Galactic_bird

Just to explain my thought process:

Cyare is (probably) an adjective describing “one who is loved/popular”

Cyar’ika is defined as meaning “darling, sweetheart”

Ad is a noun that refers to offspring (son/daughter/someone’s child)

Ad’ika is either something one uses to refer fondly to one’s child of any age, or a group of general adults familiarly, such as saying guy/dude

From this we can infer that the “ika” suffix actually has no bearing on age, only familiarity and fondness to the speaker. Now lets take a look at siblings!

Vod means sibling, mando’a doesn’t have gendered language if you wanna specify you HAVE to modify the noun to mean “masculine sibling” or “feminine sibling”

Ori means big/extreme/very.

Ori’vod, confirmed, means “older sibling”

I want to take this moment to point out how it would be kind of weird to have older and younger sibling modified in different ways, one with a prefix and one with a suffix.

Anyway the problem comes about because so far as i can tell from trundling through the internet, there is no confirmed word for “younger sibling” in mando’a. However, based on “ori’vod” i figure that taking the mando’a word for “small” and using it as a prefix would probably be the most likely option.

So, Kih’vod!

Also, possibly of important note, we do see in at least one mando’a phrase “ori” and “kih” being directly contrasted. “Ori'buyce, kih'kovid” directly translates to “big-helmet, small-head”, meaning someone with an over inflated sense of authority. This puts “ori” and “kih” as opposites, not just in meaning but possibly culturally as well, in the language.

Tl;Dr: vod’ika doesnt mean little brother its just an affectionate way of referring to one’s sibling

There is a bit of a misunderstanding in OP's otherwise excellent take which is rooted in the fact that in reality, linguistic elements like words and affixes don't necessarily have to have one meaning and one meaning only. There are ranges of meaning, and almost always context-dependent nuances. So, yeah, diminutives are both.

For some reason, as a Czech speaker, I keep gravitating towards verb prefixes as an example against English, so, have some verb prefixes. Take the Czech verb "vyskočit". It can mean both "to jump up" and "to jump out of" (where you need to add out of what). The prefix "po-" has a pretty mysterious very wide range of meanings: "poskočit" means "to jump a little", while "položit" means "to lay down", and "popsat" can, even more confusingly, mean both "to describe" and "to write all over an object"...

... I hope that suffices to completely disabuse you of the notion that living languages are logical and systematic. 😆 Obviously Mando'a is a conlang, but it's supposed to be a living language in-universe, so let's treat it that way. Besides, I think it's actually consistent with the stated nature of Mando'a. Living languages generally tend to be the above way because it's efficient; Mando'a is said to be a very efficient language that tends to cram as much meaning as possible into as few words as possible.

Diminutives in Czech basically have both functions: "little", and "affectionate". Sometimes it's pretty funny when someone uses them very much in the "affectionate / being friendly" way but everyone listening sees clearly that it also implies "little", which wasn't necessarily the intention. ETA: I don't mean just when referring to other people in the conversation. This is something Czech sometimes does that Mando'a probably doesn't - putting various nouns in diminutive form just to denote that this conversation is happening in a friendly, "I'm kindly disposed towards the world" mode. However, this example is still relevant in that it illustrates the point that diminutives do both.

And because it does imply "little" and that, in relation to people, by extension implies "younger", diminutives can also sometimes come across as patronising. As an adult, I tend to dislike being called the extra-diminutive version of my first name, except when it's someone I'm close with, because it does imply "you're much younger than me and have no clue".

So, to get back to sibling relations... Bratr = brother; bratříček = little brother. Most likely / usually affectionate.

If you want to focus on the info that a person is a younger brother, you will say "mladší bratr" = "younger brother" - so perhaps this strictly factual sense is where "kih'vod" might come in in Mando'a.

But "bratříček" absolutely very much implies younger brother in most cases, since that's the most likely reason for the brother to be little to begin with. Except for when you'd be teasing someone affectionately with that diminutive - or when you're being intentionally patronising / insulting.

And this range of nuances is exactly where English fails you, because in Czech you can fit all of them into one word, whereas in English you can't; English often relies even more on context, including surrounding words. But then you still can't fit more meanings in like that: "dear" and "little" are two different words. You can be insulting with "dear brother", but you can't fit in the additional patronising angle so easily. I assume it's even harder to be casually insulting that way with "little brother" because you cannot fit the "not literal but affectionate except actually it's an intentionally insulting irony" option into it. A diminutive can be all of the above at once, and various meanings will prevail depending on context. While Mando'a is, generally, quite a lot like English in that it tends to also be analytical in its grammar structures, in the existence of an established and clearly used system of diminutives it really is more like Czech.

So I always saw "-'ika" much the same way, with the "affectionate" meaning being the prevalent one but the "little" and, with people, implied "younger", meaning still very much present. In fact, I've long wondered if "-'ika" isn't actually, etymologically, related to "kih". Because switching sounds around actualy does sometimes happen in language evolution...

I hope this made sense. 😅

Re: ad'ike as applied to adults: Funnily enough, this ALSO has an equivalent in Czech. Specifically, in Moravian dialects where the word "děcka", "kids", a sort of diminutive of "děti" = "children", gets applied in a way similar to "y'all, guys" (if used as an appellation), or, roughly speaking, "people you hang out with" - even if you're all 60+. Normal to Moravians. Very confusing to uninitiated Bohemians who do not have this feature in their dialects and only see the literal meaning of "kids".

Although in this case Mando'a has s further twist where "ad" seems to mean, at least in compound words, just as much "person" as it does "child". Which seems to be a bit of a derived meaning, maybe with the logic of "everyone is someone's child" behind it. Starting with "Mando'ad".

You are stuck as a soldier in this historical war

(this is a magical universe where people who wouldn't usually be able to fight would. so you can all suffer.)

there are a lot of stupid red-pilled conspiracy theorists who are trying to encourage people to not fill out the census as a form of 'protest' against prime minister mark carney (which is dumb af because carney has nothing to do with the census and also it's illegal to not fill it out and you'll be fined $500 if you don't)

@everything-you-feel-is-real I know by tumblr tradition that I'm to say "impossible, my posts never blow up like that," or "please don't do this to me."

Was he like this ?:

I was thinking about how like 70% of Blutch and Chesterfield's missions are failed or they fail their way to success, and watching them do their tomfoolery and shenanigans lowkey feels like watching a trainwreck?? Sometimes?😭

Except one that has goofy cartoon sound effects over it and the occasional historical fact thrown at us. So i had this VISION for what has got to be the stupidest edit i've ever done

Behold:

The average Tuniques Bleues reading experience (???):