Eight sentences

Teliya Nevashi has no marking for collective/mass plurals like "birds", nor does it have marking for habitual actions, so these first ones were pretty straightforward...

Sort of.

1. Birds sing. Eci selis shanan.

2. Children play. Eti voya mishtun.[1]

3. Dogs bark. Eci buf kevrin.

4. Bees hum. Eci zhun mintan. 

5. Baby laughed. Ji talala Bene.[m]; Ji talala Bena. [f.]  

6. The sun shines. Si donu ya cea. 

7. The wind blows. Si feyu ya shushu.

8. The car started. Luti muzhu ya otomo. [2]

[1] Speakers of Nevashi are apparently much more age and gender conscious than speakers of English, because there are words for boy and girl at different age ranges (infant, toddler, preschooler, school kid (5-11), teenager (12-17)) that would be in far greater circulation than mishtu, which is a gender neutral word for a minor (non-adult). And though some people might consider it sexist and awful, the male form would probably be used for mixed groups and mass plural as well. So, while this is a correct and straightforward translation, a native speaker might well say "Eti voya levten." (Levte = boy, 5-11.) 

[2] Ha! A use for the inceptive! Muzhu refers to the running or working of engines, motors and machines, so this could be translated back as "The car began to run."

Weekend Conlanging Plans

Since I won't be at the Language Creation Conference this weekend, except through the magic of Internet simulcast, I thought I might actually do some conlanging this weekend instead.  To that end, I've printed the first two lists of graded sentences from Gary Shannon's site -- this one and this one -- to translate, in order to work out some grammatical knots and expand the Nevashi lexicon. 

I am hoping to develop a more comfortable relationship with the language on my way to fluency, and that's the other part of why I will be translating all those sentences. I start every language with the intention of becoming fluent in it, but those good intentions usually fail to produce the results I'd like. 

I was able to use ea-luna to some degree once upon a time, but that was a long time ago. I've got an urge to translate those sentences into ea-luna at the same time that I am working on the Nevashi translations, but that would probably be counterproductive in several different ways. I will give ea-luna some attention in the near future, but for now, I am working mainly on TN.

Speaking of what projects I am working on (or not working on), I opened a little notebook that was in the bottom of the totebag I've been using to carry my books around and discovered the beginnings of yet another language. I am going to take a little time this evening to document the vocabulary and grammar notes from that. It's not much of anything and it doesn't even have a name, but it might yet have words I can steal, or it might later develop into something more than what it currently is. In any case,  if there's one thing I've learned from ea-luna, it is that having a single hardcopy of any given bit of conlang documentation is a bad idea. Multiple electronic copies FTW. 

Tiny little updates

There have been a few new vocabulary items added to the dictionary, and the grammar has had a derivation section added back into it.

That is all. 

Pa an gwisel, and other notes to myself.

This particular entry is mainly for my own benefit, to remind myself to make some changes to the grammar later.

'To be' covers a lot of ground in English. Nevashi has a few different words for concepts that are covered by "be" in English, notably separate words for "to be located in a place" (e.g., as in "I am downtown.") and "to be in a given mood" (e.g., as in "I am happy.") Those are dev and vok, respectively.

"Pa an gwisel" would mean "I am cold." It uses an, which limited pretty strictly to connecting one noun with another in other circumstances, but here it is accompanied by the feeling/perceiving verb bit (pa) instead of the ordinary, default "be" one (ma).** This represents an extension of an to express the experience of physical sensations.

Also, this includes a new way of deriving adjectives from verbs (and probably nouns as well), using -el.
Gwis, "to freeze" > Gwisi, "frozen, icy"
...> Gwisel, "cold, freezing"

Pwen, v.,"to burn"; n., "fire" > Pweni, "burnt"
...> Pwenel, "hot, fiery, burning"

Also, I must remember to add numbers > 100 and new vocabulary.

Later this evening, I hope to write an entry outlining the differences between pa vok jeya vs. pa jeya vs. pa gan jeya. No promises though. 



(**As a bit of trivia, the distinction would disappear in the past tense, since both of those particular bits would become "ba"...)

The State of the Language, February 2009

Teliya Nevashi (hereafter, Nevashi) grew slowly in 2008. There was some minor vocabulary growth and a few grammar tweaks. It was mostly neglected. There wasn't even a lot of undocumented, behind-the-scenes development. On the positive side, the online documentation for Nevashi remains up-to-date. If I make a change offline, I am documenting it online fairly reliably.

My goals for 2009 include further fleshing out the grammar, building a large amount of vocabulary, and to create some texts in Nevashi, both translated and original. The first vocabulary advances will be in numbers and covering the domestic sphere, plus a long list of verbs I've put together.

I've got some ideas about creating an introductory level instructional text (or multimedia presentation of some sort). I don't really expect too many people to take that much interest in it, but I think putting it together may help me clarify some issues for myself, as well as being fun for me.

For right now, I am going to concentrate on Earth Nevashi (or, perhaps more whimsically, Nevashi-In-Exile), as a personal language, rather than Ianea Nevashi, the language as it exists within the fictional world of Ianea. There are two reasons for this. The first is that all of my conlangs are ultimately personal languages, even if I try to do something else with them. I just can't help myself. The second reason is that I am reevaluating where the Nevashi people and culture fit into the world. Development of Ianea continues, very slowly, but the geography is undergoing some radical changes.

So that's where we are right now and where we're going. Onward and upward!

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.

Small advances in vocabulary

I added some new words that have been on my mind. There are some more words and some new affixes I want to add. I hope I get that done tomorrow. I have some pre-existing words to document in the vocab list too.

I haven't forgotten Nevashi. Our business has really take off and has been far more successful than we could have ever imagined it would be at this point. That, and all the usual kid stuff, has me crawling a little more slowly than I'd like.