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An Introduction to Old Sumrë
Hello! This is my first post here so I'd introduce myself and a conlang of mine. I have been working on a large family of related languages known as the Sumro-Letaeric language family with my main focus being placed on Old Sumrë. As I'm new to this site a simple sample text will be my introduction, a recording of which can be found here here
Sụcwe Panararẹ
Sumátye, lasb lóma lelwepẹma,
Éstye mâlémûm táres suiltása ñaclonmúsa,
Ac sótrye mâlemyụmë rạdnû,
Atónye ayosvárun mâlémûm hálrwo,
Ac sótrye mâlemyụmë lastásë mayụma,
Éstye mâlémûm týlcat!
The Song of The Whale
"Come, you creature of the wet path,
Carry us on your endless swim,
And recieve from us a purpose,
Give us breath under the surface,
And recieve from us the fruits of the land,
Carry us to Tolc!"
This little chant is from the Four Settlements story of Sumric mythology. This chant was recited by the Men of Alt, the inhabitants of an island city in Dwisgávar "the ocean realm" . The men of Alt travelled in a curious manner by travelling not by boats upon the surface but by inside the mouths of whales. The men of Alt have a form of symbiotic relationship with a breed of whale which they used for travel and fishing and in return they offer food from the land which would be otherwise out of reach for the water dwellers. When the men of Alt wished to travel in a whale they would stand on the shore and chant this song, named sụcwa panararẹ "the song of the whale"
The men of Alt would always bring a food offering for the whale that would come as if a man were to hitch a ride and offer no payment it is said that the whale would swallow him whole as a "fruit of the land". Due to this the men of Alt had a special relationship with the whales, one that they defended dearly. This fact was put to the test when a man of Tolc named Cemírner hunted one such whale for food. Outraged at the death of their water kindred the men of Alt led a raid against Tolc. A hundred whales each with a hundred men in their mouths swam towards Tolc and when they reached the shore they put every man and woman there to the sword and for a time being they took residence in the homes of the slain.




Not only do I love the rhythm and flow of the language, I LOVE the folktale. Do you have a full page/site for the language anywhere?
Thank you! I have a site for the whole culture including the language. I'' still in the process of transferring my data onto it so it is yet an incomplete site.
https://sites.google.com/site/upwolast/golden-age-of-malomanan/mythology/creation-and-settlement
I will hie me off as soon as I can sneak it in and check it out!
The language looks beautiful and I love that bit of tale and worldbuilding! What's the basic structure of the language? Which word order do you use? Are the verbs conjugated for person, number, politeness...? Do the nouns have grammatical genders?
Thank you :). Old Sumrë is a highly synthetic language that has fusional properties in its nouns, adjectives/adverbs and verbs but tiny hints of agglutination in its mood marking enclitics. The underlying word order is SVO yet a form of topicalisation uses an OSV word order (although this is restricted to women as topicalisation differs between men and women). The verbs conjugate for person, number and tense of which there are "far past, near past, last night, yesterday, present, immediate future, near future and far future". I don't have any registers that mark politeness but I have a spiritual enclitc -olc which can attach to verbs if the subject is divine or is taking part in a ritual of sorts e.g sianá eménsolc "the spirit is" vs arsté émens'"the mouse is".
There are four genders and ten noun declensions. The genders are "Buzzard, Deer, Animate and Inanimate". Originally in Proto-Sumric there was only the animate and inanimate genders and the buzzard and deer genders split off from them. Of note is the fact that the Buzzard and Deer genders are purely phonologically based as a noun ending in a vowel is a deer noun and a noun ending in a consonant is a buzzard noun. Yet the animate and inanimate genders are purely semanticslly based on whether the noun is a living being or not. Animate/inanimate nouns tend to appear irregular on the surface with telg "shrew" taking the plural télhë but these alterations were due to sound changes that occured way way back in Proto-Sumro-Naukl.
I have a WIP site which goes into much more detail :) https://sites.google.com/site/upwolast/golden-age-of-malomanan/old-sumree
This sounds absolutely wonderful. I'm particularly tickled with the spiritual enclitic! And wow, those tenses!!