Nevashi finally has a word for "chair," deviya, so I will no longer be able to joke that it has a word for "non-dualism" but not one for "chair". This new word is dev (to be located/stand/sit) + iya. It is modeled on meriya, bed, which is from mer, to sleep. Neither of these words fits especially well with the general meaning of -iya, which normally turns a verb into a noun that is the usual object of that verb: nash (eat) + iya = nashiya (food). I think this must be some sort of furniture-related exception. I had thought that perhaps it should be "devvi," since -vi indicates a tool or instrument, but that doesn't really seem to fit with the idea of furniture in my mind either. I like these words the way they are, so that's what they will be.
Another recent word I am especially fond of is fafari, rebellious or mutinous. I would say that it is derived from faru, to be opposed to, but that's not actually how it happened. "Faru" was reverse engineered from "fafari". File that under "Confessions of a Conlanger."
There are fewer than 10 words left until Nevashi hits the 600 word mark. It's at 592 right now. There's a flurry of new words coming soon that will put me well into the 600's.
After some conversation with Peter Bleackley (@PeteBleackley) on Twitter, a new word-building event was born: Lexember (link is to his blog post about it). That's a word a day for the 31 days of December. I am working on my list. I think I may do three words a day: one for Nevashi, one for ea-luna, and one for my embryonic personal auxiliary language, which I am currently calling "Maus"-- from "Mia Auxlang" and my crazy, enduring love of rodents. I'll be tweeting new words and posting them here as well. I hope to see plenty of #Lexember tweets, or posts elsewhere, with lots of interesting words to look at.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Tides
Not too long ago, I attempted to console someone by saying, "Don't mistake low tide for failure." It later struck me as a particularly Nevashi thing to say. Last night, another saying came to mind and struck me as something that the Nevashi would appreciate: "A rising tide lifts all boats." I realized then that I didn't have the words to translate either of those things.
The concepts of cyclical change and flow (of time, of events, and in a more abstract sense too) are important in Nevashi culture. The tides would be symbolic beyond their practical importance to all the people living on the coast or on boats. So, I spent part of last night reading more about tides than I'll ever need to know, for the sake of better conlanging. (Conlanging has caused me to read about all sorts of things not directly related to languages and linguistics.) I had to adjust a couple of affixes, but I now have words for the rising and falling tides, plus high and low tide. (Slack, spring, and neap tides have yet to be Nevashized.)
Kyu- used to be an affix for verbs that meant "down or toward", but it now means "down or away". Ro- meant "up or away", but now it is "up or toward". This better matches the experience of the tide if you're standing on the beach, and that makes it a better fit for Nevashi culture as well.
Those weren't the only words missing, so I created a few more, and now Nevashi has over 550 words. Among those words are pora, "to be correct" and its opposite, sipora. These are related to ora, which means "true" (or as a ma verb, "to be true"; as a ta verb, "to be honest"; or "to tell the truth" as a ca verb). It must have been pa ora at one time, but got squished into pora and became a verb of its own, with sa. (That might be more than anyone wants to know. Consider it exposure of process.)
So, back to the things I wanted to translate:
Don't mistake low tide for failure.
Seya fremish yam sidelya gida yam ortortian.
NEG confuse-IMP the-DObject failure instead-of the-DObj lowtide.
I wasn't sure about it at first, especially with the preposition involved, but I've decided that this construction with both sidelya and ortortian as objects of frem makes me happy. Also, I decided to go with an imperative instead of a less direct "one shouldn't..." because I wanted it to be more than a suggestion-- more "cheer up!" and less "you really shouldn't be so unhappy."
The imperative in Nevashi can be a little ambiguous because it loses the meaning carried in the first part of the verb. Frem isn't one of the more confusing verbs, though, because there are other clues to disambiguate-- where it means "to be confused", it would be intransitive, so there wouldn't be any object following it. Where it would mean "to confuse (someone)", it would have the imperative+causative (which is -ihi in the new grammar: fremihi). The only remaining possibility is what you see here. (At least until other meanings for frem come along.)
A rising tide lifts all boats.
fi ec ya roian inim shenai omo.
3rd-nonpast lift the rising-tide pl-DObj all boats.
This is pretty straightforward. I was back and forth on shenai omo and omo shenai, but went with the former because numbers come before nouns, and shenai ("all") specifically refers to a quantity. (I still think the latter sounds better.)
So, there you have it! Two more things you can say in Nevashi.
Oh! One more thing! In the process of creating vocabulary today, I added two new items to my list of personal names: Delya (f, "victory") and Delyafan (m, "victor". Or more literally, "victory-maker")
The concepts of cyclical change and flow (of time, of events, and in a more abstract sense too) are important in Nevashi culture. The tides would be symbolic beyond their practical importance to all the people living on the coast or on boats. So, I spent part of last night reading more about tides than I'll ever need to know, for the sake of better conlanging. (Conlanging has caused me to read about all sorts of things not directly related to languages and linguistics.) I had to adjust a couple of affixes, but I now have words for the rising and falling tides, plus high and low tide. (Slack, spring, and neap tides have yet to be Nevashized.)
Kyu- used to be an affix for verbs that meant "down or toward", but it now means "down or away". Ro- meant "up or away", but now it is "up or toward". This better matches the experience of the tide if you're standing on the beach, and that makes it a better fit for Nevashi culture as well.
Those weren't the only words missing, so I created a few more, and now Nevashi has over 550 words. Among those words are pora, "to be correct" and its opposite, sipora. These are related to ora, which means "true" (or as a ma verb, "to be true"; as a ta verb, "to be honest"; or "to tell the truth" as a ca verb). It must have been pa ora at one time, but got squished into pora and became a verb of its own, with sa. (That might be more than anyone wants to know. Consider it exposure of process.)
So, back to the things I wanted to translate:
Don't mistake low tide for failure.
Seya fremish yam sidelya gida yam ortortian.
NEG confuse-IMP the-DObject failure instead-of the-DObj lowtide.
I wasn't sure about it at first, especially with the preposition involved, but I've decided that this construction with both sidelya and ortortian as objects of frem makes me happy. Also, I decided to go with an imperative instead of a less direct "one shouldn't..." because I wanted it to be more than a suggestion-- more "cheer up!" and less "you really shouldn't be so unhappy."
The imperative in Nevashi can be a little ambiguous because it loses the meaning carried in the first part of the verb. Frem isn't one of the more confusing verbs, though, because there are other clues to disambiguate-- where it means "to be confused", it would be intransitive, so there wouldn't be any object following it. Where it would mean "to confuse (someone)", it would have the imperative+causative (which is -ihi in the new grammar: fremihi). The only remaining possibility is what you see here. (At least until other meanings for frem come along.)
A rising tide lifts all boats.
fi ec ya roian inim shenai omo.
3rd-nonpast lift the rising-tide pl-DObj all boats.
This is pretty straightforward. I was back and forth on shenai omo and omo shenai, but went with the former because numbers come before nouns, and shenai ("all") specifically refers to a quantity. (I still think the latter sounds better.)
So, there you have it! Two more things you can say in Nevashi.
Oh! One more thing! In the process of creating vocabulary today, I added two new items to my list of personal names: Delya (f, "victory") and Delyafan (m, "victor". Or more literally, "victory-maker")
Thursday, May 24, 2012
I can't read my own shirt.
Update! The collected translations are at http://mianderings.blogspot.com/2012/06/t-shirt-translations.html .
Did I seriously publish a blank post? I don't remember doing that. I'm pretty sure that was an accident of some sort. Well, that's fixable. I'll just fill it up with something now.
I ran into a person I know, the mother of one of my son's friends, and she showed me her new tattoo, which she thought was in Latin, but I immediately recognized as Spanish. I posted about it on Facebook because I figure it is something that my language geek friends can relate to.
This rolled around in my brain for a little while, and I posted again that I thought I might create a line of t-shirts in obscure natlangs and/or conlangs that read "I can't read my own shirt." So, of course, I had to translate it into Nevashi: Seya pa nal yam yera cei.
This is wrong, however. I forgot the potential bit. It should have been Seya vapa nal yam yera cei. (It is a rule that every short translation I post in public will have at least one major error, and every long translation will have at least two major errors and a minimum of three minor mistakes.)
Before I get into my thought process below, I want to make a note that the emphasis of "my own" is expressed here with ya... cei, which is "the + my". I figure I won't remember that detail unless I write it down somewhere, and this blog is often that somewhere.
And I should note here, also, that ce is the first person pronoun that emerged from the reforms that I still haven't posted in their entirety.
~*~
And now onto the inside-my-skull stuff:
I thought with some dismay that it looked awfully choppy with all those little words. I'd been thinking for some time that I might like to eliminate some of the spaces between mandatory elements that are obliged to sit next to one another in a sentence with nothing between-- that space in the middle of a verb, for instance. I've decided against this, however, because the language has a fairly straight forward stress pattern (primary stress on the first syllable unless otherwise marked) which would be obscured or lost if the verb got smooshed together. This isn't such a big deal in a case like pa nal which would become panal, but if your verb is, say, olugav adad, then it would be little harder to tell that there's supposed to be stress on the first a in adad if it were written olugavadad.
There's no reason why the verb couldn't be merged, other than trying to preserve the rhythm of the language as it is and keeping it easy for me to read aloud. And then that first part might be used independently, too. The example above, olugav adad, means "I forced myself to begin to run." I can imagine circumstances in which olugav ("I made myself start to (go)") could be used to answer a question. In the end, "I like it that way" is the only reason any conlanger needs to justify whatever weirdness they've got going on in their personal projects.
I'll leave it alone.
~*~
I did the same translation into ea-luna, where I rendered it thus: ewe ate lige la la-bagu-mupa. I translated it correctly beforehand on paper and then typed wrong, once again leaving out the potential bit. (What is it with me and potentials? I dunno.)
Later, I reconsidered, deciding it should have been bagu-la-mupa instead of la-bagu-mupa, to show the emphasis in "my own" in English. Those are "this-my-shirt" and "my-this-shirt" respectively. This is conlang cross-contamination from the "the + my" construction in Nevashi. Previously it would have been "my + same" in ea-luna: la-mupa dati.
I think I'll keep both. More isn't always better, but sometimes it is.
Did I seriously publish a blank post? I don't remember doing that. I'm pretty sure that was an accident of some sort. Well, that's fixable. I'll just fill it up with something now.
I ran into a person I know, the mother of one of my son's friends, and she showed me her new tattoo, which she thought was in Latin, but I immediately recognized as Spanish. I posted about it on Facebook because I figure it is something that my language geek friends can relate to.
This rolled around in my brain for a little while, and I posted again that I thought I might create a line of t-shirts in obscure natlangs and/or conlangs that read "I can't read my own shirt." So, of course, I had to translate it into Nevashi: Seya pa nal yam yera cei.
This is wrong, however. I forgot the potential bit. It should have been Seya vapa nal yam yera cei. (It is a rule that every short translation I post in public will have at least one major error, and every long translation will have at least two major errors and a minimum of three minor mistakes.)
Before I get into my thought process below, I want to make a note that the emphasis of "my own" is expressed here with ya... cei, which is "the + my". I figure I won't remember that detail unless I write it down somewhere, and this blog is often that somewhere.
And I should note here, also, that ce is the first person pronoun that emerged from the reforms that I still haven't posted in their entirety.
~*~
And now onto the inside-my-skull stuff:
I thought with some dismay that it looked awfully choppy with all those little words. I'd been thinking for some time that I might like to eliminate some of the spaces between mandatory elements that are obliged to sit next to one another in a sentence with nothing between-- that space in the middle of a verb, for instance. I've decided against this, however, because the language has a fairly straight forward stress pattern (primary stress on the first syllable unless otherwise marked) which would be obscured or lost if the verb got smooshed together. This isn't such a big deal in a case like pa nal which would become panal, but if your verb is, say, olugav adad, then it would be little harder to tell that there's supposed to be stress on the first a in adad if it were written olugavadad.
There's no reason why the verb couldn't be merged, other than trying to preserve the rhythm of the language as it is and keeping it easy for me to read aloud. And then that first part might be used independently, too. The example above, olugav adad, means "I forced myself to begin to run." I can imagine circumstances in which olugav ("I made myself start to (go)") could be used to answer a question. In the end, "I like it that way" is the only reason any conlanger needs to justify whatever weirdness they've got going on in their personal projects.
I'll leave it alone.
~*~
I did the same translation into ea-luna, where I rendered it thus: ewe ate lige la la-bagu-mupa. I translated it correctly beforehand on paper and then typed wrong, once again leaving out the potential bit. (What is it with me and potentials? I dunno.)
Later, I reconsidered, deciding it should have been bagu-la-mupa instead of la-bagu-mupa, to show the emphasis in "my own" in English. Those are "this-my-shirt" and "my-this-shirt" respectively. This is conlang cross-contamination from the "the + my" construction in Nevashi. Previously it would have been "my + same" in ea-luna: la-mupa dati.
I think I'll keep both. More isn't always better, but sometimes it is.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
What Not To Call People
Let's say that you've moved to Nevash, and you're very angry at someone, and you want to call them something that fully expresses exactly how you feel about them at that moment. The word you are looking for is shufuma.
This literally means "fishmouth". It was originally a derogatory slang word for a dockside prostitute. As you might imagine, there are many popular explanations for the expression, each more obscene than the last. It has spread far beyond the docks, even into the mountains and onto the mainland, as a very strong, general purpose insult.
On the other hand, uma shufi just means "mouth of a fish". If you call someone (or their mother) that, they'll know what you intended to say, but the effect will be more comedy than insult. They might hurt themselves laughing at you, though, so you might get your revenge after all.
This literally means "fishmouth". It was originally a derogatory slang word for a dockside prostitute. As you might imagine, there are many popular explanations for the expression, each more obscene than the last. It has spread far beyond the docks, even into the mountains and onto the mainland, as a very strong, general purpose insult.
If you're sitting in a Nevashi bar, wondering what it might be like to be hit over the head with a bottle in a brawl, try this sentence:
Mi an amá dei go shufuma. ("Your mother is a fishmouth.")
On the other hand, uma shufi just means "mouth of a fish". If you call someone (or their mother) that, they'll know what you intended to say, but the effect will be more comedy than insult. They might hurt themselves laughing at you, though, so you might get your revenge after all.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The 5th Annual State of the Language Address
Well, dear readers, it is that time of the year again when I tell you that the language is developing very slowly and next year will be better. I had intended to say this in a video to mark the fifth year in a row that I've given an annual update, but that didn't work out. (I owe y'all a video this year.)
2011 was an eventful year for Teliya Nevashi. The way that nouns work has changed, I've started writing the new and updated version of the grammar, and the language finally has more than 500 words. There were some minor changes to some affixes, and there are going to be some teensy changes with verbs too, but all of that will appear in the Teliya Nevashi 2.0 grammar when it comes along.
I'd hoped to have the grammar written by January, but that was outrageously optimistic. I am not even going to pretend that I have any idea when it will actually be written, but I do hope to have a new version available some time this year.
Other than producing a new grammar for public consumption, I am hoping to hit 1000 words this year. The language lacks a lot of practical vocabulary for everyday use, so that will be my first priority. I'd like to be doing more translations than I have been, which should help the total count also.
I'd hoped to have the grammar written by January, but that was outrageously optimistic. I am not even going to pretend that I have any idea when it will actually be written, but I do hope to have a new version available some time this year.
Other than producing a new grammar for public consumption, I am hoping to hit 1000 words this year. The language lacks a lot of practical vocabulary for everyday use, so that will be my first priority. I'd like to be doing more translations than I have been, which should help the total count also.
I spent a good amount of my language building time in 2011 messing with ea-luna instead. It's a deeply flawed language in so many different ways, but I can't help but have warm, mushy feelings for it. It's the oatmeal in my heart. I am beginning to think that it deserves a blog of its own, or perhaps I should start a general conlanging blog to cover all the things that I'm doing that aren't Nevashi.
On a more personal note, 2011 was a year full of ups and downs, and when I've fallen into those downs, I've gotten a lot of support from my conlanger friends. Thank you, all of you who offered me kind words and a shoulder to cry on. You know who you are.
On a more personal note, 2011 was a year full of ups and downs, and when I've fallen into those downs, I've gotten a lot of support from my conlanger friends. Thank you, all of you who offered me kind words and a shoulder to cry on. You know who you are.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
513 and rising. Seasons.
I made some changes to a couple of affixes that has resulted in yet another revision to the vocabulary list. Here is the link to the Revised Revised version.
I will get around to changing the link on the right. (It is on the right, isn't it? I always get that wrong.)
There are 513 entries in the document now. This isn't a full listing of all Nevashi words. The pronouns aren't there, for instance. Despite some omissions, I am glad I've kept it almost complete and updated regularly. Now I just need to get that other document re-written. I am working on it, but it has been extremely slow going because my personal life hasn't been especially conlanging-friendly lately.
Nevashi is the first conlang I've done that has never had a paper version. This was one of my goals for the project; I wanted to begin to work in a searchable and more shareable format. Of those two things, searchable is by far the more important of the two. The charm of looking for things in hand-written documents wears off pretty quickly when you're doing a lot of translations.
We've moved on to the half of the year during which I accomplish the most in my creative pursuits. This season is called kana in Nevashi. It's autumn and winter taken together. The same word can be used to mean cold weather in a general sense too.
Autumn is kana gwisot, "cool kana". Winter is kana gwisel, "freezing kana".
Although I didn't make any notes on it, it would appear that the good people of Nevash measure the two seasons from equinox to equinox. The word for "south" is pakana, or "toward kana" and north is palora, "toward lora". (Lora is the other half of the year.) I will have to assume that they've generalized north/south as being "that direction on this side of the east-west line", based on where the sun is rising and setting. (I can only assume that's what I was thinking, since I didn't write anything down.)
In any case, kana is the season during which I do most of my conlanging, writing, painting, and so on. I get introspective and spend a lot of time thinking about life, the universe, and everything. During lora, I'm too busy running around outside and chasing kids. It's my care-free season.
Do y'all have a conlanging season? Or am I just a freak?
I will get around to changing the link on the right. (It is on the right, isn't it? I always get that wrong.)
There are 513 entries in the document now. This isn't a full listing of all Nevashi words. The pronouns aren't there, for instance. Despite some omissions, I am glad I've kept it almost complete and updated regularly. Now I just need to get that other document re-written. I am working on it, but it has been extremely slow going because my personal life hasn't been especially conlanging-friendly lately.
Nevashi is the first conlang I've done that has never had a paper version. This was one of my goals for the project; I wanted to begin to work in a searchable and more shareable format. Of those two things, searchable is by far the more important of the two. The charm of looking for things in hand-written documents wears off pretty quickly when you're doing a lot of translations.
We've moved on to the half of the year during which I accomplish the most in my creative pursuits. This season is called kana in Nevashi. It's autumn and winter taken together. The same word can be used to mean cold weather in a general sense too.
Autumn is kana gwisot, "cool kana". Winter is kana gwisel, "freezing kana".
Although I didn't make any notes on it, it would appear that the good people of Nevash measure the two seasons from equinox to equinox. The word for "south" is pakana, or "toward kana" and north is palora, "toward lora". (Lora is the other half of the year.) I will have to assume that they've generalized north/south as being "that direction on this side of the east-west line", based on where the sun is rising and setting. (I can only assume that's what I was thinking, since I didn't write anything down.)
In any case, kana is the season during which I do most of my conlanging, writing, painting, and so on. I get introspective and spend a lot of time thinking about life, the universe, and everything. During lora, I'm too busy running around outside and chasing kids. It's my care-free season.
Do y'all have a conlanging season? Or am I just a freak?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Out-of-date documentation
The grammar I have linked over there on the right is terribly, terribly out-of-date. I plan on working on that a little bit today. It's still going to be very informal. Writing it all out in a conversational tone helps me get over my aversion to writing it out at all, and it makes it easier reading for my friends who aren't really all that interested in languages but are curious about what it is that I do.
In any case, whatever comes out of the revision will be better than the best available documentation for ea-luna. For instance, the ENTIRE documentation for ea-luna verbs is this:
On an different, but perhaps not wholly unrelated, note, the Nevashi word du jour, newly minted just this morning, is semosva, "procrastination" (or, more literally, "not-doing-ness"), which is just shy of simosva, "laziness".
(ma/buna) (ae/ewe) (ema/ide) (eni) (uma/punu/bana)That makes perfect sense to me, but it really doesn't tell anyone else much of anything useful. That's what I am working from on my end, though, for most of my languages-- just a cheat sheet for my own benefit that needs to be expanded and explained before it is fit for public consumption.
On an different, but perhaps not wholly unrelated, note, the Nevashi word du jour, newly minted just this morning, is semosva, "procrastination" (or, more literally, "not-doing-ness"), which is just shy of simosva, "laziness".
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