The Dailies. June 6, 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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6 thoughts on “The Dailies. June 6, 2023”
Beldreni words.
kema; keme (n) summoning, calling upon
-kemí- honirific infix of respect towards someone of one’s own kin/clan/sometimes other close-knit in-group. Gives a warmer feel than the regular respectful honorific -kei- and the ultra-respectful -nakei-, but is less commonly used than -kei- since it’s precisely within your own close kin that honorifics are usually put aside. -Not completely sure of this form yet.
ramachilumina (n) lit. “monastery Lumina”; a priest-oriented lingua franca based on early Middle Lumina with many even older loanwords and some grammatical constructions from the Tomona language. Has also acquired many loanwords from Lakespeech. Might have an Eastern and a Western variety plus differences between the three main priestly schools. The Western variety does not have many Beldreni loanwords, but the Eastern one has a fair few.
rametti (n) face. May come from the passive of ‘see’, raram.
rarö seen in the sense “I am seen”, perf. particip of ra, ‘sees’.
ruanko (v) looks upon, watches, gazes at
yasiruanko, yasiranko (v) respects greatly (yasi=high); venerates
yasiruanko (n) veneration, great respect
yasiruankelle, yasirankelle (adj) venerable, admirable
yasiruankon (adj) reverent; showing/feeling veneration
gukas (adj) stable, solid
guānka (adj) stately; dignified
-ān-/ān an old affix and adjective meaning, ‘great, large’. As this meaning is now more commonly expressed by -ba-/ba, the -ān- affix now is used more to mean something like ‘grand’.
paitok (n) flint
ruzem (n) granite
Paitok kōs means ‘black flint’, and I now believe I have found the right Shadow Name (name used during puberty, more or less) for my main Beldreni POV character: Paitokkos. The stress of a phrase like Paitok kōs would normally come on Pai-, but when used as a personal name, it can also be acceptable to put the stress on the –tok-. That kind of pronunciation ambiguity would usually be avoided in a name, but for a Shadow Name it’s actually seen as quite appropriate.
Hanke ma lātama ho Meren yasirankelle = Venerable Meren with its (freshwater) fish and books
Lit. (‘freshwater)fish AND book GEN high-gaze-able’
I love these! The sound of paitok especially and all the little cultural notes. I also very much like the idea of a place famous for fish and books! Not the usual combination.
Stress. I do horrible at documenting stress as I go, but it’s really, really interesting seeing how it works in a language, especially because it’s so important to how sound changes are likely to go.
Thank you!
Meren is famous for its plenitude and great variety of freshwater fish due to its location right where the great river Olo reaches the magnificent lake Onemada, marking the end of Upper Olo. (Then Lower Olo exits the lake in the southwest corner and proceeds on its journey towards the sea, where the city Perildar is situated in its delta).
As for the books, that’s in large part due to the high quality and quantity of writing material from the region. Several areas close to Meren are rich with the plant known as sisha — usually a bush but sometimes grows into a small tree — from which the writing material sishan is fashioned. It’s close to paper in its qualities and often more durable, though it is very difficult to produce large sheets of it and is typically produced in the form of long but narrow strips/scrolls. It is also more expensive to produce since the sisha plant does not grow at all in many regions. Nearby Aounden also produces a high amount of sishan and is starting to catch up to Meren in the printing technology, notably taking inspiration from some of the methods used overseas on the South-West Continent.
Oooh! Nice. I love the word sishan too. Are there alternate forms of writing materials in use? Or do these areas hold something of an oligopoly?
SO SORRY FOR LATE REPLY!!
Yes, there are other writing materials… there are several forms of paper, in fact, which are primarily produced in areas where the sisha doesn’t grow. But papermaking so far has focused on just a few other plants as base materials and hasn’t for instance made the leap that European medieval papermaking did in using old cloth as material. Still, paper can be plenty useful even when you can also get sishan – for instance when you want to produce large sheets.
There is absolutely no sisha growing in the northern parts of the continents, the “Summer Lands”, but in revenge the paper produced up there, while made on a smaller scale than in Winter (Summer life being way more rural and decentralized all over), is considered better than Winter paper, again due to plant varieties but also probably a number of other things like water qualities.
On the South-West Continent there is no sisha and no sishan, but they have invented paper independently and have come further in its production than on the North-East Continent. They produce codices rather than scrolls, and are found of “accordeon”-type binding that folds outwards (I forget the real term for this…)
Ooooh! The other paper is even better! I love it! I do like the feel of real geographic rivalry for resources this gives off.