Conlang

Watching sci-fi shows gives me linguistic ideas.

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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)

WE ARE HUMANS AND WE ARE FROM EARTH

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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!

The Eldraeic Possessive and Memetic Imperialism

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1

(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’.

Worldbuilding: The Eldraeic Imperative

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(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.

A Taste of Eldraeic

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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.”