Lexember 30

Lexember 30

Comments 11 comments

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!

11 thoughts on “Lexember 30”

  1. One of the first words I came up with for Nahul was eth, ‘cold’ as an adjective.

    Now I have etan, ‘cold’ as a noun.

    However, I also realized that the Nahul often use a different nominal construction to express cold, namely ji-eth-je’u. The ji-construction has been seen before: it’s a type of gerund, basically, often used with a possessive suffix at the end. However, with the use of several ji- you can also tuck various objects and other arguments into the same construction. Some examples, trying to keep it simple:

    Zenatai ji-munai. I like singing. (Lit.: I like my singing.)
    Zenatai ji-munei. I like your singing/I like when you sing.
    Zenatai jinon-inek-jiho-mothat-ji-munei. I like when you sing that song for me.

    Now, you can use ji- with the copula to express ‘being’ in the more verbal sense (not in the other sense as ‘living creature’).

    Fetrionei inek jiho-je’unei. I’m happy that you’re here. Lit: Your being here makes me happy.
    Gebinonei inek jiho-jedunei. I’m sad that you’re not here. Lit: Your not being here makes me unhappy.

    But using ji- with the copula can also be used to express something close to the English suffix -ness. This meaning is often used without a possessive suffix.

    So: ji-eth-je’u ‘coldness’
    ji-timau-je’u ‘manliness’
    ji-tien-je’u ‘hardness’
    jankhit-je’u ‘womanliness’

    etc.

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      1. Thank you!

        Now I’m trying to decide why it feels right to have jankhit-je’u for ‘womanliness’ (and not ji-ankhit-je’u) but ji-eth-je’u for ‘coldness’. Why isn’t it *jeth-je’u for the latter? Is it just because the root adjective is only one syllable? I might have to give this some thought.

        1. There’s also an animacy difference, or the fact that if it doesn’t have a commonly used synonym, it’ll be used more frequently and more likely to start reducing.

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  2. My two last nouns of this Lexember:

    Qull /qull/ = sun

    Abwe /abwe/ = moon

    Qull is also related to the color term Ħez for warm-orange-dark colors and abwe to raku for cool-blue-light colors. Obviously there is a bit of contradiction there since the sun ought to be warm and the moon cool but I think that’s ok – cultural associations don’t have to be so straightforward. I’ll either figure out a way around it or they’ll just ignore part of the semantic field for the colors in their association.

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    2. Those words look really cool. I’m not quite following – I get how the sun/moon terms would be related to the colour terms semantically, but not morphologically? I’m probably missing something.

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