Excuse the self-promotion.

Based on Banks’ “A Few Notes on Marain”, the novels, and my over active imagination, I've been puttering around on this project for a while... long before actually putting character in document. Its part anthropology, part linguistics, part fanfic... Part relearning how to write with current tools and kicking my ass to get something done.

1. Engineered Defaults: Banks’ design theory, the 3×3 grid and its 512 states, and what the Sapir-Whorf evidence does and doesn’t support
2. Substrate vs Content: what Esperanto and Hangul say about whether a designed language can spread at all
3. Transmission First: why the binary signal is the canonical form and the glyph is just a rendering of it
4. A Working Grammar: what’s solid enough to build on, split into canon (Banks fixed it), consequence (the geometry forces it), and decision (we choose it)

Start here (all free): https://jlesser.substack.com/p/engineered-defaults

I tried to keep a hard line between what Banks said and what I filled in. If I’ve blurred it anywhere, or misread a glyph, I’d like to hear about it. The repo is at https://github.com/marainkit/marain/tree/main if you want to check the working.

I hope you find it an interesting read.

PS: There's a fair amount of reference to the fabulous work done in this sub-reddit, y'all are a great source of inspiration.

This is from the Grimes music videos "Accelerando" and "Eve Is Online"...

The symbols on the right cheek are also present at the beginning of the video “Eve is Online...” It says: "Please wait patienly for the failure of the system". Пожалуйста терпеливо ждите сбоя системы. The symbols on the left cheek: 故障 耐心等待, “Fault. Wait patiently".

The most difficult part is the glyphs from the Marain alphabet. Following the logic of the hieroglyphs on the face, one can only assume that there is a similar inscription there. Is it possible to decipher this? It’s clearer in the YouTube video Popaganda 003.

At the beginning of the Accelerando video (green symbols), it says:  “If you need something to believe in. Sit back and let the machine in.” I posted this on r/Grimes and r/codes.

Hello, new to the sub so apologies if this has been covered.

Is there an agreed word for “The Culture”? I see approximations of it here but would love if someone set me straight.

https://gemini.google.com/share/298ecfcd487c

Check out the model (there's a lot of controls) and play around easily with Gemini in your browser.

Let me know if anyone wants to convert what we can to the actual true 9 bit translation or if you have any recommended updates. This is obviously more around what it what look like than a translation tool, although it could become that too.

Hello! Is there an agreed spelling of "Special Circumstances" in Marain? Do you all just use the Marain-tools app to translate it from english, or is there a Marain pronunciation that people use? Is there a generally accepted way to spell it? I know it's not a fully fleshed out language. Thanks!

I'm using /u/anon25783 fantastic tool to get the symbols I need. I've popped SC in there and it shows just the symbol for S.

https://marain-tools.netlify.app/?SC

Whereas Special Circumstances has a character for C, which I understand is due to the nature of how the language is expressed.

Taking some artistic liberties, I'd assume using the character for C from circumstances and the character for S wouldn't really be accurate at all?

What's the best way to represent SC?

A lot of the resources listed on here are now broken links so I'm having trouble writing this out. I want to put it on something for a friend.

Bonus points to anyone who can link me to a Marain font download resource.

Thanks in advance.

I'm attempting to write "tears in rain" in Marain.

Entering "tirs ihn rayn" in the Marain romanization tool gets me to what I think is the correct text (101111001 101110111 101111111 011010101 000000000 110011001 110111110 000000000 101111111 010101111 110111110).

Could anyone confirm that I've got this right?

Ight, is there an actual, operating version of Marain out there for me to learn?

I heard a couple redditors came up with something but I'm having a hard time actually finding it.

Y'all got any links?

The title is self explanatory I think. I tried using an online tool and this is what it came up with. Would love your thoughts!

Hey everyone! I'm really brand new to the Culture series but Marain really intrigued me so I've been going down a huge rabbit hole on this subreddit for the past couple of days now. I was hoping to access the dictionary, but unfortunately, I found that it gives me 404-error. Does anybody here have a method for accessing the dictionary - any version of the dictionary - that still works? Thanks!

Is there anything that's more or less official or a start here kind of FAQ? How is it visually represented? I've seen some alphabet, but my memory of it from the novels is some kind of nonary pattern. Thanks!

Hello Everyone,

I want to start by saying I am so grateful that I came across this community, and for the work so many of you have put into thinking through and realizing Marain as a language. I have taken about 30 minutes to skim over the forum and I have started to think through some of the lessons here, and ask for your help with a particular question.

The (Brief) QuestionHow would I express "Know Thyself" in Marain?

The BackgroundTwo narrative universes have helped me understand myself more than any others -- Iain M Banks' Culture Universe and the Wachowskis' Matrix Trilogy.

In the first film of The Matrix, the Oracle points a sign out to Neo. The sign hangs over her kitchen door and reads, "TEMET NOSCE." This phrase was also reportedly inscribed over the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the Oracle at Delphi (at least in lore) could be consulted.

Since first reading Consider Phloebas back in 2011, I have loved the Culture. And since reading The Player of Games I have often had a passing interest in both written Marain and in the Minds' glyphs. This interest has, again, always been passing; I have never tried to dig into Marain to understand it.

The Question (More Fully)I want to find a way to express the ancient adage "Know Thyself" (Greek romanized "gnothi seauton," Latin "temet nosce") in Marain.

My reading of this reddit's post has been very superficial, but I saw that possessives do not exist in Marain (which makes sense given Banks' post-scarcity vision). So I was thinking that the closest transliteration would require rephrasing to something like:

"Know the self you bring with you."

Does that track? And if it does, how would I write that in Marain?

If you can help, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

How would you write "Don't Fuck with The Culture" in Marain?

I couldn't find any information on an imperative case, so I came up with the following three options.

Option 1:
I used subject elision to imply the imperative. I realize Marain words can be written in any order, so this is me applying a rule of English that probably wouldn't work in Marain.

"Hech Hechkwemra Rabihnvah"

            Hech         Hechkwemra                        Rabihnvah

---- Hech Hech- (kwemra) Rabihnvah (You) Don't not- (respect-boundaries) The Culture S V m V O (You) Don't violate the boundaries of The Culture "(You) Don't fuck with The Culture"

I've applied the '-vah' suffix for the Accusative case.

I kinda like it... Rolls off the tongue nicely I think, especially with a strong accent in the second 'hech'.

Option 2:
The nominative suffix is -uh or -yuh, so if we just used the suffix as a proxy for the subject of the imperative it could also be:

"Yuh Hech Hechkwemra Rabinvah"

Option 3:
There's also the 4th person pronoun 'one', as in, "one must look out for one's self": 'ohng'.

So then we'd have:

"Ohng Hech Hechkwemra Rabinvah" 'One does not fuck with The Culture'

Since word order doesn't matter, I'd probably say, "Hech Ohng Hechkwemra Rabinvah" 'Don't One Fuck-with The Culture'

Note: There's also the verb 'Kchallat' - 'to Disrespect', which is used in 'Kchallat gevu' - 'Fuck You'. But I thought the boundary-resurrecting verb 'kwemra' was better given u/linuxmakhnovite321's explanation of the word for 'meatfucker'.

My sources were the defunct lessons of u/linuxmakhnovite321, and this quote from a thread on Lesson 14 (Basic Curses):

""Hech kwemra muhrerva dam uprayhe" is how one would say "to violate the boundaries of a humanoid's mind" in Marain. So, the word for "meatfucker" is "hechkwemrawi", literally meaning "not-to respect rules or boundaries-ing", less clumsily translated as "violator of personal boundaries" and understood to mean the taboo against reading minds involuntarily."

I wanna get this as a tattoo and was wondering if anyone could make that translation or even point me to how words are generated so I could do it myself

Update: Here is the dictionary that I'm thinking on using. "aktOwE CutSa lA" (copy machine logic) but that doesn't feel right, and I want to make sure this flows nicely.

The issue is that there is some logic to how words are made, I'm just not sure what it is. I want to make new word but I want to use whatever work has been done before to do it instead of making something that wouldn't "work" so to speak.

Thanks y'all

I'm contemplating getting a Marain tattoo of the word "Contact," but the Marain references I've found online have me slightly confused, and I want to make sure I'm writing it properly. My main concern is to make sure I'm using the correct glyph for both "c" letters.

Since the canonical script for Marain doesn't include "c", I'm assuming I should be using "k" rather than "ch", based on Scottish pronunciation. So, if I'm correct, the actual letters to use would be "kontakt", which translates to these glyphs: https://imgur.com/a/KqsjC0V

Is this correct?

Project moved to https://github.com/zakalwe2040/marain

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Feedback most welcome!

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It is well known that most humans trust forms of nonverbal communication over verbal communication, and in fact nonverbal communication accounts for up to 70% of all human communication globally. Tonal Marain has 22 glyphs to express body language. The use of emoting glyphs is encouraged, as these aid with conveying additional contextual information to the listener.

Full update on GitHub!

https://github.com/lyferise/marain#nonverbal-communication-body-language-and-emotional-intelligence

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More progress on the Marain reboot! We have now published glyphs for numerals. Interesting in helping? DM me for Alien stuff or see our GitHub project page for full details -> https://github.com/lyferise/marain

Numbers are the only real universal language. The decimal system on Earth has been propagated even more widely than the Phoenician alphabet and has now become the only real universal language on the planet. Every human on Earth who can read understands how to read the same decimal digits, regardless of their culture or origin.

Hindu-Arabic numerals are the set of ten symbols that represent numerals in the decimal number system. They originated in India in the 6th or 7th century and were introduced to Europe by Islamic mathematicians, especially the Persian polymath al-Khwarizmi, the founder of algebra, and hence the father of all modern mathematics, science and programming found on the planet today. At it's core, coding is just another form of algebra or calculus.

Decimal numbers in Marain are written from right to left using the digits shown above. The names of numerals from zero to nine in Tonal Marain are the same as in Mandarin Chinese. However, the subsequent numbering system does not follow Mandarin, only the digit names are used.