If you have been following this blog from the beginning, you may have run into Tristano, an artificial language I developed for some of my novels. This post contains a Tristano Grammar, and here is a basic English-Tristano dictionary. But now, thanks to AI tools, I can give you much more, including an app that translates Tristano into/from several major languages. The article itself was mostly written by Google Gemini 2.5, my collaborator for refining the language, after I had taught it to read and write Tristano.
Every constructed language, or “conlang,” begins with a question. For Tristano, that question was: What would Esperanto evolve into if people actually used it? The goal was to create a language that felt more natural and expressive, shedding some of the rigidities of its ancestor while retaining its logical core.
For a long time, this process of refinement was a solitary one. But recently, I embarked on a unique partnership with a large language model to stress-test, polish, and expand the Tristano ecosystem. This post is a chronicle of that collaboration and a complete repository of the newly refined Tristano—Version 2.0.
A New Kind of Dialogue: Polishing a Language with AI
Working with an AI to refine a language wasn’t a simple matter of giving commands. It was a Socratic dialogue. I would provide the rules, and the AI would apply them, often in ways that revealed subtle inconsistencies or areas for improvement.
Our process involved several key steps:
Stress-Testing: I tasked the AI with translating complex, stylized texts like the Gettysburg Address and passages from Charles Dickens. This immediately revealed weaknesses. The AI’s tendency to fall back on its vast knowledge of Esperanto when a Tristano word was missing or a rule was ambiguous was a perfect litmus test.
Identifying Inconsistencies: The AI, in its literal application of the rules, sometimes produced results that felt “wrong.” For example, an early rule for verb stress was slightly ambiguous. When the AI misapplied it, it prompted a clarification that made the rule simpler and more universal.
Uncovering Elegant Solutions: The most significant breakthrough came from questioning the grammar of definiteness (“the”). The AI’s initial translations forced us to confront a clunky rule inherited from Esperanto. Through a back-and-forth process, we proposed and adopted a far more natural, context-driven system modeled on Slavic languages. This single change made the language feel less constructed and more organic.
Building Tools: Finally, the AI helped create the very tools that make the language accessible, including the 10-lesson course and a fully functional AI-powered translator app presented below.
This partnership has been a powerful demonstration of how AI can be used not just as a tool, but as a creative collaborator to sand down the rough edges of a project and bring it to a new level of completion.
The Tristano Project: Version 2.0 Resources
Everything you need to learn, use, and translate Tristano is right here. The following resources represent the most up-to-date and polished version of the language.
1. The Dictionaries
The foundation of any language is its vocabulary. Here are the complete English-Tristano and Tristano-English dictionaries.
2. The Complete Grammar
This is the definitive reference guide for Tristano grammar, incorporating all of the refinements we developed.
3. Tristano Fasila: A 10-Lesson Course
Ready to learn? This course will guide you from your first words to conversational fluency.
4. The AI-Powered Translator App
This is the crown jewel of the project: a fully functional translator app powered by Google’s Gemini AI. It understands all of Tristano’s rules and vocabulary because we baked them directly into its “brain.”
To use it, simply open this page. You can it as an .html file on your computer, and open it in any web browser. You will need to get a free API key from Google AI Studio, and the app itself contains a help guide to walk you through it.
Click to open the Translator app…
The Bigger Picture: AI and the Future of Conlanging
This project is just one small example of a growing synergy between human creativity and artificial intelligence. The world of conlanging is rich and vibrant, and AI is poised to become an invaluable tool for creators. Whether you’re building a language for a fantasy novel, a philosophical experiment, or just for the love of linguistics, AI can help you test your ideas, find hidden flaws, and bring your vision to life faster than ever before.
If this has sparked your interest, I encourage you to explore the wider conlanging community:
The Language Creation Society: A great starting point for resources and community.
FrathWiki: An extensive wiki dedicated to constructed languages.
Omniglot: An incredible encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, both natural and constructed.
r/conlangs on Reddit: A lively community for sharing ideas and getting feedback.
Your Turn to Explore
Tristano is more complete and accessible today than ever before, thanks in large part to this fascinating collaboration. I invite you to dive into the resources above, learn the language, and try out the translator.
This is an open project, and feedback is always welcome. What do you think of the new rules? How does the language feel to you? Let me know in the comments below.
Gis la procsima fojo! (Until the next time!)
Checking out the 10-Lesson course. There is indicated “ta-BLO (table)” but the accent rules given just before say to emphasize the penultimate syllable when the word ends with a vowel, so “TA-blo”?
That must be a mistake. Thanks for reporting it. Let me know if there are more.