Tag: conlangs

Ori needed more declensions?

~ mnransdellgreen ~ Leave a comment

I decided Ori needs more nouns declensions. 😛

So here are two new celestial class declensions.

2nd declension (celestial)

These nouns often end in -n or -m.

Btw, the -∅ symbol in linguistics means ‘null’ or ‘nothing’. So that means the nom. sg. forms don’t add a suffix.

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Using Calcurassen’s name as an example (in the singular, of course–there is only one of the God of Justice):

Calcurassen ryintat trulali ‘Calcurassen drinks wine’

Ti-clespes Calcurasseni astere lya. ‘Calcurassen’s jewel is bright’

Murlinis Calcurassene iyuru ‘A raven sees Calcurassen’

Hensapya Calcurassena maroi cyan ‘I gave praise to Calcurassen’

Calcurassenul minim cyan nalemapya peli. ‘By means of Calcurassen, I was able to find justice’

Hestinyal Calcurassenul lya. ‘Hope lies with Calcurassen’

Oa, Calcurassene! Maropye tyeli abarig! ‘Oh, Calcurassen! Give us blessings.’

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The next declension is also for celestial nouns–most of these ending in vowels.

3rd celestial declension

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Examples:

Ti-hembe lilya rya. ‘The body of fresh water is small’ (Note that ‘small’ still agrees with embe–it just uses a different celestial (nom sg. suffix, the one from the very first celestial declension I introduced, which is -ya rather than -∅.)

Culleryal caben bellu. ‘The expanse of the world is wide’

Gilupye yalutyin tatyin ti-trahellet ‘Turn your eyes to the meteor shower’




Ok, you get the idea. 🙂

~

Mintaka

Legend and Lore: The children of Hestaya (a poem)

~ mnransdellgreen ~ 1 Comment

In Orikrindian myth, Hestaya (the mother goddess, the goddess of the mountains and earth) bore 12 infants, which were conceived beneath the hardest rock in the earth, fathered by the fire god, whose life blood flows under the world as magma. The twelve children were born upon twelve hills that encircle the island of Orikrindia. In legend, the children were found by nomads of a group called the Lost Ones. The queen of this people, Crestellin, was the first to find one of these children, and then, one by one, she and her handmaidens found all twelve. She was a childless queen before this moment, but adopted the babies into her family and raised them as her own. According to legend, these demigod children grew into the founders of the twelve great cities of Orikrindia.

This poem is about Crestellin finding the first of the children of Hestaya.

~

Moving like a green snake

In the dewdrops

A fragmented line of tiny sighs

Blooming life along the dusty horizon.

 

Clinging still to mother

Unwilling to relinquish

That summer warm smell

Of newborns and flowers and vegetables

Singing in the sweltering heat

Humming with an old life

 

You know who they were

The ones who came before

The earthy faces digging themselves out from under hills and mounds

Stones in the dusk

In the distance,

They approached

Farther and farther

Until we heard their breath

Whispering and scraping in the evening air

Like leaves against your cheek.

 

We took them in

Opened our wings

And drew in these

Infants.

 

We gave them the instincts

We had left,

Pretending

To be mothers

Pretending

To understand beyond the eons

What we were doing.

 

The children of the stone

The babies found

In the earth                            

Creeping into humanity

Latching onto a nipple

They were lucky to find

 

Vines covering the tomb

An ancient space

Threshold to a world beyond

We remained and named the children

After the wish of the Mother,

Hestaya.

 

~

Mintaka

 

Ori derivational morphology

~ mnransdellgreen ~ Leave a comment

So this is obviously a work in progress, BUT here are some new Ori derivational morphemes! Yay! I like them.

Derivational Morphemes

-u

This morpheme comes from the word hu‘one’, and it often added to adjectives to create a noun.

 

lil ‘small’ –> lilu ‘small one’

truma ‘red’ –> trumu ‘red one’

 

It can also be used with other nouns, however:

 

cleppa ‘poison’ –> cleppu ‘poisoned one’

 

-ya

 

-ya is a gerund marker; it nominalizes a verb (transitive or intransitive):

 

ta ‘speak’ –> taya ‘speaking’

aste ‘reckon’ –> asteya ‘mathematics’

pra ‘listen’ –> praya ‘listening; educational lecture’

lyeppe ‘enjoy’ –> lyeppeya ‘enjoyment’

clasin ‘become flat’ –> clasinya ‘flattening; (of a person) becoming boring’

 

 

-uya

 

-uya is a suffix that indicates ‘beginning of V/N’, meaning it can attach to either a verb or a noun.

 

Note that if there is a vowel at the end of the bound morpheme, that first vowel is deleted before -uya.

 

lyannis ‘make a pilgrimage’ –> lyannisuya ‘beginning of a pilgrimage’

ta ‘speak’ –> tuya ‘beginning of a speech’

syala ‘rule, reign’ –> syaluya ‘beginning of the reign of a king’

becul ‘cave’ –> beculuya ‘antechamber of a cave’

besti ‘earth, ground’ –> bestuya ‘top layer of soil’

cul ‘moon’ –> culuya ‘new moon’

Sometimes the meaning of this suffix implies smallness due to something being “only the beginning of [and no more]” V/N:

 

lar ‘laugh’ –> laruya ‘a short laugh, a clipped laugh’

lubela ‘secret’ –> lubeluya ‘just a little secret’

 

-on

 

-on is an augmentative suffix that applies to nouns.

 

lyuha ‘dog’ –> lyuhon ‘large dog’

ori ‘man’ –> orion ‘big man’

mil ‘tree’ –> milon ‘large tree’

 

-li

 

-li is the opposite of -on, a diminutive suffix for nouns.

 

lyuha ‘dog’ –> lyuhali ‘puppy’

bistraya ‘flower’ –> bistrayali ‘bud, small blossom’

coru ‘rock’ –> coruli ‘pebble’

bu ‘house’ –> buli ‘room inside a house, chamber’

hesta ‘mountain’ –> hestali ‘hill’

 

–e

-e is a common ending for adjectives (e.g. nale ‘true’, clippe ‘rotten’, balnye ‘great’). It can also function as a derivative morpheme for adjectivization from nouns.

 

Usually, if there is a final vowel on the base noun, it is replaced by -e.

 

hustu ‘belief, trust’ –> huste ‘trusting’

cleppa ‘poison’ –> cleppe ‘poisonous’

galacil ‘smoke’ –> galacile ‘smoky’

lubela ‘secret’ –> lubele ‘secret (adj.)’

roru ‘darkness’ –> rore ‘dark’

 

cli-/clip-

This is a pejorative prefix that usually affixes to nouns. It comes from the adjective clippe‘rotten, sour’. The cli- form precedes consonant-initial words, whereas the clip- form is used with vowel-initial words.

 

prasta ‘mind, thoughts; behavior, actions’ –> cliprasta ‘betrayal; treason’

olta ‘tomb’ –> clipolta ‘a badly made or ritualistically wrong or unclean burial’

gerum ‘death’ –> cligerum ‘a dishonorable death’

ha-

 

This prefix can be used as either an augmentative or an ameliorative (“good N”) prefix.

 

pyelli ‘pain’ –> hapyelli ‘great pain’

selis ‘teacher’ –> haselis ‘a good teacher’

lyuha ‘dog’ –> halyuha ‘a particularly loyal dog’

bela ‘word’ –> habela ‘eloquence’

belta ‘wind’ –> habelta ‘a sudden warm wind in the winter’

 

Mintaka2

Elucuna in Quarios (pt 3)

~ mnransdellgreen ~ 2 Comments

Continuation of Elucuna’s first days in Quarios. She and Glohitan meet a strange woman along the road outside of Naeglitan.

We took two amsas (1) to the edge of the city. My meager belongings were strapped onto the young female that was given to me. Glohitan called her Isma. I was unused to riding since it was not an activity considered womanly in Orikrindia, but I managed well enough given my inexperience. The mount was, thankfully, very calm and patient. Glohitan’s walking stick was tied to his back, wrapped in a saffron-colored scarf, and he rode just ahead of me as we made our way down a dark road near the outskirts of Naeglitan.

Continue reading “Elucuna in Quarios (pt 3)” →

Conlang: Ori (relative clauses)

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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-

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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

‘Tomorrow we will travel to the temple where you found the priestess’

Ideas on Ori names

~ mnransdellgreen ~ 2 Comments

Playing with an idea that in Orikrindia, there is a kind of superstitious tendency to name a child the opposite of what the parents wish for it to become (maybe just in certain classes or subcultures?). For example, Elucuna’s name essentially means “decider”, and her parents definitely did not intend for her to be deciding much in life. Maybe someone hoping for an outgoing child would name him Pilucya ‘timid’. Kind of like avoidance of a jinx by giving a child too “fortuitous” a name and attracting the attentions of an ill-meaning demon. The Orikrindians do feel quite a bit of discomfort with regard to demons


Elucuna in Quarios (pt 2)

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More of the story of Elucuna, a runaway Orikrindian woman who goes into hiding in Quarios to start a new life.

 

It was from there that I made my way to what I had long planned would be my destination. First, I navigated the cramped streets and alleys of Naeglitan to a man who was an acquaintance of my brother’s. His name was Glohitan and he was in the business of ground transport—whether of cargo or person, he did not care. Moreover, he was in the business of discreet transport, which was of utmost concern to me, as I did not wish for my family (other than, of course, Poltyar my brother) to get wind of my location in Quarios, or even that I had in fact fled there. For all they knew, I had perished in some dark wood of Orikrindia or fallen in the hands of highwaymen.

Continue reading “Elucuna in Quarios (pt 2)” →

Story: Elucuna in Quarios

~ mnransdellgreen ~ 2 Comments

This is the beginning of story (of indeterminate length so far) told by an Orikrindian woman who leaves Orikrindia at age 15 and comes to Quarios to be able to pursue a life a greater liberty (Orikrindian society doesn’t offer a lot of independence or a very wide array of options for the future of a yong woman). Like I said, I still don’t know what’s in store for this story, how well I’ll end up liking it, how well anyone else will end up liking it, etc. If you DO want to see more, I’ll probably consider continuing it. Its main purpose now is to help me explore Orikrindian vs Quariosian (i.e. Gotevian and Lomi) cultures, as well as a peak into some other Aeniithian cultures/people/stuff. 😀

Continue reading “Story: Elucuna in Quarios” →