Becka's Notes

Sorry if the font is weird on this. Copying and pasting from notes.

Since I'm currently between jobs due to redundancy (Though I do have several interviews and potential interviews happening so I'm sure it won't be for long) I've decided it's a good time to work on what I've referred to as "The Opal Mask" conlang. The Opal Mask itself is on hold but another story "Shattering" is coming along nicely.

Shattering is set in the same world and region but several centuries earlier. You may remember it the first few hundred words of it from here. So I'm going to try and make a post per day on my conlangs, at least until I get another job.

You'll have noticed that there are two languages named in the subject - these are working names and may well change. Ketsa is a complete redo of the languages you'll find in the original Opal Mask conlang posts. Alisi is the language of a nearby (and somewhat antagonist) neighbour. The two languages are from different language families and thus very different. So without further ado:

Phonology:

Consonants:

 

	labio-dental	alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
stops	p b	t d		k g
fricatives	f v	s z				h
affricates		ts dz
approximants	w	r l	y	ŗ
nasals	m	n	ny	ng

 

Notes: Yes, I dropped the aspirated stops. They were a complication I didn't need. The orthography for the velar approximant is subject to change if I can think of a better one since r and ŗ aren't very distinct visually..

 

Vowels

 

	front		central		back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
closed
mid	e
open	a					o

 

Dipthongs:
Dipthongs in Ketsai are best analysed as vowel-semivowel combinations but are orthographised here using vowels that don't exist as separate sounds in the language. In this context i is ɪ and u is ʊ:
ai au ei eu oi ou

 

Phonotactics:
(C)(A)V(S,N) (C=any consonant, A=Approximant, V-Any Vowel, S-Stop, N=Nasal)
CAV(S,N) can only occur when the initial C is not an Approximant.

 

Type:
Agglutinative (though I suspect the descendant languages will be fusional or even isolating)

Stress:
The first syllable of a word is stressed. Monosyllabic words are not stressed unless they are the final word in a question.

Pitch:
A rising pitch generally occurs on all the penultimate syllable of polysyllabic words but not on monosyllabic words. The exception is the last word of a question where the rising pitch is on the final syllable and monosyllabic words are also have pitch.

Phonology:
Consonants:

 

	labio-dental	alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
stops	p pp b	t tt d		k kk g	q qq gh
fricatives	f	s ll		ch	sj
affricates
approximants		l		j	r
nasals	m	n

 

Notes: pp, tt, kk and qq are ejectives (pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis). Ll is a voiceless lateral fricative identical to the one orthographised that way in Welsh.

Vowels:

	front		central		back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
closed	i					u
mid	e					o
open			a

Notes: Alisi has only pure vowels.

 

Phonotactics:
(C)V – Only the first syllable of a word can be V.

Type:
Agglutinating

Stress:
Stress in polysyllabic words is on the first syllable. Monosyllabic words are unstressed except for the question indicator particle (more on this later).

Back tomorrow with Nominal Grammar!

As I mentioned here these people do not have a word for horse yet but checking my timeline I realised they will be encountering them soon so I thought I'd deal with them. The horses they'll be encountering at this point belong to a nomadic race who end up migrating into my people territory and are actually large ponies in size and probably conformation. To my people they look a lot like donkeys and are around the same size. It's no wonder they think of them as a sort of donkey and call them "small-eared donkey".

So how do we say that?

Ear is petapʰak (note: this only applies to lugholes not cereal ears) and so a small ear is petapʰrēpʰak. As an adjective that is petapʰrē.

So small-eared donkey would be rekklapʰak petapʰrē.

Of course that's a bit of a mouthful so it's entirely possible they'll just call them donkeys most of the time.

I wonder how long it'll be before they discover mules...

And it's all to do with donkeys - yes even the booze.

At the point in their history when they are speaking this language these people have only a few domesticated animals - the dog, the ferret, the goat, various poultry and the donkey - which is their primary beast of burden

Which probably explains why they get their verb for carry from their word for donkey.

Donkey - rekklapʰak gives rekklaot.

Their donkeys are similar in size to the Catalan Donkey which is about as large as donkeys get and comparable with a large pony. As of this point they haven't encountered horse but once they their name for horse will mean "small-eared donkey".

Now on to the new booze.

They obtain milk from both their goats and their donkeys. The goat's milk is usually made into yogurt and labneh (strained yogurt) while the donkey milk is fermented into a drink that's similar to Kumis (donkey's milk having a very similar make-up to mare's milk) which is the primary drink of children because it's lower in alcohol than mead or beer, is nutritious and safer than water.

The name for this drink is kisatago from kisapʰak meaning milk (they consider milk animate - in retrospect I think honey/blood should be amadpʰak not amaddzla). I'll sort out their words for goats, yogurt and labneh another day.

Note to self - get all these words into the lexicon pronto.

Today three or four animal verbs depending on how you look at it.

1. Ibex - bendapʰak. The verb that comes from this is bendaot which refers to climbing rocks.
2. Cormorant - tsretpʰak. The verb that comes from this is tsretot which refers to fishing.
3. Otter - trakapʰak gives the verb for swimming trakaot.

And the fourth which may not be an animal verb depending on your perspective?

4. Human - adekrapʰak. Interestingly even a mage is adekrapʰak rather than being shifted into the spirit class when refering to their species. This is because adekraago means god or goddess. The actual word for mage is adekrateago. The verb that comes from this is adekraot - which refers to speaking.

For aq challenge to produce one word a day I seem to be doing more than that. :-)

Let's start with the whoops.

I made a big cock-up with the water and land nouns gender. See the noun class suffixes in this post and compare them to the landscape nouns in this post and this post. I really don't think they think the landscape is abstract. Eka should be dzla in all of those (except for the name of the world which is correctly in the spirit gender). *facepalm* I'll fix that this weekend.

I also think that perhaps -te- infixed -eka words should also shift to -pʰak (mundane animate) as well. I've changed it for mundane dancer in the suffixes post but I may yet change it back as the -te- is in itself a reference to the fact this is a human. Feedback on this is welcome.


Two more Lexember words

More animal nouns and verbs - again the verbs mean similar things though the creatures are very different.

1. Bee - dzadzapʰak (yes that is supposed to be an onomatopœia). The verb that comes from this is dzadzaot which refers to preserving or otherwise preparing food ready to be stored as bees make their honey for winter.

2. Squirrel - yontadpʰak. The verb form is yontadot which means to store food up for the winter as squirrels hoard nuts. Yontadeka is their name for late summer/early autumn.

As always feedback is welcome.

Contents page for previous Opal Mask conlanging posts.

This language has a set of verbs my notes call animal verbs. These are verbs are animal nouns that have been verbed to describe an action people associate with that animal.

We actually have a few such verbs in English though they are fairly informal.

Examples: He wolfed his food, she squirreled away money, he weaseled his way in etc. I'm sure you can think of more.

Such words are a formal part of this conlang however. This gives me an advantage because it means one animal word I produce has the potential to give me a lot more words. Therefore I am going to be creating 31 word roots not 31 words for lexember and will hopefully give me quite a vocabulary by the end.

Words:

We're starting with the two main predators known to these people. The verbs that come off them are actually very similar as you will see.

1. Wolf -  Rempʰak (absolutive case, animate gender). When verbed this word means hunt as part of a group and the simple form is ramot. From this we get four more possible nouns: remago - magical group hunt, remeka - mundane group hunt, remteago - magical hunter (who hunts in a group), remteeka - mundane hunter (who hunts in a group).

2. Lynx - Kragpʰak (absolutive case, animate gender). When verbed this word means hunt alone and the simple form is kragot. Once again you can get 4 more possible nouns out of this by amending the suffixes just as above.

So that's my first two lexember word roots. Twelve words for the price of two - not bad.

A Contents Page for the Opal Mask Conlang so people can find the posts.

1. Introduction, sounds and phonotactics (LJ Version)
2. Word Order and Nominal Grammar (LJ Version)
3. Verbal Grammar (LJ Version)
4. The First Word (LJ Version)
5. Pronoun Grammar (LJ Version)
6. Sounds revisited (LJ Version)
7. Nouning that verb (LJ Version)
8. Class and Case Suffixes (LJ Version)
9. Some Nouns (LJ Version)
10. More Nouns (LJ Version)
11. Animal Verbs (LJ Version)
12. Booze! (LJ Version)

I've started with some nouns for natural places or objects. But first some of those infixes that go between root and gender.

Small: -pʰrē-
Large: -yad-
Artificial version of a magical thing: -avet-
Artificial version of a non-magical thing: -dzat-

Note: -avet- indicates that the thing itself is magic not the method of making it.

Water-related nouns:

Declined in the inanimate gender. For spirit gender just change the suffix (and infix in the case of well)

	Water	Sea	Lake	River
Ergative	ekraekaada	sretyadekaada	sretekaada	atrenekaada
Accusative	ekraekatso	sretyadekatso	sretekatso	atrenekatso
Absolutive	ekraeka	sretyadeka	sreteka	atreneka
Genitive	ekraekawat	sretyadekawat	sretekawat	atrenekawat
Dative	ekraekadyak	sretyadekadyak	sretekadyak	atrenekadyak
Vocative	-	-	-	-

	Stream	Waterfall	Spring	Well
Ergative	atrenpʰrēekaada	tsrētsrōkekaada	estrāekaada	estrādzatekaada
Accusative	atrenpʰrēekatso	tsrētsrōkekatso	estrāekatso	estrādzatekatso
Absolutive	atrenpʰrēeka	tsrētsrōkeka	estrāeka	estrādzateka
Genitive	atrenpʰrēekawat	tsrētsrōkekawat	estrāekawat	estrādzatekawat
Dative	atrenpʰrēekadyak	tsrētsrōkekadyak	estrāekadyak	estrādzatekadyak
Vocative	-	-	-	-

(sorry about the crazy overwide table - hopefully fixed now.

I have seven land related nouns as well but it's getting late here so I'll post them tomorrow.

But hey, actual words.

(I should do a sneeze post for this lot soon).

In preperation for working out words for Language one I thought it would be a good idea to have some idea of how my nouns are structured as well.

So since I had that convenient verb just sitting there I decided to noun it.

So blanot is the verb dance (Hey I don't have an infinitive form... hmm) so presumably the root blan relates to dancing.

So to noun the verb I need to work out how this becomes a noun.

A thing to consider is that in this culture there are magical and non-magical dances. Magical dances will belong in the spirit gender and non-magical dances in the abstract so this gives me a chance to work out the suffixes for both of them.

So lets say -ago is the suffix for the spirit gender and -eka for the abstract gender.

• The word for a magical dance would be blanago.
• The word for a non-magical dance for entertainment would be blaneka.

But there's another two words we can get from this root and those would be the words for dancer. Now the word for human being will be in the sprit gender but words for people who do things will fall in the class that best fits what they do. So where you could use a an -er affix in English there is a -te- infix in Language One.

• A person who channels magic by dancing is blanteago.
• A mundane dancer is blanteeka (Phonotatics note - te-eka  with a slight hiatus between te and eka rather than -teka. It is likely this will fuse in the daughter languages)

Hopefully this all works because it's time to think of some other nouns.

Opinions?

First Post here
Previous Post

So Pronouns.

Pronouns will of course decline for case (and gender/class where appropriate).

Personal Pronouns

• First Person Singular
• First Person Dual Inclusive (me and you)
• First Person Dual Inclusive (me and a third person)
• First Person Plural Inclusive (us and you)
• First Person Plural Exclusive (us not including you)
• Second Person Singular
• Second Person Dual
• Second Person Plural
• Third Person Singular
• Third Person Dual
• Third Person Plural

Not quite as baroque as Mountain's personal pronouns though the dual forms are an added twist though quite common in real human languages as are the exclusive and reflexive form.

Interrogative Pronouns

• Which
• What
• Where
• Who
• When
• How
• Why

Pretty much the same as English - not very imaginative I guess. Now do they have whence and whither as well I wonder? I suspect they would. Hmm...

Demonstrative Pronouns

• This
• That
• Yon (if there was ever an archaic word that needed resurrecting it's yon. That nearby and that over there is such a useful distinction)
• These
• Those
• Is there a plural of Yon? Anyway they have a pronoun for "those over there"

I'm not sure how they handle Indefinite Pronouns yet. I think they handle the qualifiers like adjectives. I haven't even thought about adjectives yet.

Tomorrow a bit of word making - Nouns and maybe a few more verbs.