The Dailies. September 27, 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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7 thoughts on “The Dailies. September 27, 2023”
Some verbs with compound roots for Kofnea-Kolos:
Basically, there’s some bare root verbs, some -tso verbs (derived from nouns + -tson “activity of”), and then now we also have -shi (“give” + root) and -ngamo (“make” + root) verbs.
New productive verbal stems! That’s awesome!
Love the similarity between pretngamo and prtngamo.
Ah, thank you! They do go back to the same original root, even if they diverged along the way.
I have new Beldreni words, again mostly prompted by searching for character names!
Three adjectives, the rest are nouns.
isu (n) mouse (specifically the robust northern mouse)
susu (n) owl
irēka (n) squirrel
gofn (n) spear
bongala (adj) shining (synonym to ki’boni, which I already had; from the verb bone,’shines’)
faisur (n) “heather” (or rather a plant similar to heather in habitat and to an extent shape, but with white and orange flowers)
hana (n) tea – not a new word but I thought it was “hanad” before, I now realized it isn’t
hoganisagam (n) compound of hoga (‘clan’) + niisagam (‘card/small piece of paper’). A kind of identifying document consisting of the wearer’s name, a picture symbolizing the clan the wearer belong to (drawn by an official clan artist) plus the clan’s official seal. In a travelling party, the leader of the group would usually carry one of these so that strangers can see he does belong to the clan he claims as his.
hunta (adj) fresh (esp wrt air, winds, etc; not sure if it would be used to mean ‘new’ as extensively as the English word)
kar (n) 1) air (synonym to zheng); 2) gust of wind (synonym to eletti); 3) weather
maket (n) deer; Chío Maket Deer River, the most easterly of the three long rivers in the Summerlands up north.
hoison (adj) protective, nurturing; a less common synonym to hoisala. From the verb hoise, ‘protects’.
mōru (n) island
kefö (n) islet. Synonym: mobeiru
onden (n) branch – actually not a new word, but I had mislaid it before, now it’s found and inserted into its right place on the word list
vechidakles (n) A loanword from Lakespeech into Beldreni, but rarely used outside the citystate of Meren. The original form in Lakespeech is vetčidakles, where vetči means ‘disorder, mess’ and dakles (a variant of takles) means the language Takleya spoken by the Takle people. The word refers to the variety of Takleya that’s most commonly spoken as a lingua franca within Meren itself in many different language groups. It’s got a multitude of loanwords from other languages common in Meren, Beldreni very much included. The grammar is simpler than in “regular” Takleya, but not simplified enough, I think, that it would count as a pidgin. It’s considered pretty slangy and is not used in formal written situations (but it can be used in semiformal spoken situations sometimes, like in politics occasionally). Not really used as a lingua franca outside of Meren as it’s not well-known in other citystates (even Takle people in other cities can find it difficult to understand due to all the loanwords).
Now for some new birth names:
Mii – ‘Green’. A small girl with green eyes
Irēka – ‘Squirrel’. Another small girl, brown-eyed, inquisitive
Rume – ‘Cloud’. A boy child.
Faisur – ‘Heather'(-ish). Another boy child – the protagonist’s younger brother.
Isu – ‘Mouse’
Hoison – ‘Protective’
Nāli – ‘Round’
New Shadow Names:
Susuraiki – ‘Owl Mist’. A girl cousin, the one with Isu as birth name. Nickname: Susu
Aimirona – ‘Purple ai’ (the ai is a type of fruit). Another girl cousin, the one with Nāli as birth name. Nickname: Miro
Gofnbongala – ‘Shining spear’. A boy cousin (Hoison is the birth name). Nickname: Gofn
New adult names:
Cheimōru ‘Stream island’. Protagonist’s paternal grandmother. Her nicknames are Cheikefö and Cheimobeiru, ‘stream islet’.
Halaruibeka ‘Beka [one of the moons] on water’. Protagonist’s late maternal grandfather
Ondenmarie ‘Branch and twig’. Maternal grandmother. This name isn’t new actually, it was part of a collection of three “Beldreni name stories” I shared a long time ago, but I decided to tie it into the main story now and make it the name of an older relative.
Karhunta ‘Fresh air/fresh breeze’. Oldest cousin. Male.
Dādaohayö ‘Sunny roads’. Maternal uncle. Works as a travelling merchant in wintertime. –dao is the plural suffix, but since it’s entirely optional and skipped way more often than not, perhaps a more intuitive way to translate it would be as “Many sunny roads”, even though it’s not the literal meaning. The character is often just called by his nickname Dādao, which again might be translated as “Many roads” instead of just “Roads”. (But the literal way of saying ‘many roads’ would be dā hetim, dādao hetim or dā-dadao.) “A number of roads” would be closer to the meaning of Dādao, but again, that doesn’t sound much like a name…
And the names! I love ALL of these. The sounds, the vibes, the way they all fit together and feel. My favorite is Dādaohayö though. That’s just delightful the whole way down.
Names are such rich grounds for linguistic discovery. Thus, the fictive minimum of a conlang is a naming language. And these are such great words. Of course, I always love your words.
I feel like participles by their nature tend to have synonyms, due to having multiple ways to derive the idea from the oft more ubiquitous nouns and verbs.
Especial favorites are gofn for the sound and hana for the meaning! And hoganisagam is delightfully full of worldbuilding details! But really I love this whole lot. <3