Lexember 2
Welcome to the Lexember Challenge!
Every year, conlangers can take the opportunity for the month of December to challenge ourselves to add a new word to our conlang’s lexicon.
What word have you coined today? Any cultural or associated worldbuilding notes? Tell us about your inspiration!
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6 thoughts on “Lexember 2”
for Akachenti:
ndaji • verb, to fool, deceive, or trick someone
For Dab vi Suxi Kidap: kiu, n. /’kiu/ “awe, dumbfoundedness”
I also did some archeology and read the early chat logs where the language was first laid out and discovered that some interesting details were lost. For instance, it seems that rather than having adjectives as a part of speech, instead nouns are used in a relative clause with a zero copula. That is to say, “the clever fox” in English is translated as “the fox that [is] clever”, or “sixuk ipi xix”. There are also compound nouns, but those are generally for lexicalized compounds, wherein the attribute is an essential part of the thing being referred to, and in those the modifier goes in front.
Remembering that ipi is a relativizer (and that DVSK has a zero copula) helped me understand why compounds are modifier-noun while for non-compounds it’s noun-ipi-modifier, since I’d forgotten and it seemed confusing and arbitrary without that detail.
I also noticed that colors never came up, so I brought it up with the others and we decided to have a relatively small set of color names:
Ooooh! I love that and the details involved and your colors! And the word ipi is just really nice.
I always keep my starting vocabulary for reasons just like that and in fact, my first two words were finally translating a starter conversation.
I thought I posted this last night but whoops. Here it is, two basic color terms:
Ħez = orange-warm-dark colors
Raku = blue-cool-light colors
These are inspired by Orklands geography – vast skies and vast orange plains. I think all other color words will either be derived from these, or straight up descriptors (the color of that thing).
What does Ħ sound like, just curious? (I should be more familiar with symbols, but I’m uh, getting there.)
I like both of these and the way it picks color tones.
That’s the uppercase of ħ, so it’s a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. 🙂
Thanks!