#constructedlanguages

Original (it does break my heart that this isn’t my original work, but, at least it’s available for anybody)

yes / no:  iai/mele hello: Haya welcome:  Haya-seref goodbye:  Ya'li-Alari good morning: Fylnel Serefa good evening: Ilne'me-Isther Serefa good night:  Isther Serefa excuse me: Inhil please: Ahayel thank you:  Alarith'Serefa l'hay Nanhar no problem: Mele haervi how: Ameri'fin which: Kei'fin what: Eï'fin where: Tir'fin who: Nanrel'fin why: Riah'fin when: Aethael'fin i am: Ailo Nanhir you are: Ailet Nanhar he/she is: Aila Nanhif/Nanhê they are: Ailoth Nanhirth you are:  Aileth Nanharth we are: Ailath Nanheith sell: Erhanim buy: Sarnim trade: Aewirim steal:  work: Kirnim have: Melim give: Waelim say: Nevalim get: Vaelianim make: Laherim help: Kelim know: Etherim take: Lanterim see: Enarim hear: Anerim

father: Ehelif mother: Amirê brother: Illynif sister: Illynê son: Aemirif daughter: Aemirê friend: Illynif enemy: Irstas courage: Ayi'lore fear: Ûmerem hate: Yelthir anger: Thalemâr happy:  Ri'myl-ayasel pride: Ayantheri shame: Eranther love: Sen'heil young: Nyi'llwy old:  large:  Raemill small:  Inle'me beauty: Lederi ugly:  good: Serefa bad: Gerthreb clever: Ätherae stupid: Mifarli strong: Tirianel weak: Därhay

So, here’s me collecting a basic vocabulary for the primary language of the Denashi Confederacy. I’ve never made a language before, and I don’t know shit about it, but, I wanted to gather the words I’m gonna start with somewhere.

Either way, if you have any thoughts in the matter, feel free to share them with me.

I’ve been writing journey-stories in Rílin. It is a genre of poem developed by the Ríli people as many of them were driven into exile by the Tosi invaders that ravaged the northern forests of Izoi. I want to create a book of these poems. They are written in Rílin and translated into English as accurately as possible. I include both Rílin orthography and romanization too. These are examples of poems I wrote earlier this year. I’m working on other genres of Rílin poetry too.

A bit ago I introduced some interrogative, indefinite, and negative pronouns for Ori. Related to these forms are relative pronouns, which are used to create relative clauses. 

In Ori, relative clauses are head-initial, despite the generally left-branching (head-final) nature of Ori. This means that the head of the relative clause (the main noun) is placed before the relative clause (as it is done in French or English, for example). 

The relative pronouns are basically all formed from verions of the interrogative pronouns, but with an additional suffix of -a at the end of the word. 

nalar - ‘who?’ --> nalara ‘who’ (rel.) 

nabel - ‘what?’ --> nabela ‘which, that’

nanye - ‘where?’ --> nanya ‘where’ (rel.)

nasya - ‘why?’ --> nasya ‘for which reason’ (rel.)

natin - ‘how?’ --> natina ‘in which way’ (rel.)

nalin - ‘when?’ --> nalina ‘when’ (rel.)

The trisyllable forms of the relative pronouns (nalara, nabela, natina, and nalina) also have short forms that are used more commonly in eveyday speech. 

nalara --> na-

nabela --> naba-

natina --> nata-

nalina --> nana-

~

Relative pronouns take the same case that the shared noun uses in the embedded clause. In the below sentence, 

Tu-hema-s na-s tet lyen-besorpa-tan nimas rya

def.art-woman-nom who-nom makes def.art-clay.pots-acc mother-nom be

‘The woman who makes the clay pots is a mother’

-

Lye-besorpa-s naba-t elucu-m cyan truma-s rya. 

def.art-clay.pot-acc which-acc choose-1sg pst.perf red-nom be

‘The clay pot that I chose is red’

-

nanya, nasya, nalina/nana are all often used without a case marker at all.

Ti-trente-cya nanya ti-hiluma-pya peli-t cyan culim-bru alinda. 

def.art-temple-loc where def.art-priestess-acc find-2sg pst.perf travel-1pl tomorrow

Not a nezeletŭ (journey-story) per se, but a nature-based poem in Rílin. Written when I was in Anchorage, Alaska, watching sea birds wheel in the air by the water. Some were gathering nesting materials near my bench.

I wanted to develop the language of the Orikrindians. I knew their language was called Ori, but I wasn't inspired to flesh it out until recently.

~

Ori is a nominative/accusative language (like Indo-European languages tend to be). It uses suffixes to indicate different persons/numbers on verbs. There are three different ways to conjugate verbs, depending on the what sound the verbs stem ends with.

The first conjugation includes verbs ending in -i as well as all alveolar sounds (-t, -d, -n, -s, -l, -r). Some of these verbs are below:

meri 'dance'

boltin 'keep, save, guard'

culi 'avoid, go away'

tistit 'whisper'

pyalir 'see via divine gift'

sullin 'flow'

The first conjugation endings determine the subject of the verb. For the first conjugation, the endings are:

-m (1st person singular) meri-m 'I dance'

-t (2nd person singular) meri-t 'you dance'

-r (3rd person singular, animate/inanimate) meri-r 'he/she/it dances'

-l (3rd person singular, celestial/abstract) meri-l 'he/she/it dances'

-bra (1st person plural) meri-bra 'we dance'

-dra (2nd person plural) meri-dra 'you all dance'

-nda (3rd person plural, animate/inanimate) meri-nda 'they dance'

-lta (3rd person plural, celestial/abstract) meri-lta 'they dance'

You will notice that in the 3rd person, there are different forms, one for "animate/inanimate" nouns and the other for "celestial/abstract" nouns. These are different forms that agree with different noun cases that Ori has. These are like grammatical genders in some languages (e.g. Spanish, French, German) but come in four varieties: animate class includes animals and people (generally), while inanimate includes any type of inanimate object or thing. However, the other classes complicate things a bit. Abstract class includes most concepts that have no direct physical manifestation (necessarily): death, life, love, enjoyment, resentment, disdain, joy, etc. Celestial is a somewhat special class. It includes things that naturally exist "up" or in the sky, such as: the sun, moon, clouds, stars, the sky itself, wind, light, darkness, planets, etc. But it also includes anything and anyone related to spirituality or religion--anything sacred as well. Such things as: priests, temples, gods, altars, devotions, faith (note this is included here and not in abstract), holy garments, holy places, chants, hymns, sacred objects, etc. These nouns are grammatical categories, lexically determined, but they have semantic origins.

So with verbs, you have to make sure the verb form agrees with the class of the noun you are using. So if you want to say "the priest is dancing" vs "the queen is dancing", the form of "dance" is different: ti-celunyas merilvs. tu-syalanyas merir. Note the difference of the forms of meri'dance'

Examples of nouns in the animate class:

etyu 'bird'

lyuha 'dog'

ori 'person'

cama 'horse'

syalanya 'queen'

porin 'shepherd'

Inanimate nouns:

bu 'house'

kapya 'desk'

pyen 'blade'

Abstract nouns:

gerum 'death'

sesta 'life'

hustu 'trust'

Celestial nouns:

cul ‘moon’

aster ‘light’

tellen ‘star’

lya ‘sun’

yutar ‘cloud’

roru ‘darkness’

hilacul ‘sky’

belta ‘wind; air; breath’

comul ‘spirit’

nelca ‘deity’

galacil ‘smoke’

apya ‘fire’

~*~

I wanted to give some more detailed context behind the nezeletŭn (pronunciation in IPA: /nɛ’zɛlɛtɯn/). These poems are meant to be from the perspective of Rílin people who have been forced from their homes in northern Izoi by the invading armies of the Tosi Empire.

Prior to this invasion, the Ríli people had been highly isolationist and pacifist. They had been largely protected from any outsiders by the venomous flora and fauna of the deep forests they lived in, but they were unprepared for the might and determination of the Tosi, whose large Empire was running short of natural resources that the Rílin forests were rich in—especially wood and mineral deposits.

The invasion of the Tosi ended up causing a rift in Rílin society. Some Ríli stayed in their traditional lands and formed a defensive militia to engage the Tosi in guerilla-style warfare. Despite the military might and physical size and strength of the Tosi, these Ríli had the advantage of deep knowledge of the forest—also the venomous plants and animals of the woods were deadly to the Tosi, while harmless to the Ríli. These Ríli who stayed and fought became known as the Sunuli. They drifted from their strictly pacifist religion (based on the goddess Ifinshe) and cultural mores. They formed an alliance with the Gotevians, who aided them with resources while they fought the Tosi.

Another group of Ríli, known henceforth as the Lunauli, decided to move north, into the deeper and harsher recess of the forest around a great mountain, beyond where the Tosi were willing to penetrate. They settled around this mountain and eventually even built underground settlements within and under the mountain and its foothills. They remained here, kept their tenets of isolation and pacifism, and slowly their society began to change. Whereas the Ríli had been egalitarian for centuries and had democratically elected leaders, the Lunauli began to reinstate ancient hierarchies and a much more strictly stratified society, instituting a monarchy. Linguistic changes began to appear as well; the Lunauli reverted to an older style of speech, which had been abandoned for a while. This style was based largely on verbal endings and pronouns that indicate different degrees of formality (think French tuvsvousbut with three degrees instead of two and application to all persons/numbers on verbs). The Sunuli dialect, by contrast, gained a number of Gotevian loanwords from their new allies, especially words for different technology  from Keta (the hemisphere where the Gotevians live) and material culture from Keta (terms like saŕe from Got. sazdem ‘razor’, mena from Got. mena ‘lute’ and many others).

The writers of the nezeletŭn (journey-stories) are neither Sunuli nor Lunauli, for these poems were mostly written before either term came to be used. They were just Ríli, suffering and grieving for their lost family members and occupied or destroyed homes. They were written as they wandered the wild lands to the north, as much of Rílin land was not actively settled at the time of the invasion, and settlements and cities were far apart.

Hopefully this gives a little context and maybe some more meaning to the journey-stories as I continue to write and share them.

Image here is the kind of flower I always envisaged as the national symbol of Orikrindia.

Last time I showed you some Ori verbs and how they are conjugated. I mentioned that there are essentially three ways to conjugate verbs (1st, 2nd, 3rd conjugations), and showed you some verbs from the 1st class of those verbs. I kind of lied, as it is not quite as simple as that sounds. Despite all verbs ending in -i and in all alveolars being grouped as one class, there is a little variation inside the conjugation, depending what the individual sound in the verb stem ends in. I go into a little more detail for the 1st conjugation below. Note some of the differences marked in bold where there are some variations in the stems and endings.

Verbs in –i

meri-m ‘I dance’

meri-t ‘you dance’

meri-r ‘he/she/it dances’ (animate, inanimate)

meri-l ‘he/she/it dances’ (celestial, abstract)

meri-bra ‘we dance’

meri-dra ‘you all dance’

meri-nda ‘they (an, inan) dance’

meri-lta ‘they (cel, abs) dance’

–

Verbs in -n

Note difference in some endings/stems.

boltin-im ‘I keep’

boltin-it ‘you keep’

boltin-ir ‘he/she/it keeps’ (an, inan)

boltinil ‘he/she/it keeps’ (celestial, abstract)

boltim-bra ‘we keep’

boltin-dra ‘you all keep’

boltin-da ‘they keep’  (an, inan)

bolti-lta ‘they keep’ (cel, abs)

Verbs in -l

Note changed suffix:

potil-im ‘I think’

potil-it ‘you think’

potil-ir ‘he/she/it thinks’ (an, inan)

potil-il ‘he/she/it thinks’ (cel, abs)

potil-bra ‘we think’

potil-dra ‘you all think’

potil-nda ‘they think’ (an, inan)

potil-ta ‘they think’ (cel, abs)

Verbs in -s

Note devoicing on plural endings with verbs ending with unvoiced consonants

cetis-im ‘I cut’

cetis-it ‘you cut’

cetis-ir ‘he/she/it cuts’ (an, inan)

cetis-il ‘he/she/it cuts’ (cel, abs)

cetis-pra ‘we cut’

cetis-tra ‘you all cut’

cetis-ta ‘they cut’ (an, inan)

cetis-ta ‘they cut’ (cel, abs)

Verbs in -d

Note some stem changes.

trellid-im ‘I walk’

trellid-it ‘you walk’

trellid-ir ‘he/she/it walks’ (an, inan)

trellid-il ‘he/she/it walks’ (cel, abs)

trellim-bra ‘we walk’

trellid-ra ‘you all walk’

trelli-nda ‘they walk’ (an, inan)

trelli-lta ‘they walk’ (cel, abs)

Verbs in -t

Note differences in stems and endings.

grasit-im ‘I scrape’

grasit-it ‘you scrape’

grasit-ir ‘he/she/it scrapes’ (an, inan)

grasit-il ‘he/she/it scrapes’ (cel, abs)

grasi-pra ‘we scrape’

grasi-tra ‘you all scrape’

grasi-nda ‘they scrape’ (an, inan)

grasi-lta ‘they scrape’ (cel, abs)

Verbs in -r

Note difference in some stem forms.

lar-im ‘I laugh’

lar-it ‘you laugh’

lar-ir ‘he/she/it laughs’ (an, inan)

lar-il ‘he/she/it laughs’ (cel, abs)

lar-bra ‘we laugh’

lar-dra ‘you all laugh’

lar-nda ‘they laugh’ (an, inan)

la-lta ‘they laugh’ (cel, abs)

~

Alright, that’s it for the regular 1st conjugation verbs. Many of the variations in these verbs are mirrored elsewhere and are probably results of semi-regular morphophonotactic rules…but I’ll need to figure out exactly what those appear to be later on.

Another Ori topic I wanted to talk about are definite articles. Ori has them. It doesn’t have any other articles (like indefinite artcles, e.g. English ‘a/an’, French ‘un(e), des’). These definite articles are roughly equivalent to English ‘the’, but the usage varies in Ori and may not always align with English usage (i.e. you might see an Ori article where you wouldn’t in English (or whatever other language), and vice versa). In Ori, the definite articles are proclitics. They are written with a hypen before the noun, and like other things in Ori, they have to agree with the noun class of the noun. See some examples below.

tu-syalanyas ‘the queen’ (animate, singular)

tun-hilunyan ‘the merchats’ (animate, plural)

ti-yutar ‘the cloud’ (celestial, singular)

tin-celunyas ‘the priests’ (celestial, plural)

lye-buni ‘[of] the house’ (inanimate, singular)

lyen-kapyan ‘the desks’ (inanimate, plural)

co-sestas ‘the life’ (abstract, singular)

con-gerumin ‘the deaths’ (abstract, plural)

As you can see, the plural forms of these articles are made by adding -n to the end. You can get a little preview of some of the case system for nouns too in the above examples….soon we’ll see the rest!

Aeniith itself is a planet—a cohesive world in a fictional universe. The basic layout of Aeniith includes two lateral hemispheres. Just as the concepts of “eastern” and “western” hemispheres of the Earth are based on an arbitrarily drawn line, so are the two hemispheres of Aeniith. The “western” hemisphere is known as Keta. This includes two major continents, Quarios in the south, and Ei in the north. The name Keta means “cradle” in Gotêvi (also known as Gotevian or Gotêvinur), one of the languages spoken in Quarios and Ei.

The “eastern” hemisphere is known as Elta. Elta includes the continents Izoi, Naga, Arcuna, and Hizai.

Throughout Aeniith, there are various nations, countries, and cultural groups of different species of humanoids. The main species are as follows:

Amelae (singular Amel): these are the most physiologically “human-like” of the intelligent humanoids species of Aeniith. They live in Keta and Elta. They are also the most internally diverse species with regard to physical differences. Well known nations of Amelae are Quarios and Ei (made up of the Gotêvi and Lomi cultures), Orikrindia (the island east of Ei), the Arshi of Arcuna, and the Teg of southern Quarios.

Zuna: the Zuna live primarily in Elta, and are notable for being larger than most other species. They have higher sexual dimorphism, with the females typically being larger than the males. Well known nations of Zuna are the Tosi, Selupa, and Karkin.

Ríli (singular Ríla): these are some of the smallest of the peoples of Aeniith. They have greyish skin and typically stand 145-160cm tall. They are native to Izoi in Elta

Bae (singular Baa): the Bae are the most unique from the other species of Aeniith. They have physiological systems that none of the other peoples share, such as a separate circulatory system, low level telepathic abilities, the ability to absorb electricity from the nervous systems of others species into their own, very long life spans (800-3000 years, depending on the subspecies) and six fingers on each hand. They are unable to successfully breed with any other groups beyond their own. Because of their marked physiology, there are many theories across Aeniith as to their origins, although none has been proven. They are divided into several subspecies: Mei, Nonil, Megana, Quiluma, and Nirfai, which tend to have self-contained cultural groups. They live primarily in Keta, but some groups have traveled to Elta, most notably the Clussimeth (sometimes called “vampires” of the Bae), an offshoot of Nirfai, which live on Izoi. The term Bae is actually an exonym (name given to a group by another outside group) that is a Gotevian word, the plural of the word baa, meaning vaguely ‘spirit’. The Baen word for themselves is Iemir or ‘the people’. The singular form of this word is Iem or Em.

Amongst the peoples of Aeniith, interbreeding is possible for some. The most common by far is that between Amelae and Zuna. They are probably the most physiologically similar of any two groups. Many people of mixed Amel and Zuna heritage live in Elta especially (due to this being the side of the planet where almost all Zuna live), and some cultural groups exist that are totally integrated and consist of Zuna, Amelae, and many degrees of mixed-heritage people. One such nation is that of the Keresn.