The Dailies. January 23, 2020
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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Two related words for Beldreni.
Many centuries ago the language Sedi, which is spoken by the Sed people, had the verbal root gel (today gul) with the basic meaning ‘reach’. The Sedi nominalising prefix to- (today ta-) turned this into the noun to-gel, stressed on the last syllable.
Literally ‘reaching’, this was used first chiefly to talk about people reaching for their share of something, but then for games of luck and skill where you reached out your hand to take part. Both meanings are retained in current Sedi in the form ta-gul, with various metaphorical usages as well.
But Beldreni borrowed the earlier form to-gel only for the latter meaning, talking about a person’s turn in a game, and added a final syllable as Beldreni does not like stresses on word-final syllables: togelu. So it came to mean ‘turn’ in the sense “wait your turn”, “it’s my turn now”, etc. (The Swedish word for this is also a loanword.)The Beldreni reciprocal prefix saka– created the new verb sakatogelu, ‘takes turns’.In current written Beldreni the words are sometimes still spelled like above, but more often the spelling reflects the current pronunciation in all varieties, where the -e- has disappeared.
So now it’s like this:
toglu (n) ‘turn’ (in the ‘place in order’ sense, not in the motion sense)
sakatoglu (v) ‘takes turns’
As usual, stress is on the penultimate syllable, and the verb is given in its present tense in the neutral style.
Edited to add: Ah…. is it still okay for me to post and comment here? I’m getting a bit worried I’m intruding.