Miscellanea IV. The Tragedy and Comedy of Xiding Language

In the Chinese Conlang Circle, particularly among young students, almost everyone knows of Xiding (希顶语). This is a constructed language (conlang) belonging to a niche field with virtually no commercial market in China, yet it seems to have attracted an excessive amount of attention. Recently, while hiking and chatting with a classmate, Jiang Hongyu, about language-related topics, he unexpectedly brought up Xiding. Neither of us are regular observers of the conlang circle, yet we both knew of this artificial language—a language described as "childish and paranoid to the point of no return"—which is truly strange.

Additional Notes:

• Chinese Conlang Circle: A niche subcultural group in China, gathered on platforms like Baidu Tieba, Zhihu, and QQ groups. Although small, the academic threshold is high, filled with linguistics majors and enthusiasts. Xiding holds a special status within it, often referred to as "the only true Meme in the circle."

Xiding's "breakout" success seems to be credited to the intellectual whims of young scholars. Among them, a netizen named Unt, whose capabilities are quite admirable, is arguably the most authoritative voice among online linguistic scholars. A few years ago, he mocked Xiding relentlessly; later, however, he seemed to go mad, perfecting and supplementing Xiding’s phonemes and fonts, analyzing its language family, and promoting it. According to him, this language was simply "too rustic, too regional, to the point where, amidst the ridicule, it actually felt quite valuable for research"—in other words, he found it amusing.

Under the "leadership" of Unt and others, Xiding mutated from a rough draft into a massive empire of memes.

Additional Notes:

• Unt: A well-known contributor on Zhihu and in the language circle, known for an extremely solid foundation in historical linguistics. The "serious transformation" of Xiding he led is actually a piece of "Deconstructionist" performance art—using the most rigorous academic tools to analyze the most absurd sample. This immense contrast is the core driver of Xiding's explosive popularity.

I. Phonology and Orthography: The Magical Dance of Dialect and IPA

The most fascinating yet most criticized aspect of Xiding lies in its extremely non-standard yet self-consistent phonology. This is by no means the product of standard linguistic training, but a personal creation with a strong undertone of Shaoyang Dialect (Xiang Chinese).

Additional Notes:

• Shaoyang Dialect: Belongs to Old Xiang or the Lou-Shao subgroup of New Xiang Chinese. Its significant features include the retention of ancient voiced initials (or devoicing without aspiration), the confusion of $f/hu$ (e.g., reading "Fujian" as "Hujian"), the lack of distinction between $n/l$, and an extremely rich vowel system. The so-called "chaos" of Xiding is actually Huang Quefei attempting to use a set of self-created symbols to record the voice in his head, which sounds "like Mandarin yet like Shaoyang dialect."

1. The Arbitrariness of Initial Design: Xiding possesses over 40 Hidinc Letters. In Huang Quefei's original setting, their corresponding pronunciations were extremely chaotic. He directly appropriated symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) but assigned them completely different phonetic values. For example, he used Greek letters like $\theta$ and $\delta$ as alphabet characters, yet they do not correspond to interdental fricatives, but rather to variants of the Pinyin zh or ch. This distinctively "literalistic" appropriation resulted in an initial phonology full of "provincial flavor" and unpredictability.

Additional Notes:

• Misuse of IPA: In standard IPA, $\theta$ represents the th sound in English thin (voiceless dental fricative /$\theta$/). However, in the original Xiding setting, it is often used to represent something like a retroflex /$\text{\textasciitilde t\ s}$/ or other variants. To linguistics professionals, this misuse feels extremely "offensive" and hilarious, akin to seeing someone use the mathematical symbol $\sum$ (summation) to represent the letter E.

2. A Peculiar Vowel Pattern: Unlike the vowel symmetry pursued by general constructed languages (such as the classic five-vowel system of $a, e, i, o, u$), Xiding introduced vowels such as $/y/$ (umlaut u) and $/\o/$ (similar to the Swedish rounded vowel), which are difficult for Chinese speakers to distinguish, while carrying a strong accent. For instance, its unique "Wei" rhyme sounds somewhere between $/ui/$ and $/vei/$, depending entirely on the random fluctuations of the so-called "official" pronunciation.

Additional Notes:

• $/y/$ and $/ø/$: $/y/$ corresponds to the Pinyin ü (as in "yu"), and $/ø/$ corresponds to the close-mid front rounded vowel in IPA, similar to ö in the German schön. For educated conlangers, distinguishing these is easy, but Xiding’s problem lies in "lack of phonemic opposition"—meaning Huang Quefei himself often confuses these sounds when speaking, making the language's "standard pronunciation" effectively a random variable.

3. A Minimalist yet Fractured Writing System: The so-called "Xiding Script" is a symbol system hand-drawn by Huang Quefei, highly geometric but lacking calligraphic continuity. To digitize it, Unt and others had to re-draw it conceptually in vector form, even developing a specialized input method and Font. These letters look like a deconstruction of Chinese character strokes, yet also like a crude imitation of some lost civilization, forming a unique aesthetic—a visual clash blending "Wasteland Sci-Fi and Rural Billboards."

Additional Notes:

• Digital Salvation: Before Unt intervened, Xiding letters existed only in photos of Huang Quefei's messy manuscripts. The community not only produced OpenType fonts but also applied for Unicode Private Use Area encoding for them. This act of forcibly elevating "doodles" to industrial standards greatly enhanced the cyberpunk absurdity of Xiding.

II. Grammatical Evolution and Dialect Divergence: From "Xiding" to "Xilü"

The fundamentalist Xiding grammar is extremely crude, basically a "one-to-one mapping of Chinese characters," known as a Relex (Re-lexification). However, with the rise of the "New Xiding Movement," the community constructed a complex evolutionary tree for it:

Additional Notes:

• Relex (Re-lexification): A term at the bottom of the conlang circle's hierarchy. It refers to not changing the grammatical structure of the source language (usually one's native tongue) and merely replacing vocabulary with invented sounds or symbols. For example, using "A B C" to directly correspond to "I Love You" while the grammar remains entirely Chinese. Most beginners' conlangs are Relexes.

• Proto-Xiding: The original version by Huang Quefei himself, characterized by word order strictly following Chinese SVO (Subject-Verb-Object), a lack of inflection, and massive use of calques (direct translations) from Chinese vocabulary.
• Modern Standard Xiding: The version revised by the community, which standardized the use of case particles, introduced agglutinative features, and attempted to make it look more like a "real" language.
• Dialect Variants:
  • Xibei (Northern Xiding): The "Beijing Dialect of Xiding," a product generated by Unt and other scholars forcing Xiding through phonetic shifts similar to Mandarin Chinese, created for satire or experimentation.
  • Xilü: A variant combining features from other languages. The existence of these dialects is not based on geographical separation, but on the "setting carnival" of the online community. They use rigorous historical linguistic methods (such as variants of Grimm's Law) to deduce the history of a language that does not exist; this performance art is itself more valuable for research than the language.

Additional Notes:

• Grimm's Law: Describes a set of regular consonant shifts that occurred as Proto-Indo-European (PIE) evolved into Germanic languages (e.g., $p \to f$, $t \to \theta$). Unt and others pretend Xiding has thousands of years of history, pretentiously writing similar "sound shift laws" to simulate how it branched into dialects. This is the highest level of humor in the linguistics circle—constructing history for the void.

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In short, Xiding is like a jester in an old Western court; it is essentially slang and a joke among conlangers. With a website and a translator, to outsiders, it truly appears to be a rigorously constructed, vast linguistic system.

This highlights its tragedy even more. The inventor of Xiding, Huang Quefei, should be around 50 years old now; he does not belong to the demographic of young people who hyped this language up. He has received no systematic education in linguistics, and the Xiding he invented bears heavy traces of local dialects. He uses IPA to annotate Xiding, but his pronunciation is inaccurate. In Unt's words, "It is so rich in (personal) character that one becomes possessed trying to decipher the phonemes (what sound it actually is)."

But he poured his heart and soul into this "flaw-riddled" language.

Year after year, he persistently promoted his work, with no one taking interest. Until one day, he posted: "I invented Xiding, which led to losing my job, losing my wife, and suffering from a terminal illness. Is this punishment from heaven for discovering Xiding?"

Additional Notes:

• The Cost of "Leaking Heavenly Secrets": Huang Quefei posted several heartbreaking threads on Baidu Tieba, attributing every hardship in his life (family separation, illness) to "karma for leaking heavenly secrets by inventing Xiding." This displays an obsession bordering on religious fanaticism, elevating a clumsy linguistic creation to the height of fatalism.

Right after posting this illogical message—perhaps out of mockery, perhaps out of sympathy—his "masterpiece" went viral. But behind this popularity is deconstruction and reshaping; Xiding is no longer what he recognized.

Huang Quefei does not understand young people. He looks at those rigorous phonological analysis tables, the complex syntax trees, and the standard fonts he himself can barely recognize, and he is genuinely joyful, as if meeting a kindred spirit for the first time. He may not necessarily be unaware of these young people's true thoughts—the teasing about "rustic cyberpunk," the attention born not of respect but of curiosity—and he may not necessarily fail to feel sorrow for his work, which has been changed beyond recognition.

But he can still only thank his luck, and that is where the tragedy lies. He is a creator who "failed yet succeeded," an actor living in self-consolation, a true "obsessed man." This is the tragedy of a commoner who believes in idealism, a dream forcibly constructed by Prince Shou amidst the pain of sobriety.

Additional Notes:

• The Death of the Author: Roland Barthes' concept is vividly embodied here. The moment Xiding was handed over to the community, Huang Quefei, as the author, lost the right to interpret it. The more perfect and scientific the "Standard Xiding" created by the community becomes, the more it highlights the roughness and powerlessness of Huang Quefei's original version.

In this farce, there are no real winners. Linguistics scholars consumed the absurdity of a grassroots dreamer, and the dreamer gained a sliver of illusory comfort while being consumed. Someone asked him to choose an icon for Xiding; he said, choose a firefly.

To him, even if this light is merely phosphorescence, an illusion, or even the price of burning his own life, he still believes in the fluorescent light in the darkness.

After rambling for a thousand words, I ultimately want to inscribe a poem for him, which in a sense is also inscribed for myself, and for all those building towers in the wasteland:

Trimming the candle, I startle at bird-track scripts, Pouring a lonely cup, I toast the flowing fireflies. Rising from the soil to become Xiding, Addressing the heavens to challenge injustice. Dreaming with joy of Liang Hao's official success, Waking in reality to weep as Prince Shou. Facing the mirror, laughing at your folly, Singing a long song, I journey far once more.

Additional Notes:

• Bird-track scripts (Bird tracks): A metaphor for writing/characters. Legend has it that Cangjie invented Chinese characters inspired by observation of bird and beast tracks. Here, it refers to Huang Quefei creating the Xiding alphabet.
• Rising from the soil to become Xiding (因地成希顶): The characters for "Xiding" (希顶) in Huang Quefei's original explanation implied "Hope to stand upright between heaven and earth" or "Rare top-level design." Here it is a pun: referring to its dialectal (soil/local) origins, and his aspiration.
• Dreaming with joy of Liang Hao's official success (梦喜梁颢仕): Liang Hao was a Song Dynasty figure who famously passed the imperial exam and became a top scholar (zhuangyuan) at the age of eighty-two. This allusion metaphorically describes Huang Quefei's fantasy and joy of late success (even if not based on true scholarship).
• Waking in reality to weep as Prince Shou (实哭寿王醒): Prince Shou refers to Li Mao, Prince of Shou, a son of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (whose wife, Yang Yuhuan, was taken by his father, leaving him depressed for life). It metaphorically implies the beautiful thing (Xiding) being taken away or alienated by some irresistible force. This line forms a massive contrast with the previous one: in the dream, an elderly scholar achieving success; upon waking, a prince stripped of his love.
• Singing a long song, I journey far once more: Even if it is absurd, even if it is a joke, the tower-builder will continue to move forward. This is a final tribute to all idealists obsessed with futile endeavors.