Linguistics - Blog Posts
Y'all, I just got curious at one point, and I hope this isn't a repeat of a previous post. So, if you don't mind:
Wiktionary has a couple of recordings if you're curious about the difference/don't know linguistics and can't read IPA.
Follow-up question:
What words/phrases (if any) rhyme with orange?
This is a hotly-debated topic in the English language. I sincerely believe that in my dialect, no single word is a true-rhyme with orange that isn't also either a portmanteau or explicitly related to the word "orange." (E.g. blornge does not count for me, even though it does rhyme, because it is a portmanteau of blonde and orange.)
Reblogs are appreciated!
I was initially skeptical because, honestly, some of these are only plausible w/o the Great Vowel Shift (e.g. grope, game > grapple, gamble) but yes, it's real.
Indeed, it's a no-longer-productive grammatical process dating back to Proto Germanic, where *-ilaz was an adjective suffix.
But anyways, some of these make sense with the great vowel shift. E.g. with game ~ gamble:
/geɪm/ "game" < /gaː.mə/ < /ga.mə/
/ˈgæm.ˌbl̩/ "gamble" < /ˈgam.ˌlə/ < /ˈga.mə.lə/
Note with gamble: an epenthetic /b/ is inserted after /m/ to preserve the distinction between /m/ and /l/.
Lexember Post #1
Woo! Happy Lexember conlangers. I will be using Modern Ipol for this one. The first root is:
Sha-
Meaning: "rain, calm, sadness, weather"
Derived Words:
shar - rain
sharijv - electricity
sharna - "debbie-downer," a gloomy person
sham - calm, easygoing
iposharijv - telephone, smartphone
In a sentence:
Jir piner asisharis, stinirinen shrijfte?
LIT: day this-MASC PASS.V.rain.REF, V.go.FUT store?
"It's still raining today, are (you) (still) go(ing) (to) the store?"
Help me out pls
Usual suspects: @quillswriting @oldfashionedidiot
Language squad: @ominous-feychild
Man, I don't care about learning NatLangs any more (Mandarin, Spanish), if given the choice, I want the ability to speak everyone's a priori Naturalistic ArtLangs. (IALs be damned.)
I am begging to see any corpus of the Sekaran that has been produced so far.
Info Post: Current Writing Projects
The Sekaran Tales:
Currently, the Sekaran tales are a loose collection of myths and folktales about the Sekaran people and the world they inhabit. The tag also includes the Sekaran conlang. I like to say I'm in my Silmarillion phase - just laying the groundwork for what I hope will be an epic story.
Oak, Ashe, and Thorn:
Oak, Ashe, and Thorn is a planned trilogy about found family, being Othered, and the power of supportive allies. Book one, Coffee and Curses, follows the adventures of the enby empath Quin Quercus, the lesbian werewolf Ashe Thompson, and the "not a prince" Bramble Brokenthorn as they discover a insidious Fae plot to steal people's Names.
Pataphysics 101:
A sci-fi anthology set in Keystone University, where a chaotic Fae-ish scientist named Dr. Kori Cyfrin¹ teaches classes on, you guessed it, pataphysics. The anthology includes/will include both lectures and short stories, and art if I can learn to draw better.
¹Yes, it's me. This is my source - well, part of it. -Kori
Ok, so, when reconstructing natural proto-languages, those protolanguages are almost never attested. Historical Linguists are basically making educated guesses and throwing darts against a wall when making the Proto-Indo-European hypothesis, it was just that the evidence was so compelling that linguists (and, most humans) believe it. For all intents and purposes, it's a really good guess.
The issue with my conworld? Classical Zispoel and Proto-Ytosi-Itaush are still fully attested languages with exactly 2 and 1 native speakers each, all still technically living.
To make matters worse, Lozerief is kind-of a scientific genius, and Pagjom is the literal Hero of Language. Together, they could reconstruct Proto-Zispoel and see what a god-awful, horrifying shit-show it was.
The idea that my characters could derive my god-awful, good-for-nothing protolanguage is, somehow, deeply disturbing to me. I think they would realize they were in a simulation if they did that.
Cursed Low Zeneth Translations
Consider this a makeshift guide to how Low Zeneth works.
Overview
Low Zeneth is a language and group of dialects spoken Southwestern Zeneste (the state of Tolftorrijv.) Its last common "ancestor" with Ipol was Classical Zispoel, but it had already started to diverge before the time of the Hero of Life. Low Zeneth is radically different than Ipol in many ways, though it's been influenced substantially by Ipol, too.
I will focus here on the prestige variety of Low Zeneth: the kind spoken in the city of Tolftorrijv.
Phonology/Romanization
Rendered Phonemically:
Stops: /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/
Nasal Stops: /m/ /n/
Affricates: /t͡s/ /t͡ʃ/
Fricatives: /f/ /θ/ /s/ /ʃ/ /h/
Approximants: /w/ /l/ /j/
Tap/flap: /ɾ/
Trill: /r/
Vowels:
/iː/ /i/ /yː/ /y/ /uː/ /u/
/eː/ /e/ /øː/ /ø/ /oː/ /o/
/ə̃/ /ə/
/a/ /ɑː/
That makes 34 total phonemes broken down from 20 consonants and 14 vowels.
Romanized:
p, b, t, d, k, g
m, n
ts, q
f, th, s, sh, h
w, l, j
r
rr
ij i üü ü uw u
ee ê öö ö oo o
v e
a aa
If you can't tell, I had fun deriving this phonology from the restrictive, Classical Zispoel phonology. Maybe a little too much, but oh well.
Morphology and Syntax - Grammar
Technically Low Zeneth is a VSO language, but that's not the full picture.
Basically, auxiliary verbs get sucked up into the (head-initial) tense-phrase. The tree below describes the translation "fijsesê bv hijfrê" which literally translates to "have I money" and means "I have money."
The result is that most subordinate clauses have the structure SVO, while the main clause has structure SV(A)O.
Low Zeneth has very slim morphology, only inflecting for a simple plural in nouns with -o, and no morphology at all in verbs. A series of sound changes rendered the T/A distinctions of Classical Zispoel basically indistinguishable, so to compensate, speakers of Low Zeneth employ heavy periphrasis.
Cursed Translations from Today
Fijatsia bv io dv luw êraanva ijrenva
Phonemic: /fi.ˈja.tsi.a ˈbə̃ ˈi.o ˈluː e.ˈɾɑː.nə̃.a ˈiː.ɾe.nə̃.a/
Lit. Translation: Will I give you of news urgent.
Meaning: I will give you urgent news/I must give you urgent news.
Üümen ijnvth Dvrr Ilaajote hijthen-luwario
Phonemic: /ˈyː.men ˈiː.nə̃θ ˈdə̃r i.ˈlɑː.jo.tə ˈhiː.θen.lu.wa.ɾi.o/
Lit. Manages Zeneste Emperor Tolftorrijv fight-people.
Meaning: The Emperor of Zeneste (now) manages the Tolftorrijv army.
Conclusion
I just figured I'd talk about Low Zeneth today because I haven't talked about it a lot but have been producing a bunch of translations. I realize only now that I didn't go over forming questions in this post, but maybe later I will. Feel free, as always, to request that I translate random words/phrases into this language.
I’ve never read this book, I only watched the series on YouTube. I must read it at some point. David J. Peterson’s content on linguistics is immaculate.
I FOUND A BOOK
Look what we got from the library!!! Look at it! Look!
Now that we have The Book, there's no stopping us. You will all be drowning in words and grammar and scripts >:D
But seriously. If I had a flappy hands emoji, I'd be using it right now.
Day 13 (16 in base 7) of writing my novel again.
Today, in addition to adding about 700 words to Part Two, I also made a bunch of translations into Modern Ipol. I probably translated about two hundred words of English into Ipol, and I will post one snippit of it here:
Pijteshijv sispeen pijte sis Nistemiks sis Nurrif sis Leerf pifijz. Pijteshijv losr shise tismostijv sispeenes pijte sis leerfine sis koleerf pite, Ir Nusnijv, spuw's sis spine, por sisla's pijte sju sis koleerf ejr sotenaks sis Nistemiks piste.
Ipol is the language of the Hero of Life's Confederacy of Zeneste. It started as the dialect of the capital, Ir Nouzonif, where it diffused, becoming a standard language for Zeneste. It replaced Classical Zispoel as the language of government and official business one-hundred and fifty years ago.
A couple notes:
ij and uw are symbols for long i and long u respectively.
j before a vowel is the palatal glide /j/.
Nistemiks literally means "the states" but it's also the most natural translation for 'Zeneste.'
Maybe at a later date, I'll do a post that breaks down this translation, but that's all for now!
Ipol (Conlang) Synopsis
Day 3 (? 4?) of writing my novel and I actually wrote a bunch today! But today I wanted to do something different: present on the most-used conlang in my novel: Ipol.
Ipol ['i.pol] is an Eastern Zenestian language descended from Classical Zispoel by way of Old Ipol. Ipol is actually the word used for the accent spoken in Ir Nouzonif (Ip. I Nusnif [i.'nus.nif]), the capital of Zeneste. Most other dialects, including several languages, are lumped together into Ipol Sinezo (literally: Rice-farmer Ipol.)
Phonology
Consonants
Ipol has 16 consonants:
Oral Stops: p, b, t*, d*, k, g*
* t, d > tʃ, dʒ / _ i
**Nasal Stops: **n, m
Fricatives: f, s*, h
* s > ʃ / _ {i, e}
Semivowels: j, w
Liquids: l
Rhotics*: r*, rr
r > /ɹ/ / _ {#, consonant}
r > /ɾ/ / (everywhere else)
rr is the uvular rhotic /ʀ/ found in French
Vowels
Ipol has 12 vowels.
High: i, ij, u, uw
Mid: e, ee, o, oo (/oː/), oh (/ɔː/)
Low: æ (/æː/), a, aa (/aː/)
Phonotactics
Ipol is a (C)(S)V(C)(C)(C) language:
C = any consonant
V = any vowel + r
S = semivowel + r
Translation + Teaser
Excerpt from Part One:
Dr. Este grunted, wrinkling her nose at me. "If you know what's good for you," she rephrased, "you'll stay far, far away from the attic." I gulped. Then, I shook my head. What were a bunch of sticks going to do to me when I wasn't looking. "Why? The Sensonif isn't hiding up there, is she?" I realized that the first stained glass window depicted the three Heroes: the Heroes of Life, Earth, and Language. Then the other window depicted the Hero of Earth killing the Sensonif-a monster said to be fifty-feet high and filled with lava. One touch from her is said to kill a person in seconds. My comment stiffened the Vice President, who stopped. Then, hanging her head, she gripped my shoulder and looked up into my eyes, her gaze lifeless and cold. "Nerte treste ésispijen," she whispered, "Sispoh sispijz la eheempijz." If you care about yourself, you mustn't go into the attic.
Nerte - you.ABS
Treste - you.ACC
sispijen - believe in, care about
Sispoh - must
sispijz - (negative modal verb)
la - in, into, towards
eheempijz - attic (literally house-up, or the top bit of a house)
Conclusion
Given that Dr. Este is the Hero of Earth who sailed around the world with the other two Heroes (of Life and Language,) what do you think is in the attic that she's so worried about?
"blurb"
a real and normal word