Lexember 28

Lexember 28

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 28

  1. I have words to do with marriage! Though not yet an actual word for ‘marriage’, hm.

     

    lo-godel nak, lo-godel miel (v) ‘to marry’, ‘to marry someone’ – This is either reflexive (nak being the reflexive 3rd.sg.anim. pronoun) or transitive.
    godellekh (n) wedding – Note: go- is a negative prefix in Nahul, but here the first syllable is just part of the stem: these two words aren’t negating anything. Of course there are still jokes claiming differently, trying to make up meanings for the non-existent “lo-del” and “dellekh”.

    heres (n) ‘spouse’ in the general sense. Non-gendered, like the English word. As I can’t seem to find an etymology for it, and it’s the kind of meaning where you feel there should be one, it may be a loanword, or just have a rather opaque origin.

    Surprisingly, ankhit-heres and timau-heres, lit. “woman-spouse” and “man-spouse”, don’t actually mean ‘wife’ and ‘husband’, but ‘bride’ and ‘groom’.

    wolí (n) also means ‘spouse’ but in a more specific sense: it’s only used for someone you have living biological children with. This has gendered derivations: niwolí for ‘wife’ and nawolí for ‘husband’, with the first elements being the last syllable of anní, ‘mother’, and enná, ‘father’, respectively.

    Tangent: Wolí is absolutely not uncommon, but heres is more often in use even for a spouse you do have children with. However, the fact that the semantic distinction exists makes me wonder if the Nahul have same-sex marriage, in which case heres would be used as well. I haven’t settled on how the South-West Continent in general, nor the Nahul in particular, regard homosexuality. It may well vary a lot in different time periods and regions, unless there’s a specific view associated with the dominant thought-system, but I can’t really think why there would be. The South-West Continent seems a bit more patriarchal than the North-East Continent where the Beldreeni and others live, in that women are not allowed to become Learned Ones, but that fact doesn’t say much… It does seem likely, though, that someone who’s not the head of the household would be afforded more leeway in their private affairs than one who is. I’m not sure if having lovers outside your marriage, of any sex or gender, is all that accepted.

    ETA: I forgot to add this sample line!

    Epal, godellá bik. Reader, I married him/her.   😀

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    1. Interesting development! I’d also be curious if there’s a status difference between couples w children and couples without them, since there is a special term for it?

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      1. I think there might well be, or at least, you might need to have children to hold the status position of head of the household in the traditional sense. But in a large enough household, there will be couples who have children without either parent being head of that household. And then there can be new or small households with no children in it, of course.

        I do think it’s likely to be one of those things that make a difference in people’s attitudes and in respect shown, rather than in laws. And now that I think about it, I could see the dominant thought-system actually working a little against the mindset of equating having children/having many children with status, with sayings about how the best thing about a household is harmony and balance, not how many children it has. (But even widespread philosophies still have to contend with tradition…)

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        1. I should add, though, that a couple having many children in this world will mean like 5 or 6, rather than say 12-15 – since you’re usually only fertile in the summer half of the year, and the years are so long. Sure, you can fit in two pregnancies during one summer, but most couples wouldn’t try for that for every summer of the woman’s fertile years. They focus more on trying to keep the children that do get born in good health.

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  2. So I missed over half of the month because a bunch of stuff happened irl, but I’m back to do the last few days. I won’t bother trying to coin words to make up for the missed days though because if I tried I’d just procrastinate even more.

    Today’s word for DVSK is:

    • guvava, n. /ˌguvaˈva/ “music”
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