The Dailies. February 20, 2023

The Dailies. February 20, 2023

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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4 thoughts on “The Dailies. February 20, 2023

  1. A Beldreni verb meaning ‘sweats’:

    gal/kal
    This one belongs to a small class of verbs where the initial consonent changes depending on level of formality – voiced stop for most formal, voiceless stop for most familiar. In formal style it’s gal, in familiar style it’s kal. In neutral style it’s also gal, which is new for me – all the other verbs so far in this class have gone with voiceless initial consonant for both neutral and familiar style. Will be interesting to see if any other verbs follow the gal pattern or if it’s unique in that regard.
    The familiar version is close to the verb kale, ‘works’, but I don’t know if they’re cognates. In any case kale is not conjugated in that unusual fashion.

    Here is the basic conjugation table for gal/kal. I’m leaving out some other verb forms like future tense, subjunctive, passive, and imperative.
    Shown are: present tense, present tense negation, past perfect/preterite tense, past perf/pret negation; and past imperfect + past imperfect negation.

      gal/kal ‘sweats’

    formal gal gal’n gales gal’ns galeti galenti
    neutral gal galen gales galens kaleti kalenti
    familiar kal kalanu kalus kalansu kalati kalanti

    And the noun ‘sweat’ is gali.

    1. Very nice! I love a good cognate / deceptive cognate situation, tbh. And I really like the formal, neutral, familiar variations. Do most of the plosives alternate between voiced/unvoiced or are there different variations based on which letters are actually involved? I mean, within the subset of verbs that do it.

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      1. I haven’t been able to see a pattern beyond the “formal voiced plosive/non-formal voiceless plosive” one! With gal/kal so far the only one where the neutral style is voiced.

        Here are all of them so far, listing the forms of present tense in the formal/neutral/familiar order:

        gat/kat/kattu ‘must, has to’ – Auxiliary verb

        gal/gal/kal ‘sweats’

        bosu/posu/posa or posu ‘does, makes’ – Auxiliary verb, but much more restricted than English ‘does’

        gauru/kauru/kaura or kauru ‘goes, travels, journeys’ – especially if not on foot

        dova/tova/tovo ‘hears’

        gwai/kwai/kwā ‘understands’

        gam/kam/kamu ‘runs’

        bal/pal/palu, pala ‘comes’

        boel/poel/poelo ‘hopes’

        dūs/tūs/tūso ‘knows, is cognizant of’

        and the two derived words dūselli/tūsel/tūsello  ‘knows, is familiar with’ and dūsiri/tūsira/tūsiro, ‘makes something known’ or ‘recognizes’

        Listing these out now actually made me realize some inconsistencies which I have just corrected, so thank you very much for the comment!

        1. I would like to say that I love this list, and I’m already pondering, I admit, whether that means this is a case of fortition (formal can often be older) or what gave rise to it. I love when languages have stuff like this.

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