The Dailies. March 1, 2023

The Dailies. March 1, 2023

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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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5 thoughts on “The Dailies. March 1, 2023”

  1. Two new words in Beldreni! Based on the verb krao, ‘holds’.

    kraorío is a vague profession-ish term. Depending on context, adjectives, and/or which word it’s paired with in a compound, this can mean:
    1) a representative/spokesman for a community
    2) a foreman/supervisor/etc for a workshop, shop or similar
    3) an appointed civil servant within the citystate administration

    The common tenor is that it’s a position of trust, whether trust from a community, a business owner, or a politician. There’s another common word for a civil servant, obenío, from the word oben, ‘written records, official documents’: this word has more of a connection to the type of work that is done rather than the position of trust the person in question holds. Generally speaking someone called a kraorío might be assumed to have a higher status than someone called obenío… but this is highly context-dependent and the reverse can also be true.

    Put the augmentative infix -ba- on this word, and you get

    kraoribayo

    which can perhaps be translated as ‘mayor’, unless that sounds too humble. What we mean here is the highest elected position in a citystate, filled by only one or, at most, two individuals at the same time. Perhaps ‘consul’ is a better translation in the two-person case (thinking of the Roman Republic), but on the other hand that might sound a bit too warlike (…thinking of the Roman Republic). As a matter of fact the spread of the term kraoribayo in recent Decades (i.e. centuries, in Earth terms) may well be tied to the term having more peaceful connotations than older words for citystate leaders, who were often associated with leading their polities in war.

    Some citystates don’t single out a single person/two people above the rest of the city government, so in those cities nobody is a kraoribayo.

    (Obligatory disclaimer that kraoribayo is only the Beldreni term and other language groups will call these people by a different term. Sometimes Beldreni-speakers also will default to a word in a different language for the elected leader of the city they live in, while kraoribayo will then be used for other cities or for the position in general.)

    Towns and villages also have their own leaders and might call them kraoribayo as well, when there is only 1 or 2 of them. But in the city you’ll often add a preceding element to such titles. The leader of a town of medium size, an eloku, can be called an elokukraoribayo, for instance. In more dismissive colloquial speech, pejoratively, even a diminutive might be added next to the augmentative: kraoribabeyo .

    ADDENDUM: I think kraoribayo is reserved for Winter times only. In the Summer, most people live rural lives in small villages, with no large towns or cities, and they’d use other words for the leadership of those smaller towns that do exist. Maybe they’d use gātendaka, with gāten meaning ‘summer town’ and daka meaning ‘leader’ in neutral and familiar style, and gātendakairon or even gāten ho dakairon in formal style.

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    1. Ooooh! I love all the nuances of when it’s used, why, and how it varies based on circumstances and context. I also like the insight into their political arrangements and history here.

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  2. More words! I’ll try to include some notes with the definitions. (Someday I might even get back to including pronunciations. You’re all very gracious about the ongoing omission.)

    1. pmto – trade good(s), including either in kind goods or official currencies, which are themselves mandated that they must be in a usable state, not diluted or alloyed with other materials
    2. kients – trade information or instructions, used instead of goods or currency for exchange
    3. solgu – regular currency, consisting of carved pieces of a white native stone, marbleized with veins of evnenn, thought to be naturally occurring but formed deliberately by the first colonizers when they realized the stone was a naturally useful medium for creating “accesses” or “communicators.” Value is determined by the size of the piece, not the degree of marbleization. Even pure white solgu is considered equally valuable.
    4. evnenn – rare high-value currency, naturally occurring colonies of their nanotech, at this point thought to be simply very dense, highly conductive (of the Knowing) metals in black, silver, blue, or black veined with any of other colors
    5. iljot – rare, extremely high-value currency, small, standard-sized slabs of black; these were traded among initial colonists as pmto during the clans gatherings, for information or instructions gained and learned by those who had settled elsewhere. Modern generations are aware it’s highly valuable, extremely limited currency (those brought with the colonists are the entire supply) but do not remember that these are actually command badges that can be used as inputs on specialized boxes for the purpose or on a sufficient quantity of solgu to trigger the Knowing to manufacture a particular item or execute a preprogrammed set of commands. Command badges are reusable but “boxes” are no longer understood nor available, so command badges mostly go unused as anything other than currency.
    6. wanivere – the Knowing, the communications / signals / carrier network provided by the self-maintaining ecosystem of nanotech brought by the initial colonists, especially “the blue,” which is responsible for translating intention and meaning between all “people” on the planet, regardless of species
    7. nagura – hall, a wide open room suitable for large assemblies or groups of people, enclosed on all sides, typically two or more stories tall
    8. gndala – pillars, a concourse like space on an outer face of a building on the ground level with supporting pillars at the edges or throughout it holding up another level of the building or a simple roof or defensive forcefield emitter. These last do not cover the entire space but merely form a rail-like structure atop the pillars surrounding a space
    9. paritzon – traveling by a flying airborne vehicle between two discrete locations under control or ownership of different entities. Compare partihatzon, which refers to traveling within one discrete location, e.g. in-city flying
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    1. Very, very interesting! The glimpses of worldbuilding here – !!!

      To think their their currency has such intriguing links to the past, while also being so pretty!

      Apart from all the implications wanivere, the Knowing, is such a pretty word.

      Command badges are reusable but “boxes” are no longer understood nor available, so command badges mostly go unused as anything other than currency.

      Only “mostly”…? Can they get used for anything else, without the boxes?

      Re paritzon and partihatzon – oho, is that an infix I see on the latter?
      Also what are words for non-flying methods of travelling? How common is it to use flying vehicles?

      1. So mostly is because they can be used with solgu and at some point, it’s pretty obvious to me that Yonyunn figured out they held instructions and quietly used them to figure out how to build those flying vehicles, and I’m sure there’s some other exception out in the back of beyond, but mostly, no one remembers anything about using colors (their nanotech).

        And that was a typo. It was supposed to be parithatzon, where -tha, -th is commonly contrasted as “near” against -ot, -o’, -oq for “far.” I haven’t built out all the travel vocab yet, but I’m sure I’ll get some more done soon. Glide cars are common, but helicopters (for lack of a better word) are mostly used by clan leaders, the war palace, and the military. Civilians having them is extremely rare and indicates a very wealthy person.

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