Eldrin

Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
Durakken
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Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

So I needs feedback on what I got for this so far.
The basic idea is that this language was more or less just magiced into existence so I'm not too concerned with "naturalness" but it still needs to follow some sort of rules and such to make it sound "nice" and easy for people to speak.
Also I'm more or less just building as I need it rather than starting with the sounds I started with some names/words that I want in there and then derived an inventory mostly based on that. So it's supposed to have somewhat of an english feel with some asian, but not much in there...

Main questions as I post this are;
1.) am I getting compound word order right for the words after Eldrin in the Library... I'm not sure. It seems funky to me.
2.) I've not really done phonotactics before and relied a lot of the sonourous thing + English sounding, but it doesn't look right to me.
3.) dh I put that in there for some reason, but I don't remember why cuz it was several months ago when I originally came up with those. I really don't get the difference between aspirated and not. Should I just take it out?

= Inventory =
Consonants
/m n b t d dh k g f v θ s z dʒ tɕ ɹ l w/

Monopthongs
/i u ɪ e ə ɜ ɑ ɒ/

Dipthongs
/ɪə eɪ oʊ i̯ɑ aɪ/

= Phonotactics =
1. (c)(c)v(c)(c)(c) - last consonant is for modifier suffixes only.
2. All consonants can be used in the onset
3. /w/ and /tɕ/ cant be used in the Coda
4. All vowels can be used for the nucleus

Current clusters allowed
Onsets
/fw/ /fl/ /fɹ/
/θw/ /θl/ /θɹ/
/sw/ /sl/ /sɹ/ /sm/ /sn/ /sv/ /sf/ /sθ/ /st/ /sk/
/tɕw/ /tɕl/ /tɕɹ/ /tɕm/ /tɕn/ /tɕv/ /tɕf/ /tɕθ/
/bw/ /bl/ /bɹ/
/dw/ /dl/ /dɹ/
/dhw/ /dhl/ /dhɹ/
/gw/ /gl/ /gɹ/
/tw/ /tl/ /tɹ/
/kw/ /kl/ /kɹ/

Codas
/lm/ /ln/ /lv/ /lz/ /ldʒ/ /lf/ /lθ/ /ls/ /lb/ /ld/ /ldh/ /lg/ /lt/ /lk/
/ɹl/ /ɹm/ /ɹn/ /ɹv/ /ɹz/ /ɹdʒ/ /ɹf/ /ɹθ/ /ɹs/ /ɹb/ /ɹd/ /ɹdh/ /ɹg/ /ɹt/ /ɹk/
/mf/ /mθ/ /ms/ /mb/ /md/ /mdh/ /mg/ /mt/ /mk/
/nf/ /nθ/ /ns/ /nb/ /nd/ /ndh/ /ng/ /nt/ /nk/
/vz/ /vd/ /vdh/
/zd/ /zdh/
/dʒz/ /dʒd/ /dʒdh/
/fs/ /ft/
/θs/ /θt/
/st/ /sk/
/bs/ /bd/ /bdh/ /bdt/
/ds/
/dhs/
/gs/ /gd/ /gdh/
/ts/ /td/ /tdh/
/ks/ /kt/

= Dictionary =
Kaos /ˈkeɪ ɒs/ = Chaos (as in the traditional chaos of many ancient mythologies, rather than chaos as in random)
Tir /tɪər/ = Order
Teine /teɪn/ = Fire
Voda /ˈvoʊ də/ = Water
Argia /ˈɑr dʒɪə/ = Life
Deces /ˈde siz/ = Death
Dalan /dəˈlɑn/ = Roads
Jia /tɕi̯ɑ/ = Home
Teneb /ˈtɛn ɛb/ = Shadow
Myth /maɪθ/ = Light
Inu /ɪˈnu/ = Hunt
Gradh /ˈgrɑd/ = Love
Bron /brɒn/ = War
Sophia /soʊˈfi ə/ = Wisdom

(Pronunciation of these three or if they need to change I haven't decided yet)
Nisse = Balance
Aspare = Freedom
Yemoja = Restraint

(these all have pretty obvious pronunciations and since I have not written them yet...or organized them all out I'll just leave it as is from my notes)
El : 1
-dra : ordinal indicator suffix
-in : of (the)
Eldra : First
Eldrin : Of (the) Eldra

North : thon
South : Kos
East :
West : wiz

En : adjective form
Ef : people

Elf = Elef : One People
Elven = Elefin :Of (the) one people

Raluvt = Restored
Ra = back, again
Luv = Make
-t = past tense

Bentef = Cooked People
Ben = Cook/Burn

Evief Dolin : Guardian People of the Home
Dol : Home
Evi : Guardian

Thonen Ef = People of the North

Ril : Metal

Tenebril : Dark Metal
Mythril : Light Metal
Aetheril : Divine Metal
Kaosril : Kaos Metal

Elis : Pure
Od : Woodland
Vath : Desert
Dro : Dweller
Wid : Tree
Uz : Place

Elis - od : Pure Woodland
Vath - dro : Desert Dweller
Thonen : Northern
Wid - uz : Tree Place

La : Lady|(high status) Woman
Rac : Lord|(high status) Man

Tel : Land
Gol : Sea
?? : Wind

La Telin : (Lady of the Land) Goddess of the Land.

Neri : Bay
Aban : Mountain
Mak : Rough

??? Argian = World of Argia
Last edited by Durakken on Sat Oct 29, 2016 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nachtuil
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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Seems promising so far. What kind of grammatical features are you looking to use?

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

I am not sure... I haven't really thought about it, and while I have some knowledge of the features, I didn't really put them in the context of "grammatical features" until you mentioned it and had to look up what you mean... which hasn't resulted in a very easy to use site v.v Oh well.

Here's all the listed features they have and what I think of them...

Gender = Definitely not going to be used. The language is innate and comes from the gods and though they have "gender" it's not something they really think of in a way of division.

Respect = Maybe, though I have no idea how I would impliment it currently. I like this run down of what seems to be talking about the same thing with english though.

Tense = I'm thinking it should be able to express all notions of time or use that one tense that presents everything as present... I don't recall what its called.

Evidentiality = Site lists but doesn't say what it is so I dunno

Inflectional class = Site discusses, but I don't understand...

Number = I am thinking that if I can figure out that it might be good to have singular, plural, greater plural, dual, trial, and paucal. Given that there are greater and lesser wholes and many of the deities come in pairs or trinities.

Definiteness = I think this is relating to some sort of pronoun usage but I'm not sure. Probably want in, but I dunno.

Aspect = ummm yes?

Question-word dependency = Not explained, but my guess is that it is referring to using a word to ask a question rather than tonaly indicating... I don't know.

Stem index = No clue...

Person = Seems like a good idea to have all 3 persons...

Mood = not described.

Associativity = Seems like a good feature, but I am thinking this will either be added or left out due to accident rather than me purposefully adding or not having it.

Syncretic index = Do not understand

Case = ??? Yes... I guess?

Polarity = Not explained...

Transitivity = Never understood this...

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Holy god I just lost a post that took me so long to write that the system logged me out so I lost it! I am pretty peeved............
I can't even right now.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Ugh okay, very quickly and of tragically reduced content. I don't know what site you are referring to but hopefully this is helpful:

Gender: Gender is a form of noun class. Noun class agreement can be really useful in languages because language is imperfect so some redundancy is useful. About half the worlds languages have a gender system, including English on the pronouns. The most common is an animate/inanimate split. Other options exist though, such as "masculin, femine, neuter" but you can have noun classes for things that are food, tools, weather, plants, animals, whatever. Languages with a animate/inanimate split often have one pronoun for "he/she" and one for "it" and they get by just fine. The level of agreement on noun class varies, like it may be on all determiners and nouns and verbs and pronouns or just some or show up elsewhere.

Respect is marked in different ways and is also known as social register. A common way is on pronouns but it could be marked on verbs or with particles or other ways.

Tense and Aspect are related and often mixed up. This is a very complex subject but absolutely worth exploring. I had a huge write up on this section but I am demoralised but trust me when I say it is complex, interesting and worthwhile to make some effort to investigate. This is huge and I had a lot written here.

Evidentiality marks how the speaker feels about information they are presenting. They may mark is as counterfactual, hearsay or as solid fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality

You sound like you understand number, know that it can be marked in different ways and doesn't need to be on nouns and pronouns itself. Number may may only show up on the verb and articles for instance. You may want to look up classifiers.

Definiteness is how a language indicates a piece of information is new or old information. Many different strategies exist, English uses articles and demonstratives and assumes pronouns are definite. Other languages may use topicalisation, focus marking, and word order tricks and more. Direct marking on the noun is known too.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definiteness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment

Question word-dependency, I have no idea what they mean. Same for Stem index.

Mood: This is somewhat similar to aspect and tense sort of. I'll give some examples in english but know different languages have different strategies:
"I want to eat" Indicative mood
"May we eat" optative mood.
"Let's eat" hortative mood.
"If we eat..." conditional mood.
"Are we eating?" interrogative mood.

Person, yeah, there are 3 main ones. There are other systems out there, such as proximate/obviate systems.

Associativity: I would need to look this up myself.

Syncretic index: Same as above.

Case: Case is friggen awesome and you should totally investigate it. Know that in English we have residual case inflection on pronouns. Mostly we use word order and prepositions to explain the relationship between noun phrases. I had a lot written here. The sets "I, me, my" "She, her, her" "He, him, his" "You, you, your" "They, them, their" can be thought of as reflecting nominative, oblique and genitive case.

Polarity: This may refer to question formation again. A polar question anticipates a "yes/no" response. A content question seeks information.

Transitivity: This has to do with verbs and if they have a object or not.
Intransitive: "I am sleeping"
Transitive: "I am eating an apple"
Intransitive can be thought of as the verb only acting on the subject and transitive as the verb acting on the object through the subject.
Languages have different strategies for how to deal with this stuff. Some may have specific verb forms for transitive versus intransitive verbs.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitivity_(grammar)

The loss of my previous post makes me cry.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

lol I feel on the losing a long post. I've been there.

Gender: I was thinking more in terms of He/She rather than animate/inanimate, but since you put it that way I think I'll go with animate/inanimate/divine/spirit/male/female as already seen with "Lady" and "Lord" which also indicates a level of divinity as well.

Respect: I am not sure I want this in Eldrin, but in derivitive languages. Not sure if it would develop within a single language change though...

Tense: I already have a past tense used so that has to be there. I've looked into tenses in the past and while I think some of less known ones cool, I'd confuse myself using them ^.^

Number: Yeah, it just a matter of incorporating it.

Evidentiality: I see now. I'm torn on this because on the one hands this is the language of the gods so my initial thought is that everything should be "evident" and as such should have no indication, but then I start thinking about how a god might wish to speak in terms it is this way, but I'm thinking I would like it that way and as such wouldn't in such absolute terms. I think I'm gonna go with the latter and use phrases like "i think it is the case"

Definiteness: I'm not quite understanding... I don't get how "I saw men", "I saw the men", and "the men" indicate new or old information. The only thing that I can think of is that "the" indicates that I have already mentioned a set of men before that I am referring back to or you already know the group of men that are being refered to in some way. If that is the case, then I have no idea how I am going to incorporate that.

Mood: I didn't know that was a grammatical feature...I wouldn't even know how to look into this.

Person: Well, I know the basic 3. The other ones I never remember and don't see much of a point to distinguishing between, but then I'm not deep in linguistics to really determine that.

Cases: I see what it is now... though that seems like a lot of work and I'd have to constantly reference back so it would be extremely hard.

Transitivity: I see. So it's like inheritence in programming... though, is a "weilding a bow" a transitive verb or intransitive since "weilding" alone doesn't make sense while "eating" (from your example) does without the object. Either way, I don't know how I'll handle this and probably won't know until I'm confronted with having to write a sentence using it ^.^

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

I am glad you understand my pain :p I want to write more now. Sorry, I should have said about gender, even though English has pronouns based on the gender system from Germanic, you could have a lot of pronouns but no gender system anyway. Consider Thai which has a multitude of pronouns but no grammatical gender system. That may be what youre looking for. This also gets you a social registry system going where you could have special pronouns for divine things and nobility.

Case systems don't need to be that bad and need be no harder to remember that prepositions :)
You could have a system like the following:
Nominative: unmarked
Subject of verb.
Accusative: -ge
Direct object
Dative: -la
"Towards x"
Ablative: -t
"Away from x"
Locative: -jit
Where in English you'd say "at/in x location"
Commitative/instrumental: -pa
Where in English you would say "with x"
Genitive: -os
Where in English you would say "of x" like" brother of jack"

Not so bad right? You likely were going to have those prepositions anyway. A lot of languages throw in plurality and gender but youre language doesn't need to.
I m pressed for time. That's all for now.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Evidentially marking is something we don't have in English and we just indicate with adverbs like "allegedly" and such and phrasally, "it seems to me" etc. You certainly can get by doing it that way. In languages with evidentially they'll have a grammatical element like a clitic, affix or particle of some sort.

Definiteness is also if something is expected to be known by the listener too. "The weather is nice today"

Mood is a grammatical feature in how you indicate it. Every natural language can generally express every thought but how differs.

For transitivity, English doesn't really explicitly mark it. Some verbs can be both transitive and intransitive. Like you could say "I am eating" or "I am eating an apple". Some languages have more restrictions or explicit verb forms, so I imagine.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

The problem I'm having with Case is that I don't understand which cases are which...So, I can come up with some marking structure but I will have problems applying it.

For example, "vathdro" mean desert dweller, but i would think that "dro" should actually mean "dwell", so I should add a suffix to the end to make it "dweller" and for all the various cases, of normal "Dwell", "dwelling", "dwelled" and "dwells" but i have no idea what cases those are. Of course there is also the problem that I don't want to change "dro" to something else for "dweller" as the point of that was to have the word "dro" which is commonly used for dark elves, as part of the word to explain why they are later called just "Dro"... blah.

I didn't respond earlier cuz I was and am still thinking... Also, I wrote down all the extra 3 consonant coda clusters and wrote down all the phonetics of the words already there.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Accidentally posted twice.
Last edited by Nachtuil on Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:01 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Let me put together some examples of how cases can work. Case marking is usually a suffix that you stick on the end of a noun, though in some languages it is a prefix, though this is rarer. They basically fill a very similar role that that prepositions (or postpositions do) in showing the interrelationships between nouns. You already have some stuff going on which is pretty cool.

You have some suffixes already like "-en" and "-dra". The "in" suffix in" meaning "of the". This is basically a classic genitive case marker in appearance you already have going on. The following constructions presumably would be grammatical:

"Evi dolin " could mean "Guardian of the home"
"Evi elisodin" could mean "guardian of the pure woodland" (It seems elis functions in a type of adverbial role here)
"Ef abanin" could mean "People of the mountain"

I'll again conjure up some case endings to kind of show you a possible way case endings could work for you:
Nominative (NOM): Unmarked
Accusative (ACC): "-ke"
Dative (DAT): "-lu"
Ablative (ABL): "-sra"
Genitive (GEN): "-in"
Locative (LOC): "-gir" /dʒiɹ/"
Instrumental (INST): "kai" /kaɪ/

Other relationships could be handled with prepositions perhaps. I don't want to go crazy on you here.

I'll try to put together some sentences. I am going to make produce some verbs just for the sake of variety. These are just for the sake of being able to make examples. I am also going to make a infinitive and finite form of each verb which you can regard as existing only for the sake of example. Infinitive forms get "ath" and finite forms "su"

Verbs:
Argiasath / Argiansu / Argianst = "to birth/ birth / birthed" (as in, to give life to)
Decesath /Decesu / Decest = "to kill / kill / killed"
Febronath/ Febronsu/Febront = "to battle / battle"
Femyth/ Femythath / Femytht = "to bless/ bless/ blessed"
Luvath/ Luvsu /Luvt= "to make /make / made"
Tewarath/ Tewarsu / Tewart = "to travel / travel / travelled"

So check this out:
1. La Telin efke eldrin femytht.
The goddess of the land blessed the first people.
(Lady/Goddess of the land) in nominative (umarked case), efke (people with accusative suffix) eldra (first with genitive suffix), femytht (past tense blessed)

I am treating ef and eldra as nouns of course. Above the word order is subject, object (which includes the genitive noun modifying it) and then the verb. In theory, you could write this different ways.
"Efke eldrin la telin femytht" would mean the exaxt same thing as the first example.
Ef(ACC) Eldrin(GEN) Le(NOM) telin(GEN), femytht (verb)
Notice how, with this example, the genitive noun stays with the noun it modifies?

2. Ef eldrin luvt bronke.
The first people made war.
A simpler example. Ef eldrin, again, in nominative and genitive case, and then bron, in the accusative case. You could theorhetically put it in different orders while retaining meaning.
"Bronke ef eldrin luvt" or "luvt bronke ef eldrin."

3. Ef eldrin luvt bronke teinekai.
The first people made war with/using fire.
Ef(NOM), Eldrin(GEN), Verb, bronke(ACC) teinekai(INST)
This is the same as above but with fire (teine) added with a instrumental suffix.

4. Rac tewart odsra.
The Lord travelled out of/away from the woodland.
Rac(NOM) tewart(verb) odsra(Ablative)

5.La golin tewarsu raclu.
The lady of the sea travels to the lord.
La (NOM) Golin(GEN) twarsu (verb) Raclu(DAT)
Again, you could write this sentence like "Racke tewarsu la golin" or "Racke la golin tewarsu" without changing the meaning.

6.La golin tewarsu raclu delankai.
The lady of the sea travels to the lord via roads.
Here Delan (roads) has been added with the instrumental case ending to show that it is the method by which the lady travels.

7. Thonen ef luvsu dolke abangir.
The northern people make home at/on the mountain.
Thonen (Adjective) Ef (NOM) Luvsu (verb) Dolke (ACC) abandir(LOC)

8. Vathgir rac decest mythrilkai.
In the desert the lord killed using lightmetal.
Vath(LOC) rac (NOM) decest(verb) mythrilkai(INST)

9. La golin luvsu nisseke raclu.
The lady of the sea brings balance on the lord (they may say "make balance" where we would say "bring balance"
La (NOM) golin(GEN) luvsu (verb) nisseke(ACC) raclu(DAT)

You could totally get away with making compound words with "Dro" meaning dweller. Perhaps you can have a verb like "Dorath" that it was generated from. As I hope you can see, the case ending is understood to not be part of a noun itself permanently but is just something that explains its relationship to the other sentence elements. "Vathdro" and "vathdrolu" both pertain to the desert dwellers but one indicates something is being brought to going towards the desert dwellers.

I hope that all makes sense. Please ask if you have any questions. I actually never got around to using infinitive forms but I don't want to get carried away and just want to explain how case works.

Edit: I accidentally randomly capitalised some nouns. Not an invalid strategy though, German has capitalised nouns.
Last edited by Nachtuil on Sun Nov 06, 2016 5:22 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

You mind if I take those case endings? Cuz those sound awesome, just reading it.
Also I am pretty sure I "get it" but it hasn't quite clicked yet, as in I still can't speak competently on it, but I can make do with looking it up every time I use it ^.^ It's just one of those things that is going to take a while to become engrained and such.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

I would totally be honoured if you used them. :) Yeah case marking is pretty different from how English does it. I would take a look at some languages that use them to get a better idea. They play different roles. You might choose for instance to use the ablative and dative cases into of the accusative with speaking and listening, maybe using ablative to make a subject listen to something and dative for speaking to something. If that makes sense.


Edit: Even more interesting you could if you want have the same verbs take on different meanings depending on the case of the patient of you want to have some more context from things like word order. Like say maybe the patient always follows the verb. The case of the noun after the verb could change its meaning.

Other prepositions can also change be used to change the exact way a noun with case ending is read. There are many possibilities. :)

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

Are finite and infinitive forms necessary to differentiate? I mean, if I have present tense unmarked, and then mark each of the other tenses, doesn't that make all those tenses the infinitive forms anyways? and where there is no other tense it is present/finite..

What I'm thinking is that a verb will have number attached as a prefix and tense attached as suffix, with singular present being unmarked. So... "I am eating" would be translated as 1 word with no suffixes/prefixes... though thinking about it, that would make translating Shakespeare's "to be or not to be" fairly hard... So maybe I need to differentiate between infinitives and finitives?

Also... rules for adding suffixes so far:
1. Suffixes that start with a repeated phoneme drops the suffixes phoneme. Pas + sra = pas + ra = pasra.
2. /θ/, /d/, /dh/, /z/ followed by an suffix that start with /s/, the /s/ is dropped. Paz + sra = paz ra = pazra.
3. The vowels /ɜ/ and /ə/ that are the last phoneme of a word are dropped when followed by /ɪ/ in a suffix. El + dra + in = El dr in = Eldrin

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Re: Eldrin

Post by mèþru »

Durakken wrote:Are finite and infinitive forms necessary to differentiate?
If you can understand by context, then no. Then again, that rule applies to pretty much everything in linguistics.
Durakken wrote:I mean, if I have present tense unmarked, and then mark each of the other tenses, doesn't that make all those tenses the infinitive forms anyways?
No. Both infinitives and finite verbs can have tense distinctions, although the they are more common in the former than in the latter.
Durakken wrote:What I'm thinking is that a verb will have number attached as a prefix and tense attached as suffix, with singular present being unmarked.
[/quote]One of my languages does the same thing, except the finite tenses are marked (the infinitive is unmarked an has no tense or person)
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

Mèþru is quite right. You could leave the infinitive unmarked, or even mark it differently. You could require that the finite verb might always come first in the sentence before the infinitive verb.
You could also try "verb stacking" where you put a bunch of verbs consequitively where following verbs are understood to be consequential to preceding verbs. Something I am not super familiar with and we don't have it in English.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

Ok, this is what I've decide so far...

==== Verb definitiveness ====
to-infinitive (to) = "es" works sorta like how to works in english.
"To hunt" for example might be "es inu"
It can also be used like "es or not es" = "to be or not to be" (I currently have no words for "or" or "not". This is just to show what I mean). The "be" is assumed to be there even though there is no "be" verb as far as I have thought up yet.

==== Verb Tense ====
Suffix attached to verbs

present = unmarked
Past = /-t/
Future = /-ken/
Imperfect = /-su/
Perfect = /-dhɑn/
Pluperfect = /-tɕu/
future perfect = /-kɑn/

==== Noun Number ====
Prefix Attached to subject? nouns

Singular = unmarked
2 = /ɑn-/
3 = /del-/
plural (non specified number greater than 1) = /dɹə-/
greater plural (usually consider the whole group of all in the world) = /fel-/
paucel (greater than 3 but less thaen the whole world?) = /tɑn-/

==== Noun Case ====
Suffix Attached to nouns?

Nominitive = unmarked
Accusitive = /-ke/
Dative = /-lu/
Ablative = /-sɹə/
Genitive = /-ɪn/
Locative = /-dʒiɹ/
Instrumental = /-kaɪ/


I think next I have to work on mood next... and filling out more words.

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mèþru
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Re: Eldrin

Post by mèþru »

I'm interested in how the orthography works.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

mèþru, there are a number of issues with that.

The gods don't write things down.
Multiple species use this language, 1 does not write ever, 1 is acquatic and I haven't developed much, and both the aquatic species and elves won't develop writing till after the language has evolved to new languages (several in fact).

However, being that it is the language of the gods, I don't see why races wouldn't eventually makes various writing systems for it...

But all that is to say that there shouldn't be one orthography for this language.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by mèþru »

I mean the romanisation in your posts.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

You mean, how I'm going to "officially" romanize it from the IPA phonetics? I'm not sure on that ^.^ but, yeah I need to figure something out that is easy to use.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by mèþru »

Here's a working romanisation for you:
/m n b t d dʰ k ɡ f v θ s z d͡ʒ t͡ɕ ɹ l w/ <m n b t d dh k g f v þ s z dž tš r l w>
/i u ɪ e ə ɜ ɑ ɒ/ <í u i é e è a o>
/ɪə eɪ oʊ iɑ aɪ/ <ie éi ó ía ai>
Why do you have different places of articulation for the two affricates when they are so close to each other? Why just one aspirated sound? (I suggest replacing it with /ð/.)
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Eldrin

Post by Durakken »

Figured some more stuff...

Word order can be SVO or OSV.

The Subject and Object always have an indicator between which also tells the mood.
The indicator in SVO may come before or after the Verb.
Subject can be dropped in either ordering, but often is not in OVS.
When the subject is dropped it is assumed to follow on from the subject of the previous sentence.
If there is no previous subject or the sentence is isolated then the subject is assumed to be the speaker.

These are the indicators I'm thinking, but I haven't put them in any sentences to really hear them so I might change them in the future, probably not though

indicative = gə
subjunctive = wa
conditional = kɜ
Optative = tsialan
Imparitive = kin
Jussive = ki
Potential = sa
Hypothetical = ga
Inferential = ken
Interrogative = wə

=========================

mèþru, I will likely not use that because I want something that I can just type with a standard keyboard rather than copy and paste or use some arcane method to access the characters.
/m n b t d dʰ k ɡ f v θ s z d͡ʒ t͡ɕ ɹ l w/ <m n b t d dh k g f v th s z j x r l w> is likely what I'll be using for the consonants.
For the vowels, I'm still not good with the IPA and I don't feel like looking them up right now so I can't give what I'm likely going to use.

d and dh may be ultimately represented by just a "d" rather than a character for each.
Like wise, d͡ʒ t͡ɕ may both be repped by "j" ultimately.
As far as why those consonant were selected. It simply has to do with how i came up with the initial words.
I had intended to have a "y" but I left it out accidentally, noticed the discrepancy and I'm just going to leave it out now.

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Re: Eldrin

Post by mèþru »

New one then, based on your objections and temporary orthography:
/m n b t d dʰ k ɡ f v θ s z d͡ʒ t͡ɕ ɹ l w/ <m n b t d dh k g f v th s z j c r l w>
/i u ɪ e ə ɜ ɑ ɒ/ <i u ih ei e eh a o>
/ɪə eɪ oʊ iɑ aɪ/ <ie eih ou ia ai>
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Eldrin

Post by Nachtuil »

I don know if you need to explicitly mark the indicative mood. You could probably leave it as an unmarked default. You should try doing some translation with the mood particles before committing to them. You may find it clunky to have to mark it explicitly every time. For instance, English has multiple ways to make interrogative statements, one of which is subject and verb inversion and other ways are by using question words.
I would advise doing a lot of practice sentences before committing to a rigid word order myself.
I am like you in that I prefer romanisation systems that lack funky little marks my qwerty keyboard doesn't natively support :p

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