The Lexicon Building Counselling Service

[MIGUELbM]

xD Miguel, Izambri's a native too.
Those are actually the ones that take an accent: catalán, carnés, paró, ... (if they don't have an accent, they are stressed in the second-to-last syllable: perro, axis, cantan).

The name is acute accent btw.

yeah... that wasn't me

[Thry]

no big deal xD

[suelior]

What is the better word for rain in Isenian?

mbu [ᵐbù] or cú [kʷú]

Why not have mbu for rain in general and make cú very heavy, pouring rain?

[Qwynegold]

No one agrees with me. :/

grese ['gɾɛzə]
grefe ['gɾɛfə] or grofe ['gɾɔfə]
berce ['bɛɾsə]

Grese sounds the most oniony to me.

síl [siːl]
(or) sílta ['siːl.tə]
ní [niː]
línt(e) ['liːn.t(ə)]

Síl. Maybe I'm biased by Swedish pil.

What is the better word for rain in Isenian?

mbu [ᵐbù] or cú [kʷú]

Neither sounds very rainy, but I'd go with cú because mbu sounds so earthy.

[Izambri]

What is the better word for rain in Isenian?

mbu [ᵐbù] or cú [kʷú]

Both sound blunt and frank to me, but I think I would choose cú, because the labialized consonant has something more liquid in it.

It seems that for watery concepts I always need to put a liquid consonant in the word to make it sound right; for example Hellesan eire "water", bresse "rain" and lèdue / lleu "liquid"; even eure / erle "air" and dor "river" seem to follow this tendency.

[Izambri]

Consider cognate Heleo too for Spanish.

That was my idea. Hel·leu's and hel·lesà's structure are based, respectively, on Catalan Egeu "Aegean" and català "Catalan", so the respective versions in other natlangs should take the appropriate endings. That's why I write hellèu / hellesan for Occitan, heleo / helesán for Spanish and Hellean / Hellesan for English.

[L'alphabētarium]

What is the better word for rain in Isenian?

mbu [ᵐbù] or cú [kʷú]

I think mbu sounds more rainy...

[clawgrip]

Yeah, I like mbu too.

[L'alphabētarium]

Consider cognate Heleo too for Spanish.

That was my idea. Hel·leu's and hel·lesà's structure are based, respectively, on Catalan Egeu "Aegean" and català "Catalan", so the respective versions in other natlangs should take the appropriate endings. That's why I write helèu / helesan for Occitan, heleo / helesán for Spanish and Hellean / Hellesan for English.

And, possibly, heléen(ne) / helesan(e) for French & helläisch / hellesane, -nin for German?

*...following the Egeu and Català formation you mentioned...

[Thry]

heleu, heleia / helesano/a for Portuguese.

[Izambri]

Consider cognate Heleo too for Spanish.

That was my idea. Hel·leu's and hel·lesà's structure are based, respectively, on Catalan Egeu "Aegean" and català "Catalan", so the respective versions in other natlangs should take the appropriate endings. That's why I write helèu / helesan for Occitan, heleo / helesán for Spanish and Hellean / Hellesan for English.

And, possibly, heléen(ne) / helesan(e) for French & helläisch / hellesane, -nin for German?

*...following the Egeu and Català formation you mentioned...

For German I thought Helläis(che) / Hellesanische (sprache). And for French I'd say Hellée / Hellesan.

[L'alphabētarium]

How do you decide when the [ll] in Hellesan is going to stay [ll] or change into [l] when translated?
Is it based solely on pronunciation of the language it's translated into? [ll] pronounced /l/ in French, but /ʎ/ in Spanish so you choose [l] for Spanish to avoid mispronunciation?

[Thry]

How do you decide when the [ll] in Hellesan is going to stay [ll] or change into [l] when translated?
Is it based solely on pronunciation of the language it's translated into? [ll] pronounced /l/ in French, but /ʎ/ in Spanish so you choose [l] for Spanish to avoid mispronunciation?

It's the normal adaptation of Latin's geminate <ll> into whichever language. Compare Cat. pàl.lid, Sp. pálido, It. pallido, English pallid (French pallide? does that exist? -apparently it's pâle, but whatever, French keeps ll as in tranquille), Pt. pálido...

Catalan has a special digraph for that, so the information that it's geminated is preserved. Spanish and Portuguese don't have it, and so <l> is the only option; it's not geminate in speech in any of these languages for that matter (unless you're really pedantic in Catalan). Italian and French can keep the information for different reasons: Italian preserves geminates (even in speech) and French just has a very old-fashioned orthography. German doesn't seem scared to keep <ll> in orthography either.

[L'alphabētarium]

...German doesn't seem scared to keep <ll> in orthography either.

Exactly. Not all languages are Romance languages...
What happens when you try to translated it to one of them? You just go with the flow (and general rules) of the language or you keep the [ll] at all costs?

[Thry]

How you adapt a name into another language depends largely on the other language. (though the last word here is Izambri's).

There's nothing exclusive to romance here (a language doesn't have to be romance to adapt things from Latin); i.e., if Finnish normally adapts Latin <ll> with <ll> because it has geminates, then that's the most sensible thing to do; if Japanese just puts a normal /l/~/r/, then that's just how they do it. It's Finnish and Japanese we'd be talking about.

I'm talking my personal tastes here, but I'd always go with ear borrowings rather than eye borrowings ("keeping the <ll> at all costs"), I find it more natural in most instances.

[L'alphabētarium]

I'm talking my personal tastes here, but I'd always go with ear borrowings rather than eye borrowings ("keeping the <ll> at all costs"), I find it more natural in most instances.

Yeah, me too, me thinks!

[Thry]

Plus eye borrowings only make real naturalistic sense in specific circumstances when the speakers are physically close and they share a writing system bla bla bla bla (which wouldn't be the case between Taura (Izo's conworld) and Earth)

[Psykie]

I have a similar problem with the word "Wraith" in Fengwë, although each one means something a little different, they could all be candidates for the word.

"ðoët" [ðɔ.et] - evil + fear (also dread),
"ðogast" [ðɔ.gʰɑst] - evil + shadow (also evil spirit, not that "vengast" (dead + shadow) means ghost),
or "ðol" [ðɔl] - evil + animal (also monster).

Wraiths are very specific types of evil spirits to the Vendri, however, and represent more along the lines of a vengeful being sent by a misguided victim (sort of like a the Furies in Greek mythology).

[abaddamn]

Same here in -
layá - place, land, district, area
visamlayá, overseas, another country
talá - place, area, realm, world
visamtalá, another world, alternate universe
aigá - at-place, location, position
vyaigá, different location.

Can drive me crazy when it comes to defining words that are of two distinct cognates relative to the speaker.
Moon/Planet comes to mind here, as it is both a place(talá) and a body(kșá), as well as a world(talá) in itself.
All relative the speaker's vantage point, so I ended up making various lexicons for them incase.

[Izambri]

How do you decide when the [ll] in Hellesan is going to stay [ll] or change into [l] when translated?
Is it based solely on pronunciation of the language it's translated into? [ll] pronounced /l/ in French, but /ʎ/ in Spanish so you choose [l] for Spanish to avoid mispronunciation?

In Hellesan that double el <ll> is etymological, so it shows where a double el once stood in the original word. It works the same way as Catalan's ela geminada (in fact, Hellesan's l·l was stolen from it because ll and lh are used for [ʎ]). It can be pronounced short [ɫ] or long [ɫɫ] / [ɫ:].

How I decide when <ll> will appear in foreign adaptations is based on every language's rule for preserving double el. So when a language like Spanish doesn't or can't represent it, I use a single el instead (helesán) because that's how this language treats that matter; and when a language like Finnish accepts the orthography, I use it (Hellesaani).

But in any case, I'm deciding about the orthographic representation, not the pronunciation of that double or single el (which, in every case, will be pronounced the way every language sets).

The same thing happens when I need to decide where and how I use <h>, which is mute in Hellesan.

[L'alphabētarium]

...Hellesan's l·l was stolen from it because...

I believe the politically correct and more diplomatic way to put it is "borrowed".

[Izambri]

...Hellesan's l·l was stolen from it because...

I believe the politically correct and more diplomatic way to put it is "borrowed".

But I borrowed it under the cover of darkness, which puts what I did in the "thievery action" category.

[L'alphabētarium]

...Hellesan's l·l was stolen from it because...

I believe the politically correct and more diplomatic way to put it is "borrowed".

But I borrowed it under the cover of darkness, which puts what I did in the "thievery action" category.

As long as the Catalan language still has its original ela geminada intact, I believe no court could convict you, so you're safe!

[Thry]

Well, actually young people use it less and less lately (a Valencian friend of mine told me "it sucks"), so I'm growing suspicious of Izambri.

[Izambri]

Well, actually young people use it less and less lately (a Valencian friend of mine told me "it sucks"), so I'm growing suspicious of Izambri.

Don't grow so suspicious, [ɫɫ] is common in words like cel·la, destil·lar, col·locar, al·lot... and words ending in -el·lo, for example. If it tends to [ɫ] or [l] is due to Spanish influence thru schools and TV, so you basically find it in non native speakers of Catalan, specially those with Castilian as the native tongue (is one of the characteristics of the bleda social speech, for example). On the other hand, [ɫɫ] is the typical pronunciation of <tl>; for example, atleta is [əɫ'ɫɛtə / aɫ'ɫeta / əɫ'ɫetə] in Barcelonian, Valencian and Mallorcan, respectively.