#lexember

Today's Valyrian glyph is tegon "earth". I could've sworn I did this one already; it's so common. Common as dirt. It's a bit like grass standing out of the dirt, this one. Kind of like this: 𓏠. That's the glyph for "land" in Egyptian hieroglyphs. I love those goofy hieroglyphs. Sometimes they're basic af. Like "This rectangle with lines is land." Then sometimes it's like:

𓅸

BOWL OF DUCKIES HAVING A LITTLE BATH!!! SPLISHY-SPLASH!

It’s Lexember time again! If you’re not familiar, Lexember is a conlanging community event where we make a new word in a conlang for each day of December. As with last year, I’ll be using my language Valya, which makes this the first time ever I’m using the same language for Lexember two years in a row!

My first Lexember word this year is buba, meaning “frog.” It’s from Proto-Valya *bubaa, which is almost certainly onomatopoeic.

But that’s just the in-universe etymology; the actual etymology for the word is a reference to Let’s Have a Bouba, the livestreaming conlanging duo that you can find on youtube, tumblr, and instagram. They will also be participating in Lexember, and as part of that they’ll be debuting a brand new font that I made for their languages N’asibómmó and Bokuz!

Coincidentally, the T’owal word for frog is also a reference to a conlanging friend: tethis is actually Tethys, a.k.a. @archipithecus!

Tüküra küra mbuba samünwintsa nggvagla kimblu? /ty.ky.ra ky.ra‿m.bu.ba sa.myn.win.tsa‿ŋ.ɡvaɡ.la kim.blu/ How do frogs jump and jump and not get tired?

While Proto-Valya had the suffix *-la to mark the iterative (which is where a couple of word of the day words come from), in Modern Valya that suffix is no longer productive. But one thing Valya does use a lot is serial verb constructions, so a very common way to mark the iterative mood is via serial reduplication. So in this sentence you’ve got küra küra, which is very similar to the English “jump and jump,” but without the “and.” The tü- prefix at the beginning makes the whole serial construction into a converb, so the sentence could more literally be translated as “When jumping (and) jumping, how do frogs not get tired?”

Day 1

vhe’viin (n)

1. a species of small, grain-pilfering rodents

2. (slang) “land rat,” landlubber, a novice to spacefaring

Lexember 15

Qar- to bend, twist, turn

Qarnak- twist prone, confusing, complicated

Qavvas- turnable, flexible

Qartan- rotation, a bend (in a path or story)

Kaal- to think, consider, turn over in the mind

Kaalnak- thoughtful, considerate

Kaaltan- thought, idea

Kaalvaak- rational, argument, logic

Ata har turoluuk lahsauttau

Lunaian