Becka's Notes

This is my first attempt at the personal pronouns. I'm not to sure if they work (I think they may be a little similar) so feedback is welcome. These are the roots. First person never inflects for noun class and second and third only in formal situations. They do inflect for case as appropriate.

First Person Singular - Ke
First Person Dual Inclusive (me and you) - Kela
First Person Dual Exclusive (me and a third person) - Kedo
First Person Plural Inclusive (us and you) - Kema
First Person Plural Exclusive (us not including you) - Kede
Second Person Singular - La
Second Person Dual - Ledo
Second Person Plural - Lot
Third Person Singular - Dom
Third Person Dual - Dabo
Third Person Plural - Det

Rather sleepy so more tomorrow. Does anyone have any thoughts on woords they'd like.

As I mentioned in this post many (but not all) comparatives such as big and small  are handled by adjectives in English are infixes in this language (in much the same way that we sometimes use -let as a suffix to indicate smallness in English)

Other adjectives are seperate words and appear immediately after the noun and behave very like nouns but not exactly. They decline for case (to match the noun they describe) but do not take a gender (which I suppose makes them a noun class as well).

That decided we can do our first five colours.

Black - kratak (also means dark)
White - ekra (also means clear)
Red - amad
Green - yonet
Yellow - orem

No, it's not a coincidence that ekra is the root of water and amad is the root of blood/honey they name the colours by association. So these words might literally be seen as the adjective class forms of night (kratakago), water, blood/honey, leaf (yonetpʰak) and ripe grain (orempʰak) respectively.

Yes they think of night as spirit, they can't touch it but its certainly real so it makes sense to them.

Well numbers are words and they are most certainly commonplace.

1. an
2. ba
3. zeg
4. mot
5. ved

When counting without naming the thing being counted numbers take its noun class. eg: If you were counting sheep it would be anpʰak, bapʰak, zegpʰak etc. If the thing is named then the number is treated as an adjective (and I'm not sure how I'm handling adjectives yet - I'll decide this weekend).

Hope this all makes sense.

Opal Mask Conlanging Contents Page

So I was musing on Twitter about what I should make my Lexember words for today and aldersprig suggested beer. At which point I had to stop and decide if my conculture has beer. Basic answer - they have grain crops so probably. They certainly have mead/ honey wine.

So then words for beer and mead...

Next consideration is what gender would they be? Beverages are inanimate but I can't help thinking my people wouldn't see them that way. As I thought about this I realised something - even though there is real magic in their world they are not 100% clear on what is and isn't magic and consider the psychoactive effects of alcohol to be sacred/magical.  Both words therefore belong to the spirit gender.

1. Beer - dzotago. Dzotdzla is a sort of twice-baked hard bread primarily used for brewing but also as a winter ration due to its keeping properties.
2. Mead - amadago. Interestingly, since they associate honey with blood in a very literal way, this means that amadago is also their word for divine blood (and also the blood of magicians). Amaddzla is ordinary unfermented honey (and also the blood of non-magical humans and creatures). This suggests to me that the honey they are most familiar with is honeydew honey which is darker than normal honey and appears amber-red.

So two words with a small side order of worldbuilding.

Comments? Suggestions for other words I can create this month.

So thanks to aldersprig and haikujaguar I have learned of this thing known as Lexember. It's a conlanging challenge to create one new word for your conlang everyday for the month of December.

I wanted to get back to working on The Opal Mask conlang again now NaNoWriMo is over (why yes, I won again :-D) and this seems like a good way to do it.

I'll do the first post tonight and will do two words tonight and tomorrow to catch up.

Does anyone have any words they would like to see?

A/N: This takes place in the same world and rough geographic area as "The Opal Mask" - my planned NaNoWriMo for this year - but is about a millenium earlier. I hope you enjoy it. Comments welcome as always.

---

Title: Shattering
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 707 words

The air pressed oppressively against Ranet's skin and there was a hollow, metallic feeling in his stomach as he made the month's full moon devotions on the hill above his people's village. The dark sensation had been growing for months and he knew from talking to the village head and hearth keeper that the other magic users sensed it too.

Tonight, however, it was worse than ever. He found himself stammering as he mouthed the ritual phrases and poured out honey wine onto the white rock for his patron deity.

He was just struggling through the last prayer when the gnawing hollowness contracted painfully into a cold lead ball of panic he could not explain. It was replaced a moment later by an equally inexplicable determination.

He shook his head to clear it and looked around, trying to find the source of these emotions since they were clearly not his own. A whispered spell revealed there was no other human in range to affect him, so he turned his eyes unwillingly to the sky. It had to be his patron, but what could discomfort a goddess so?

So he was looking straight at the moon when it shattered.

***

Ranet groaned and tried the push away the hand that was shaking him gently. His head was on fire and he could smell the sharp scent of vomit he was sure was his own.

"Ranet, I'm sorry. I know it hurts, but you have to wake up." Whoever was shaking him it sounded like she was in as much pain as he was. Ranet couldn't place her voice, but it was familiar somehow. "Ranet, wake up, please!"

He opened his eyes hesitantly, then gasped as the sight of the burning sky reminded him of what he'd seen. He tried to sit up but his stomach rebelled at the sudden movement and he retched, depositing what little was left in his stomach into the tattered silver skirts of the one who'd woken him.

Wait? Silver?

Ranet's gasped in a breath as his retching stopped and he regained enough control to look up into the pained eyes of his goddess Enled. He scrambled to his knees, breathing deeply to suppress the nausea, but as he went to prostrate himself she stopped him with a gentle hand a shake of her head. There was blood matted in her silver hair and leaking from cuts in her shimmering skin.

"It wasn't your fault, my priest, and we don't have time for ceremony. I only wish having one of my priests vomiting on me was the worst thing that had happened to me today. You have to get your people to high ground. The sea is coming. Otraya is doing his best to slow it so you have time, but he can't stop it."

The moon had shattered? The sea god couldn't control the sea? He had dozens of questions but what came out of his mouth encompassed them all. "What?"

"The gods can affect the wind but they cannot stop it," Enled said. It was a common saying, a platitude when unfair things happened, but he got the point. He climbed cautiously to his feet, wishing the headache would abate so he could think straight.

"How long?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "We're running right at the edge of our power just to keep this world liveable after this. But it should be enough if you-" She collapsed in a heap at his feet.

Ranet stared at the unconscious goddess. Should he leave her there? Would the other gods come for her if he did, if they were dealing with whatever had happened? Would she recover on her own if they didn't? He hesitated for a long moment, then scooped her into his arms gasping at her unexpected lightness. He doubted the hearth keeper would be able to remedy the ills of an injured goddess but he wouldn't leave a human in that state so he certainly couldn't abandon his goddess. And her presence – even unconscious – was more likely to make people listen to him when he told them to flee.

He shifted her weight in his arms and raced down towards the village to raise the alarm.

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.

Post 1 here
Previous Post here

Today I'm thinking about my moods... My grammatical moods that is. I'm also thinking about tense and aspects. Yes, it's verb grammar day.

We'll start with tenses because they're as simple as can be. Just the basic three - Past, Present and Future.

Aspects:

• Simple  (I eat)
• Perfect (I have eaten)
• Habitual (I eat every day)
• Progressive (I am eating)

Moods:

• Indicative
• Subjunctive  (I think, anyway. It's kind of useful but gives me panic attacks)
• Opative
• Imperitive 
• There is also a negative form for each mood made with another affix.

So, there we go. Not to long.

Pronouns are next and I'll actually make some vocabulary this weekend.