The Dailies. May 7
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 7”
Today I have some Nahul words to share, within a specific context.
On the North-East Continent, people refer to the spiritual energy of this world, which we might call a low-level magic, as “blessings” (in Beldreeni, cheirannos). The blessings of the gods, is the assumption. I’ve known that for a while, but until now I hadn’t settled as to how the people on the South-West Continent, with a rather different attitude to the phenomenon, refer to it.
Back in the bad past, in the ancient days of wars and slavery and public human sacrifice*, when this energy was a lot higher than today, people on the South-West Continent referred to it as ‘the power’, or more properly ‘the sacred power’. In modern Nahul, this would be dezuïm iloth, but since modern Nahul wasn’t spoken back then I don’t really know what they would have said exactly, nor in any other language on the continent. In any case, iloth means ‘power’ in the sense of ‘domination over others’, just like Swedish makt, and not necessarily in the sense of ‘energy, strength’.
Today people don’t talk about the phenomenon as much. The energy is lower on the South-West Continent than the North-East one, and there are more people there who think it doesn’t exist, seeing the mentions of old exploits with the power as mere fantastic legends. The thought-system/ideology iwase-ta-hene makes no overt reference to it in its core texts and traditions, although there are interpreters equalling it with the concept of harmony that permeates its teachings. (The ideology does preach piety to the gods as important, but again doesn’t overtly tie the spiritual energy to the gods directly.) Regular Learned Ones, that is to say certified experts at iwase-ta-hene, have no truck with it. Only the small élite High Learned Ones do, and they’re still not supposed to use it that often.
The terms used by those High Learned Ones (and other educated people when needing to refer to the matter), mean ‘flow, conduit’ or ‘stream, current’, with the full phrase “the flow of the Spirit Realm”. The idea is that this energy flows from the Realm of the Spirits to the Realm of Wild Nature and the Realm of the Human World, and then back again to the Realm of the Spirits. A skilled High Learned One is supposed to both facilitate the flow and lightly manipulate it, but only lightly. Otherwise there will be disruptions of the flow and disturbed harmonies, and the spirits will be angry and make that anger known. In Nahul, the word for ‘flow’ is gul or gulí, a Class II noun. As halan means ‘spirit realm’, genitive case halanet, the phrase becomes halanet gul or halanet gulí in Nahul.
The wandering shaman-priests have a different view of the phenomenon, being less suspicious and more accepting – though still cautious, and highly secretive of the matter to outsiders. They refer to the energy/magic as “the shine”. In Nahul they tend to say chelekh.
In deciding this I also came up with a few other words in the process. Listing all the new words here:
ilai (adj) powerful, mighty
iloth (n) power, domination
gul/gulí flow, conduit; current, stream
erup (n) witch, wizard, warlock (not generally used in a positive sense)
dezu (adj) sacred, holy
cheloth (n) shine, radiance, brilliance (the more widespread form of the word). From the verb lo-chel, ‘to shine’. Note: /ch/ stands for [ʃ] in my Nahul notation.
chelekh (n) shine, radiance, brilliance (the less widespread form of the word, which is probably why the wandering priests have picked that form to use for their purpose)
bír (adj) strong
bíroth (n) strength
*It is in fact possible that some human sacrifice still occasionally takes place on the South-West Continent. But if it does, it’s very hidden away and secret.
oooh, these are fantastic! Love the worldbuilding. I hope they’re not sacrificing people though. 🙁
Thank you! I really enjoyed deciding how these different groups view the energy/magic in question, and how that reflects their terms.
Unfortunately, I think children born out of season may meet a harsher fate on the South-West Continent than the North-East one. Sometimes a priest may choose to keep one, hidden away at their “base”, which is at the borderlands between Society and Wilderness, where the priests will raise that child as one of their own. But it depends on when exactly the child was born, and other things. Regular society has no real place for those children, in any case. 🙁
Yes, there are some very dark corners of this Continent. (But out-of-season pregnancies are still very rare, just as on the North-East Continent.)
And also — among the High Learned Ones, they are always on the lookout for older children exhibiting sensitivity to spiritual energy, looking to train successors… but only if those children are of acceptable disposition. The ones who question too much, who cause too much problems, might also meet a hard fate: but it’s still rare, and hidden. (If it does happen. I haven’t fully decided yet. Maybe they do find another use for such children, after all.)