#vardin

now all thats missing is the spirit of summer

the flowers burned in summerlight the grain as well, O make it bright! at winter's end, we thaw the ground wherever winter fruit is found and so may all live, thrive, abound

In Vardin, it's the woman's job to make her fiancee a son of her father's household. It's the man's job to completely impress her household and become a full, culturally integrated member thereof. In short, he joins her family and has to meet her standards, not the other way around.

Vardin began as an unexpected sort of language, popping up in a handful of almost unrelated stories in several worlds that never quite came to fruition. When I started recognizing the similarity of the odd vocabulary (odd for me anyway, I have tendencies when it comes to language creation), I made a decision. It was all one language and Vardin would become the framework for a single world where I could merge a dozen universes into the ideal. It worked too. Back to the vocabulary. esl - thanks accepted I knew from the beginning that this was not the standard "you're welcome" from other languages I have learned or spoken. There was something distinctly "you should be thanking me" about it. Turns out this is merely an inflected form of the word for "Thank you." Came from the Hunters, and what we'll call Vardin I. charetsë - bondmate/spouse Tough word to translate. This actually varies depending upon cultural connotations, but there are a few definites, regardless of which culture is employing the word. The word applies specifically to a partner that is married by bond, that is to say in another form than legal marriage with its attendant family merger and inheritance requirements. The partner is unable to leave this relationship except by the other's death, and sometimes not even then. In some cultures, one may be both married and bonded; in others, it's one or the other. Charetsë status can be entered into by one or both partners. Came from a very interesting little sideworld called Vardin II.2 and was thoroughly and completely adapted for Vardin IV, the final version of the world. rothnen - bonded; soulmates; guardians Squarely came from Vardin II. This is a tricky sort of word with a lot of meaning packed into it that was carried over unchanged into Vardin IV. The rothnen are bonded from birth. There is no escaping that. When they hit puberty, they become hyper-aware of their resonant partner, which is why they are called "soulmates." They feel each other's pains and pleasures, physically hurt when physical affection is shown to someone outside of that resonance or a familial bond (which softens the pain), cannot ignore their attraction for each other when in the same geographic area, and dream of each other nightly. Most of this alters if they decide to actually "bond" and become charetsë. Once they are bound, they will still refer to each other as rothnen, like as not, and while they no longer have debilitating distraction regarding each other, they do still feel each other's pains and experience pain if showing physical affection outside of the bond or the family. katchen - a plant and a group of people called Gifteds Think superhero powers and you've pretty much got the katchen. But there are side-effects and issues with the whole situation, especially considering that there's only a 18.2% chance of survival upon eating the plant that induces Gifts. Came from Vardin II and carried over unchanged. vaska - no Only word (there was a name, but that doesn't count) that came over from Vardin III. Simple enough. No. Note here: language is culture expressed, as far as my world seem to be concerned. Language form around this time was re-becoming fascinating to me, and I took the opportunity to turn this into a consonantal root language. Like Hebrew or Arabic, I lean toward three consonants makes a root, but you might not know that if you're reading it in English. I also took the rather liberating approach of Hebrew that there is no correct English spelling. There is only a correct Vardin spelling. This means I can write it however I want to convince my reader to pronounce it correctly. So this is a bit of a chronicle of the odd way the language of Vardin was born. There's more, tons more, and I might actually put it all up for consumption.