By: printfogey

I came up with a new suffix in Nahul for making person nouns!
I already had the prefix e- which is put before a verb stem to make person words similar to the English suffix “-er” and Swedish “-are”. Examples: emadon, ‘teacher’, from madon-, ‘teach’; ekath, ‘painter’, from kath-, ‘paint’.

But I also felt the need for making person nouns not just from a verb, but also from another noun.

Inspired by the use (as far as I have picked up on) by -wallah/-wala/-vala in several Indo-Aryan languages, I came up with -sotal as a similar kind of freewheeling, flexible suffix in Nahul. It sometimes means the same as -seller in English, sometimes it’s more like -maker, occasionally even -master or just ‘expert in’.

So then, using pre-existing nouns and the new suffix, I now have a whole slew of new words!

tram, tharam ‘wagon’ – tramsotal/tharamsotal ‘wainwright’
tedeth ‘star’ – tedethsotal ‘astronomer, stargazer [astrologer]’ (obviously Earth-style astrology doesn’t exist but there are other ways of reading meaning into the stars)
ro ‘sword’ – rosotal ‘swordsman, warrior, fencer’
atoi ‘thought’ – atoisotal ‘thinker, philosopher’
posol ‘clothes’ – posolsotal ‘tailor’
hazin ‘kitchen’ – hazinsotal ‘head chef/head cook’
chigau ‘border’ – chigausotal ‘Customs Master’, more or less, with certain military functions and responsibilities as well
(chigaudeng, lit. ‘border person’, is used for someone working under the Customs Master’s underlings as a kind of border soldier and/or customs assistant)
chōkan ‘loan’ – chōkansotal ‘moneylender’
dolú ‘square, marketplace, open place in city; neutral ground’ – dolúsotal someone who’s in charge of the organisation of commerce in a specific marketplace, and also other aspects of that space, for instance the quality of well water if there’s a well there (I don’t think this is a paid position, though for the biggest squares you would get money from the city to hire day workers helping you in your duties, at least on big market days)
fachan ‘building’ – fachansotal 1) ‘builder’; ‘head/owner of a building company’ 2) ‘architect’
ikeinon ‘medicine’ – ikeinonsotal ‘medicine seller, apothecary, pharmacist’

1