Tag Archive | conlang

Syllabic Sunday: Don’t know much about History…

Mar24

I have these four words in my list, although I cannot find the post in which I posted them:

telyen: story
telnyent: truth-known
telyentozh: myth
telnyenttozh (hunh. I think that should be telenyentozh): history (Wow, that’s clumsy, don’t take that one as canon yet, or the myth one)

Where I wanted to get with this post was BOOKS.

Because the Cālenyena love books. Well, they love the written word. They were fascinated with it when they discovered it. They wrote histories into their tents. Usually biographies. They decorated their clothes with tales of their prowess, and lessons learned. They painted stories on their saddles.

Actual books, paper in a library? That took a little longer.

The word for writing come from the [east-coast-people] word Saayish, and is zhēzhet

The word for book comes from the proto-bitrani word urnia, and is turnē

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/497340.html. You can comment here or there.

Syllabic Sunday: Kids and kids

Mar17

Children! They are required for continuation of the species!

Like all people, the Cālenyena have children, and they have words for them, of course

Pabap is a baby, a “carry-on,” or tes-tyētyē (self-carried), testyē.

Lerū is a child, generally one tall enough to walk but not tall enough to carry a spear or throw weapons.

This is the equivalent to their goat terms:

Pebyab is a tiny goat, not large enough to do much but bleat.

Lelū is a young goat kid, old enough to walk but not to be ridden.

The similarities in terms is not accidental. Especially when a herding culture, the Cālenyena tended to gather all their young together and raise them, so that babies and goat kids would grow up under the watchful eye of the pregnant mothers and the too-old to ride. Similar still happens today in remote villages and small towns.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/492794.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember in March: Syllabic Sunday: Snow, and snowshoes

Mar3

In the early days of the proto-Cālenyena, snow was not something that they often saw. Their Texas-like climate never had lasting snow, and rarely had snowfall at all.

Thus, their word for snow was a compound word: rain-cold-hard, teb-run-zē, which, through the centuries, and, in their new home, their far more consistent exposure to snow, became terunz. (The ending sound is actually stolen from the Bitrani. Very few Cālenyen words end in a double consonant).

And, as they were becoming more familiar with drifts of the white stuff, they needed a way to get around in this terrain.

paiterz, snow-spears, were the first innovation (essentially skis. The Cālenyena call almost everything long and pointy a spear. When all you have is a hammer, etc.)

And, in different places but for similar need, Begerz, shoes-snow, snowshoes, were developed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/485729.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember in February? #Febumantau? Syllabic Sunday: Fire

Feb3

I may go forward with the suggestions listed here in the future and, for example, do Febumantau and put forth compound words. But for today, I want to talk about fire.

Fire: apa

This word has two thing of note:

First, it begins with a vowel, indicating that it’s of the third (first? zeroth?) gender: beyond use. Very few things in the world (the current list can be found here), but fire is considered by the Cālenyena (or at least by the proto-Cālenyena) to be one of those awesome things of the world that is simply always there.

Secondly, it has nothing to do with the god of fire and blood that the Cālenyena worship in the time of the story, Veignevar.

This is because the Cālenyena have had fire for a much longer time than they have had these three god. Fire dates back longer than any history, while the god Veignevar is a loan-god from the Bitrani.

What’s more, the god Veignevar is actually a combination (Maybe he’s a portmanteau!) of at least three proto-Bitrani gods.

Which is a story in and of itself…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/468457.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post ten – Conlanging objects in the Cālenyan world – The Dairy Case

Dec17

@Shutsumon & I were talking about food words, which reminded me that I have a goat-based culture and hadn’t handled, ah, goat-based cultures.

Yogurt cultures, that is.

So here we go: the dairy case – kōm, kōtez, kōba, kōbetez, kōbânuk, kyōm –> kōkyōm

Milk, to start with – kōm
And then, of course, cheese – kōtez. This is a paneer-like unaged cheese.
Digress to butter for a moment – kōba
And then to a soft, aged, cultured cheese – kōbetez (butter cheese)
And to a hard aged cheese, named after the farmer who developed it – kōbânuk, Bânuk’s cheese.

And then there’s yogurt.

The original word for yogurt – kyōm – means “bad milk.” But, as they came to realize it wasn’t actually bad, the word evolved. – kōkyom

All of these things are used in Cālenyan cooking. Maybe in January I’ll come up with some recipes.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/434382.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post iIne – Conlanging objects in the Cālenyan world – Posers and Fakes

Dec14

This was going to be a post about colours!

And I have those, too:
kāt – red
lenal – orange
patō – yellow
tōtyō – green
dēdun – blue
bezhya – indigo
galō – purple
leten – black
telun – white
lēlē – grey

Then I realized that red-face (or face-red) is a reference to the war leader, for the paint they once used to mark themselves in battle.

kalō – face
kalōkāt – red-face, war-leader – this leads to kalokākab (big war leader) –> calenkat –> Cālenta (calenka?)
kalōlen – orange-face. This is a courtesan or a “fancy lady,” from the proto-Bitrani women the Cālenyena encountered who painted their face with an orangey-red cosmetic.

And, from the fact that both of these leave a yellow residue when hastily wiped off:

kalōpatō – Yellow-face, someone lying about what they are, a fake.

Which led me to
tezyu – goat-hair
lanut – braid

And lanutez goat-hair braid: someone who is pretending to be something they’re not, a poser.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/431745.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post Eight – Conlanging objects in the Cālenyan world – Waste

Dec12

Last night, I asked my spousal unit what everyday object I should cover next for Lexember.

“Urine,” said he.

So, today we have the crude words for urine and excrement, with vomit thrown in for good measure. These are the equivalent of “piss,” “shit,” and “puke;” because I have yet to figure out where the Cālenyana eventually get their “scientific” sorts of words. They don’t have Latin to pull from.

Back to the topic at… hand?

These are the noun forms; I’m not doing verbs right now.

dyen – piss
pyemen – shit
tyep – puke

I was asked yesterday where the pronunciation guide is – it’s here.

There’s an audioboo of my vowels here, and one of Cālenyan vocabulary here

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/429879.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post Seven Conlanging objects in the Cālenyan world – PLUNDER!

Dec11

This was going to be about butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers, but I decided plunder was more fun.

The Cālenyana have a very bellicose culture, and one of their oldest words and concepts is plunder, spoils of war: dīkiz.

It comes with its paired word dyukez, souvenirs, or useless trinkets brought home from war.

And a similar word: dezhiz – temporary gains, or land claimed in a battle, but not won in the war. And useless gains, or Pyrrhic gains: dyuzh

Spoils of war aren’t just things or land, either: dīkizātē is a person who has been taken – what Rin refers to as a “war-bride” or a “war-groom.” And an udenīkiz is an idea – a large idea, some big concept – that is grabbed from another culture. The Cālenyana have a lot of those.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/429246.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post Six Conlanging objects in the Cālenyan world – Art and needle-art (also maps)

Dec10

The Cālenyena have had a uncertain relationship with art all along.

Their original word for drawing and their word for map indicate this fairly clearly:

Drawing is tyek, with the grammatical beginning meaning “without use.”

Map is tenek, a very similar word but with the beginning indicating “with use.”

“Lately,” in the era of the Rin/Girey story and later, art has begun to be more often “tek,” often with a prefix or suffix meaning some sort of art. But the words that have evolved from “tyek” still have the y sound in them.

For instance: benyentyek, bentyek, art-with-a-needle, embroidery.

(and if that isn’t a tidy way to pull together a request for “map” and “embroidery,” I don’t know what is. 🙂

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/428747.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember post Five – Conlanging objects in the Calenyan world – Meals

Dec8

So, we’re back on food today!

To start with, in the comments of the last post, I came up with the word for table:
geten-upēk becomes getupēk, food-blanket, table.

And then, a bit more history.

The proto-Cālenyena were a semi-nomadic culture, which ate mostly gathered foods and goat products (meat, milk, cheese, yogurt).

The story they tell about their primary starch crop, a parsnip-like root vegetable that is a stem-tuber, in style like a potato, is that their goats found it growing along the banks of a river.

More likely, considering the name, was that a proto-Bitrani captive found the plants, realized they were edible, and began cultivating them.

The name, belenuza, likely comes from the proto-Bitrani osani á sibellan, earth-around-apple, although there are scholars that argue parallel linguistic construction, and those that argue it came from cazenbelun, a {west coast} word for a type of celery, with a declension meaning “down.” However, nobody’s ever heard anyone in the {west Coast} discuss “down celery.”

… That aside, the Cālenyen word for “meal” is one that seems to be their own word. Lōk and pēku seem to have originally referred to “food that requires something done to it” (originally lyōk) and “food you can eat right away;” some culinary awareness must have seeped in over the years.

Possibly with the belenuza.

getupēk, food-blanket, table.
belenuza, potato-parsnip (or earth-apple)
Lōk, meal

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/427975.html. You can comment here or there.