#catlang

littermate. or litter. it depends.

i don't use kinship words unless i feel there's no other way to convey what i want, because i think it unnecessarily raises the cognitive load of my readers. maara is one that i struggle to go without, because there's no other way to say the cats you train with who are a family unit, not one that conveys this is a normal established practice. sruae means littermate, or a whole litter (i've thought more about cat grammar then probably anyone else who makes up words for fics btw, i have a phonological system and i keep meaning to make a page on conworkshop for this stuff, and cats don't have any number markings on nouns, so a word like sruae can mean both a whole litter and a single littermate), and i've used it in a few places.

i think i mostly use it with squirrelflight and leafpool, to convey their closeness.

maach is a generic word for kin, and also for siblings across litters. it used to just be the latter, and sein used to mean kin, but sein fell out of usage.

i have other words, but i haven't written fics where impressing the specific relationships between cats is important. mother and father, occasionally denmother, typically suffice.

F. Female cats and “intelligent” animals

M. Male cats and “intelligent” animals

N. Nonbinary cats and “intelligent” animals

P. Prey animals

L. Bugs, Plants, Fungi

A. Animate (fire, wind, etc.)

I. Inanimate (stone, pool, etc.)

Each of these classes has its own associated noun endings, definite and indefinite articles, and pronoun.

In human languages, the first colors to be named are generally light/white and black/dark, followed by a name for red/orange/yellow, and then one for green/blue, and the rest fill in from there. I try to write my cats as partially colorblind - for the sake of convenience, they can differentiate between red and green, but blue and yellow are much stronger and clearer.

So the first four colors are

nii - light

run - dark

weia - yellow

mul - blue

These are followed by black and white, which originally were light/dark combined with intensifiers, but evolved to become their own proper words. Gray comes in around here too.

manii - white

rai - black

nius - gray

Red and green derived from “warm” and “cool” gray, brown is derived from the word for mud, and the color covering the pink/cream range essentially means “flesh-toned”. These are fairly recent and their roots are evident.

taanius - red/orange

lunius - green

murnu - brown

nuriin - pink/cream

The last few are more novel color names that are nonetheless considered to be complete colors of their own. Golden is roughly “sun-color”, silver comes from the word for metal, hazel derived from “bush” and is used specifically in reference to eye color, and tawny/copper and amber are “warm brown” and “dark yellow”, respectively.

yeiyiumi - golden

tenge - silver

munit - hazel

taamurnu - tawny/copper

runweia - amber

My Catspeak is an agglutinative language, meaning words and their descriptors stick together to form mega-words. Adjectives get combined as suffixes to their respective nouns, and adverbs combine to verbs as suffixes. However, each subject and the verb are always separate words, and articles remain separate. Adjective order is the same as English because messing with that seems unnecessarily complicated.

For example, here is how the sentence “The tall gray tabby cat swiftly caught a small mouse.” would be translated.

Raa aiunanairaniuster rreteshmentei nai nirininiitu.

Raa     aiuna-naira-nius-ter    rretesh-mentei  nai   nirini-niitu.

The     cat   tall  gray tabby     caught  swiftly    a   mouse small

Now the weird bit, word order is dictated by the relative nouns. If you’ve just got one, as in “the cat eats”, then the verb comes afterward. Easy enough. But if you have two, “the cat eats the mouse”, then the noun of “higher ranking” must come first, and the verb changes form to indicate it. It works more or less like this:

The cat bites the mouse.

Raa aiuna tse nii nirini.

The mouse bites the cat -> The cat is bitten by the mouse.

Raa aiuna tseihh nii nirini.

Here, -ihh is more or less marking the passive voice. Ok, not too bad, but then we have to deal with indirect objects. I find the direct/indirect object terminology really confusing, so we’re instead going to use Donor (D), Recipient (R), and Theme (T) to mark things.

The leader (D) gives the cat (R) a mouse (T). 

Raa liauna (D) pel raa aiuna (R) nai nirini (T).

The cat (D) gives the leader (R) a mouse (T).

Raa liauna (R) pelihh raa aiuna (D) nai nirini (T).

Since the theme is at the end here, we don’t need any extra markers. Usually the theme will be some sort of prey or inanimate object, so will naturally be at the end. However, if we have a weird situation:

A mouse (D) gives the cat (R) the leader (T).

Utraa liauna (T) raa aiuna (R) pelihh nai nirini (D).

The verb is moved to be between the donor and recipient. Since the donor comes after the recipient, we have pelihh, and since the theme isn’t at the end, its article gets the prefix ut-. This summarizes the rules for any other permutation.

The sound inventory is mostly the same as last time, so I’ll be quick about it. The consonants are m, n, ng, t, s, sh, h, hh, r, rr, l, w, and y. Most of those should be self-explanatory. 

“ng” is the same as in bring, but while English only allows this sound at the end of syllables, in catspeak (and many human languages), it can appear anywhere. “hh” is the velar fricative, equivalent to the french/spanish j, but in some dialects it’s a longer/more emphatic h so that’s fine too. “rr” is a rolled r.

Alright! One thing I was considering as I did these - catspeak uses the equivalent of and, ai, very sparingly. Here it’s only seen in “silver tabby and white”, because those all become one word, so “and” can’t be indicated by a pause. Generally, it isn’t used unless the sentence is unclear without it.

Also, because nouns used for cats can be gendered, we have words for dam and sire that imply gender based on their endings! 

Elknose - A large, light brown tabby tom with white paws and muzzle, and amber eyes. Father(sire) of Sparrowwhisker, Sparkfur, and Stormsong.

Urrunute - Se aiunemaitsauniimurnuter trir rinamimanii, tsimamanii, itiamirunweia. Leie ru Siutsitriinama, Shtahulte, Raumaaraiema.

Iceheart - A longhaired white tom with pale tortoiseshell patches and blue eyes. Father(dam) of Sparrowwhisker, Sparkfur, and Stormsong.

Isitehrauma - Se aiunehrulumanii trir mateneiushruyumi, itiamimul. Miune ru Siutsitriinama, Shtahulte, Raumaaraiema.

Sparrowwhisker - A longhaired brown tabby tom with a white underside and yellow eyes.

Siutsitriinama - Se aiunehrulumurnuter trir mrunamamanii, itiamiweia.

Sparkfur - A speckled tortoiseshell molly with white paws, chest, and tailtip, and orange eyes.

Shtahulte - Lu aiunulatiiruyumi trir rinamimanii, rraumamanii, neniatmamanii, itiamitaanius.

Stormsong - A patched silver tabby and white cat with blue eyes.

First note, pronouns don’t have any kind of case distinction. This basically means that he and him are one word, and so on. Possessives are all indicated by adding the suffix r. (So for example, if he = se, his = ser.)

-rre or -arre are the suffixes for collective nouns regarding anything in the F, M, and N classes. For example, if you want to talk about all the leaders, you would use liaunarre. It’s essentially a way to avoid the issue of picking a gendered suffix for a mixed group. If the group you’re talking about specifically corresponds to one category, you would use the normal plural for that class.

As for the rest of the pronouns:

ilu/ire/isa - I, conveniently encodes the third person pronoun.

irrau - we. 

naa - you. For extra politeness, naalu/naare/naasa may be used.

naas - plural you, aka y’all. Also naarre depending on dialect.

hhes - they, regarding a group in the F,M,N classes.

heir - they, regarding a group in the P,L,A,I classes.