Viossa

Viossa is an artificial pidgin initiated in late december of 2014, amongst members of the /r/Conlangs skype group, now the CDN on discord. It is unique in that it was not designed by a single creator, and that there is balance between mutual intelligibility and individual variety which is strongly encouraged. From user to user, phonology, grammar, and vocabulary generally varies considerably. It contains content from dozens of source language including (in no particular order) Tromsø Norwegian, Swiss German, Finnish, Greek, Albanian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, and many others. An exact count of unique words has proven to be difficult based on spelling variation and derivational/inflectional distinctions, but is generally considered to be in the low thousands.

Approach
The philosophy of Viossa is encapsulated in the following rules, which are typically applied in the context of a group voice, video, or text chat, and give Viossa its vibe.


 * No Translation -- Speakers must use a language other than English, or use gestures in order to attempt to reach understanding with one another. They should try to contribute from a natural language which is least mutually-intelligible with that of another speaker, such that every new word must be learned experientially, as opposed to translated into an intermediate language. Collisions are of course unavoidable at times.
 * The exception are the following words:
 * Fshto - "understand"
 * Akkurat/Akku/Ak - "yes"
 * Nai - "No", "not"
 * Ka - "what"


 * If you're understood, it's Viossa -- Users should be encouraged to accept the usage of others and use their best judgement as to what the meaning of an utterance is. If someone's spelling is different than yours, but you still understood them, their usage is just as valid and should be considered Viossa.

Links

 * Viossa DiskordServer -- The official Discord Server for Viossa, the main hub of activity for the language, with approximately 1.3K users as of 2022.09.29.
 * https://vikoli.org -- Vikoli is the official Wiki for Viossa, where users are welcomed to post instructional and artistic material, exclusively in Viossa.
 * Davi Hanu! -- a podcast created by Madjik, a prominent Viossa speaker and content creator.
 * K'slucj? -- a shortform podcast in Viossa by Nikomiko, one of the older speakers of Viossa.