “phonemic” value. The writing system superficially resembles modern staff notation, with six lines and eight symbols.

As I imagine you're aware, this is again very specific to modern Europe.

The language is highly isolating; time signatures are not specified, but deduced.

Why do they have time signatures - since presumably they don't live in modern Europe?

One extremely unusual feature of Chirpie is the existence of chord-words, impossible for a single person to pronounce; these words are used in formal or ritual contexts, or in some cases to indicate closeness. A family might say “grace” with a five-note chord, or a congregation make a prayer with twenty voices. These words often indicate extreme emphasis, as they require rehearsal; if a craft master’s apprentice says “I have a problem” or even “we have a problem,” that’s one thing. But if all his apprentice gather and say “chord-we chord-have chord-grievance,” it’s a good sign there’s a real problem, and a very serious one.

Just to say something non-pedantic - the idea of chord-words is a very good one.

[Whitewings]

Well, it's really none of the above, though I suppose thought experiment is closest. It's part of a setting I'm creating, in which various groups of humans were created by various deities, and granted languages at their creation by those deities. Each deity created a language that it favoured; in this case, probably the deity of air and wind. I chose to use modern European/American musical concepts as basis for the simple reason that they're the ones I'm most familiar with.

I know that treble isn't really a range, but most teen and adult sopranos have lower ranges than children, and treble was the only term that came to mind. In setting, the question of "what range is this person singing in?" would rarely come up, either because the listener knows the speaker, or the range immediately becomes obvious because (to use your example) upper alto speech and lower soprano speech have different meanings, and so if you guess wrong about the speaker's range, what you hear will rarely make much in-context sense. Sociologically, nobody's likely to allocate people; they'll allocate themselves just by the nature of their voices. You won't find a lot of tenors who can sing well in the bass range, for example. I'm aware of baritones (I am one) and mezzo-sopranos, but I want to keep things simple, at least in the initial development.

I use the term time signature for lack of a better one; I'm quite aware of the variable duration of quarter notes, and thus half and whole notes, between pieces, or even in some cases within a piece. I based the writing system on staff notation because it's as good a choice as any, and it has the advantage of being one I'm familiar enough with to feel comfortable in modifying. Besides, who's to say a deity couldn't invent something akin (but not identical) to staff notation?

I'm glad you like the idea of chord-words; I thought it was pretty neat.

[Whitewings]

Though this is not an absolute, a note most often has a duration of a half-second (approximately), thus a double lasts a second and a triple, two seconds.

The G major 7th chord, ideally sung with G B D F# in the bass, tenor, alto and soprano ranges, is the base for the eight-triple run that makes the above mentioned "congregation" chord, one of the longest and most complex chords in the language. As this requires approximately sixteen seconds, it is normally sung fairly loudly, due to high volumes requiring less breath to sustain than low (source: am a choral singer). It can be sung outside of a formal church service (or rehearsal), but is always sung in context of some sort of spiritual event. The absolute ideal is to have the word sung by 36 people in each range, making a dozen dozen (an extremely strong number in this world's beliefs).

[Whitewings]

Instruments are not normally perceived as "speaking" by the people of Stillwater, but there is one exception: the signal horn. Similar to our alpenhorn, it is most often used to sound the la-la#^-ti^(3)-la^ word that means "emergency," followed by a word naming the emergency's nature. There is no chord for this word, since it cannot be made more emphatic.

# indicates a sharp, ^ that the note is in the upper portion of the singer's range.