- -st'i-/-stı- added for plural and obviative forms.
- -rk'e-/-rk'o- added for all oblique cases and all plural and obviative forms.
- -t'o-/-'te- added for plural oblique forms and obviative oblique forms
Archive for January, 2016
Word derivation for "pink" :
Basque = arrosa, Finnish = pinkki
Miresua = pinsa
My previous Miresua conlang word for pink was poska. Somehow I just didn't like that word.
I missed my scheduled post for the 22nd last week. Simply got busy doing other things.
Both the Basque word and the Finnish word for pink appear to be borrowed words. There's another word in Finnish for pink, vaaleanpunainen, which translates as light-red, but I didn't care to deal with that 15-letter word for pink.
I found one instance of the word pink in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
vär ehi luqu-nta-jut törö-ntä-z ehi p'arŋuba
you (s)he trick-fut-inv get-fut-direct (s)he inheritance
(s)he will trick you so that (s)he will get the inheritance
ehi gäbü-lö-: mat'a-nta-: k'ugoru'a' serves as a subclause delimiter.
he scream-past-intr leave-fut-intr bear
he screamed until the bear went away
mat'a-nta-: k'ugoru a ehi gäbü-lö-:
leave-fut-intr bear * he scream-past-intr
And I’m only 24 days late!
But I think (maybe) I’ve maybe up for it by having 142 words this year!
Séko – mouth; rumor; a gossip
séko – to spread rumors; to gossip
Kset – noise; sound
kseté – to make a noise; to make a sound; to be noisy (n-verb)
Ngiks – annoyance from sound (from reduplicated participle of kseté – ngikseté)
Nete – parent (mother or father); parents; from the verb nete – to bear children
bilhe – to pee; to urinate; to poop; to vomit; to fart; to burp; to sneeze (generally to relieve a bodily function; to specificy an elative object is used, which is never used in polite company; a nondescript ‘passive’ is used:
tov robilhe – 3.neut-acc must-relieve.prs
nouns used are often derived from a general noun plus the bodily function morpheme –bu:
Vanébu pee – liquid-body.func
Pochbu poop – brown-body.func
Cwebu diarrhea – fall.down-body.func
Minalbu vomit – up-body.func
Riraibu sneeze – nose-body.func
in casual senses, these nouns have become reflexive verbs (ksir):
de ksir vanébu; deks vanébu
uma – to be sober; not drunk; clear of mind etc.
umar – sober, not drunk; clear of mind; impartial; objective (this is one of the few adjectives that is not derived from the stative verb by the mechanics that govern the majority of stative verbs when used attributively, that is, it’s not an N-verb or an S-verb, which describe the ending that the stative verb takes when used attributively in an adjective like way)
Ilh – woolen blanket; coat for very cold weather;
Ilhngere – wool; winter coat (of animals)
nurna – forget; (n-verb ) to be forgetful; to be absentminded
dekmo – (s-verb) be hesitant; to be timid; to doubt oneself; to be reserved
ciri – (s-verb) insightful; considerate; compassionate
y – (n-verb) confident (not nikte – to be sure/certain, which applies to a single item, as opposed to y which has more of a holistic meaning)
diamikoso – to procrastinate; (n-verb) to be lazy
Diamikoso – procrastination; laziness
Dimik – lazy person
Tynam – the central room of a modest home where the cooking, eating and lounging happens, the bedrooms are typically directly attached to this room
Padhnak – world; universe; reality; existence
Utal – world; day-to-day; routine; perspective
mlase – to invite someone’s attendance
Mëmlasen – invitee
Mlase – the act of invitation
Mlaseb – a physical token of invitation (such as a card) (mlase+b, deriv. suffix that derives nouns that aid in the accomplishment of the verb)
mëmlase – (s-verb) to be welcoming; to be prone to inviting people over; to be hospitable
Gloska – stomach (the internal organ, not the abdomen in general); digestion; curiosity
mires Gloskav oido – to be curious (lit. to have a big stomach)
Lagor – fitness; exercise; diet; attempts to be healthy;
Lagorv cydo – to work out, to exercise, to be on a diet, to be health-conscious (lit. to hold fitness)
gola – to hunt
Ngagolan – big game that is frequently hunted
ngagola – to be a hunter
Goléir – hunting permission; right to hunt
kendhai – sell goods (translocative prefix+buy)
pvi – sell services
dhai – buy goods (okay, this one existed before Lexember, but the distinction is new)
Nidhais – a good; an item that can be purchased (bread, metal, etc)
vrama – buy services (assistance from waitstaff, farmhands, etc)
alhargili – save money; acquire wealth; become educated (alh-Argil cis-locative prefix+money+vowelforverbalendings)
Chilh – a spice used mainly in meat dishes and an alcoholic tea that is drunk during the winter, similar to cinnamon, but with a bit of a black-pepper quality; the name for the alcoholic tea mentioned above
si – to heal; to restore to health
Sisis – doctor; the field of medicine; hospital
Chyn – medicine; remedy; curative (from an archaic word for herb (replaced by Naba); traces of which is now exclusively present in the word for berry bush Nolchyn (red-bush). The berry, Nol, is used to make wine (also called Nol). This superficial relationship between Nolchyn and Chyn has lead to the wives’ tale that mass consumption of wine at the onset of a cold cures it.
para – to believe something based on faith (God, the goodness of a person, etc.)
rize – to believe something based on an empirical evidence (evolution, Global warming)
kete – (s-verb) to be trusting; to be friendly; to be gullible (from kate – to trust)
Ngëket – servant, page, assistance (not slave; lit. trusted one)
dodoi – to give credit to someone; to cite; to reference
brusku – to fly through the air (not metaphorically extended to swiftness)
Arani – bird
Ëknak – flying insects
Ibruska – fascination with flight; someone who is prone to day dreaming
Mras –edge of land water that is not potable (oceans, brackish water, bogs); seashore; shore; coast
Dola –edge of land and water that is potable (rivers, streams, lakes), bank, shore
Girn – bog; acidic standing water, forms peat, mossy, feed by rain so they are low in nutrients
Ulgos – fen; alkaline, fed by ground water often, richer than bogs, also form peat Kacma – swamp; woody plants
Anéng – marsh; herbaceous plants
Gom – ocean/sea; large salty body of water; can be landlocked or not
Pvas – lake; large fresh body of water; with tributaries; landlocked
Okuoi – pond, puddle (standing body of water without tributaries)
Iciv – stream/brook/creek (linear body of water that can be crossed without swimming or with water going above the waist), smaller than Crasdo
Crasdo – river (linear body of water that must be swum across or where the water is substantially deeper than the waist)
molhi – to ford, to cross a river by wading, to wade
Molhik – a ford, a natural crossing of a river
Immal – bridge (from i+minal (lit. go over) > iminal > im(i)nal > imnal > immal)
Kër – kitchen (an independent room only in large houses); cooking spot, pit, hearth, fireplace (used in the Tynam)
isga – to mix, to stir
vrasga – whisk, whip, beat (vracos+isga)
gade – to cut, to sever, to chop
gigaide – mince, dice (iterative of gade)
cigaide – to slice, to cut thin pieces (cic+gigaide)
ci – to be thin, skinny; to be simple (irregular attributive form of cic)
py – bake, roast, cook in an oven with dry heat
Py – oven
medo – cook
vole – to fry
Vole – frying pan, skillet
duolo – boil
Duolo – pot, kettle
zobvemo – burn, overcook
my – to knead dough
Mym – dough
raza – to crack an egg; to begin something that cannot be stopped
ga ga ga ga – ideophone(?) to be running around frantically in the kitchen trying to get a meal together
Korak – root vegetable (onion, garlic, potato, turnip)
Kuana – leafy greens (cabbage, lettuce, arugula)
Nuenad – stalk vegetables (celery, asparagus, cinnamon, bamboo)
Pi – flower vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, artichoke, dandelion)
Ada – fruit vegetables (non sweet fruits, e.g. tomato, cucumbers)
Oione – fruits (sweet)
Inai – metal
Malga – gold
Lydh – silver
Hoios – copper
Tlaigo – bronze (Salman – tin)
Rydinai – brass (‘yellow metal’) (Gran – zinc)
Fies – iron
Kdhes – iron ore; metal works in general
Rof – steel
Mamavan – cast iron (‘that which is cast’)
Inainé – lead (‘flexible metal’)
Buola – mercury
ao – to smelt (‘to melt’ in general; not just for metals)
oao – molten
Coa – slag
ikuo – mine
oikuon – ore (‘that which is mined’)
mava – to cast (from va – to pour)
Inaikër – forge (‘metal fireplace’)
Blas – hammer
bla – to hammer; to beat with an object
Kromos – anvil
Nacmat – hangover, grogginess
Nacmatnol – hangover cure (lit. ‘hangover wine’; see above)
Okosiag – headache
Okosiag ym dalh. – I have a headache (lit. ‘A headache is at me.’)
Okos – head
Iag – pain; ache; illness (often appended to body parts)
puapua – to be queasy (N-verb)
zolzaka – adv. to and fro; hither and thither; back and forth; (S-verb) directionless; unfocused; wandering; meandering
Another way could of course be some causative-ingressive combination, three-caus-ingr-(ptcpl) or even three-ingr-caus-(ptcpl): the thing that starts to cause a count towards three, the thing that causes to start a count towards three.
Looks like it’s my birthday again. I’ve had 35 of these things now and they show no signs of stopping. Bleh. So be it!
For those who follow me elsewhere, you’ll know that the last year has brought some major changes and challenge. The short version: new house, new shows, new book, and new child. Erin and I welcomed our first child Meridian Victoria Peterson last month, and the level of effort required to maintain her comparatively spartan lifestyle is as advertised. It’s stretched us to our breaking point and left us little time for anything else.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t do us a proper Dothraki haiku competition!
It does mean, though, that I don’t have any haikus of my own to share, or new rules to debut. It’s too much. Per last year, though, there will be a Dothraki competition and a High Valyrian competition, and each competition will have its own winner.
We can certainly still do challenge words, though. Always time for challenge words! The challenge word for Dothraki will be haf (an adjective meaning “quiet” or, with respect to pain, “dull”). For High Valyrian, the challenge word is the noun lāra, which means “crow” (lunar noun, regular Class IA declension). For the full set of rules regarding the haiku, see below.
For the purposes of this contest, a haiku is 17 syllables long, with the syllable counts for each line being 5, 7, and 5, in that order. If you need to fudge, go for it, but I will weight exact syllable counts more highly.
Also (and this is important), since this is Dothraki, we are definitely going by syllable count, not mora count. Regarding syllable-counting, in Dothraki, a syllable is defined as a vowel plus one or more consonants on either side. A syllable cannot contain more than one vowel, which means that a word like kishaan is trisyllabic, not disyllabic.
If it helps, you may or may not contract the various prepositions that contract. So, for example, mr’anha (two syllables) is the usual way of saying “inside me”. For your haiku, if you wish, you can separate the two out, i.e. mra anha (three syllables). You can also drop purely epenthetic e vowels (so the past tense of “crush”, kaffe, can be rendered as kaff’). Feel free to play with word order and drop pronouns, as needed, bearing in mind that such language is figurative, and the reader will still need to be able to figure out who’s doing what to whom.
For Valyrian: Long vowels count as two mora, and a vowel with a coda counts as two mora, but a syllable will not have more than two mora. So a long vowel plus a coda consonant will still be two mora, for the purposes of the poem. If you can’t do the poem using mora, do it with syllables, but I’ll weight those done with mora more highly. This will make it more like a real Japanese haiku. If you need a particular word in a particular number/case combination or a verb in a particular conjugation, please let me know and I’ll give it to you.
Addendum: Falling diphthongs count as two mora (i.e. ae and ao); rising diphthongs count as one (e.g. ia, ua, ue, etc.). Also, word order is certainly freer in poetry than it is in everyday speech, but the rules about adjectives still apply (i.e. you use the short forms if the adjective appears directly before the noun it modifies; otherwise they’d take their full forms). And, finally, word-final consonants are extrametrical. Thus if a word ends in -kor, that counts as one mora, not two.
Shieraki gori ha yerea! Fonas chek!