Becka's Notes

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.