What IS Viossa?
Viossa is a collaborative artificial pidgin, created from a basic but novel set of constraints. It began as an online experiment to see whether or not we could simulate the conditions for pidgin formation. We achieved this by:
- Refusing to translate our speech to (or use words from) a preexisting shared language, like English.
- Refusing to correct speech from others that we can understand
These essential constraints result in a language that is free to grow and change over time, since it is anchored neither by internal or external prescriptivism.
To date, Viossa is the first known and most successful conpidgin of its kind: being founded on Christmas eve of 2014, and growing today to a devoted community of around 100 competent-to-fluent speakers. It features contributions from a number of natural and artificial languages—and even other conpidgins!
Today’s Community
The Viossa community is an international and deeply eclectic one, and seeks to draw from many cultural and linguistic traditions. The community is currently centered on the Viossa Diskordseгver (VDS), and there are several satellite communities under independent leadership.
No matter which part, the community still teaches Viossa exclusively by immersion: there exist artistic translations and language packs for various software, but there is no translation-based dictionary or exhaustive grammatical description of Viossa.
Diversity and Vilant
Viossa, the language itself, features significant diversity on all its layers. Its users spell and speak differently, use different words, teach differently, and pull from a grab-bag of grammatical features.
It contains pieces of:
- Japanese
- Norwegian
- Finnish
- Chinese
- Russian
- Greek
- Albanian
- toki pona
- Many more!
The VDS also hosts a set of additional conpidgins you can read about—Wodox, Minemiaha, and Luferen—which are not mutually intelligible, but together form a sort of cultural bund called Vilant. Vilant is currently an informal collective of these conpidgins, intended to create mutual support for each.
Very often, conpidgins do not survive for a long time unless individuals within the community are very persistent over time. It’s normal for these projects to fade! Often, though, there are one or two last speakers who are willing to teach, and would like to continue. Creating a broader society of conpidgins allows members to exchange with each other, and work towards mutual preservation, or even growth. There is, after all, power in numbers!
Projects
Active projects in and for Viossa take many forms:
- Original literature
- Original music
- Original podcasts
- Software and websites
- Translation of existing works, notably videogames
- In-person meetings in multiple countries
- State and international formal recognition
For more, see <link to PROJECTS page>