The Dailies. February 24
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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7 thoughts on “The Dailies. February 24”
Lately I’ve been revisiting how comparatives are done in Beldreeni. I’ve now decided that subjects for this type of clause can only be placed first if they’re followed by the topical marker to, otherwise the… I don’t know what the right term for it is. The thing you’re comparing the subject to. Otherwise this noun phrase is placed before the subject. What more is, the main adjective (or adverb) in its comparative form is also placed before the subject in the latter case. Also, it’s more common to do it that way than to put the subject with a topical marker first.
But I’ve kept di man for expressing that a comparison exists, similar to English than and Swedish än, only put after what you compare something to rather than before it as in English/Swedish. I’m thinking of spelling it diman instead, though. According to Swedish grammar än can be either a preposition or a conjunction. Not sure if the same goes for Beldreeni. In the glossing below I’m calling it a conjunction anyway.
So here are some phrases, contrasting the proverbally poor and unlucky folklore character Banyara with the stingy folklore character Ahoken and the lucky character Sinek from another popular folk tale. The first set of sentences are in the neutral register, the second set and the final line are in the formal register, as seen in the different forms of the copula.
I am also keeping the comparative prefix se- and the superlative prefix an-.
Sinek ki’pelu ru. /// Sinek is lucky.
Banyara ki’pedzhelu ru. /// Banyara is unlucky.
Sinek to Banyara di man seki’pelu ru. /// Sinek is luckier than Banyara.
Banyara di man seki’pelu Sinek ru. /// Sinek is luckier than Banyara.
Sinek di man seki’pedzhelu Banyara ru. /// Banyara is unluckier than Sinek.
Sinek ankipelu ru. /// Sinek is the luckiest.
Banyara hosu wai. /// Banyara is poor.
Ahoken molor wai. /// Ahoken is rich.
Banyara to, Ahoken di man sehosu wai. /// Banyara is poorer than Ahoken.
or more frequently: Ahoken di man sehosu Banyara wai. /// Banyara is poorer than Ahoken.
Ahoken to, Banyara di man semolor wai. /// Ahoken is richer than Banyara.
Banyara di man semolor Ahoken wai. /// Ahoken is richer than Banyara.
Ahoken chen-ni-wa ho min du anmolor wai./// Ahoken is the world’s richest man.
or: Saski chen-ni-wa na, Ahoken min du anmolor wai. /// In [lit. “from”] the whole world, Ahoken is the richest.
This brings us to a striking old line by Paul Simon, which becomes like this in Beldreeni:
A-tes baen sati wai di man selaadri, ma baen sadde wai di man semimi, baen wai. Ukudzhesu hemodzhemo wai.
occasion* 1sg IMP COP CONJ COMP-old and I FUT COP CONJ COMP-young 1sg COP fact-not common-not COP
“I am older than I once was, and younger than I’ll be. That’s not unusual.”
*Here meaning the same as “once”.
Topic marker is good! I love the way these decline! I swear, at some point I need to sit down and try to properly grok this language of yours because I love it and it would be fun to actually learn and understand it properly.
Thanks! That’s so flattering to hear!
Let me know if there’s ever anything in particular you want me to sum up! (Unfortunately my own working documents are in Swedish, but I can totally post about specific areas if you like!)
I think it’s always a good sign of a rich conlang when you can express the same idea with more than one syntactic construction! Love the way your comparatives work.
So I’m super behind on commenting and reading comments between a flare-up of depression and a lot of trying not to be laid up in bed sick. Ugh.
That said, I’ve made some progress on having a feel for the new Riftspace naming language, which I have been busy trying to make names out of without properly doing the work. Naturally.
It has an aspiration contrast in stops, which I don’t know how to distinguish, let alone how to properly develop, but I’m going to try. There’s so far absolutely no consonant clusters, which gives the whole thing an oddly simplistic feel to me and makes it hard to make things sound different from each other without coming up with long names, and most of the names are 2-3 syllables, no longer or shorter. I’ve thrown out every single name for one guy because all the ones I came up with either sound like something stupid in English or are spelled like something in English that isn’t going to do. I haven’t entirely decided why it sounds weird to have f in a medial position if I’m allowing s. I’m allowing the sibilant, so pretty sure there’s no good reason to nix other voiceless fricatives and make them all allophones.
I haven’t done the phonology yet. It shows.
I don’t think I want a lateral approximant / fricative, though r and rh, whatever the difference actually is, have both shown up already. I have -esi meaning “-ese” or “-ian”, and I want to make -esa the basic plural because of course. I definitely need to come up with honorifics because Zana’s name just got completely declined for an honorific and her brother calls her “Big Sister” all the time, which isn’t just coincidence. Also, word final -i is actually pronounced ɛ, but since word final -e becomes a schwa, I haven’t figured out how to spell names so people can even tell there’s a difference in pronunciation because in English, we’d use e for both.
Going to read everyone else’s comments later. Got a pile of catch up to dos.
Well, ɛ is often spelled ä in Swedish (and in Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, and German), though we also use e for the same sound, and ä is also used for æ.
Maybe r could stand for apical r and rh for velar or dorsal R, something like that?
As usual with your languages, it all sounds impressively cool (and to me, a bit intimidating, but mostly impressive!). Can you explain a bit more about the name Zana being conjugated for a honorific, but you don’t know what the honorific is (if I understand correctly)?
Is there a reason you can’t use -h to show aspiration, the way I do for Nahul and a number of RL languages do? (th/kh/ph…) If there is such a reason, maybe use an apostrophe instead?
I’ve tried to not have consonant cluster before, but they always sneak in…! Stay strong. Good luck!
edited to add: Forgot to say that I hope you feel better soon! <3
Thanks for the good wishes!
So Ijeve Isanave is the title that came off my fingers when someone was addressing her respectfully as the person in charge of the Ijeve training facility, though it would probably make better sense if it were Izanave.
That’s definitely not what her little brother calls her simply because he’s not calling her person in charge of everything honorific, just Big Sister.
Oooh, I hadn’t thought of that with the r’s. Well, I thought of uvular but that wasn’t it. Wikipedia didn’t want to really admit a velar r was a thing, so I assumed it wasn’t, but it does feel like a dark r, the way there’s a dark l in English. :sigh: I never know if what I think I’m doing with my mouth is actually right or it’s some other phenomenon I’m not really up on.
With the aspirated, I did start tucking in h’s but I need to figure out which stops show up in the phonology with this contrast, and for th, I need something else altogether. I went with c vs. k for the velar simply because kh means x to me and always will.