conlang

Circumlocution: A Way Of Talking Around Something

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Among the things I am kicking around today are future possibilities for the Word-of-the-Day feature. I’ve got some interesting ones in the form of words which have distinct values implied – say, “greed” – which necessarily require multiple translations – “ambition”, for example, or “compromise” – or whose closest equivalent have very different nuances and whose literal meaning can only be expressed by rather awkward circumlocution – such as our “professional”.

And then I thought of one real fun job to translate into their language. How, exactly, would one translate “social justice” into Eldraeic?

(Bearing in mind that the literal gloss, tramoníë saráv, lit. “a society-kind-of-justice”, would actually mean “international arbitration”.)

So let’s have a little informal competition, here. The best circumlocution, using only the sorts of concept which are native to the language, is an awkward phrase that comes out as, roughly, “the coercive enforcement of a sophont-owner’s preferred group-level outcomes upon the involuntarily coadunated”.

Think you can do better? Offer your best circumlocution in the comments, and we’ll see if it passes the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology.

(But remember, and this is important now: the aim here is to provide the translation that a charitable translator working around the constraints of a language that doesn’t have a background tradition of compressed euphemisms would come up with. We’re not going for “the Worlds’ snarkiest value judgement”, nor are we going all-out to offend people in the real world, here, especially any who might find squeezing the concept into an unhelpful vocabulary an interesting game; it’s supposed to be a fun little conlanging exercise. Don’t let me down here, folks.)

Eldraeic Word of the Day: Ulquordaëälathdar

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ulquordaëälathdar: (lit. “impossible-knowledge-person”, derog.) Agnostic; (Flamic) an adherent to the Agnostic Heresy; one who holds that certain or all knowledge cannot be known, i.e., is intrinsically unknowable, rather than simply unknown, or circumstantially unknowable due to lack of necessary epistemic tools or cognitive capacity.

from ulquordaëlin (“impossible”, itself from ulquor, the degree quantifier of absolute absence, and daëlin “probability, chance”), alath (“knowledge”) and dar (“person”).

 

The Things Are Also People

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First in this initial set, a terribly useful phrase in first contact situations or when wandering around an unfamiliar starport, Floating Market, or lost sophont office, lest you commit a dreadful solecism and confuse a robot, a piece of luggage, a pet, vehicle, furniture, or potted plant for a fellow traveler of an unfamiliar species. Or even worse, the other way around.

Xamelcétar an-val ke mekt anan darávar?

IMPERATIVE + forgive + PRED. / OBJECT CASE + I / LOOSE-LINK SEPARATOR / is it the case that / you (you alone) / sophont + PRED.

“Excuse me, but are you sophont?”

…well worth memorizing for the avoidance of all sorts of awkward situations.

– p. 2, Trade Eldraeic for Beginners

 

Trope-a-Day: Unusual Euphemism

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Unusual Euphemism: Eldraeic, by and large, is not a language given to a great deal of euphemism.  Circumlocution, yes, but not so much euphemism, as its principal speakers prefer their straight talk to be straight.  For example, polite society has no problem with people just saying straight out:

valdar sessqár (“We had sex”)

On the other hand, one can get many of the same overtones by playing around with tense words and affixes.  For example, playing around with the “noble” tense and the augmentative affix could produce the following:

valdar chal sessqár

(“We made love”, in a more romantic/poetic sense)

valdar lin-sessqár

(perhaps best translated “We engaged in rampant shagging”, emphasizing the happy-fun activity)

Or even both at once:

valdar chal lin-sessqár

(suitable for describing, say, one’s honeymoon, creative translations capturing both of these senses simultaneously are left as an exercise for the reader)

As a final note, the Eldraeic verb meaning “to have sex” is a mutual verb, that requires a set of at least two members as a subject and takes no object; in these examples, valdar (“we”) literally means “I-and-you”.  In one case of not-really-a-euphemism, it is entirely possible that the Eldraeic verb meaning “to masturbate” is actually also sessqár, merely applied to the set of “I-and-nobody”.

Essence and Observation

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Also important to recall in choosing the precise description of an entity is that Eldraeic enforces a strict conceptual division between objectives, defined as descriptions of properties inherent to a subject itself, and subjectives, defined as descriptions of properties inherent to a predication, and therefore dependent upon the observing as well as the observed.

For example, consider aelva (“beautiful”). This is an objective, an indisputable fact; to describe something as aelva is to assert that it is beautiful in itself without reference to the observer, and therefore implicitly that all accurate and rational observers must necessarily agree that the subject in question is aelva, and to the same degree.

Eldraeic does permit the use of multiple standards of beauty, or other objective properties. All objectives accept the case tag qori- in their place structure, defining the standard of measurement used. In the case of beauty, this typically refers to some artistic or aesthetic-philosophical school; in the case of more mundane measurements, commonly seen examples would include qori-aladár (“scientist’s measures”), qori-covadár (“merchant’s measures”) or qori-mahadár (“engineer’s measures”).

An seemingly obvious dodge here would be to declare qori-feäval[1], i.e., that one is using oneself as a standard of measure. This is certainly usable, but the speaker should be aware that declaring ones’ own opinions an objective standard by which the universe should abide is moderately arrogant even by eldraeic standards, and should therefore be prepared to answer the inevitable follow-up, “Qori-vé?”

To express a similar subjective view of an object, one must resort to words such as delékith (“pleasing”) or méskith (“attractive”), both of which relate not to a property of the object itself, but to a property of the observer’s view of the object, which is conceptually distinct. Contrariwise, neither of these, nor other words in their class, can be used in an objective mode since they necessarily imply an observer. Implicitly, all such words imply a specific observer whose (subjective) standards are being used, by default the speaker unless an i- (“to”) case tag is used. Qori- may be used with subjectives to inquire into which of several potential personal standards are being used, but is obviously less relevant than in the case of objectives.

(When used in a tra-description, e.g., traméskith darávíël (“an attractive woman”), the standard of objectives and the observer of subjectives is contextually determined – as in all tra-descriptions – if not specified, with a preference for the default when it is otherwise unclear.)

A related differentiation affects the choice of expression of a description. To say sa cálenavar (“it is green”) is to state an indisputable fact about an object’s optical properties, and implies that one’s knowledge about that object is sufficient to make that claim, poor lighting, other environmental conditions, optical illusions, and so forth notwithstanding.

While the limitations of such claims are traditionally qualified by evidentials and dubifiers (see p. 347 et. seq.), in cases where there is any significant degree of unknown doubt, it is preferred to say sa sérivar an-el calen (“it seems/is perceived to be green”), reflecting a proper attitude of epistemic caution.

– Eldraeic As It Is Spoken: Precisionist-Grade Communication for the Unsophisticated Outworlder

[1] Note: not simply qori-val; omitting the abstraction operator implies that you are literally an incarnate standard of measurement, which is almost certainly not the case.

Trope-a-Day: Punctuation Shaker

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Punctuation Shaker: Averted.  Those punctuation marks have meaning in the Constructed Language.  Specifically, the acute indicates a long vowel, and the umlaut-that-is-really-a-dieresis indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the previous one, rather than as a diphthong.  Any wandering apostrophes you may see exist because I’m using (or was using and haven’t yet fixed) a typographical system that won’t let me put an acute and an dieresis on the same letter.  (Yes, Unicode should technically let me do this, but not everything in my software stack will play ball. Don’t write letters.)  And pling is pronounced “tongue-click”.

Ladies and Gentlemen…

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In a post elsewhere, reference was made to this trope page, and the generic problem of saying “ladies and gentlemen” when addressing a group of people which may include those who deem themselves members of neither category. This, of course, is a problem which my universe had to solve a long, long time ago, given the presence of large numbers of people who are neither of those genders right down to the chromosome-equivalents – for values of solve equal to “didn’t give itself this problem before it occurred”, at least – and since it came up, I found myself writing a quick paragraph on what people do say by way of collective address:

Namely, this:

Well, with six grammatical genders – not counting the default of “not specified” – mapping to an arbitrarily large set of the non-grammatical kind, it would get… rather messy if one had to name ’em all, wot?

As Amy says, the general term there is daryteir , glossed “gentlesoph” from its literal translation of “sophont of honor”, darav i-teir , and possesses no gender affices at all. In opening collective addresses, since the pluralization lies entirely in the article-equivalents, one would probably go with elen daryteir – “gentlesophs all” – if being polite, or if less convinced of the decent-chapness of one’s audience, simply elen darav – “sophonts!”. ( Darav , incidentally, is a word which I usually gloss as “sophont” but which I could equally well gloss as – and is used in the equivalent contexts as – “person”, so “people!” .) One might also hear elen valmirian , which would be “citizens!” . Well, “citizen-shareholders”, technically, but that’s a lengthy construction in English.

(If one really wanted to say “ladies and gentlemen”, one could always say elen daravion ap elen daraviel , but that would just leave your audience wondering why you were deliberately excluding the herms, neuters, and prenuptial and postnuptial catalysts…)

A Darkest Night Card

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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.

2012 Conlang Card Exchange

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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.

Trope-a-Day: Decorative Apostrophe

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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: Constructed Language

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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!

Eldraeic Vocabulary (1)

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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.

Six Simple Machines

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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”)

Eldraeic: Degree Quantifiers and Antonyms

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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.

Eldraeic: Degree Quantifiers

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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.)