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!

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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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