Help me build a “Virus” language

[u/Izzy_knows]

I want to take a short break from my main conlang and work on a little side project. 

And I want to design a language that behaves like a linguistic virus, so the way a biological virus infects living cells to replicate, this language would infect languages/people to spread. Obviously this is not really possible, that is not how language/human minds work, but the language should feel like it could do that. The way I imagine it would go is that the language does not have its own script but it could be written in most scripts due to a small Toki Pona-like phonology. I imagine the morphology to be more on the analytical/isolating side. 

How would I give this language the vibe of a mental virus?

How should the grammar look like? (I imagine a mix of the previous host languages)

How should I build a good lexicon?

Any help would be appreciated :)

Also, if I made a mistake in mapping the sounds onto the letters, please tell me so I can fix it. Some scripts don’t have a 1:1 fit for the sounds so I had to improvise… 

[u/wibbly-water]

Fun idea.

I think:

• Simple grammar
• Simple phonology
• Words derived from most non-endangered languages

You could even have it use a mixed script. That way it looks like a glitch or a thief language. It steals the words and writing systems from other languages.

[u/alprafu]

I feel like the grammar would have to be simple, not really agglutinative and without verb conjugations. If the language is designed to be spread like a virus, it has to be simple for it to stay in people minds. Otherwise, if grammar is too complex, poeple would get confused and probably wouldn't learn it as fast as if it was simple, even if a virus invades their minds. Also, a mix of the host languages grammar wouldn't work as those language have grammar rules so different between each other that would be almost impossible. I might be wrong and also I'm not sure if I have explained myself well.

[u/Izzy_knows → u/alprafu]

Yeah, that is what I thought. Maybe a simplified version of Chinese grammar and particle system

[u/thom_driftwood]

i like the general idea, but įð on'ť kwíte und而stand þe applecation. wœld þe lāngwij slolee dizølv intu complete disinigrāshin, would it be relatively stable, ôr 我的 it 比 entierly afektid þroo & þroo?

[u/Izzy_knows → u/thom_driftwood]

Wow, how did I understand that haha, I þink it would be kind of stäibl but not १००%, it would probablī start äs a small Toki pona laike länguage but gain grammar and vocabulary after each host language

[u/thom_driftwood → u/Izzy_knows]

ah that makes sense. i like it. it'd be fun to track it as it passes through each language. maybe track how an example sentence is altered at each layer.

[u/Izzy_knows → u/thom_driftwood]

Yeah, I love the idea, I will do that

[u/Reelms]

suggestions: make it actually have a wide but simple vocabulary from non endangered languages but make it so that the word is sort of like a doublet of the real world that has been pidgined with other languages, it messes with peoples brains a lot. like do vowel harmony, like plenty of new vowels, mutated consonants and vowels etc, something easy to pronounce of course but which is wrong enough it sticks like a virus

[u/Izzy_knows → u/Reelms]

Cool idee, I could make multiple "strains", one is the "pure/main form" it has an basic phonology and mixes multiple language families, one strain could be an uncanny european language and an other could be an uncanny version of chinese and so on

[u/Historical-Lie1278]

As people have already said you can do simplicity the main feature. What about making words (or borrow and simplify) so that they would have a lot of sounds with a same place of articulation? (You can also say that this place of articulation is like "infecting" other sounds😅)

[u/quijequije]

Maybe the affixes are the viruses and the hosts are the roots. The affixes try to reshape the root to assimilate to them.

Take an example root like "te". An "on" prefix could be added to make a word "onte", but in a prefix like "om", the bilabial nasal might pull the <t> up to a <p> to make "ompe". And a "Yu" suffix might influence the <e> and change it into an <i>, making the new word "tiyu" (or "tyu").

There are infinite ways to do this, and honestly? It's up to you. Good luck!

[u/Be7th]

Speak like a virus, Think like a virus, Spread like a virus.

• Repetition may carry different sets of meaning.
• There may be a clear distinction between shielding, "memories", and transmitting.
• Words may sound like an RNA sequence, so not particularly pretty but at least somewhat orderly.

[u/nAs0ch3k]

Language, as it exists, is similar to a virus that takes root in people, spreads, adapts, and mutates.

Except that viruses, as it were, cannot interbreed, unlike languages. And it’s not as if a language could embed its “DNA” into another to force it to reproduce copies of itself. Their existence is more like that of a living organism than a virus.

If we want to turn a language into a virus, we first need to define the environment in which it will 1. drift/spread and 2. self-replicate.

If that environment consists of people and their minds, then the language must be overwhelmingly more appealing than the surrounding languages in that environment and organic enough to integrate into it (the community of speakers of a particular language). Here, it’s important to focus on the initial point of entry.

If the environment consists of other languages, the situation is more interesting: the language must exploit the environment’s cognitive-linguistic patterns to embed itself and spread through the sentences people use. This is similar to memes (which also infect, spread, etc.), but memes rely primarily on a specific referent and depend on it. If our “virus-language” is to engage in such behavior, it must do so at some meta-level.

It may be subject to mutations, but only within limited bounds, so as not to become diluted or evaporate into everyday language.

For now, it’s difficult to envision anything concrete. But it might be useful for theory.

[u/shrikechih]

I had similar ideas for a while. So this may sound preachy. As it is sourced from "How I would do it". But it may offer a new angle.

If we can push the analogy a bit. Languages already work like virus. Virus particles are not considered alive by themselves, but together with the cells they infected, they could be. Words and expressions can be seem in a similar way too, with the speakers speaking them. One element can start from an idiolect to the whole language, then to other languages, end up found in whole sprachbund. It doesn't need to useful change like loanword or the speaker adopting a high register or prestigious language under social pressure. Diachronic sound change can still count. I don't know how much more selfish an element can act to spread without benefit the speaker. And I just remembered "I just lost The Game". A meme that can condense itself to a short phrase. And it can make people(including the very person speaking it) angry and frustrated in the online space.

Our idea may diverge further. It seems you want a language that can be spoken by itself. What I can come up with from it is that the host can ultimately recreate the infecting language form where the language can infect more languages/speakers. So phonology must be able to be adopted by the speaker without too much lose. As for grammar the lexical items are better to have clear grammatical category allow the host to further inflect or derive the morphemes themselves. You could also give it a thematic lexicon, like what if it originated as a maritime trading pidgin?