To my mild embarrassment, I’ve tacked another hobby on to my list of hobbies: web design. Enter suzypavlis, which is currently a home for the lyrics of, like, six songs in artificial languages that vanishingly few people use.
What’s On the Site?
Translations of song lyrics in the constructed languages (or conlangs—see details below) Lojban and Toki Pona. Some of these are new; others are from a year ago. More will be added over time, along with fiction (eventually) and a What’s New section on the front page once I figure out how I want that to look and stuff.
We have a good mix of memey and non-memey songs represented right now.
Why Conlangs?
Way way back, like a decade ago, I first became aware of constructed languages. Aside from languages associated with fiction—like Na’Vi and Sindarin—the biggest and most well-known ones then, as now, were Esperanto, Toki Pona, and Lojban. I “tried on” all of them, but for whatever reason, only Lojban had my whole heart.
Below is a random sentence from The Complete Lojban Grammar meaning “Rick and Alice go inside the coffee bar.” You’re not supposed to add ending punctuation, and the mid-sentence periods aren’t optional:
la rik. .e la .alis. nerkla le kafybarja
It looks arcane, it feels strange, and I still don’t really like how it sounds. But it’s the fact that you can bend and mold its grammar in myriad ways, and are encouraged to do so, that intrigued me. If you try that in Esperanto, people just say (and not without good reason), “Uh, but no one talks like that.” Esperanto has the grammatical power to make some truly odd phrases, thanks to its free-ish word position and all its increasingly specific affixes, but only Lojban will exact that power.
I was somewhat interested in Toki Pona, mostly because it felt like that was where all the art was. People have made custom scripts for Lojban (I know of zbalermorna and srilermorna), but they haven’t made every word its own custom logogram, or elaborate hieroglyph, adopted and used en masse. It almost feels absurd. Normally trying to get people to spend their free time learning a whole language’s worth of glyphs that they can’t even use outside of niche communities of total strangers would be a fool’s errand (I’m sure Ithkuil has always been struggling with this). But Toki Pona has a very limited vocabulary, so it can get away with that.
Why Now?
I dunno. I was just going about my day recently when I thought, “I miss Lojban.” I apparently didn’t miss the countless languages that could help me travel abroad, enjoy world literature, or advance my career in some way. Just the language I had treated as a hobby and a toy.
In high school, I had used Lojban a lot, but in isolation, and I got frustrated by the idea that nobody was reading my stuff. Even if they WERE reading it, I never heard back. But I’ve decided that this time, I don’t care whether or not I get traffic. I’m just doing it for its own sake, because I enjoy the making of it. I like translating song lyrics just so they can run through my own head! It’s a fun little challenge that helps me remember vocabulary and get inventive with a language that, for once, wants me to be endlessly inventive (maybe even demands it?).
suzypavlis includes not just Lojban, but Toki Pona. About a year ago, I was at a convention, sitting at a table for about six hours, and while it was a great event and I’m glad I did it, I got so bored in between chatting with guests that I relearned Toki Pona and translated Chapter 1 of Catgirl System. (Again, you can do that kind of thing when the language has sub-200 words.)
I’m not currently writing more Toki Pona lyrics; I just expect to upload the ones I’ve already made throughout 2025. Finally there’s a dedicated place—no, shrine—for the things Reddit has celebrated me the most for: lyrics to “I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones)” and (forthcoming) Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy.” I mean, if a major conlang doesn’t have lyrics to that, what are we even doing?
Why Not On WordPress (Which You’re Presumably Reading This On Right Now)?
With the power of Neocities, just about anyone can build an individualized website! It still takes time, frustration, and cobbling together bits of code from other people’s how-tos (unless you go slow and take an actual tutorial, which is for people smarter and more patient than me).
I didn’t want a blog, I didn’t need anything elaborate…I just wanted a landing page with portals to static word fountains.
Okay, I do still want things that are elaborate, and “elaborate” here means “basic JavaScript and CSS,” which I have no prior experience with. But those things can be counted on my fingers. For now. The JavaScript/CSS thing I’m happiest about is the button that will switch onscreen text from Latin characters to sitelen pona. It’s not 100% there yet because terms like “toki Inli” still aren’t totally Tokiponized…but it’s somethin’ and it’s fun to toggle back and forth.
I’m also glad about how the site looks, in general. I wanted it to look “timeless/classic,” because I do so much stuff that is self-consciously nostalgic…and I’m increasingly aware that that’s what everyone does. Well, maybe the result looks more cheesy, like the tacky Harry Potter book covers I historically make fun of. I dunno. You decide!
What’s Next?
I intend to write fiction in Lojban and upload that too, but that will have to wait until, um, I understand the language again. It’s been years. And I didn’t even understand it that deeply last decade.
Besides that? Um, nothing. I told you all the facts I have. I’ll make a What’s New section and continue to add more lyrics. Maybe a zbalermorna toggle for Lojban will appear. Or not. Who knows?!?!?!?!?!
Enjoy yet another link to suzypavlis! (Note: the name means “at least one story” in Lojban. This means I have to write at least one story or I’m cooked.)
Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
For more readin’ fun, check out my review of Logan’s Run, or maybe It’s A Wonderful Life. Or learn about Catgirl System! (It’s still on break, but as of this writing, 12 chapters of an approx. 50-chapter final book are done. Uh, 95% done. Finishing the last 5% will take math and statistics.)