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The Dailies. January 11
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in you 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?




Just a few new words today:
isok: to spend time with
peraz: soon
faraz: not yet, in a long time
gi-ti gi-ye bejat isok peraz, mes gi-ti gi-ye fejat ok faraz: I will spend time with my sister soon, but I won't see my brother for a long time.
I love all three of these. Isok is such a nice word and faraz, I feel it.
Very neat words!
So peraz is put after the verb? Is ok a preposition?
Ok is 'to see'. (I'm not actually sure that I want to use the same word for 'to look at' and 'to meet up with someone', but I didn't have an alternative so I went with it for now.)
I think they could probably go either before or after the verb? gi-ti zii peraz ok would work just as well, I think.
I should have realised! Now that you said it, I remember seeing it in samples before and finding the meaning clear then.
Today I've come up with a few words:
Let's make a sentence using these words, while we're at it.
zaoro-gu ko aillaoltif-ji ikase saṙl-gië zegaspanasu, suski-du ko sůṙka zegasikkasu
shrine=DAT POSS essense/-tial.cripple.D=OBL couple.A(ABS) snow=LOC PP.CONT.walk-IND.3-A, child=CAUS POSS 3.DL(ABS) PP.CONT.pray.3-A
"The couple walked in the snow to The Cripple's temple, for their child they prayed."
Possibly a grim sentence, depending on interpretation, (Ralataṙ is the Aspect of willpower and overcoming adversity) but it nicely demonstrates some new grammar.
Also, I decided that I want to grammaticalize speficicity somehow. It doesn't exactly replace definiteness, but it somewhat reduces its need. Also, nouns can be made explicitly indefinite with ni "one" as it is, though it's not entirely common.
Oh, I LOVE that your language has a word/title for 'empowered cripple'! As a physically disabled person myself that's pretty awesome to see. :)
Well, not just a word, but a deity. I was actually somewhat unsure of having the Aspect that represents strength have that symbolism, but I think that that kind of opposition within one deity is symbolically rich and realistic for a religion.
So much to love here. Your sentence is kind of awesome, grim and all.
I especially like the compactness afforded by giving possessors the full range of cases (which is what the oblique is there for, earlier drafts of the grammar didn't have one and so possessors basically had no casing at all), so that the second clause has two "they"s in English but only one in Firen. It just feels good for some reason.
I love how aglutinative (wait, is that the right word? I just got out of bed...) your language is. Also great peephole into your in-world mythology there, very interesting!
So impressive as usual! What a nice long sentence, too. Is span the stem for 'to walk'?
Does the glossing "essense/-tial" mean "essense/essential"?
Still think suski is a lovely word for 'child'! It sounds so tender.
Yes, though it's spana in the indicative. And yes, again, that's what that shorthand means. ail isn't entirely translatable, so it's hard to gloss in English. Also it's not ever very clear to me if a noun in Firen should be glossed with an English adjective or noun.
And thanks! I rather like it, myself. (Also, I keep trying to translate it as son or as daughter, which in terms of use it's closer to, but lexically it's really "child".)
Been a surprisingly busy day, and all I've done conlanging-wise is a tiny bit of work on my personal pronouns. I have tentatively picked /uːl/ and /-ullu/ as nominative and possessive respectively for 1st p singular, and /tʉː/ and /-tʉ/ for 3rd p sing (and plu? maybe) that's used for objects only (not humans or animals). I think it'll be the only one with a different structure like that, but we'll see.
Gonna try to put some more time into it tomorrow. Wanna finish my pronoun system (at least version 1 of it) this week. Bit too tired tonight though.
Those sound neat. Love that the possessive is a suffix.
Take it easy! Don't wear yourself out!
Thanks. Yeah, I feel like this conlang will mainly take inspiraton from Swedish and Arabic, and affixed pronouns was something I loved about Arabic right from the start.
No worries! I'm really enjoying this, I've just been a bit busier/sleepier than expected because I was back to work this week after vacation.
Love these!
I've continued the same theme as yesterday and found words for the other two types of Beldreeni housegods/domestic guardian spirits.
ruu [ru:]
'a housegod/guardian spirit that's attached to the house as a physical place'
lömuni [lø'muni]
'a housegod/domestic spirit attached to a specific family/bloodline'
Ruu is a homonym for a very common word, the copula in its neutral register, except that one has a short vowel. I don't know the etymology for ruu.
Lömuni comes from an older löömuuneo (or something like that) which meant 'companion', from lö 'by, beside' + muu 'walk' + agent suffix. (The slightly updated lömunio can still get used to mean 'companion', but it has an archaic ring.) The modern word for 'companion' is sakamuyo.
But! This had slipped my mind yesterday, but these words as well as hesan for the third type would often not be used in these bare forms. When you talk about your own housegods, you would normally at the very least add the respectful infix -dee-. Or, more often, -madee-/-made- which adds an element of intimacy and in-groupness. And when you talk about someone else's housegods, you'd again add either -dee- or the even more respectful infix -wadee-/-wade-. Since ruu is monosyllabic, these infixes are turned into suffixes instead.
ruu-made
hemadeesan
lömumadeeni
ruu-wade
hewadeesan
lömuwadeeni
These related words also came to be today:
min koni 'family member, close relative'. Koni is 'near, close'
hogayo 'clan member' - hoga is 'clan'
hosti 'family'. The same ho- as in 'clan', and then the -sti comes from asti, an adjective meaning 'narrow, tight'
osanhoga 'other clan'. When your parents are of different clans (which is quite common, probably a bit more common than not), you will belong to one primary clan, which gets worked out by the couple and their families before the wedding, since this usually means one parent switches clans. The birth clan of the parent that switched over is your other clan, the non-primary one. They can often be important and useful.
I love these words. Interesting with the different house spirits too.
Also, I like your concept for inter-clan marriage. It's actually a lot like the culture I built as background for one of my D&D characters.
Thank you!
How cool! I'd love to learn more about that.
I love the family and clan words too! So many intriguing cultural notes. :D And I think I can finally commit -yo to memory. I really like this.
I'm glad you like it!
The default form for the agent suffix is -io, but it is often realised as -yo. (And in fact, it turned up before I even knew what it was - the word for teacher, apayo, was one of the first three nouns I knew in the language, IIRC.) Less commonly, it can be -rio, as in kaspirio, 'builder, carpenter' - but that doesn't seem to happen much, so far.
guda • [ gu.da ] • person who stays at home or does not get out much — noun. From gone, (related to) home and da, to want
gone • [ go.ne ] • (related to) home — adjective
igon • [ i.gon ] • one's home — noun. Connotes the place one is comfortable in and belongs in.
-ar • first person possessive suffix
So apparently I come up with more vocabulary while documenting the stuff that predated Lexember? Have a few more words.
Love this theme! And a first person possessive suffix seems very useful. Possessive on the noun possessed or the possessor?
Does guda have any unpleasant or dismissive connotations? (Just asking because the Swedish adjective "hemsk", which now means 'terrible, awful', also used to mean 'staying at home all the time' and then for a while, roughly, 'weird and stupid due to staying at home all the time'. And IIRC "idiot" has a similar semantic origin, too...)
On the noun possessed.
It doesn't have any negative connotations yet. Right now in story time, it just maps to "I don't get out much," with possibly more implication despite wanting to. Though in the imprecative, it can be used as an insult, that totally changes the connotations by default. So gud' (no audible release, often reinforced with glottal stop) would mean shut-in in a derogatory way.
'My home' would then be igonar?
Cool. Love your imprecative case!
If it were fronted as the topic, yes! This is basically it's lemma/citation form and it could vary a little based on topic/agent/patient in the sentence used.
My home is beautiful. could be said Igonar isiganchanta. Though that'd be better glossed, My home, it is beautiful.
Does the -ar suffix itself change according to the syntax, or is it invariable for 1st person possessive?
Invariable for 1st person possessive. It would change should the person change, but I'm not willing to commit to -er and -ir just yet. :D
Understood! It's the same in Nahul (and also in Finnish, my model for this case): the possessive endings go last and are unchanged regardless of what else is going on with the noun.
I really like how many design choices seem similar between Nahul and Akachenti. (For one, it tells me I didn't go wade off a deep end.)
Akachenti seems to me a great deal more intricate, though! But I agree, it's neat to find unexpected common ground.
Language: Akachenti
nagoste • [ na.gos.te ] • to crown, coronate, make sovereign — verb.
ngunbeste • [ ŋun.bɛs.te ] • to reveal — verb. Connotes voluntary revelation. From anguno, to see and ibesit, that which is underneath.
ingunbast • [ iŋ.gun.bast̚ ] or [ iŋ.gun.bas ] • revelation, something revealed or made known — noun. Connotes either a positive revelation or that the person revealing it wished to do so.
valut • [ va.lut ] • the way of things, i.e. the general path of events of the nature in question or the usual situational context of a person or topic — indefinite noun
mivkha:sh • [ miv.xa:ʃ ] • sexual partner — noun
So there's a theme here certainly, in figuring out exactly how productive stems are and in which directions they move. What constructions each stem can take and how it morphs when it takes it vs. what's simply a productive derivation into a new word. Honestly, I haven't entirely sorted out what makes a core sentence argument (a construction) vs. just another word of its appropriate part of speech. But I'm working on it! (Still no "inherent")
Language: Vas'hehr
So they were mostly done, but I've finalized the Vas'hehr consonant inventory, complete with a stop allophone that appears pre-rhotic. (Is it an allophone or a new phoneme if it only appears in a consonant cluster when that consonant cluster is considered its own letter by the language's speakers?) I apparently went to town on sibilants and velar/uvulars, as compared to other sounds, when I first created this language. Not entirely surprising, considering they are the hard and soft poles of the way Vas'hehr treats sounds, but still. Clearly, I was having too much fun. :D
Very cool, as always! I'm so impressed by how steadily you make progress.
Also, yay, you have a qaaf! My fave sound in Arabic, probably. Very cool. Still haven't decided if I'm gonna have it in Lash-enne but I've half-decided (as in, decided for now but if it doesn't "work" when I start making more words I'll remove it) on including a uvular g.
Oooh! You should definitely have both then. For balance. Unless your language doesn't distinguish voicing.
That's a good point. Tbh, I didn't even know the uvular g was a thing, I just knew about q. I'm gonna have to see how they fit in once I make more words but I'm sort of hoping to keep them. If not, maybe nother day for another conlang.
You've been so productive! And that is one handsome array of consonants.
I really like following your Akachenti excavation onwards, the different stems and their various derivations and manifestations (when I'm able to follow it). Valut seems like a very cool word to have! (Now I wonder if the word for the dominant worldview/thought system on the south-eastern continent where the Nahul are, originally iwese-ta-hene which translates to 'the way things are' in yet another language, would be known simply as valut in Akachenti if it could somehow be transported there.)
Valus! You'd want the definite noun for that, which I literally translated "the way things are," which is considered generally immutable in Ogunn culture, unlike valut, which varies based on context.
I'm glad you're enjoying the journey, considering how much it gives me a headache, and I'm supposed to be the one creating it!
Thanks for the cheerleading. :D
Oops, you did say indefinite! I guess somehow my brain interpreted it as definite-ish anyway.
(Since I gave up definiteness as a grammatical thing for Beldreeni I kind of forget about it at times, to be honest. Nahul doesn't have it either.)
So it would be valus, I see!
Then maybe the indefinite valut could also be tentatively translated as 'how things may hang together'? Or is that too uncertain?
That would actually work! I like it. :D
That term reminds me somewhat of stůllao, which I (somewhat idiomatically/poetically) have translated as "Ways" (as in worldviews) or (more straightforwardly) as "state of life".
Oooh! I like!
Having such a poetic vocabulary mostly comes from my first set of samples being entirely religious, representing the stage of worldbuilding I was on when I started on Firen.
What I really need now is some equivalent to the English past participle. Which, come to think of it, is largely just a "passive nominalizer", which I could do similarly to my "agent nominalizer". I'm not sure why I didn't think of that before. (I blame the fact that in English it's an actual verb form while -er is merely a suffix.) With such a suffix, I'll finally be able to translate Ralataṙ's longform title, "[the] Empowered Cripple", and be done with the Aspects' names.
Oooh! Fun. I like your ceremonial names. They're so interesting and colorful. I also love the idea of doing it with a different part of speech. It makes sense to me.