Lexember 6
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 6”
Big word today, yay!
Gachas̄ghaur /gaxasˤɣawɾ/ = the entire tapestry of the night sky including the stars and whatever else is up there.
Ooh! What a cool word! So, basically ‘stjärnhimmel’?
Yes, basically. Slightly different connotations because I think the nightsky in Orklands is static and doesn’t change (because it’s not actually a planet), but v close to that.
How pretty! I love it.
Today’s word functions either as a verb or a noun, with basically identical meaning. In DVSK, there’s no special marking for this kind of thing, so you just have to tell which role it is by the grammar. It’s also a rare example of a consonant cluster in DVSK, inspired by a former example in aksup, “wrong”.
I like it! Do you also have a word for ‘liar’?
Not specifically, though it could be formed as tuksuksuk (where -suk is a suffix meaning “a person” and is also used in pronouns) or dab vi a tuksuk, “one who lies”, depending on which flows better. The -suk suffix is unrelated to this new word, it just happens to be the same as its last syllable. Because tuksuksuk is a bit of a mouthful, the verb phrase would probably be used more often.
tuksuk is slightly irregular in that usually when a verb is used as a noun it refers to the subject, but tuksuk has a distinct meaning as a noun, which necessitates a bit more decoration to emphasize the verbal sense. (The a continuative aspect marker would normally not be present in an agent-of-verb noun phrase, and -suk is not always needed to refer to a person.) I suppose it could be characterized as an ergative verb? The only other word in the lexicon that has been specifically marked as verb/noun is pufu, “cause”, which is not ergative like this (but, as a sidenote, it does indicate that a distinction between “cause” and “causer” is not particularly natural in DVSK, not that “causer” is a particularly common noun in English in the first place). I could do a more extensive survey on which verbs in DVSK might be ergative but it’s late so I won’t.
Nice!
Late to Lexember, but I do have a few new words for Nahul! As always, emphasis on the last syllable, and accents signify long vowels.
1. lo-sagéz (v) ‘to share, to split up, to portion out’. 1sg past, sagézá; 1sg present sagézai.
While close semantically to the existing verb lo-hek, that one means more ‘to part, to split, to cut into parts’, focusing on an action that splits up one object into small parts (hekoth, ‘part, section’). Lo-sagéz puts the focus on a person sharing out portions from a whole for a group.
2. esagéz (n), ‘leader’, lit. ‘one who portions sthg out’. From the above verb comes this noun. It’s a general word for ‘leader’. There already is a word for ‘leader, boss’ in Nahul, rogi, but I figure the language has room for more than one. Esagéz might be more used for a temporary position, like that of the leader for a travelling party; it might also denote an actual rank in a police force/military force. Belongs to Class I of nouns. Plural: nesagéz.
3. dolú(n) ‘crossroads’; ‘meeting place’, ‘public square’, ‘neutral ground’. Belongs to Class III of nouns. Plural: el-dolú.
The meaning ‘crossroads’ might be the oldest. I already had the word sagus for ‘meeting place’, ‘point of gathering’, so there’s a semantic overlap here. However, sagus focuses more on a place where a group/crowd may gather, while dolú puts the emphasis on a public place as neutral ground where anyone can meet anyone. (Not that you can’t just do that on the road or street, too. But people stay and linger in crossroads and squares.)
In children’s games, the word dolú is sometimes used to signify a safe place, where everyone in the game can go freely. But at other times on the contrary dolú will mean an unsafe place of danger (since everyone can go there, including the ones playing the part of a beast of prey or bandit).
4. Piggybacking on the last one, karan-dolú (n), ‘crossroads’. For when you want to be more specific that you mean one of those and not a larger place (karan meaning ‘road’). Naturally, this also belongs to Class III of nouns.
I’ve also started to think about possible words for ‘head of household’ in Nahul, as I already have those for Beldreni, but I need to solidify some worldbuilding first.
These are lovely. I like that connotation/etymology of leader!
Oh goodness, I love all the thought put into how these words interact! And they’re also lovely. Well done!