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Weekly Vocab - Week 16 - Animals!
I decided this week's weekly vocab topic is animals. Yay animals! Show me your animals.
I'm not sure if I'm trying to make new words for types of animals this week, or if I just wanna make some sentences that are topical somehow.
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I made a modifiction:
One of my first words was this:
I have since redesigned the animal to be a hoofed wolf with a body style similar to that of a hyaena and roughly the same size as a bull moose. My creative juices are starting to flow.
Oh, that's very cool! Are they domesticated?
They are semi-domesticated and are still unpredictable. Very much like the mustangs of North America. They choose the rider; they are very dangerous since they are carnivorous.
Cool!
I was thinking about making the word for cow as a feminine noun since horse is a feminine noun. Then a thought arose: if I make cow feminine, then I could just make a masculine version a bull, right? Following that line, I could also do the same to differentiate male and female horses. Then I thought about the different words English has for the male and female animals commonly found on a farm such as:
So that threw a wrench in my thinking. Do I simply make a masculine/feminine version of the animal or do I make different words for each gender of animal? Hmmm...
I think it can go either way. Swedish works a lot like English with this, but then they're pretty close relatives. But in Arabic at least -some- of them have straight up male/female versions of the same word. You can always do a mix with some animals having the same word and some not.
How interesting. I like the idea of mixing the two. Not sure which ones will have different words; perhaps those which are domesticated vs wild.
Great idea! But I also support a mix and match as per Emma's suggestion.
Beldreeni:
vii 'animal'
guumai 'bird'
kvaihu 'donkey, ass'
tuk 'sheep'
The rest of the animal words so far are for imaginary species.
Domesticated
seshte - mammal carnivore; companion animal, often used for guarding, sometimes for hunting; not as malleable as dogs but more cooperative than cats; a rather flat face
naron - small-ish omnivore; I have vaguely thought of it as somewhat mongoose-like, but I honestly don't know that much about mongoose
peidel - a reptile kept chiefly for its nutritious eggs and its skin, though some appreciate the meat, too
roshi - a large bird mostly kept for its meat
Semi-wild
pren a large grazing herd mammal; in the summer, herds may be protected against predators by humans who, however, also cull the herds themselves. But there is little active interference in breeding, and individuals are rarely bought or sold alive; the pren is a bit too dangerously headstrong for that. Also, they're too cumbersome to bring along for the migration south in the fall, so they're just left to fend themselves for the winter (the herds do migrate on their own eventually, but they usually start out later than people, and don't go as far south).
Wild
pashnak - a large, antlered, deer-like animal with a hump
beses - a wild relative of the seshte, perhaps its ancestor. The two species can produce offspring that's viable, but infertile. Can be quite dangerous
tosen - a mammalian predator, sleek and fast-running, almost like a mix between a greyhound and a hare. Shepherds truly hate them, they can be hard to guard against
rovu - a large swampdwelling mammalian predator
solennok - a huge marine mammal
veisu - a weasel-sized tree-dwelling reptile with feathers; possibly warmblooded
savalli - a migrating bird with cultural significance, often alluded to in songs and poetry
rebbe - a family of birds; robust-looking, with ear tufts and thick beaks; some are seabirds but not all
salmerebbe or zhekapokoyo - a seabird that's a species of rebbe. Salmerebbe recalls the seafaring Salme people, while zhekapokoyo means 'ship follower'
I need a word for 'fish'.
I love your worldbuilding!!
Hmm... I never thought of the notion of keeping reptiles for eggs. Cool idea!
I still love the idea of a ship follower.
Yeah, the peidel essentially fill the chicken niche, although they're not quite as social. The word yangsi, 'egg', is understood to refer to peidel eggs unless something else is stated (or inferred through context).
Forgot to note that I also have words meaning 'ram', 'ewe', and 'lamb' - but those are the only ones where I have names for male/female/children of a specific animal, so far.
So what would a bird egg or fish egg be called? :)
Bird egg = guumai-yangsi (or perhaps that should be spelled guumayangsi instead). Fish egg = still unknown, as I haven't come up with a word for 'fish' yet.
Cool ^^
Here's all of the (base) animal words I have in Yená, in reverse alphabetical order:
There's a few other ones, like argérdo and ardads, puppy and stray dog respectively, that I didn't include since they're just basically declensions of the base word, in this case, ardo.
Very cool set! I especially like cat and owl. I also like that several of them have literal meanings like that.
Thanks! Although, most of the literal meanings aren't obvious to an actual Yenán speaker because of sound and meaning changes.
Ah, ok. Still fun though :)
These are so cool!! I love how robust your words sound, and the compound ones are awesome!
How did the meaning 'big animal' come to mean 'bird'?
Thanks! Originally, the words kwené & kinés were much more interchangeable and could mean either 'beast' of any description.
In nevira, I have the following words for animals so far:
vemu [vɛmu]: octopus (very important animal)
feirhia [fejɾia]: to hunt (not an animal, but related... nevira speakers only hunt animals!)
I'm impressed, I didn't even know that I had so many animals O_O
Nice set! I don't know why but I like that fish and bird are so similar.
They both fly... one of them just flies under the water! That was the "logic" after it.
Haha cute.
I have two words so far:
taʍen = animal. Might be closer to "mammal" but I am not positive.
ɲʉlu = ant. I think this word is a "false diminutive", since ɲ is the diminutive prefix but /ʉlu/ probably doesn't mean anything.
False diminutives are cool. I don't know how to pronounce taʍen...
That's actually just the IPA, hehe. /ʍ/ is that "hw" sound that some English dialects do for w in certain contexts. I still haven't sorted out my romanization so I'm just IPA-ing it.