The YouTube channel, “Agma Schwa,” was created in September of 2019, and the first video came out on November 1st, 2019. Agma Schwa is a conlang show, hosted by Robert Cole, who is known as Agma Schwa or “Nguh.”
Agma Schwa is dedicated to creating a fun community of descriptivists online who find a way to make good times out of the very essence of language.
Robert Cole, aka 'Nguh', has been writing stories and drawing comics since he was a little kid. He began conlanging as a middle schooler in the early 2010s, though he had no idea that "conlanging" was a thing, nor that there was an entire online community dedicated to the subject. It was only in early 2017 when the early versions of what would become Arodjun took shape for the first time. At Arizona State University, Nguh majored in Linguistics (with a minor in Spanish linguistics and a certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and made it his Honors Thesis project to develop a full grammar book for the Arodjun language. The language itself was going through many changes, and Nguh decided to begin documenting his process on a new YouTube channel.
The original idea for the channel was intended to be an equal split of conlang material and Linguistics educational content, hosted both by Nguh and his friend Chris. The first video made for the channel was actually the Dene-Yeniseian Language Family Connection video essay, though this would not be released for several months.
The channel began to take off after the release of the Conlang Speedrun video, and even more so after the Rabbid Conlang video. After releasing a video every Tuesday for over 13 months uninterrupted but for the occasional 'i am __, do not cry', the channel reached 1000 subscribers in early December 2020. After this, Nguh created a Patreon and began to shift the video upload schedule to a focus more on quality than quantity.
The biggest project of 2021 was the Conlang Community Iceberg, released in May of that year. This was a massive collaboration with over a dozen Conlang content creators from YouTube and elsewhere. The production of the Conlang Community Iceberg led to the creation of “Big Lang,” a club for conlanging and worldbuilding content creators of all sizes. Together they created the 2021 Conlanger Census, which yielded 1,034 responses, with plans for future Censuses in the future.
In 2022, the channel reached 4,000 subscribers, with several large-scale projects in the works. A comic, titled “Dog Days,” has been in production since early 2022. Aeternal created a Conlang-themed Hunger Games Simulator on this site in the spring of 2022, which quickly exploded in popularity after being featured by several YouTubers, including Zeez Vov Gee 2. A card game, under the working title “Prescriptivism: The Game” was created in late 2022, with plans of future printing and online multiplayer gaming. In August of 2022, Nguh announced the first-ever “Cursed Conlang Circus,” a challenge and contest for people around the internet to create disturbing and weird languages to stick it to the gatekeepers who are notorious in the more “serious” elements of the conlang community.
The pace of video releases slowed in 2023 for the sake of increasing quality as the audience of the channel grew. In October of 2023, after the announcement of the Second Cursed Conlang Circus, the channel passed 10,000 subscribers, a milestone Nguh originally considered to be the 'endgame.'
The content of the Agma Schwa YouTube channel has evolved quite a bit since its first releases in the fall of 2019. At first, most videos were explanations of the progress of the development of Arodjun, with several translations of popular memes and television scenes.
As time went on, production value increased and the preponderance of conlang-related tutorial videos as well as conlang showcases and even songs began to increase.
After the release of the Rabbid Language showcase in the fall of 2020, Nguh and Ætérnal began a tradition of creating over-the-top cursed conlang showcases. Hyperpirate, Gumsmaq, and Santaa are a few examples.
After the release of the book “A Grammar of the Arodjun Language” to Amazon Direct Publishing, Nguh began to focus on the many other languages spoken in the Dog Days world. :·pʰ.ð.m, Nashan, Permechikan, and Prins are a few examples. This is expected to lead to worldbuilding-specific content in the future.
There are also occasional livestreams titled “nguhstreams,” which vary in content from Conlang Counseling to Minecraft to Hunger Games and much more.
In late 2021, Nguh began two series of YouTube Shorts which were also posted to TikTok, those being “Conlanging 101” and “Arodjun 101,” with each giving tips on the very basics of understanding the language-making process and how to speak Arodjun, respectively.
The Agma Schwa Community would love to have you! Join the Discord Server, join the subreddit r/AgmaSchwa, and follow Nguh on Instagram and Twitter!
Videos typically come out as premieres on Sundays. See you in the live chat!
