Saturday, April 26, 2008

Greetings, 2 New Suffixes, and a brief note on the future of adjectives.

First, the Teliya Nevashi weather report from Johnstown, PA: Anta ketsa'ozh. We're having a rainstorm.

You can now greet people in TN... That's Teliya Nevashi and not Tennessee. Unless you know someone in Tennessee who happens to speak Teliya Nevashi, in which case you can now greet people in TN in TN.

Upon encountering someone, you can say, "Yeva!" ("Peace!"). The typical response to this is "Wa jeya!" ("And happiness!"). The idea is that the person responding is wishing the first person peace and also happiness. Those Nevashi, they aren't people to be outdone. They don't call, they don't fold, they always raise the bet.

When a person leaves, the people who are staying would wish the person leaving, "Veku!" ("Health!", which also may mean physical safety, in addition to wellness). A typical response to this would be "Wa imla!" ("And prosperity!")

There might be other variations of good things people might wish on each other, but these would be the normal ones that people just say without thinking too much about it. If you were trying to impress your future in-laws, you might try out something more elaborate.

"Cia fis" would be "good morning", and "dona fis" would be "good evening", but those would be an imitation of greetings in (European) Earth languages rather than expressions native to Nevashi as spoken on Ianea. (I don't actually have words for "day" or "night", it appears.)

I am not going to open the can of worms about Ianea TN vs. Earth TN right now. I am not ready to go fishing in that pond.

Ok... I promised 2 new suffixes! They are -(V)séd ("with") and -(V)dún ("without" or -less). (Where, as usual, (V) is the vowel of the preceding syllable, in the event that a vowel is needed to make the word flow better.) I even have some examples of these in action.

First, these can be used in place of "with" and "without" in most places that you'd use those. You can order your hamburger kecapaséd or kecapadún (with or without ketchup, that is). Another example, since I need the practice anyway:

Anta ianash osalanaséd aldhá. (There-is mud rock-pl.-with over-there. "There's mud with rocks over there.")

Some words might have extended meanings with these suffixes as well:

imlaséd : rich, or having money at the moment
imladún : broke, or not having any money at the moment

This also introduces a new use of an, with pa instead of ma. It still means "to be", but implies "having" or "being with".

ma an imlaséd. I am rich.
pa an imlaséd. I have money on me.
seya pa an imlaséd. I don't have money with me.

ma an imladún. I am poor.
pa an imladún. I am broke, or I don't have money with me.
seya pa an imladún. I am not without money. I've got money. (For instance, when your friend offers to pay for something, but you want to pay for it yourself.)

In the past tense, ma and pa would both become ba.

ba an imlaséd. I was rich OR I had money.

You are, of course, still free to say "Pa def imlam.". ((1st-singular-have-aux) have money-acc., "I have money.")

Re: The Future of Adjectives:

I may be changing how predicate adjective are handled, which may change some of these examples. Most likely, I will change the verb used to connect a subject to its adjective-- last night I was thinking gan would be the new verb:

Mi gan cora. ((3rd-singluar-be-aux) is red; "It is red.")

Along with this change, I have a few other fun ideas in mind, such as using the definite article with the adjective to mean "very":
Mi gan ya cora. It is very red. ("the red")

Also, I already made a change regarding augmentation by reduplication for colors. The whole word is duplicated, rather than just the first syllable in the case of colors (and possibly other cases yet to be determined).
Mi gan cora-cora. It is very red. ("red-red").

And then there are the usual suffixes:
Mi gan coragyu. It is very red. (cora+gyu)

I haven't yet really nailed down when which suffix is used where among the diminutives and augmentatives... It's pretty much a free-for-all at this point. I used -gyu because I think it has been neglected thus far.

It's pretty clear that there's a lot more work to do. And I need more nouns. I am feeling very conlangish lately, though, so there's hope that there will be more good stuff coming sooner rather than later.

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