The Eldraeverse

…building civilizations with my space elves in space.

Tag Archives: 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 , , , ,

2012 Conlang Card Exchange

3 Comments Posted by on November 22, 2012

This year I’m planning to take part in the 2012 Conlang Card Exchange, in which participants from the conlang and conculture mailing lists I subscribe to exchange:

“a card-sized, mailed, ordinary or concultural, written-in-a-conlang item such as:

  • a this-cultural greeting card in the conlang
  • a this-world postcard in the conlang
  • a postcard of a concultural location (in the conlang… take this as read for the remainder of the entries)
  • a greeting card for a concultural holiday
  • a concultural card-like, written artifact that may or may not be related to a holiday, which may or may not be occurring this December or associated with solstices or anything at all
  • something that the participant feels fits the spirit of the above, is written in their conlang, and can be mailed like an ordinary card”

But since I’m feeling all generous-like this month, what with recent events in the world of books, I thought I’d throw this offer open to my blog readers, too.  Fancy getting some pretty far-wandering conmail from some conpeople?  Let me know in the comments, and I’ll get in touch and tell you where to send your mailing address.

Worldbuilding , , ,

Trope-a-Day: Decorative Apostrophe

Leave a Comment Posted by on September 21, 2012

Decorative Apostrophe: They’re not decorative.  Nor are the other accents.  The acute indicates a long vowel; the diaeresis indicates, as it does in other languages, that two vowels are pronounced separately, and an apostrophe, found trailing a vowel with a diaeresis, indicates that that vowel is both long and pronounced separately, except that my current software doesn’t let me put both an acute and a diaeresis on the same letter.  (Also, “!” is pronounced <click>.)

Something which I need to solve before I get to publishing anything that uses one of those words, belike.

Trope-a-Day , , , , , ,

Trope-a-Day: Constructed Language

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 8, 2012

Constructed Language: Both in and out of universe, Eldraeic is a constructed language.

In-universe, it’s a constructed language designed as an interlingua for the Empire by the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology, with additional requirements for regularity, unambiguity, cultural neutrality where matters other than The Fundamentals are concerned and linguistic imperialism where they are, maximal flexibility, designed to allow the greatest scope for creativity, and simultaneously to promote logical reasoning and precision, and designed to be expressively isomorphic in multiple forms.  This heady list of requirements was then tackled by a group of linguists, philosophers, logicians and mathematicians, whose work and arguments produced the language we know today.

Out of universe, it’s also a constructed language, albeit an unfinished one (and given its claims to universality, a perpetually unfinished one – I don’t have the nose to produce the olfactory-description features it inherited from the dar-bandal, for example, never mind some of the real esoterica it’s acquired from various other Starfish Languages).  Nor, while I can describe in great detail its 36-character alphabet — well, 3.5 alphabets (for pen, brush, and chisel, the additional half being a variant on the brush alphabet for scratching with claws) and dozen or so phonologies (for different speech apparati, including things like radio and chromatophore matrix), do I actually have them all terribly well defined.  Nonetheless, it’s constructed enough that it is possible to say things in it, and even – having participated in a conlang relay or two – for other people to understand what was said.

Type-wise, it’s somewhere between “complete original” and “foreign conversion” – originally, I started using Loglan/lojban as a base, but it’s grown up to be a very different language (it uses case tags than place structures, for one thing, along with many other affixes, and handles a lot of shared features differently, and comes with a lot of different or at least differently implemented features).  And it’s nothing at all like English, certainly!

Trope-a-Day , , , ,

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.

Conlang , ,

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”)

Conlang , ,

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.

Conlang , , , , , , ,

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.)

Conlang , , , , ,

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”)

Conlang , ,

Writing Style Query

1 Comment Posted by on January 6, 2012

So, with regard to the Age of Flavor and other similar things – well, you’ll notice I used a couple of untranslated Eldraeic words in there (for lack of a directly analogous English concept, and for, as it were, flavor).  In general, am I making the right assumptions, here, that everyone is comfortable just grokking the meanings of hasérúr and hasérmuas and how they relate to one another from context, or would people prefer to have those footnoted when they occur?

Opinions?

Writing , ,

Trope-a-Day: Law of Alien Names

Leave a Comment Posted by on December 3, 2011

Law of Alien Names: HEY!  I have phoneme tables, thank-you-so-very-much, and an entire strictly-defined phonology, and word roots to use for name generation in multiple previous languages, and notes on how phonology is affected by different mouth-parts, even.  Respect the tables!

And, hell, half the names aren’t even pronounceable by any throats.  An esseli name is a slice of DNA strand, myneni names are made up of chimes, whistles, and gurgles, galari names are musical chords transliterated directly out of their true EM format, and then there are all the sonar pings, electrical waveforms, patterns of bioluminescence, and complex aromatic chemicals… so when the names those guys go by sound familiar, that’s because they’re nicknames.


Trope-a-Day ,

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)

Conlang , ,

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 ,

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 ,

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