Lexember 20
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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13 thoughts on “Lexember 20”
Great set!
I’m so behind! I have had a bunch of words since last week in fact, but haven’t found the time/energy/focus to report in.
But here we go! This is for Nahul. Stress is always on the last syllable, an accent denotes a long vowel, and /th/ stands for an aspirated /t/.
5. hathemir (n) The position of ceremonial head of household. Often but not always this will be the retired former acting head of the household (see below). Class II noun.
6. hatrei (n) 1) The position of acting head of household — or sometimes the head of a small business. Most often a guy but it can be a woman too. (The South-West Continent is more patriarchal than the North-East one.) 2) The head of household himself/herself. This personalization is widespread, but it’s still more common that you have the position of (acting) head of household, rather than that you are the head of the household. (“Kanoi inek hathrei” vs “Esai hathrei”.) Note that this remains a Class III noun even when used in the latter sense, though normally nouns for people belong to Class I.
7. oso- a prefix that means roughly ‘side’, ‘extra’, ‘bonus’; and which can also mean ‘replacement’, ‘ersatz’, ‘substitute’ – but only when used together with something else. Oso- doesn’t seem to stand on its own.
8. osodeng (n) 1) an assistant, a helper, a minion, etc 2) a (temporary) replacement for someone else; a substitute. From oso- + deng ‘person, human being’. Class I noun.
9. osohatrei (n) the position of a “side (acting) head of household”, so to speak. For instance, maybe your brother is the head of the household where you live, but at the same time you have your own trade. Then you have a hatrei of your own, only it’s seen as a side position, sort of. Similarly the wife of a man who holds the hatrei in the household usually still has her own authority, and she will leave her position, her osohatrei, to a younger woman once she retires. Most likely a daughter or daughter-in-law. Class III noun.
10. choruhath (n) 1) ‘household’ 2) ‘small business’. Maybe I should have listed this one first. Chor- means ‘house’, and choru is the genitive form. I haven’t fully settled what hath/hat actually means.
11. lo-guel (v) ‘inherit (sthg)’. Are verbs okay for Lexember? Anyway, here is one. Past tense 1sg is guelá.
12. gueloth (n) heritage, inheritance. Class II.
13. re-guel (perf part) inherited; on its own, it denotes a specific inherited object and as such can be treated like a noun
14. lo-guelon (v) ‘to make someone inherit something’; ‘to will someone sthg’ (not necessarily in a written will).
15. lo-gueledon (v) ‘to disinherit someone’
16. eguel (n) ‘heir’
17. eguelon (n) 1) the one you inherit something from (is there a word for this in English?). 2) forefather, foremother, ancestor. Class I noun.
Love it, as always! I’ve said it before I think but i can’t wait to be able to to clusters of derived words like this.
And afaik verbs are fine for Lexember. It’s just any words, as far as I understand.
These are all of them so great. I love the thought you put into each word and all its connotations. ♥
Another derived word today! Or rather, two, yay! Derived from the one I posted yesterday, da’ru meaning “to speak:
Eyqumda’ru /ejqumdaʔru/ = language
Aruqumda’ru /aruqumdaʔru/ = Orklang
You will recognize da’ru from above. Ey- is a sort of… semantically near-empty particle, I think, which is used to hang a case ending on something. It’s inspired by a similar thing in Arabic. In translation it’d correspond roughly with “something” or “someone”, in this case. Aruq means “ork”.
The -qum– part is a case ending for a case I haven’t named yet. It marks who (or maybe what, but it may be exclusive to people or at least sentient beings) performs the act described by the nominalized verb. So here it’s essentially “someone-by speech” and “ork-by speech” – “speech by someone” meaning language and “speech by orks” meaning Orklang. I think technically it should be “aruqqumda’ru” but I find /q/ practically impossible to lengthen so I just… didn’t.
I figure it may be used in some other constructions to create something close to a nominalized passive participle. So “eyqum”+write might mean book or letter (I don’t know if they actually have writing, yet, so it’s just an example”. I’m pretty happy with this invention/discovery, I think I could have a lot of fun with it in future!
Very, very nice!
Thanks!
That sounds great!
Does this case work a little like an agent suffix, like “-er” in English and “-are” in Swedish?
A little, but not quite.
At first I thought it did and was thinking that sthg like eyqum+bake would be “baker”, but then I realize that doesn’t make sense with eyqumda’ru being “language” rather than “speaker”.
So if anything it’s more like a -en ending in English or a -ad ending in Swedish (spoken, talad). But a different way fo constructing it with an implication of an active agent being needed for the thing to exist.
That makes sense!
My interesting word for the day:
mashakhiet • adj., worshipful, reverential in a romantic or sexual context
What a cool word!