Speak Eldraeic Like A Semi-Literate Barbarian (3.5): Some Érélar
In which we begin to discuss the arguments that are slotted into the predicates. Specifically we’re going to talk about érélar (from e, diminutive prefix, plus rélar, argument-word). You may consider these the equivalent of pronouns, insofar as they are words which stand in the place of full arguments rather than full arguments themselves.
But we aren’t going to give a comprehensive listing of érélar at this time, as you may have guessed from the fractional number of this chapter. Rather, we’re just going to sum up some of the ones you’ve seen already in past examples, and which will help make future examples make more sense, and these will be gone back into in more detail in a future article.
Personal érélar
The equivalent of personal pronouns in English and used in much the same way, the most basic of the personal érélar are these:
| val | I |
| valén | I and those I speak for |
| anan | You |
| ananén | You and those you speak for |
Letting us say things like:
val dalessár an-anan; anan dalessár an-val
I love¹ you. You love me.
There are more personal érélar available to express the many variations of “we” and “you (plural)”, which we won’t get into at this time, so that’s really all we have to say here. You should note, though, that as expected these carry no miscellaneous information about their users, nor do they inflect for case; case tags are used as normal.
These érélar can be used as esprel and to form observatives in much the same way as any other word, leading to statements such as:
val valár
I am me.
or, in the observative form
valár
I am.
The latter is most useful when you hang a tense on it to indicate that you are in a particular place and time, but if you want to be philosophical, go right ahead.
It should also be noted that personal pronouns are most common in casual speech, and that to a certain extent, they should be treated as assignable variables; one should illeize on first use of the first person, and upon later valëssef shifts, in order to let people track the changes. This is done using the equivalence operator es which we talk about below (and the naming operator ádar that we will discuss in a later article), thus:
val es ádar Esitaríél Cyprium-ith-Aelies dalinár
I, known by the name Esitaríël Cyprium-ith-Aelies, am a friend.
The second person is generally only used when one has not been introduced, and subsequent to that one should use the name, and assign a variable for ongoing use.
Demonstrative érélar
Among the simplest ways to define something is to point at it. For this purpose, the three demonstrative érélar exist:
| pí | This, here |
| pá | That, there |
| pé | The other, yon |
Usage, of course, is simple.
pí azikár
This is a rock.
pá lórravár
That’s a tree.
pé chalíëlár
Yon’s the moon.
The demonstratives are not “sticky”, or rather, only as sticky as the moment of the speaker’s pointing. You can walk down a row of items and refer to each in turn as pí. If you want to keep one particular item around for future use, you can assign it a variable (again with the equivalence operator):
pí es sá azikár
This, henceforth known as A, is a rock.
Note also that these are strictly used as demonstratives. No other English uses of “this” and “that” are encompassed in them; if you can’t point at the thing or if you’re identifying one thing out of a group (i.e. “this car”), you don’t use these. And if you point at a date on the calendar, you can’t say that this is Tuesday, you have to say that this represents Tuesday. Precision, good sophs!
Variables and the Equivalence Operator
Finally, the variables, of which there are six, which are the most general-purpose of the érélar:
| sá | it, known as A |
| sé | it, known as B |
| sí | it, known as C |
| só | it, known as D |
| sú | it, known as E |
| sý | it, known as F |
These érélar can stand for anything at all. Animate, inanimate, singular, plural, whatever. They carry no meaning except that which is attached to them using the equivalence operator, es, which is used to define that its operands refer to the same entity (i.e., it does not denote type or equality). So, for example.
val es sá …
I, Mr. A., …
ádar Geffly min Torill es sú …
Geffly min Torill, henceforth referred to as Mr. E, …
el azik es sé …
A rock, B, …
pí es sí …
That, C, …
And so forth. These variables retain their values as set until explicitly redefined, explicitly cleared, or implicitly cleared by the end of the chapter or conversation. They can be used as simply as any other érélar when defined.
sá cadairár
It (A) is a throne.
The use of the variables without defining them first as a means of posing hypotheticals is an attested form of the language, but it’s considered courteous to let your interlocutor know that you’re doing so, so that they don’t have to quest through their memory for a definition that they missed.
If you find six variables insufficient for your needs, you can extend the list indefinitely by appending syllabic numerals to create the equivalent of A-prime (sáne), A-double-prime (sáto), etc. One convention that has arisen is that of setting the base variable to a group, and using its indexed variants to represent members of that group, as an aid to recall.
That’s all for now! We hope to be back later in the month with details on rélar themselves, not just their short substitutes.
- Eldraeic is a much more specific language than English. To put it in Greek terms instead, daless refers to philia; compare, for example, dalin (friend).