The Dailies. January 9

The Dailies. January 9

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?

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One thought on “The Dailies. January 9

  1. A few new celestial words in Nahul!

     

    I already had chai for the sun and Nuus for the largest of the planet’s three moons. (Looking back, I think I might have been influenced by one of your words, nonniemas – if I remember correctly, “nuus” is used for ‘tea’ in a conlang of yours?) As the large, most visible moon, craters and phases clear like Earth’s moon, its name would often be used in contexts where we would use “the moon”.

    Now the new stuff:

    Heleth is one of the two smaller moons. It’s close to the planet, with a small orbit; it’s perceived as the fastest moon.

    Saní is the other one. Being the furthest from the planet, it’s perceived as the slowest moon. The names of Heleth and Saní have some kind of etymological connection to the meanings ‘fast’ and ‘slow’, but not necessarily in Nahul. They might be loanwords.

    kimen is the collective word for all three moons. It would also be used for moons around other planets, if those have been discovered on the South-West Continent yet. I’m not sure if they’ve invented telescopes, like the scholars on the North-East Continent have by now. Kimen has an inherent plural meaning, so a plural prefix isn’t necessary. Objective form: kimenén

    If you need to talk about a moon in the singular without specifying its name, you use gukimen. This is probably chiefly used in astronomy.

    kimenoth ‘moonlight’ in general, though it’s mostly for the light reflected by the big moon, of course. Object form kimenothén.

    aikhimen is the word for talking about both of the smaller moons together

    And pathá is the word for ‘sky’. Object form pathán, genitive patháli.

    All of these nouns are of the class 3 gender which is used for most celestial nouns (though not tedeth, ‘star’). In general grammatical gender for inanimate nouns is determined phonologically (word ends with consonant or vowel) and not semantically: this category is one of the exceptions.

    Maveng mamú ho lo-mether tuwán koth kimenothén ni! Belekas nono phi-tedethat da thokekas anchates.

    Let us sit here and play the tuwá together in the moonlight! We will look up at the stars and drink our tea.

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