A community for conlangs and conlangers
The Dailies. February 12
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in your lexicon?
On the other hand, do any excavating or reading or enjoying stuff you've already created? Do you have any favorites to share?
How did you conlang today?




I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that the translation of "Sleep well" into Papiamento (a natlang), "Drumi dushi", literally means "Sleep tastily".
I haven't actually done any conlanging today though, still out of the house.
Niiice.
That's so fun!
Then, for Beldreeni!
Jumping off the earlier noun suli, 'mark, sign', we get:
suletti (n) 'signature'
suliimo (n) 'contract, treaty, written agreement in general' - something you sign and are supposed to abide by, in other words
heirasuliimo and heilusuliimo 'peace treaty' ('peace' is heira in the West and heilu in the East)
Heirasuliimo Ba, Heirasulibamo and just plain Sulibamo - 'The Great Peace Treaty', the extremely important agreement from circa 300 Earth years back, preceded by at least two generations hard struggles, which ushered in a still-ongoing era of peace, stability and - mostly - prosperity.
sulimio 'signer', someone who signs a suliimo
Sulimio and Sulimio-dao 'The Signers' - the ones who were present to sign the Great Peace Treaty. All are honoured by posterity, even as the ones who were the most active and the first to sign are naturally praised a bit more than the stragglers.
uliimo 'oath; binding verbal agreement' - I'm pretty sure the two count as one and the same for this culture. Either from ule(v), 'talk', or uli (n),'voice'.
ulimole 'to swear/enter an oath'
ulimondo 'to uphold an oath'
And! This might seem a bit unimaginative, but I've also decided to have a verbal prefix with the meaning 'again', like the prefix "re-" for English and Romance languages, "åter-" for Swedish (and also the verbal particle "om"), "wieder-" for German, etc. It's a handy thing to have. So I'm using ve- to do that. When unstressed, it's pronounced [vɛ]; when stressed, it's [ve:], and spelled vē. I'd like for it to also be used as an adverb/sentence particle, but I already have not just one but two words for 'again' (man-man and man ki), so I'm not too sure. Maybe it can express 'back' as in "I'm back!".
Reduplicated, veve-, it expresses an action repeated several times, like 'again and again', 'over and over'.
velaate 'reread'
vēpal 'return', 'come back' (pal = 'come')
veposu 'repeat (an action)', 'do over', 'redo'
vēshu 'say over', 'repeat (a statement)'
Aso ifor di vevelaatis. (Formal style)
'He read the letter over and over.'
Lol I read signer as singer and was about to ask about why singing was related to treaties.
I like the ve- and veve- idea, neat!
Singer is probably tokirio! (Since the verb 'sing' is toki in neutral style present tense.)
I'm glad!
"Sing, o Goddess, the treaties signed by the weary Beldreeni..."
Oooh! These are wonderful, especially your repetition affixes!
And here's the traditional Sunday-evening question: weekly vocab suggestions? :D
Time!
Could be a good one, yeah! :)
So I finished my three core kinship terms. Yay!
/eija/ and /jiji/ - parent. The latter is the "mommy/daddy" equivalent, more colloquial and not something you'd see in a formal context or use when your parent is pissed at you, heh.
/tiʎa/ - child (as in offspring)
/leʍa/ - sibling
I originally had it as /tilla/ but I kept pronouncing it as /tiʎa/ so I decided to go with it. I am thinking of making /ʎ/ an allophone of /l/ when it's germinated. Does that make sense? I still don't really know what sort of things trigger allophony and what sort of things don't. If it makes sense, that will change my 2p pl pronoun, or rather the affixed version of it, to /-uʎu/ rather than /-ullu/ which I'm finding I don't mind.
Sounds good to me! I like those words. And the /eija/ vs /jiiji/ distinction!
I don't really know about allophony either.
Will you also have words for 'grandparent' and 'parent's sibling'?
Yes, I will, though I haven't decided yet if I want to just compound like in Swedish or do something else.
Lovely!
Thank you :)
First, for Nahul! Three new words.
sima [si'ma] (n) 'child' in the sense of 'non-adult'. Now joins the earlier wal, 'child' in the sense of 'offspring'.
ikhá- [i'kʰɑ:] (v) 'grow'. Or rather, the stem is more properly ikh-, with ikhá being the past tense of the 1sg. In past tense 2sg to 3pl it's: ikhé, ikhó, ikhas, ikhak, and ikhár. Present tense 1sg: ikhai, infinitive: likhá, imperative: mikhá. Future tense 1sg: ikheká. Negated past tense 1sg: ikhedá.
raikha (n) 'adult'. Two syllables with an [aɪ̯] diphthong. Derived from the above via the ra- prefix, which I'm still not sure what to call - it's a person-specific (or perhaps animate-specific, when the semantics allow an animal as actor as well) nominalising of the perfect participle. So here it's: 'the grown one'.
Etymologically this is a total calque on Swedish "vuxen" and for that matter on Latin "adultus" as well.
Nice, useful set :)
Love them all!