The 6th Annual State of the Language Address

Didn't I just write one of these? What happened to 2012?

Here we are in 2013.  Remember all those things I said I'd do over the course of the last year?  Yeah. That didn't happen. It was a good year for Nevashi anyway.

The Revised Revised Lexicon grew to 655 entries this year. Lexember gave a nice end of the year boost to the count. That raw number doesn't take into account any of the words that gained additional meanings or the new affixes you might use to derive new words from the old ones. Among those new affixes, my favorites are the two that you can use to make a given thing into a collective of those things: -rí (extracted from zirirí (swarm) and used in sirurí (guts)) and -na (used in omanena (crew)).

I haven't written a new grammar, and the old one is teetering on the brink of being obsolete. What I have done is start working on compositions and translations. This is letting me iron out some kinks. I don't think I'll use the "write a grammar and then try to use it" method of language building again. I'm happy with the way that Nevashi has turned out, but it is evolving further and faster through use than it did through trying to build a structure to hang a usable language on later. I hope to do more writing and translating this year.

I am slowly getting a better grip on the details of Nevashi culture. If I were to make any one resolution for Nevashi this year, it would be to write more about that. I still don't even know what Nevash means. I know that ash means "land." I have reserved line #656 in the Revised Revised Lexicon for nev.

Since the last "State of the Language", I started attending the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (known locally as UPJ). I still have to work and I still have kids, too. This doesn't leave a lot of time for working on languages. That hasn't stopped me, but it is a factor in how much gets done. Language construction does make a nice diversion when I need a break from studying.

So... That's that. I still owe y'all a video or some audio, at least. I did try to record a video at some point in the spring, but my daughter kept making me laugh, so I gave up on it. I would at least like to record some Nevashi so that people can hear what it sounds like. It's on the to-do list.

Im ceana wadi jeyaséd! Happy New Year!