A Modest Proposal for A Revised Anomaly Classification System

From: LCD.78.tenpics|hcsnum.divad#LCD.78.tenpics|hcsnum.divad
To: 78.tenpics|scitsalpc-s.tsilgniliam#78.tenpics|scitsalpc-s.tsilgniliam
Subject: A modest proposal for a revised anomaly classification system

Dear all,

Like many of you, I have had difficulties in adjusting to the recent shift to ACS. The reforms to the Foundation’s classification system are long overdue and they have expanded our ability to describe the features of an anomaly, but this has come at the cost of both easy reference and linguistic cohesion. ACS terms on the whole have only partial thematic unity or contextual indication of their meaning, as if they are two incomplete systems merged together. This itself is an issue, but it masks a greater flaw underneath.

The true problem we are facing is not that the current ACS format is too complex - it is that it is not complex enough! We are still capable, on an institutional level, of understanding our own documentation and I will not stand for this miscarriage of justice! In the nearly 30 years I have been part of the Foundation, we have taken only timid, half-measure steps towards our great destiny of total incomprehensibility. I say this cowardice has gone on long enough! Long enough and no longer!

And so to address this crippling flaw in our organization, I propose the following: in order to sever the last remaining ties of ACS to functionality, we must cut it entirely from the English language and its purse of stolen words. We must engineer a language wholly focused on condensing the granularity of ACS information into the most informationally-dense and functionally-useless form possible.

My proposal for a Revised ACS will encode the exact specifications of an anomaly’s qualities and distinctive features in its morphology, providing granular detail that will be rendered utterly incoherent if it is mispronounced, misheard, mistyped, spoken with any sort of accent, subjected to ordinary sound changes, or otherwise changed in any way.

This proposal owes a great debt to Mr. John Quijada’s Ithkuil, and I offer Mr. Quijada my sincerest apologies for this inexpert bungling of his magnum opus. It is only fitting, for the purposes of destroying language’s function and purpose, that I fill the role of demiurge and create a lesser world of base matter in crude imitation of the truth.

Phonology

I have chosen to keep the phonology and romanization of RACS within the boundaries of what is easily pronounced by English speakers and what can be easily typed on a standard keyboard, except in those cases where I have not.

While is written here as the trilled /r/, but it is more appropriately described as a "whatever rhotic" and can be realized as /ɾ/, /ɹ/, /ʀ/, or any other variety as one sees fit.

The vowel inventory has been arranged so that, if you are more in line with the spirit of the IPA chart rather than the reality, they will be arranged in such a way to mimic the Foundation’s own sigil.

Romanization

Revised ACS uses multiple romanization systems: sets A and B (With and without diacritics, respectively) are acceptable for casual usage and teaching materials, but not in keeping with the standards set forth by the Classification Committee. As such, the formal orthography of RACS will exclusively use symbols from the Latin Extended-B Unicode block.

As these charts are quite large, I have added them to collapsible blocks.

Practitioners of Revised ACS are encouraged to switch between systems A and B according to whatever aesthetic criteria they deem fit, save in formal situations.

It should also be noted that, if a consonant is followed by or it will be palatalized or labialized, respectively.

Slot 1 - Anomaly Status

The anomaly’s current status is indicated by a consonant prefix. The glottal stop prefix for Contained anomalies is typically not written, as its purpose is to break up words

Slot 2 - Primary Containment Class

Primary containment class uses the standard 5-vowel system in a straightforward manner. If the anomaly has been neutralized or explained, use its prior classification.

Slot 3 - Object Tags

The Slot 3 consonant cluster is derived from both our internal tagging system and the Coalition's serves as the root of the name; extended roots can become rather unwieldy, and so only the primary class root is required, and the additional consonants can be added as one sees fit for desired specificity, or dropped for ease of use.

Slot 3-1 is the Primary Class Tag, which designates the broad category of the anomaly. Four of the six will have a secondary class tag filling slot 3-2, while the other two skip directly to slot 3-3.

Epenthetic schwas or glottal stops may be inserted to break up particularly unruly clusters, even if this is against the spirit of the exercise.

In cases where 3-2 and 3-3 are stops that share place of articulation but differ in voice, the consonant in 3-2 will shift to match that in 3-3.

Slot 4 - Threat Level

The threat level tags do not feature any change from the existing Threat Level system, as even in the name of increased and unnecessary complexity I cannot bring myself to distort them.

Slot 5 - Secondary Containment Class

This section will only cover secondary classes included as standard in the ACS documentation: if you would like other esoteric classes included, send me an email and I will add them to the table.

Slot 6 - Disruption Class

The consonants used to indicate disruption class are irregularly derived from their existing names, so as to cause cognitive whiplash when moving from the randomly-selected Slot 5 components. Additionally, as Disruption Class operates on both a logarithmic scale and a horseshoes/handgrenades schema, the contents of this slot may change according to the attitudes of the speaker.

Slot 8 - Group of Interest Affiliation

Do not be alarmed if you don’t recognize some of the listed names: I believe several of these entries to be entirely fictitious. As a show of good faith, I have maintained or approximated initials when possible. This is to promote confusion with those letters such as c and x that do not align with typical English usage. The letter ẃ is used only in this slot, and is pronounced /v/.

Slot 7 - Affiliation Type

This slot indicates the manner in which the anomaly is connected to the Group of Interest used in Slot 8. This is not a typo: I have presented these two slots in reverse order on purpose.

Slot 9 - Plurality

Plurality consists of two components: the grammatical number itself, and a descriptor that will specify the compositional makeup of the plural.

Slot 10 - Database Number

A full anomaly name can be quite a mouthful in Revised ACS, and so an abbreviated version may be derived from the numbers themselves. So as to not perpetuate the Foundation’s unfortunate history of mangled Kabbalah, I elected to forgo gematria and instead drew the consonantal number values from the Georgian numeral system, on aesthetic grounds. Several of these numerals will represent the wrong numbers, as I had to find replacements for vowels.

There is no zero value in the conversion: if the digit is a zero, it will be skipped, unless it happens to exist between two vowels, in which case it will become a glottal stop.

These abbreviated forms may be used on their own, or attached to the primary name.

Worked Example 1

Let's use our good friend Lord Blackwood as a demonstration

• He is currently within our care; Slot 1 is an unwritten ʔ
• His standard classification is Safe; Slot 2 is a-
• While it is not a particularly flattering description, I think that Lord Blackwood qualifies as non-human (former human) - as he does not present an anomalous threat, we skip table III-C and end with a Slot 3 root of -mr-
• His threat level is Green; Slot 4 is -a-
• He does not have a secondary containment class; Slot 5 is skipped.
• His scope of effect is limited to those he is speaking with, and thus Dark; Slot 6 is -d-
• He does have an affiliation with Her Majesty's Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal (or so it is said - I can't find it in his documentation, though everyone I've spoken to seems certain of it); Slot 8 is -hm-
• As the nature of Lord Blackwood's connection to the HMFSCP is unclear, if it exists to begin with, I will render Slot 7 as -a-, though I can see use cases for both -i- and -u-.
• Since there is only one Lord Blackwood (who could possibly replace him?), Slot 9 is skipped.
• With a database designation of 1867, Slot 10 turns into c-u-k-i

Putting it all together, Lord Blackwood's new designation is 'amradahm-cuki

Further Examples

Instead of just running through all the steps again, I'll provide some additional examples.

• SCP-179 => 'amrąngą-ąǧÿ
• SCP-2316 => 'urkiqacl-tserò
• SCP-4017 => qxungšwuquhṭ-ts’ri
• SCP-6787 => alsad-xip'i

As you can see, the end results are both simple and elegant.

Concluding Notes

Using this outline we can now classify every anomaly in our care with extreme granularity, reducing the amount of usable information in our document headers to zero. No longer will we be beholden to standards of comprehensibility, ease of pronunciation, or indicative nomenclature! We can now achieve informational security on a scale never before conceived by the Foundation, hiding vital information from our very own personnel!

Qapla’!
David Munsch
Director, Department of Constructed Languages
Site-87