The Eldraeverse

…building civilizations with my space elves in space.

Category Archives: Conlang

Dialects

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 22, 2013

The distinction between the three generally accepted primary Eldraeic dialects is both informal and quite simple:

“Low Eldraeic” is the language as it is actually spoken day to day, using the common-sense medium of language features and vocabulary that are of use to most of the people most of the time.  (It’s still complex and formal by most language’s standards, but it has had most of the rough edges and unnecessary complexity in its native speakers’ eyes rubbed off it.)

“High Eldraeic”, on the other hand, is the language with every idiosyncracy, grammatical feature, additional functionality, and pedantic technical distinction put together by the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology over generations, for reasons technical, philosophical and political, in play.  It is used lightly in scientific and technical documentation where it aids in clarity, brevity and accuracy, more heavily in formal ritual, high-falutin’ rhetoric, and particularly grand opera, and most heavily when one speaker in a conversation wishes to browbeat another about just exactly how much better educated, more intelligent, and generally superior they happen to be.

“Trade”, the third dialect, is the worn-down and bastardized form of the language used widely by non-native speakers who learned it from other non-native speakers, or who found themselves reduced to stammering confusion after taking a mnemonetic course and wondering just how the heck they use all these registers and modes and affixes and non-temporal tenses in practice, and just what is an evidential anyway?

Conlang , ,

A Darkest Night Card

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 26, 2013

Remember the Conlang Card Exchange I mentioned a while back?

Well, now that it’s the new year and all the participants have presumably received their cards, I thought it was about time I posted it up here for general enjoyment. Here, therefore, y’all go:

A good-wishes card for the Darkest Night.

A good-wishes card for the Darkest Night.

What it says, transliterated:

An-el estkál xakorevár árjír idaratis qan árchal arícetár an-anan ké-el traquel jírileth ap silarí hál.

OBJ+ARG fate IMP+order+PRED PURPOSE FUT-AND-ONGOING QUANTIFIER year [sun-circle] bless+PRED OBJ+you/those-you-speak-for WITH-ARG ADJ-goodness freedom COMBINED-WITH prosperity IMP-AMPLIFIER.

“Fate is commanded to bless you with excellent freedom and prosperity in the coming year.”

A traditional eldraeic — the eldrae prefer to let the eternal verities know firmly what is expected of them—wish for the Darkest Night, the winter solstice/new year festival.

It’s written in eldraeic hexrunic, the one of their alphabets best suited for printing on cards, and signed with a personal ideograph, which I borrowed from one of my characters whom I’m sure won’t mind too much.

The background image is borrowed Creative Commons work, but represents the style of the original rather well, I think, and could well be an image of one of the Twin Worlds’ skies on the Darkest Night.

Conlang, Worldbuilding , , , ,

Cultural Tells of Language

1 Comment Posted by on August 26, 2012

This came up on the conlang/conculture mailing lists:

Ursula K. LeGuin writes some really gorgeous stub-languages into her fiction.  In a lovely short story called “Dancing to Ganam” in her collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, I paused to earmark this:

“Tezyeme,” he said, which meant something on the order of “it is happening the way it is supposed to happen.”

These little philosophical bells in a language always make conlangs more believable and immersive to me – telling the philosophy and culture of a people through the use of language.

What are some examples of words like this in your conlang(s)?

And I thought my answer might just be worth repeating here:

Eldraeic has a few of these.  Probably the most notable are the seven or eight words which they use to describe the innate and/or desirable characteristics of their mindset: coválír, estxíjir, mélith, talcoríëf, teir, valëssef, and valxíjir, none of which map precisely onto English/human concepts, even if some of them can get pretty close:

coválír might be translated as propertarianism, but really has the meaning “property as an extension of the self”; mélith, I gloss as “balance and obligation”; talcoríëf is literally “cold-mindedness”, but depending on context, it could reasonably be glossed as “rationality”, “self-mastery”, or “self-knowledge”; teir could be approximately glossed as “honor” or “self-integrity”; valëssef as “divided selfness” or “polymorphic identity” – the multiple social identities one has, and the need to keep them separate both mentally and in dealings with other people,even when you have two different relationships with one person; estxíjir as “wyrd”, “destiny” or “devotion to ideals”; and valxíjir as “uniqueness”, “excellence”, “will to power”, or “forcible impression of self onto the universe”.

(Most of these are covered in rather more detail on one of my trope-a-day pages, here, so I’ll link rather than repeat myself at great length.)

Oh, and estxíjir and valxíjir combine to create qalasír, which one might approximate as “will”, more adequately translate as “driving energies of the individual”, or casually gloss as “a soph’s got to do what a soph’s got to do”.  They also give rise to the slang term jír - approx. strength of will, courage, boldness, chutzpah, etc., and to jírileth, liberty – a “life of will/volition-use”.

Which brings me onto another one of those cultural tells: daráv, meaning literally “sophont” – which I gloss as “soph” in informal speech, for the right feel – and used in Eldraeic as the generic word for ”person” – without any reference to species, gender, sex, race, etc., etc. unless explicitly added.  Also found in compounds like daryteir, “person of honor”, “gentleman” — er, gentlesoph.

Hm, other examples.  There’s the term for an Imperial citizen-shareholder, or at least the short term that’s a lot quicker to say than “Imperial citizen-shareholder”; valmiríän, which ambiguously means both “ordered self” and “self who sets in order”, and probably reveals a decent amount about their self-concept in so doing, and its opposite, ulvaledar, “unbound-person”, which means “foreigner” but defines that as “not signatory to the Contract and Charter”.

I’d add the classic series of insults - ”Defaulter”, “slaver”, “parasite”, “dullist”, “cacophile”, or “entropic”, but I have not yet translated most of those, except for “dullist”, which is ulsúnadaráv- one who finds lack of the Nine Excellences and their concomitants laudable, or at least non-condemnable; so not technically “one who does not strive to shine”, rather, someone who thinks that there’s nothing wrong with that.  And there’s zakhrehs (“barbarian”), which while it doesn’t actually say that the thus called are guilty of specific and enumerated acts of coercionism, infiduciarity, theft, mooching, wilful culture-lack, destructionism, disharmony and chaos, implies that they like that sort of thing really hard.

Oh, and if I wax political for a moment, their taxonomy of polities.  The principle top-level division of móníë (polities), after all, is that between telelefmóníë (oath-consent states, Societies of Consent – by which they mean anywhere where the social contract is explicit and voluntary) and korasmóníë (force-states, where it isn’t), the latter being in turn primarily divided into talkorasmóníë (autocracies, “true-force states”) and sémódarmóníë (democracies, which charming word means “mutual-slave states”).

I’ve got some fairly telling metaphors, too, but they came up in my English-writing forms and I haven’t translated most of them yet.  Except for these different kinds of dilemmas, I think.

And if noodle words count, this.

Conlang , ,

Eldraeic Vocabulary (1)

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 9, 2012

By request, since I’ve seen a couple, here’s the dictionary of all the canonical Eldraeic words so far – canonical in this case meaning they’ve appeared in a fic or trope here or have otherwise been concretized.  (Yes, I have more words written down here, but everything’s subject to change except these.)  I’ve omitted a few species names and other proper nouns, as well as some grammatical particles, and the current version of the words’ place structures, but everything else should be in this list:

!tesh: ant
a!déra: bluelife animal of Eliera, resembling an indigo-furred, hexapedal woodchuck
aelva: beautiful/aesthetic (distinct from attractive)
Ailék: phonetic name for letteral “A”
alaer: ocean
alath: knowledge (as distinct from data)
alathciera: “weave-of-knowledge”, encylopaedia
aldamanyr: eikone, deity
aléla: motion/move
alírvelv: eel-analog native to Eliera
altáné: mother (performer of maternal role, not necessarily genetic or brood mother, or indeed female)
anan: you/you and those you speak for
anquan: negligibly, to a negligible degree
argórén: a tuberous Elieran vegetable
arien: the largest piece of Imperial coinage; 6 esteyn
aril: light (also dark when reversed with ulquor)
árkal: causal connective: causally resulting in, thus
astrar: (Selenaria) governor of a province’s subsidiary city
azik: stone (substance)
balchárn: hunter/to hunt
bandal: dog/domesticated canid
caile: leaf
cálen: green
calma: little/small
cap: logical connective: AND
cerrúr: four-horned hexapedal browsing animal, native to Eliera, used for riding
chalánlél: pulley (“wheel that moves things not itself”)
cháldar: a nanodrug refined from pithed sophont mind-states
chalél: wheel
charét: axle
chelír: a short non-rhyming triplet poem, of similar form to the senryu
chimbrí: like, be fond of
cikril: silverlife pseudoplant of Eliera
cikrieth: swamp/littoral variant of cikril
cisatar: (Selenaria) provincial governor
coronargyr: “Emperor’s merit”; that quality of authority conferred on a ruler by competence and granted proxies of the ruled that enables them to rule
coválír: propertarianism, the conception of property as an extension of the self
covalth: understanding of a concept
daër: game
daranan: you and others
daráv: person / sophont
darbandal: uplifted sophont dog/canid species
darcúlnó: uplifted sophont octopus species
darëssef: social role; the function you presently serve
darííche: uplifted sophont cetacean species
daryteir: “sophont of honor”; gentleman (although applies equally to any sex in the Imperial context)
deless: to like/love as a friend
delesessqámél: approximately, friend-with-benefits
dhaith: afraid
dimar: (Selenaria) governor of a district of towns and villages
dúran: darkness (with a sense of presence of malice; for simple absence of light, see aril)
ei: particle introducing names
ékaláman: “wyvern”; hexapedal flying carnivorous reptile with mid-legs turned into wings
el: particle introducing simple descriptions
elar: temporal tense: past/was/then/before
eldré: eldrae
elén: particle introducing mass descriptions
eloé: particle introducing set descriptions
esklav: hot drink produced by an infusion of beans; neither coffee nor chocolate, but not entirely dissimilar to either
espré: “pronoun assignment”; also known as
essa: create
esteyn: the base unit of Imperial coinage
estrev: “boss”; informal
estrevikh: “boss”, with sense of “master”; derogatory.
estrev-i-ráyestrev: “boss of bosses”, overboss; informal, usually criminal slang.
estxíjir: wyrd/destiny/devotion-to-ideals/dharma
falsan: black
fíäríën: tree
fidúr: blue
filwé: small four-winged songbird of Eliera, noted for its brilliant white plumage
galrás: meat
Gilek: phonetic name for letteral “G”
Hacek: phonetic name for letteral “H”
hain: war
hanat: home/domicile/dwelling/lair
hanrian: the second of the traditional two swords; resembles a Roman gladius
harisan: runner/to run
harnis: vehicle (generic)
hasérgalrás: the meat of the hasérúr
hasérúr: a hexapedal, browsing, bluelife Elieran animal used for meat and milk
highént: difficult
hyúman: human; this word, of course, doesn’t actually exist in the language, but I include it to illustrate how it would be transliterated into Eldraeic orthography
iandaër: a strategic battle-simulation game, similar to both chess and shogi
ictoch: lit. “glitch”; colloquially, any annoying thing that you need to work on
idaharis: progress
idar: temporal tense: future
iébel: evidential: statement is hearsay, from the speaker’s perspective
intáné: father (performer of paternal role, not necessarily genetic or brood father, or indeed male)
ithréth: a four-dimensional stone-placement (similar to go) game
ítavir: yell/scream
jír: (slang) approx. strength of will, courage, boldness, chutzpah, etc.
jírileth: liberty (primarily in the negative sense; technically, a maximised phase-space of individual volition)
kal: polished gemstone used as a currency token
kálan: center, middle, midpoint
kecbal: animal
kerc-rakhel: “miserable prey”
kesseth: a lettuce-like vegetable of Eliera
kimaes: jar-sold sauce for plain food; similar to “ketchup”
kírasseth: the most complex Eldraeic game, involving multiple boards of play, cards, dice, and mechanical computers, self-referential, with an astonishingly broad base of symbolism
kirsunar: “most brightly shining”, supreme
korásan: “forceful one”; an aristocrat who governs by “right” of force
kórasmiríë: order imposed by force
korasmóníë: force-state; nonconsensual society
kveth: ass (body part)
kveth-lakh: that which comes out of the kveth (informal, perjorative)
lakhass: to die
laras: word
larileth: “sigillary”; a tile-placement game similar to Earth’s mah-jong, based on combining rune-constructs
leir: mist
léran: “observer of the civilities “; a non-citizen-shareholder who, nevertheless, respects the principles of the Fundamental Contract
lethis: living thing, to live
líhasúr: a quadrupedal greenlife rooting animal, native to Eliera
lin-runér: a coordinator of coordinators; to the runér as royalty is to nobility
lin-vandthel: the cold, black rage that leads to terrible deeds
líril: singer, to sing
lorzh: trapper, to trap
lúekha: a sea-bottom “hot smoker” worm native to the ammonia oceans of the qucequql homeworld
lumenis: the “shilling” of Imperial coinage; 1/24 esteyn
mahar: maker, to make
mélith: balance and obligation
meressif: the “gentle arts”; the formalities and skills required to move in Imperial high society
miríë: order (as opposed to chaos and/or entropy)
mírlathdaër: a rule-manipulation game (similar to Nomic), popular among AIs
móníë: polity
múléth: a plum-like fruit native to Eliera
múratmiríë: order born from cooperation; emergent order
múrcét: night; the night half of the daily cycle
nalathdaráv: “unknown-person”, stranger
nall: none
nalrí: neuter (person or animal)
naratis: temporal tense: now & ongoing into the past and future; i.e., now and for all time
nekhalyef: a quadrupedal grazing animal of Eliera, used primarily for meat and milk
nérí: male (person or animal); man
nérissí: hermaphrodite (person or animal); herm
nissí: male (person or animal); man
olman: container, to contain
ómith: an elementally-themed card game with additional dice-controlled variations
qal: this here, a nearby object
qalasír: driving energies of the individual
qan: degree qualifier: syllabic numeral appended indicated degree by twelfths
qané: degree qualifier: to a small degree
qaneth: degree qualifier: to an average/usual degree
qanlin: degree qualifier: to a large degree
qel: that there, a medium-distant object
qil: that yonder, a far-distant object
qildaráv: person-from-yonder; stranger, foreigner
quel: good (general sense – moral, pleasing, aesthetic, functional, etc.)
quor: degree qualifier: absolute presence, completely, extremely
raicve: “rotting” (pejorative sense only)
reshkef: a hexapedal browsing animal of Eliera, used for meat, milk and wool
rian: blade (weapon)
rijsevas: wedge (“double-sided inclined plane”)
rijvas: inclined plane
runér: coordinator/harmonizer, a local executive in the Imperial government
saejas: screw (worn-down “circular inclined plane”)
saeris: crystal
sarai: judge, assess
sekánlél: lever (“stick that moves things not itself”)
seklar: arrow (weapon)
selenis: the “penny” of Imperial coinage; 1/288 esteyn
serren: shellfish, native to Eliera, whose shells have been historically used as currency
sessilar: binary metaphor
sessq: to have sex (mutually; takes a group term or list as subject)
sémódarmóníë: mutual-slave state; democracy
sétavir: converse (among a group)
sevesúr: a two-winged greenlife game bird of Eliera
sunar: bright/shining
talcoríëf: “cold-mindedness”, rationality, self-mastery
talis: true/truth
talkorasmóníë: true-force state; autocracy
taltis: smallest Imperial coin; 1/1152 esteyn
tavir: to talk (to)
teir: honor/self-integrity
teirquel: moral goodness/ethicality
telalél: wind
telalélharn: hovercraft
telelefmóníë: oath-consent state, Society of Consent
telir: sky
thunimidár: “faded person”, middle-level supervisory operative; criminal slang.
tiryef: a large flightless bird of Eliera, raised for meat
uldaráv: p-zombie
ulquor: degree qualifier:  nonexistent, absolute absence, zero
ulsúnadaráv: “dullist”; one who finds lack of the Nine Excellences and their concomitants laudable, or at least non-condemnable
ulvaledar: “unbound-person”; non-Contract signatory, foreigner
urlis: false / untrue (not implying a lie, just not logically true)
urlisdaër: “false-game”; a game whose purpose is to cheat
val: I / I and those I speak for
valanan: you and I
valdar: I and others, we but not you
valdaranan: you and I and others
valëssef: divided selfness/polymorphic identity
valmiríän: “ordered self” and “self that sets in order”; Imperial citizen-shareholder
valxíjir: uniqueness/excellence/will to power/forcible impression of self onto the universe
vandthel: anger
var: temporal tense: present/is/now/at
xaról: a night-purple flowering shrub native to Eliera
yalcet: to curse
zahúën: big/large
zakhrehs: barbarian

That’s all there is for now.  I’ll post more when it builds up again, in the course of fics future.

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Six Simple Machines

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 7, 2012

In today’s random conlanging post – the Eldraeic terms for the six simple machines, just because I could:

rijvas
Inclined plane.

rijsevas
Wedge (“double-sided inclined plane”, more or less)

saejas
Screw (originally “circular inclined plane”, then worn down)

chalél / charét
Wheel / axle

sekánlél
Lever (“stick that moves things not itself”)

chalánlél
Pulley (“wheel that moves things not itself”)

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Eldraeic: Degree Quantifiers and Antonyms

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 19, 2012

As was mentioned before, the use of degree quantifiers in Eldraeic in some cases makes unnecessary, or redundant, the use of antonyms.  One example which was given, and in which there really aren’t directly cognate words in the language, are “full” and “empty”, expressed as:

quor olmanár

and

ulquor olmanár

respectively.  Another is the question of moral goodness and evil, in which the latter concept – in accord with its philosophical status as a defect or absence rather than a force in its own right – has no corresponding symbol of its own (although its aspects do), being expressed as

ulquor teirquelár

which one could reasonably gloss as a Newspeak-style “ungood”.

But Eldraeic not being a Newspeak-style restrictive language, it’s worth pointing out that there are plenty of cases, unlike these, in which both halves of an antonym pair persist in the language by inheritance from its predecessor languages, and both remain in use.  The nuances of such usages vary, of course, and to illustrate this, I’ll give you three examples: big/small (zahúën / calma), true/false (talis / urlis) and light/dark (aril / dúran).

In the case of the first, either may be used without distinction.  There’s no real difference in sense between saying for something small

calmavár / ulquor zahúënár

(small/unbig), or for something big

zahúënár / ulquor calmavár

(big/unsmall).  The difference is merely one of emphasis, and you can choose whichever suits for taste and meter, etc.

The second pair is a little more interesting; while technically there is no difference in meaning when the same transformation is done, the subtextual implications are rather different.  To claim that something one is told is an

ulquor talisár

an untruth, has the implication that the speaker believes the teller to be incorrect, misinformed, miscalculating, or is otherwise acceptably wrong.  To claim, on the other hand, that what they have told you is an

urlisár

a falsehood, is to implictly accuse them of deliberate deceit, falsification or wilful miscalculation; in short, a lie.

The last pair is perhaps the most interesting.  In all cases, light is simply

arilár

but the common usage for darkness, in the sense of the mere absence of light, is exactly that – “absence of light”:

ulquor arilár

To say

dúranár

Is to imply not merely the absence of light, but darkness with a sense of presence, or malice; it might well be used for such things as the Shadow of Sauron, the environmental conditions of Z’ha’dum, the palpable darkness of a thick forest at midnight in deep winter with the howling of unfriendly wolves all around, the lights going out in Rome, or the long cold darkness preceding the death of the universe; very much not a word used for simple low lighting conditions.

Likewise, its ulquor-converse very much implies Light with a capital L, in an almost religious sense; that light which burns away the darkness in the dúran sense.  Also not a word for common, turn-on-the-lights usage.

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Eldraeic: Degree Quantifiers

1 Comment Posted by on January 17, 2012

To expand a little on the degree quantifiers mentioned in the previous post, these are a set of words which permit the Eldraeic speaker to quantify the degree to which a particular predicate applies with reference to its subject argument.  There are six of these in common use:

ulquor
nonexistent, absolute absence, zero

anqan
negligibly

qané
to a small degree

qaneth
to an average/usual degree

qanlin
to a large degree

quor
absolute presence, completely, extremely

The definition of qaneth is, of course, somewhat subjective; a coffee cup or drinking glass which is qaneth olmanár is rather more than 50% full!  One can also use qan as a prefix with the syllabic numerals 1-11 to specify a particular degree, by twelfths, of a predicate’s applicability before having to resort to the more precise quantification systems in the language.

This also reduces linguistic redundancy in some ways.  As seen in the previous post, something which is full is quor olmanár (“containing as much as is possible”), and something which is empty is simply ulquor olmanár (“containing absolutely nothing”), and that’s all the linguistic expression those concepts need.

This applies equally well to most other concepts.  Good, in the moral sense, for example, is expressed by the predicate teirquelár (“be ethical, be honorable”); a good man in the common sense is simply described by teirquelár, or qaneth teirquelár; the uncommonly virtuous by qanlin teirquelár; and a saint by quor teirquelár; but equally, a common villain may be described as qané teirquelár, the uncommonly bad as anqan teirquelár, and cosmic evil as ulquor teirquelár.

There are, of course, an adequate quantity of specialized terms to properly taxonomize evil in both terms of practical result and in terms of motive, but I take a moment here to consider and note the way in which the language reflects the eldraic conception of evil as flaw, defect, or absence (evil as entropy, or miscreation) rather than as an entity due consideration in its own right.

(Even if some of we earthlings might find it a little creepy to discover that their word for evil is, quite literally, ungood.)

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My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels

1 Comment Posted by on January 17, 2012

El val telalélharn quor olmanár elén alírvelv.

No, I have no idea why I translated that.  Just had a moment, I suppose.

Word-by-word breakdown:

el
Simple descriptor; essentially an article.

val
“I”; or in this case “my”, because it follows the simple descriptor.

telalélharn
hovercraft – literally “wind-vehicle” from telalél (“wind”) + harnis (“vehicle”);
wind is itself derived from telir (“sky”) + aléla (“motion”)

quor
degree quantifier; extremely, absolutely, the highest possible degree

olmanár
predicate, meaning “to contain”; in combination with quor, therefore means “to be full of”

elén
Mass descriptor; again, essentially an article, but talking about a mass of whatever rather than a countable number of it.

alírvelv
Eel.  Well, technically, an Elieran eel-analog in the sense of being slimy, serpentine, and water-dwelling, but close enough; from, obviously enough alír (“water”) + velv (“serpent”)

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Watching sci-fi shows gives me linguistic ideas.

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 23, 2011

sarvanattar:

I was in the middle of a Stargate SG-1 marathon when I decided I needed a particle for Síntári that makes an imperative more urgent.

It would work in the same way that English, Latin, and Greek all use go!, ite!, or ἴθι! plus another command.

The particle is kri. This is perhaps unsurprising if you’re familiar with the show XD.

So while lainttiskuas means “(You [sg]) write it!,” lainttiskuas kri! would be more along the lines of “Go write it (now)!”

I’m also thinking of deriving it from a verb krije, but I still have to figure out what that verb means. Probably something like “to pay attention to.”

You too, huh? :)

Back in the older versions of Eldraeic, a terminal krí (long-vowel marker on the I to make that sound right) in a sentence was how you converted a requestive into an imperative. Of course, ever since I caught delusions ambitions of publication, that’s had to be kicked out of canon for fairly obvious reasons, but it used to be there…

(via fyeahconlangs)

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WE ARE HUMANS AND WE ARE FROM EARTH

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 22, 2011

fyeahconlangs:

Wahawafe is the name of my multilingual translation project. It was begun on 18 June 2011. The website was launched on 9 July 2011. “Wahawafe” is an acronym of “We are humans and we are from Earth.”. The aim of this project is to collect translations of this sentence in as many languages as possible. It celebrates the linguistic diversity of the Earth. Translations in all languages are welcome!

This site includes many natural languages and also accepts lots of conlang translations!

Finally got around to doing this in Eldraeic:

valdar hyúmanár; cap valdar hanatár ir-ei téra.

Notes, word by word:

valdar
“We” – or to be precise, “I and others (not you)”

hyúmanár
There isn’t actually an Eldraeic word for “human”; humans, in their universe, are an undiscovered species somewhere out beyond the Periphery. On the other hand, standard Contact rules offer a few guidelines with regard to “call them as close to what they call themselves as we can get”, hence hyúman, with Eldraeic phonology for the “man” being close enough, but requiring the long u to be explicitly marked and an extra y inserted to do what English does naturally.

The ár, on the other hand, is the predication affix that turns it into a “verb” – the way you say “we are humans” in Eldraeic is to say, in effect, “we are humaning”

cap
It’s not quite “and” as we know it; Eldraeic doesn’t have a simple connective, and arguably a native speaker would just say valdar hyúmanár; valdar hanatár ir-ei téra (“we are humans; we are from Earth”). I’ve chosen instead to use the logical connective cap, which means “logical and”, or in this context, asserts that both the connected predications are true as a set.

hanatár
“are from” is hard to say in Eldraeic, because it lacks the broad sense of the verb “to be” – technically, it only has that in the sense of “to exist” – that lets you glom it together with arbitrary prepositions. hanat is the word for “home” at its most generic, or perhaps “domicile” would be better. So, with the right case tag, “domiciled at”… which is one possible meaning of the original from, and one quite likely to be used by humans who aren’t on Earth right now.

ir-ei
Two words here to introduce the argument of hanatár; ir is the case tag for location, therefore equivalent to “at” in this context; and ei is the “name descriptor”, indicating that what follows, the argument, is a proper name, not a description or other possible word.

téra
Again, there is no name for “Earth” in Eldraeic, so I’m using the concultural Contact rules. “Terra” is commonly enough used – without being a non-proper noun in a major planetary language (which class by my imaginary interstellar standards probably means English and Mandarin among Earthly languages, sharing the 1 billion speakers plus set) – to be a plausible candidate for their pick, and phonological transliteration takes us here.

Now to think about submitting it to the actual site!

Conlang ,

The Eldraeic Possessive and Memetic Imperialism

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 11, 2011

(As promised to the anonymous poster of the earlier ask, here’s a quick worldbuilding post reprint on the nature of the Eldraeic possessive and memetic imperialism.).

The Eldraeic possessive also goes into more detail than the possession functionality of many known languages.  Specifically, there are three types of possession recognized by the Eldraeic language using separate grammatical structures: the intrinsic, the associative, and thepropertarian.

The first of these, the intrinsic, is used to identify entities which are possessed by you because they are intrinsically part of you.  It is, in turn, separated into first- and second-order intrinsic possession:

First-order intrinsic possession is used with those entities which are not merely intrinsic parts of you, but are necessarily so.  Examples would include “my thoughts” and “my consciousness”, or indeed “myself”; these are necessarily part of oneself, otherwise one would not exist to make such a statement.

Second-order intrinsic possession covers the remainder of the intrinsic realm; “my hand”, “my hair”, “my liver”, etc.  As a historical note, “my body” is now an example of second-order intrinsic possession, despite originally being first-order.  The invention of uploading conclusively demonstrated that a specific given substrate was not, in fact, necessarily required to support a specific given mind, and thus invalidated the case for “my body” being first-order.

The second of these, the associative, designates entities which are “yours” because they choose to associate with you in some way, and vice versa, rather than being either intrinsic or property.  Examples from this set would include “my wife”, “my children”, “my friends”, “my coworkers”, “my concredents”, etc.

As a further linguistic note, one can generally identify the current Imperial stance on animal intelligence/prosophoncy with how domesticated examples of the species are referred to in the possessive.  For example, the brighter dog breeds would be referred to with the associative, whereas cattle would be referred to with the propertarian.

The third and final form of the possessive, the propertarian, is used with property over which the speaker actually holds present property rights, whether direct or delegated, except those things for which intrinsic possession is used instead.  (While one does possess property rights over one’s second-order intrinsics, alienating them is generally more complicated than those things for which one would use the propertarian.)  Examples are virtually limitless: “my car”, “my book”, “my lunch”, etc., etc.

This is, of course, another example of Imperial memetic imperialism – in this case, embedding epistemological, logical and metaphysical claims into the structure of the language - in practice.  Leaving aside the separation of related but non-identical concepts in the interest of encouraging (if not quite enforcing) clarity of thinking, the need to use the associative vis-a-vis the propertarian in the examples above is a little embedded moral lesson on not owning people (for those who need it) every time they speak; conversely, making the Freudian slip of using thepropertarian in place of the associative (or even the intrinsic, outside some very specific metaphorical contexts) is an effective declaration of your lousy, stinking slaverosity to all with ears to hear you.

Some other examples1 of the Empire’s memetic imperialism, as embedded into the structure of the language by the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology, are these:

  • The explicit support built into the language for propositional, probabilistic, and inductive logics, and devices of grammar designed to make it as difficult as possible to phrase muddy or fallacious statements in grammatically valid Eldraeic.
  • The slant in the definitions and structures of descriptive predicates to encourage precision; even where ambiguity is permitted, precision is also permitted and encouraged, along with statement of the standard by which a given property is judged.
  • The requirement that metaphoric uses of language be explicitly marked in the grammar.
  • The difference between the imperative and the requestive, explained in a prior article, and the circumstances in which it is appropriate to use each.
  • The use of the word daráv, literally meaning “sophont”, to perform double-duty as the word for “person”.  The Alphasian metaphysical rule that any sophont entity is necessarily and intrinsically a person for all other purposes is thus made implicit.
  • Verbs such as séssqár (to have sex; of sophonts) and sétavirár (to converse) taking a set as a subject and no object; i.e., being linguistically defined as mutual activities, rather than activities performed by one to/with/of another.
  • While the ten available assignable Eldraeic pronouns and the 36 letter-variable pronouns canbe inflected for gender, status, animacy, and half-a-dozen other qualities if the speaker desires so to do, by default, the Eldraeic pronoun doesn’t mark any of these qualities, or indeed any qualities at all.
  • The presence, when one does wish to use gender-marking, of six grammatical genders (male, hermaphrodite, female, neuter, prenuptial catalyst and postnuptial catalyst) and three classes of gender (genetic, phenotypic, and personalic).
  • Likewise, nomenclature for parenthood comes in three classes (genetic parent(s), birth-parent(s) and family-parent(s) – i.e., the ones who raised you) additional to a generic word, none of which are explicitly gender-marked.
  • The Eldraeic language possesses only one word per genital organ and secondary sexual characteristic, which must suffice for both vulgar and technical usage, and no sexual expletives at all.  (Just imagine the fun the English->Eldraeic translator programmers would hypothetically have, given English’s most common noun-verb-adjective-interjection-conjunction-vocative-adverb.)
  • On the other hand, it does have a very fine set of scatological expletives, including extras formed by generalization to waste and entropy in general, and more ways to call someone an idiot than any language this side of Yiddish.  Possibly even beyond.
  • The entire taxonomy of Eldraeic words for government types begins with a division of elén móníë’ (polities) into elen telelefmóníë’ (oath-consent states, more freely glossed, “Societies of Consent”) and elén korasmóníë’ (force-states), the latter themselves divided into elén talkorasmóníë’ (true-force-states) and elén sémódarmóníë’ (mutual-slave-states) along lines roughly determined by their hierarchical vs. peer-to-peer organization and perceived internal honesty.  This top level of their taxonomy captures the philosophical underpinnings of Imperial political thinking very effectively2.

1. Not, by any means, all of them; just all those I have documented so far.

2. Hint: There is not a single polity on Earth which they wouldn’t consider one kind or another of el korasmóníë’.

Conlang

Worldbuilding: The Eldraeic Imperative

Leave a Comment Posted by on July 13, 2011

(Seeing as I’ve been getting a lot of enjoyment out of fyeahconlangs recently, here’s a little piece I wrote some time ago, back in ‘09, about how imperatives work in Eldraeic, for the conlangophiles among my readership.)

The Eldraeic language possess two forms of the imperative mood, expressing commands and requests, respectively – referred to natively as the imperative and the requestive; the latter being glossed most appropriately as an “If it pleases you, ~”, or “~, …if you please?”, although in the original language they are of approximately the same length in most cases.

The imperative, in standard Eldraeic usage, is restricted almost without exception to situations in which one party may issue the other orders by virtue of some authority held as of right; in other words, in which the other party has some defect of will and autonomy, or has ceded it voluntarily for the duration.  Thus, its applications are quite limited:

  • The imperative is used (while in duty situations) superior-to-inferior in the Imperial Military Service, other branches of the Imperial Service which maintain military discipline (such as the Watch Constabulary), and in certain private organizations which likewise maintain military discipline in limited areas (such as a ship’s crew on duty).  Such uses of the imperative often additionally contain the “honorable” infix.
  • The imperative is used by the government in the exercise of its sovereign power to coerce compliance (although that’s really a special case of the general use of them in rights-affecting situations, as below).  i.e., officers of the Watch Constabulary use the imperative when requiring you to step out of your car, court orders requiring you to take some action are phrased in the imperative, etc.  The governing philosophical paradigm prefers that such things not be sugar-coated; such uses of the imperative may contain the “honorable” infix where they are notifying someone of a requirement to perform a civic obligation, but not where, for example, the person being addressed is subject to the police power.
  • The imperative may also be used parent-to-child (or in loco parentis to child) for emphasis. although it should be noted that the acceptability of this usage is limited strictly to minor children.
  • The imperative is also used to address sub-sophont domestic animals and non-sophont and non-sapient (i.e., non-autonomous) machines, although custom tends to limit this usage also to emphasis.
  • The imperative may also be used by anyone when requiring someone to take or eschew action to prevent violating one’s – or another’s – fundamental sophont rights.  This means not only may imperatives be used freely when speaking to murderers, slavers, thieves and defaulters, but additionally that it can be used in other circumstances concerned with the preservation of life, property, or contract.  For example, should circumstances require one to shout, for example, “Stop the bus!”:
    • One may use the imperative should the reason be to prevent said bus from running over another person; but
    • One may not use the imperative and should use the requestive if one is merely attempting to catch a bus which is in the process of moving off.
If you are in the unfortunate and embarrassing position of selling your time (rather than your services)1, then you may also be unlucky enough to hear a flat imperative.  While, technically, one does have the grammatical right to use imperatives to wage-servants, the custom is for one to phrase orders in the requestive form out of courtesy.  Hearing such an imperative is, then, a clear sign that the speaker considers one either incompetent (and thus incapable of handling less granular requests), or lazy (and thus unwilling to) – either way, an imperative in such a situation has a strong subtext of “shape up or ship out!”
Outside these circumstances, use of an imperative will be taken as an unwarranted intrusion upon the listener’s personal autonomy, and will at the very least be considered most rude and impertinent, and may even constitute “fighting words”; as will any use of the imperative with the “dishonorable” infix.  It should be considered a matter of course that any request outside these circumstances should be made in the requestive.

As a matter of courtesy, it should also be noted that a simple requestive, outside business, workplace, or other contractual situations, and especially in “polite society”, will be considered very blunt.  Courtesy and caution require that the polite Eldraeic speaker dress up requestive phrases with a degree of circumlocution2 to demonstrate an adequate respect for the autonomy of the person of whom the request is made, and this will almost always garner a better response.

This applies particularly to requests to perform some matter that is already a matter of obligation to the person addressed; it is usually considered sufficient to point out the circumstances that apply and let the person addressed note their obligation in that matter.  To request that someone perform an obligation of theirs too bluntly may well be taken as an implication or even accusation of undutifulness, which while occasionally necessary, is sufficiently unpleasant as to be worth avoiding making unintentionally.

1. “Employment”, from a Tellurian perspective.

2. Said circumlocution, however, must still be a requestive phrase; such indirections as “Would you like to <whatever>?” are likely to be parsed literally and answered that way, too.
Conlang ,

A Taste of Eldraeic

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 28, 2011

So, over in the worldbuilding department, thinking about the Chant of Light from Dragon Age has inspired me to do some polishing of the holy books that exist in my universe, and specifically some of the more commandment-y parts.

And then, in thinking about them, I not only came up with the opening for that particular canticle, but also translated it. So, for you conlang fans out there:

el darav naratis an-saraivar elen fe essyref apnal

  • el = individual description operator
  • darav = person, sophont
  • naratis = tense operator, now + ongoing into the past and future, i.e. now and for all time
  • an-saraivar = inverted verbized form of “judge, weigh, assess”
  • elen = mass description operator
  • fe = possessive referring back to first entity in sentence
  • essyref = form of “create” meaning “created thing”, “creation”
  • apnal = standard portmanteau of “ap nall”, i.e. “and none”, “and no-one”

Or, translating as a sentence:

“A soph is judged by its creations alone.”

Conlang, Worldbuilding

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