The Dailies. May 13
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in your lexicon?
On the other hand, do any excavating or reading or enjoying stuff you’ve already created? Do you have any favorites to share?
How did you conlang today?
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3 thoughts on “The Dailies. May 13”
I wanted a word in Nahul meaning “long time” or “long/for long” (as in “Not for long), something like Swedish “länge” and French “longtemps”.
I decided to not try to be creative semantically this time but just start with the adjective for “long” and then put some affix to it. An adverbial affix would work nicely. I’d forgotten what I had for that in Nahul, but after some digging found it was the suffix -os, as in mazos, ‘calmly’, to maz, ‘calm’.
The existing adjective meaning ‘long’ was paraf, which would give me parafos (stress on final syllable as always in Nahul). But I didn’t like the sound of that. I try hard not to be too picky with sounds, but I just didn’t like this one. Would I have to come up with some other etymology after all?
But wait! I had had other candidates in mind for ‘long’ before settling on paraf. Actually I can’t remember them now, but I still felt inspired in coming up with a synonym, hulai. I decided this was a less widespread word for ‘long, tall’ (maybe only covering one of those two usages; probably more common in one regional variety than in the other two).
And then I put on the adjectival suffix and got hulios, since the /ai/ diphthong loses its first element in front of most suffixes (the exception is -im for the Class II gender nominative case, which turns the word into hulayim). That same goes for most Nahul dipthongs.
Hulios has the same number of syllables as *parafos, but I just like hulios better – despite being equally long, it just flows better to my ear.
There – a look into how my creative process can go!
Now, a sample. This also shows how a statement that would be in past perfect in English uses the present tense for the verb in Nahul. Hulios is an excellent adverb for adding the extra context that Nahul needs, since its verbs don’t really have aspectual forms. (I think.)
Duzai gien hulios.
I’ve loved you for a long time.
Great word, and fun path to get there!
Thank you!