#Greek consonants

[ratnix]

Something that I think is really funny is that the word Anaklysmos (Riptide) doesn't even exist, it's just a combination of a suffix that means above and the verb κλύζω which means to ripple😭 [Help, even my Greek keyboard doesn't even recognize the word]

I read these books when I was 12 and as a native Greek speaker that also studied ancient Greek for 6 years, I fully thought this was an actual word because it sounds Greek but it's not 😭 Mf Rick Riordan gaslit me in my own language. Apparently he asked an ancient Greek professor and told him that this was the closest word he could use but like, my question is why😭? There are so many already existing words that are related to the sea and even if they don't directly translate to 'Riptide', just pick a Greek word and paraphrase it when translating it to English like it's not hard 😭

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

can someone tell me what Tolkien had against the letter j

[slettlune]

i found an audio guide to standard pronunciation of attic greek

why does he explain this part so suggestively

[shittywriterbrain]

bro can i double your consonants? i promise it‘s for metric reasons

[napuleh]

Neapolitan wiki has been such a great resource, especially when it'll have comparisons between Neapolitan and standard Italian, but there are instance like this where it shows the differences between DIALECTS of Neapolitan and it feels so daunting 😂 especially when the same word can be spelled/written fourteen million different ways depending on where the person is from LOL

(also it makes me sad that it isn't taught in schools 🥹🥹 which i understand is probably hard because there's no 'standard Neapolitan' but conservation of the culture >>>> over anything else at this point)

I'm also going to sit here and complain about having to learn about the different grammatical features now 😂 the verbal conjugation in Nap vs Italian vs English is sending me (like I can't even wrap my head around it until I break down all of the parts of speech lmao)

La "cemmeraglia" è proprio quello che pensavi! È un piccolo disco di ferro con la faccia di un santo incisa sopra (per questo hai letto "dischiello", ma possono essere anche di più) che si appende al rosario/"curona".

E poi mi hai fatto scoprire un mondo con quel link! Non sapevo esistesse wikipedia nel mio dialetto,,, andrò a leggere qualche cosa appena ho più tempo.

[classicslesbianopinions]

i'm using an open source online textbook (ancient greek for everyone) as part of my "get better at latin and greek" summer project and so far it's a pretty solid textbook but the thing it does that makes it really, really useful is it tells you what the stem is for each word and then explain why that stem transforms/changes.

like for example for "τιθημι" it says that the stem is "θη," but in the present tense it's reduplicated, but you can't reduplicate an aspirated consonant like θ so you use a τ instead. and when explaining third declension nouns it explains that the masculine/feminine nominative ending is -ς, and in words where the stem ends in a consonant it will often either remove the stem's final consonant (παιδ- -> παιδς -> παις) or the -ς will drop (δαιμων- -> δαιμωνς -> δαιμων). these are just a couple examples but so far these explanations are making it much much clearer how we get all the irregularities that i was originally told i just had to memorize with little rhyme or reason behind it. greek makes a lot more sense this way.

so anyway i recommend this to anyone who's looking to learn/improve at greek!

[gemsofgreece]

Mycenaean Greek

(and examples of lexical evolution to Modern Greek)

Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language (16th to 12th centuries BC). The language is preserved in inscriptions of Linear B, a script first attested on Crete before the 14th century BC. The tablets long remained undeciphered and many languages were suggested for them until Michael Ventris, building on the extensive work of Alice Kober, deciphered the script in 1952. This turn of events has made Greek officially the oldest recorded living language in the world.

What does this mean though? Does it mean that a Modern Greek could speak to a resurrected Mycenaean Greek and have an effortless chat? Well obviously not. But we are talking about the linear evolution of one single language (with its dialects) throughout time that was associated with one ethnic group, without any parallel development of other related languages falling in the same lingual branch whatsoever.

Are we sure it was Greek though? At this point, yes, we are. Linguists have found in Mycenaean Greek a lot of the expected drops and innovations that individualised the Hellenic branch from the mother Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). In other words, it falls right between PIE and Archaic Greek and resembles what Proto-Greek is speculated to have been like. According to Wikipedia, Mycenaean Greek had already undergone all the sound changes particular to the Greek language.

Why was it so hard to decipher Linear B and understand it was just very early Greek? Can an average Greek speaker now read Linear B? No. An average Greek speaker cannot read Linear B unless they take into account and train themselves on certain rules and peculiarities that even took specialized linguists ages to realise and get used to. Here's the catch: Linear B was a script inspired by the Minoan Linear A, both of which were found in the Minoan speaking Crete. (Minoan Linear A inscriptions have yet to be deciphered and we know nothing about them.) The Mycenaeans (or was it initially the Minoans???) made only minimal modifications to produce the Linear B script and used it exclusively for practical purposes, namely for accounting lists and inventories. Linear B however was an ideographic and syllabic script that stemmed from a script that originally was not designed to render the Mycenaean Greek language, and thus it could not do it perfectly. In other words, the script itself does not render the Greek words accurately which is what made it extremely hard even for the linguists to decipher these inscriptions. Due to its limited use for utility and not for prose, poetry or any other form of expression, the Mycenaean Greeks likely did not feel compelled to modify the script heavily into some more appropriate, accurate form to cover the language's needs.

Examples of the script's limitations:

I won't mention them all but just to give you an idea that will help you then read the words more easily:

In the syllabic script Linear B, all syllable symbols starting with a consonant obligatorily have a vowel following - they are all open sylllables without exception. Linear B can NOT render two consonants in a row which is a huge handicap because Greek absolutely has consonants occuring in a row. So, in many cases below, you will see that the vowel in the script is actually fake, it did not exist in the actual language, and I might use a strikethrough to help you out with this.

For the same reason, when there are consonants together, at least one of them is often casually skipped in Linear B!

There were no separate symbols for ρ (r) and λ (l). As a result, all r and l sounds are rendered with the r symbol.

Exactly because many Greek words end in σ, ς (sigma), ν (ni), ρ (rho) but in Linear B consonants must absolutely be followed by a vowel, a lot of time the last letter of the words is skipped in the script!

Voiced, voiceless and aspirate consonants all use the same symbols, for example we will see that ka, ha, gha, ga all are written as "ka". Pa, va, fa (pha), all are written as "pa". Te, the are written as "te".

There are numerous other limitations but also elements featured that were later dropped from the Greek language, i.e the semivowels, j, w, the digamma, the labialized velar consonants [ɡʷ, kʷ, kʷʰ], written ⟨q⟩, which are sometimes successfully represented with Linear B. However, that's too advanced for this post. I only gave some very basic, easy guidelines to help you imagine in your mind what the word probably sounded like and how it relates to later stages of Greek, and modern as is the case here. That's why I am also using simpler examples and more preserved vocabulary and no words which include a lot of these early elements which were later dropped or whose decoding is still unclear.

Mycenaean Linear B to Modern Greek vocabulary examples:

a-ke-ro = άγγελος (ágelos, angel. Notice how the ke symbol is representing ge, ro representing lo and the missing ending letter. So keep this in mind and make the needed modifications in your mind with the following examples. Also, angel actually means "messenger", "announcer". In the Christian context, it means "messenger from God", like angels are believed to be. So, that's why it exists in Mycenaean Greek and not because Greeks invented Christianity 15 centuries before Jesus was born XD )

a-ki-ri-ja = άγρια (ághria, wild, plural neuter. Note the strikethrough for the nonexistent vowel)

a-ko-ro = αγρός (aghrós, field)

a-ko-so-ne = άξονες (áksones, axes)

a-na-mo-to = ανάρμοστοι (anármostoi, inappropriate, plural masculine. Note the skipped consonants in the script)

a-ne-mo = ανέμων (anémon, of the winds)

a-ne-ta = άνετα (áneta, comfortable, plural neuter, an 100% here, well done Linear B!)

a-po-te-ra = αμφότερες (amphóteres, or amphóterae in more Archaic Greek, both, plural feminine)

a-pu = από (apó, from)

a-re-ka-sa-da-ra = Αλεξάνδρα (Alexandra)

de-de-me-no = (δε)δεμένο (ðeðeméno, tied, neuter, the double de- is considered too old school, archaic now)

do-ra = δώρα (ðóra, gifts)

do-ro-me-u = δρομεύς (ðroméfs, dromeús in more Archaic Greek, runner)

do-se = δώσει (ðósei, to give, third person singular, subjunctive)

e-ko-me-no = ερχόμενος (erkhómenos, coming, masculine)

e-mi-to = έμμισθο (émmistho, salaried, neuter)

e-ne-ka = ένεκα (éneka, an 100%, thanks to, thanks for)

e-re-mo = έρημος (érimos, could be pronounced éremos in more Archaic Greek, desert)

e-re-u-te-ro-se = ελευθέρωσε (elefthérose, liberated/freed, simple past, third person)

e-ru-to-ro = ερυθρός (erythrós, red, masculine)

e-u-ko-me-no = ευχόμενος (efkhómenos or eukhómenos in more Archaic Greek, wishing, masculine)

qe = και (ke, and)

qi-si-pe-e = ξίφη (xíphi, swords)

i-je-re-ja = ιέρεια (iéreia, priestess)

ka-ko-de-ta = χαλκόδετα (και όχι κακόδετα!) (khalkóðeta, bound with bronze, plural neuter)

ke-ka-u-me-no = κεκαυμένος (kekafménos, kekauménos in more Archaic Greek, burnt, masculine)

ke-ra-me-u = κεραμεύς (keraméfs, kerameús in more Archaic Greek, potter)

ki-to = χιτών (khitón, chiton)

ko-ri-to = Κόρινθος (kórinthos, Corinth)

ku-mi-no = κύμινο (kýmino, cumin)

ku-pa-ri-se-ja = κυπαρίσσια (kyparíssia, cypress trees)

ku-ru-so = χρυσός (khrysós, gold)

ma-te-re = μητέρα (mitéra, mother)

me-ri = μέλι (méli, honey)

me-ta = μετά (metá, after / post)

o-ri-ko = ολίγος (olíghos, little amount, masculine)

pa-ma-ko = φάρμακο (phármako, medicine)

pa-te = πάντες (pántes, everybody / all)

pe-di-ra = πέδιλα (péðila, sandals)

pe-ko-to = πλεκτό (plektó, woven, neuter)

pe-ru-si-ni-wo = περυσινό / περσινό (perysinó or persinó, last year's, neuter)

po-me-ne = ποιμένες (poiménes, shepherds)

po-ro-te-u = Πρωτεύς (Proteus)

po-ru-po-de = πολύποδες (polýpoðes, multi-legged, plural)

ra-pte = ράπτες (ráptes, tailors)

ri-me-ne = λιμένες (liménes, ports)

ta-ta-mo = σταθμός (stathmós, station)

te-o-do-ra = Θεοδώρα (Theodora)

to-ra-ke = θώρακες (thórakes, breastplates)

u-po = υπό (ypó, under)

wi-de = είδε (íðe, saw, simple past, third person singular)

By the way it's killing me that I expected the first words to be decoded in an early civilisation would be stuff like sun, moon, animal, water but we got shit like inappropriate, salaried and station XD

Sources:

gistor.gr

Greek language | Wikipedia

Mycenaean Greek | Wikipedia

Linear B | Wikipedia

John Angelopoulos

Image source

[deception-united]

What are ways to come up with names for fantasy worlds/countries/regions? I’m struggling a LOT with this

Hi! Thanks for asking and so sorry for the late response.

Places will usually be named for or after a significant person, god or deity, mythical creature or legend, natural element, historical event, abstract concept or virtue, in celebration of a major achievement, or to reflect the region's characteristics, climate, or features. As with most things, there are a number of ways to go about the naming process, but my go-to method is linguistic experimentation. When creating names for places, countries, events, or world, I like to use words from existing languages—particularly older ones, like Latin, Greek, or Old English—and playing around with prefixes, suffixes, or various conjugations until they sound right.

Here are some tips:

Modify endings: Feel free to adjust the endings for more phonetic appeal (for example, change "Terra-" to "Terri-" if it sounds better)

Blend words: Create compound words by blending whole words with prefixes or suffixes (e.g., "Aqua" + "polis" = Aquapolis)

Add consonants/vowels: Sometimes, adding a consonant or vowel between a prefix and suffix can make the name sound more natural. For instance, if you want to combine "Theo-" and "-aria", you might want to discard one of the vowels or add a consonant (for example, you could add a "t" to make it "Theotaria")

Here are a few in the aforementioned languages you might want to experiment with:

Latin:

Prefixes:

Luna-: moon

Terra-: earth

Magn-: great

Novi-: new

Sub-: under

Trans-: across

Suffixes:

-ium: place or region

-or: agent or person

-is: neutral noun ending

-ensis: related to

Examples:

Lunaris (Luna- + -ris): A moon-themed city or region

Terranova (Terra- + -nova): A new land or country

Magnor (Magn- + -or): A great or powerful place

Subterra (Sub- + Terra): An underground city or region

Greek:

Prefixes:

Theo-: god

Geo-: earth

Neo-: new

Hyper-: above

Paleo-: ancient

Poly-: many

Suffixes:

-polis: city (e.g., Acropolis)

-cracy: rule or government (e.g., Theocracy)

-ther: place (e.g., Panether)

Examples:

Theopolis (Theo- + -polis): A city dedicated to the gods

Neochron (Neo- + Chrono-): A new era or time period

Hyperion (Hyper- + -ion): A place above or exalted land

Polydia (Poly- + -dia): A land of many valleys or diverse regions

Old English:

Prefixes:

Eald-: old (e.g.,

Beorht-: bright

Midd-: middle

Sūþ-: south

West-: west

North-: north

Old English suffixes:

-burg: fortress or town

-ham: home

-stede: place

-tun: settlement

-weald: forest

-dun: hill

-wic: village

Examples:

Ealdorland (Eald- + -orland): An ancient land or old country

Beorhtwyn (Beorht- + -wyn): A bright or blessed place

Middgard (Midd- + -gard): The middle land or realm

Westfold (West- + -fold): A western region or land

Name generators:

You could also use online name generators, and either use one of them or modify it to better fit your world. Here are a few popular ones:

Fantasy Realm Names Generator

Name Generator

Seventh Sanctum Name Generators

Fantasy Name Gen

LegendKeeper Fantasy World Name Generator

DonJon's Fantasy Name Generator

Portmanteaus:

Another method is portmanteaus—blending parts of two words together to create a new term. This can work with the most random, unrelated words; for example, you could combine "velvet" and "orion" to create the word "Velorian". There are really no rules involved.

Hope this was helpful! Happy writing ❤

Previous

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

@dfwbwfbbwfbwf Eri has mostly said this already but I’ll try phrase it in a different way (it might help?).

Tolkien treats TY as a palatised T ( which mutates easily to CH). T->CH is the same change as S->SH, and N->Ñ (see señor). (also: there are extra Quenyan consonants that are anglicised as two Roman ones. In [TY, LY, NY, RY] -y signifies palatisation).

See, I cannot understand why the Noldor didn't just switch to Vanyarin Quenya after Thingol banned their language which leads me to the only possible conclusion that it was because it preserves the "th" and they found their inter-clan squabbles more important.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A List of Poetic Terms

anaphora the repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line.

alliteration the repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.

allegory narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated.

apostrophe direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity (someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate).

assonance the repetition of vowel-sounds.

beat a stressed (or accented) syllable.

binary dual, twofold, characterized by two parts.

blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter.

caesura an audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle. (An audible pause at the end of a line is called an end-stop.) The French alexandrine, Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter, and Latin dactylic hexameter are all verse forms that call for a caesura.

chiasmus from the Greek letter Chi ( Χ ), a "crossed" rhetorical parallel. That is, the parallel form a:b::a:b changes to a:b::b:a to become a chiasmus.

climax the high point; the moment of greatest tension or intensity. The climax can occur at any point in a poem, and can register on different levels, e.g. narrative, rhetorical, or formal.

consonance the repetition of consonant-sounds.

couplet two lines of verse, usually rhymed. Heroic couplet: a rhymed iambic pentameter couplet.

diction word choice, specifically the "class" or "kind" of words chosen.

elegy since the 17th century, usually denotes a reflective poem that laments the loss of something or someone.

end-stopped line a line that ends with a punctuation mark and whose meaning is complete.

enjambed line a "run-on" line that carries over into the next to complete its meaning.

foot the basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stress with one or more unstressed syllables.

free verse poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

imagery the visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate.

meter a regularly repeating rhythm, divided for convenience into feet.

metonomy a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it, e.g. "White House" for "the President."

ode a genre of lyric, an ode tends to be a long, serious meditation on an elevated subject.

prosody the study of versification, i.e. the form—meter, rhyme, rhythm, stanzaic form, sound patterns—into which poets put language to make it verse rather than something else.

refrain a phrase or line recurring at intervals. The definition does not require that a refrain include the entire line, nor that it recur at regular intervals, though refrains often are and do.

rhythm the patterns of stresses, unstressed syllables, and pauses in language. Regularly repeating rhythm is called meter.

scansion the identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter. To "scan" a line of poetry is to mark its stressed and unstressed syllables.

simile a figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as "like" or "as."

speaker the "I" of a poem, equivalent to the "narrator" of a prose text. In lyric poetry, the speaker is often an authorial persona.

speech act the manner of expression (as opposed to the content). Examples of speech acts include: question, promise, plea, declaration, and command.

stanza a “paragraph” of a poem: a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines.

symbol an image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes.

symbolism the serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas. (Distinct from allegory in that symbolism does not depend on narrative.)

synecdoche a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, e.g. “wheels” for “car.��

tone the speaker’s or author’s attitude toward the reader, addressee, or subject matter. The tone of a poem immediately impresses itself upon the reader, yet it can be quite difficult to describe and analyze.

topos a traditional theme or motif (e.g. the topos of modesty).

trope a figure of speech, such as a metaphor (trope is often used, incorrectly, to mean topos)

valediction an act or utterance of farewell.

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

More: Word Lists

[jennelikejennay]

Studying some Vulcan lately, for fun and profit. It's driving me a little nuts because I've studied a lot of languages (French Latin Greek Spanish Old English Quenya (I'm only really competent in Latin though)) and made up my own languages and it is such an illogical language. Seriously half the verbs conjugate a little bit and some don't conjugate at all? And some of the pronouns are longer than the nouns? A nice graceful language like Latin can say "I said" in one word (dixī) but Vulcan can't do it without a whole pile of words (vesht tar-tor nash-veh).

I can get around this by saying it developed organically, of course, there are pre-surakian holdovers, there probably used to be different pronouns which were replaced by other things for respectful reasons,* different dialects melded.

*what really gets me is that "I" is "nash-veh," (this one), and why would you have two whole syllables to replace a one syllable name like "Spock"? But considering Mexican Spanish dropped its perfectly useful second person plural for "usted," from vuestra merced, your grace, I can't argue that this wouldn't happen in real life. It just makes it heckin annoying to say "I want my book" (Aitlu nash-veh dunap t'nash-veh).

Of course Doylistically the reason is that Vulcan was used in canon for some time before anyone actually made it up. It was just gibberish that later got analyzed and turned into a language.

But man, Klingon was much easier. I never studied it seriously but I do know a couple things and the only thing that's really hard about it is the consonants.

ANYWAY, given all that, you'd think I would lose interest but instead I'm thinking of writing a (very short) fic in Vulcan 🤣 Hey, there's no better way to learn than by doing!

[whencyclopedia]

Book of Genesis

The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Jewish scriptures and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Genesis takes its name from the opening line in Hebrew – beresit, ("in the beginning") – later translated into Greek as genesis ("origin"). Genesis is the first text of what eventually became designated the Pentateuch, the Jewish Torah ("teachings"): five books of the Laws of Moses.

The Documentary Hypothesis

Genesis consists of a variety of literary details: myth, hymns, prayers, sacrifices, rituals, oracles, folk tales, and historical narratives. Tradition claimed that the first five books were written down by Moses, who passed them to his general Joshua when the Israelites arrived in Canaan from Egypt. In the 19th century, the social science disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, and sociology emerged and were utilized to study ancient civilizations and ancient texts. What is noteworthy in Genesis is that several of the stories are repeated, but with varying details. At times, the God of Israel is referred to as "Lord," but at other times as "God almighty." When this occurs we also find theological differences, as well as indications of changing historical contexts that included politics.

After the period of the united monarchy under King David and his son, Solomon (c. 900 BCE), two separate kingdoms were created: the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the South Kingdom of Judah. A way to explain the formation of the text was proposed by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), who taught at the University of Göttingen in Germany, in what became known as the Documentary Hypothesis. As we do not know who actually wrote the biblical texts, the various elements were assigned to a source:

J, the Jahwist, or Jerusalem source The Hebrew name of God (revealed in the book of Exodus) consisted of four consonants, YHWH ("I am that I am"), described as the tetragrammaton. We have the German J, for the pronouncement of the Y sound. The later Masoretic version added vowels, which gives us the English version, Jehovah (which does not appear in the Bible). The J source utilized anthropomorphic portraits of God; "the face of God," "the hand of God." In these texts, God often visits the earth.

E, the Elohim source The E comes from a form of the Canaanite el, pluralized as representing several aspects of the godhead, but also from the tribe of Ephraim, settled in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The E source portrays God as a more abstract being who does not come to earth, but communicates through angels.

P, the Priestly source The P source is a collective term for priestly concerns. This includes the sacrifices, rituals, hymns, prayers, and the begats of Genesis. The Hebrew begat ("brought forth") was the term for procreation. All ancient cultures emphasized bloodlines in detailed genealogies. This validated concepts and practices handed down through the generations. In oral cultures, the repeated lists of the begats may have been a way to memorize oral traditions.

D, the Deuteronomist source This source was named after the last of the five books assigned to Moses (Deuteronomy). It is a collective term for the final form of the traditions that were written down. In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire invaded the Northern Kingdom, and refugees from the North migrated to Judah. This may be when northern traditions were first joined to southern traditions, combining the J and E sources.

In 587 BCE, the Babylonian Empire invaded Judah and destroyed the Temple of Solomon. At that time, some Jews were taken captive to the city of Babylon. This period is known as the Babylonian exile." The theory is that the "Deuteronomist," either a person or school of scribes, completed the final redaction, or editing, of all the combined sources while in Babylon, beginning c. 600 BCE, but with further editing over the next several centuries (in a range from 538-332 BCE).

Jews Mourning the Exile in Babylon

Eduard Bendemann (CC BY-SA)

Continue reading...

[snow-lavender]

post-finale headcanons pt 3: snow is a linguist special edition

nightingale kingdom did a lot of trade with the nether (for example, for chilies and other spices, hence fenris' canonical high spice tolerance). at that point, overworld common had already become the lingua franca of the nether, so a pidgin never needed to develop, but there was still a lot of cross-linguistic exchange. sayings and words from the nightingale dialect of common made their way into the dialects of the piglin communities in the associated part of the nether, and vice versa. wanda gets very thrown off at the occasional piglin words that fenris uses like he was born speaking them.

piglin has templatic morphology!

branching off of that, like some of the semitic languages in the real world, ancient piglin writings have no vowels, just consonants. however, as the different cultures in the nether started interacting with each other more, piglin adopted putting vowels into writing from ghast, to make communication less of a hassle. it started with just trade documents and other things that would need to be read by outsiders, but eventually trickled down to all writing.

telchin don't need air to breathe underwater, but their voiceboxes are very similar to humans in that they need to expel air to create vibrations. so underwater, their lungs become solely used to hold reserve air for speech. thankfully most live near underwater vents, so there are plenty of places to refill their lungs (you figure out the science of how minecraft people gain air from underwater bubbles. i don't want to). it is a common trope in telchin live theatre, especially comedies, for a character to be arguing, suddenly stop, swim off a bit, and spend a moment glaring at their opponent from an underwater vent, before swimming back and picking up right where they left off.

spoken telchin's phonetic inventory is influenced by the environment in multiple ways. sounds that travel better in in water are used much more. even overworld common cognates that have sounds that are a part of the inventory may be adapted to travel better if they're used more often, or in high stress situations.

telchin has a lot* of vowels. so many.

*a lot of vowels is actually not as impressive to native english speakers, as i'm sure most of you reading this are. english has i think 12 vowels naturally occuring in it? but the average number for a language to have is somewhere around 6. for the hell of it, let's say telchin has between 16 and 20, to preserve that wow factor.

to further take advantage of the auditory qualities of vowels, spoken telchin has contrastive tone. with the huge number of possible vowels, then, a large percentage of telchin syllables are just V. they have CV and CVC syllables, but many words are just strings of Vs (or vowels and semivowels, i suppose, since they'd be kind of necessary to facilitate the flow of speech)

when telchin does make use of consonants, it's mostly fricatives and stops. again, because sound is dampened underwater, sounds that involve a pronounced cut off of airflow or a lot of vibration are preferable.

words that express a lot of emotion in telchin just happen to have a lot of fricatives. the turbulent airflow of those make for a lot of bubbles, so it's a joke in telchin that you see that someone's yelling at you before you hear it.

some explanations of terms below the cut-

pidgin: a "language" that's actually just a mashup of two languages to allow for communication between two groups. these happen when two groups first start interacting; once time goes on and it (possibly) develops its own syntax and processes, and begins to have native speakers, it's no longer a pidgin, it's a creole.

lingua franca: an existing language that two or more groups decide to have in common and speak as is to allow for communication and trade. in the modern western world, english serves this purpose, but in the early roman empire (at least for writing) it was greek, and a bunch of nations in western north america have a signed lingua franca, not a spoken one: Plains Indian Sign Language.

templatic morphology: an alternate way of adding meaning and inflecting words to affix morphology (where you add prefixes and suffixes (and also infixes and circumfixes). for example, adding the -s plural suffix to cat to get cats.) instead, under this system, root words are just chains of consonants, and which vowels you slot in determine how you're modifying the meaning. arabic is one language that does this!

phonetic inventory: the set of sounds that make up a specific languages, out of all sounds used in all language. that gutteral, back of the throat hiss you find in german and dutch is part of those languages' phonetic inventories, but not english's, so english speakers looking to learn those might struggle with that noise.

cognate: a word in one language that has been borrowed from another; your french teacher may have called them mots amis. english has a lot of cognates; from spanish, like tortilla, from french, like deja vu, from german, like kindergarten, and many more!

tone: how high or low you say a word, or how that changes. like how as you say a question your voice raises up. in some languages, like mandarin, this is part of the grammar instead of something that modifies fully made sentences.

contrastive: when the difference between two sounds can mean the difference between two words. for example, if you take the i in leek and change it to ɪ, you get a new word, lick. so i and ɪ are contrastive. which sounds are contrastive varies bewteen languages: ɹ and l are contrastive in english (lad and rad are two different words) but interchangeable in japanese.

syllables: V and C just mean vowel and consonant. so a V syllable is one vowel, and a CVC syllable is consonant-vowel-consonant.

semivowels: w as in wind or j as in yell. they share a lot more attributes with vowels than consonants, but they can't function as the nucleus of a syllable so they're classed as consonants.

fricatives: sounds like sh and f and h, that restrict airflow but don't stop it completely, making for really turbulent vibrations.

stops: sounds that stop airflow, then release it, like b, t, and k. very short bursts of air.

[rapha-reads]

IWTV rewatch

Season 1 episode 2 [... After the Phantoms of Your Former Self] - part 2/3

- [Daniel] "White master, Black student, but equal in the quiet dark" - *spits out the water I just drunk* DANIEL MOLLOY THE QUEEN THAT YOU ARE. And Louis immediately answering the provocation with a slam down of his own. I am so here for the Louis/Daniel bromance, the way they can just spend hours snarking at each other. Saltmates, if you will.

Louis is such a Bitch, the way he decides to eat that fox in front of Daniel to remind him that "vampires are killers", and the way he lets the blood drip, when canonically vampires never waste any blood (at least in the book, that's one of the thing Lestat repeats often, a vampire's feeding is clean, no trace of blood left anywhere, but in a visual media about vampires, of course it looks better to have the blood dripping on the chin after, sometimes you gotta privilege aesthetic over function).

[Louis] "Vampires are killers, apex predators whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment, the ability to see a human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow, but with the thrilling satisfaction of being the end of that life and having a hand in the divine plan."

Yeaaah, like Daniel says, "don't expect every reader to swallow that one". Because for one thing, you don't even fully believe it, Louis, you who's about to spend several years starving yourself feeding only on rats and cats, you who just had a fox for supper instead of going hunting, you who hates feeding on humans and doesn't let even your fellow vampires witness you feeding (book canon), you who also goes during the 20th century from crisis of faith to fully atheist and uncaring about religion... Pretty words. Empty words. I'm not buying it.

"Mawkish": lacking flavor or having an unpleasant taste / exaggeratedly or childishly emotional (Merriam-Webster). Well I didn't know that word. Collins Dictionary tells me that the best translation to French would be "mièvre", and now I am loving this even more. "Mièvre" is not a very used word in French, which is a shame because it's a very pretty and very evocative word, and "mawkish" definitely gives me the same impression. Yey, I learned something new today! New word to incorporate to my vocabulary.

- I swear I'm not trying to comment every single minute of this episode, but every single minute brings something interesting. I have to stop on Louis and Lestat's conversation about languages and killing being its own language, as a multilingual person myself (I could spend hours talking linguistics, sorry not sorry):

[Lestat] "'When I first started learning English, I abhorred it. Every word felt like a doorknob falling out of my mouth. Chapeau is a hat, étoile was a star...' [Louis] 'Killin' folks ain't a second language!' [Lestat] 'But when I started dreaming in English, that's when I embraced it. And now, I have English consonants to thank for this astonishing jawline.' [Louis] 'These are nightmares I'm having, Lestat, not dreams.'"

Firstly, yeah, Lestat's right, "hat" is weird. It's chapeau in French, cappello in Italian, kapela in Greek, even quba'a in Arabic, and Arabic is not even an Indo-European language... The heck does hat come from? *resists the urge to go linguistic deep dive* Secondly, yeah, he's right, he does have an amazing jawline - taking this opportunity to bring attention to the scar on the corner of his mouth, book readers know what's up. Where was I? Ah, yeah. No, Lestat's right about a foreign language sounding weird in your mouth until you start to understand its spirit instead of only its letter - words falling out of your mind versus dreaming in that language. Been talking English for long enough that I do dream in English, and been multilingual all my life so I adapt to languages fast enough, but it's still a struggle. I'm fluent in Spanish now, but I don't dream in Spanish yet, and I sometimes feel like the word sounds wrong when it actually sounds like it should.

What it means in regard to Louis is that he's a slow learner. Gotta sound the kill one by one, taking your time, before you get to be a consummate killer. Can't learn a language in a night. Can't learn a language if you don't practice. Can't get used to killing if you don't kill, and can't survive if you don't kill, and vicious circle, doesn't kill>doesn't survive>doesn't practice>doesn't learn>doesn't survive>doesn't kill... Extremely interesting to see that Lestat IS actually teaching Louis about vampire ways, but Louis is not ready to listen yet, or, to continue the metaphor, they're not speaking the same language and they haven't learned to understand each other's language (not talking about accents obviously, but once again taking the opportunity to praise both Sam and Jacob's vocal work, between Sam's French accented drawling English and Jacob's Creole slang in NOLA and flat "standard" English in Dubai, it's a feast for the ears).

Okay, while Lestat's teaching Louis how to read minds (the Mind Gift, that book!Louis actually doesn't get in the books until very, very late on, and isn't good at, and doesn't show), wanna just say: look how giddy they are! Look how soft they are with each other! Look how fondly Louis speaks to Lestat, how fondly Lestat looks at Louis! We forget, and Louis too, but in between the misunderstandings and the drama and the anguish, they DID love each other, they DID have good times, they DID build a life with each other. It wasn't complete (and no I'm not talking about darling Claudia, I'm talking about speaking the same language), but it was good enough for quite a few years.

Oh man, Louis reading his family's minds, I coulda told him that's a bad idea *points to every literature with a man reader*, but also that passage in Narnia (Dawn Trader) when Lucy spies on her school friends and hear things she didn't want to read and didn't have to know. Don't have time to go search for that passage now, but Aslan tells her something like "some things really do not need be done", or sum' like that.

- Oh, hey, look. More social commentary. That white guy's gonna get eaten if he keeps patronising Louis like that. "You truly are an exceptional Negro" - hey Lou baby, can I kill him please? Lemme kill him for you. "I had let them talk to me like that so long, I had stopped hearing it" - oh, and Louis' accent is slipping here, can you hear it. Really, REALLY love how that change from book canon adds so many layers to Louis' character. Hey, have I said lately that Louis' my favourite? 'Cause Louis is my favourite. "Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Subject, verb, agreement, sir. Smile, nod, yes sir." - AWARDS FOR JACOB, all the awards for Jacob please, and my gods how much do I adore Louis, that sassy, snarky, bitchy queen. I want to have a book club with him.

"But I wasn't a man anymore. I was something else. I had powers now, and decades of rage to process, and it was both random and unfortunate, the man picked that night to dabble in fuckery." - so first, Jacob keeps on flexing his vocal skills by letting Louis slip more and more back to his original accent, and then, YES KING, get his ass, DRAIN HIM. And in a more meta way, all hails liberation movements and the process of reclaiming one's identity. Maybe not through murder, we all ain't lucky enough to be vampires, but yeah, rage is a good tool actually. Rage can lead to enormous movements that change the fabric of society for the better. Never underestimate the power of repressed rage finally expressing itself when it's yielded by clever, resourceful, empathic beings. Sorry, that was the "segregated Southern States social commentary as a mirror for 21st century's current liberation movements social commentary" minute, back to the vampires.

[Lestat] "You are a library of confusion" - first of all, Sam's delivery, with the hand gestures and the head shake, MAGNIFICENT, but also, it's Lestat starting to realize that maaaaaaybe he bit more than he can chew. Maaaaaybe.

[Louis] "'There's some things you don't get about America, Lestat.' [Lestat] 'Yes, let's have this conversation again.' [Louis] 'Colored; white. Creole; French. Queer; half-queer, mostly queer, what is it?' [Lestat] 'Non-discriminating.' [Louis] 'Complicated situation we got here is what I'm saying.'"

ICONIC. And also, maaaaan do I love that that's the road RJ and Cie decided to go with, one of the only changes I've been having issues is the time skip (from 1797 to 1910, cf. episode 1 part 1 rewatch). But this little conversation here actually warms me to it! The layers, man, the layers. Also, love that Lestat self-identifies as non-discriminating, that's so totally him about basically everything: skin color and ethnicity, sexuality and gender, species, age... Drama Queen really said "everything goes, eeeeeeverything".

- "How can I say no to you?" - awwww, Lestat is so whipped for Louis.

[Louis] "From 1912 to 1917" - oooh thanks for the time stamps. So it's been two years since he's turned, and it's on for 5 years of stability. The famous "honeymoon era".

[Louis] "I made a mountain of money, enough to retire and be buried like a pharaoh" - uuuuuh *side-eyes cautiously Queen of the Damned* let's not talk about Egyptian monarchy yet, yeah, that'll come to burn us soon enough.

Oops, the baby scene. And Louis realising he can't hold on to his family, that they're about to slip between his fingers like sand... Ow. [Grace] "I'm sure Mama would love to see you" *rapid glance* *giggles* That's siblings for "yeaaaah no, lol, Mama would definitely NOT love to see me, you crazy".

[Louis] "I no longer kill. My last victim was in the year 2000." BUT DID YOU EAT THE BABY, LOUIS. "I sit here a master of my instincts." But did you eat the baby, Louis. Slight aside, but how is this dinner still on going?? WAIT, go back a second: [Daniel] "And you know this how, you guys have a thread on 8chan?" - BENJI MENTION? I sooo want to see Benji's radio. Though if we still follow book events but on show timeline, Armand hasn't met Benji and Sybelle yet, because they're turned a decade after Daniel. Repeating myself, but RJ did say he'd adapt Prince Lestat, and Benji's one of the main players of this book, so I'm sure we'll see him, but it's going to be a while, I think.

- Wait, I need to relisten to that conversation:

[Daniel] "'And what about the others out there? Have they mastered theirs?' [Louis] 'Just the opposite. Most of them are slaves to the blood, exhausted from decades, centuries of hiding, giddy to increase their numbers.' [...] [Daniel] 'Is the pandemic the opening they've been waiting for?' [Louis] 'Pandemic, the unravelling of geopolitical foundations. [...] One of them, a brute in Madagascar, called it 'the great conversion'.'"

Oh, lots to say here. Lots that will spoil the books too. Because hey, y'all know what happens in Queen of the Damned, after Lestat's concert? Yepppp. Pretty sure Rolin Jones just planted the seeds of seasons 3 and 4. And served on a silver platter with delicious 21st century social commentary. I'm having the time of my life.

[Daniel] "'Well most people I know like to play a little ball in the afternoon, or maybe go down to the beach, catching a few rays.' [Louis] 'Yes. What on earth would a meth-addicted son of a coal miner in West Virginia want with eternal life?' [Daniel] 'Did you eat the baby?' [Louis] 'Or the Arab youth whose whole family were wiped from existence...' [Daniel] 'Did you eat the baby?' [Louis] '... by a Western drone? No, I'm sure you're right.'"

SHOTS FIRED. And another Benji mention! And a personal attack. And Louis being his glorious catty self. And Daniel being his glorious one-minded self. We're heading for another "outburst", lmao.

The Damek scene is just so fucking weird, I'm wheezing. Nothing to say here, just: this show is a freaking comedy. Between Louis perfecting the Little Drink but his taste of the night just passing out, and Daniel going "you might have a drinking problem" and then going back to his idea of the night, "the goddamn baby, Louis, did you fucking eat the bloody baby", this is peak humor.

Aaaaaand we need a third part, still 15 minutes to go.

episode 1 | part 1 | part 3 | episode 3 | episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 6 | episode 7

[physalian]

The Fantasy Language Translation Matrix

Whether you intend to write your own full-blown lexicon with different verb tenses and formal vs informal language, need unique words for spellwork, or just need new names for all your foreign places, behold… the Physalian patented Fantasy Language Translation Matrix.

(I kid. I have no idea if I’m the first to come up with this)

**Disclaimer!** After rolling out your fresh new vocab off the word assembly line, make sure you google it and that it doesn’t already exist and mean something you don’t intend.

Step 1: Pick your Derivative

You can make it sound completely foreign and like total gibberish, but I find it easier for you and other people to read if they have some real-world reference to compare it to, and so they have a clue for which pronunciation rules to rely on. For example: I did not know who René Descartes was my freshman year of high school. His last name was in my algebra book, and I, thinking he was Greek like so many other ancient mathematicians, pronounced his name as if he were Greek “Des-kart-ees.” I got made fun of.

Spare your readers the humiliation.

So say I want a vaguely… Russian/Latin/Italian influence. As opposed to French. Cool. That’s my starting point.

Step 2: Reorder the most common letters from English to your new language

In English, the average use of the standard alphabet by letter in order is this:

Ignore your vowels for a second. I don’t use charts like this on the regular, I use the Wheel of Fortune method and focus on RSTLNE, then go from there. I also want to make sure this isn’t a complete 1:1 ratio so it’s not super obvious I’m just juggling letters around, so I’ll knock out some “duplicate” letters and swap out singular letters for specific sounds.

The goal of this isn’t to stare at two existing language matrices and perfectly match them up, it’s to take the most common sounds and letters in English and make them new, common sounds in your new language, to sound more uniform and like you have a real etymology.

And I end up with this:

This might look a little confusing on how I got from A to Z so the basics:

All my vowels remain in the same place, they just get juggled around so I don’t end up with 8 consonants next to each other and word garbage

My “duplicate” letters are combined so I have more room for the new sounds, like c/k, f/ph/gh, h/wh, s/z. The new sounds then get the spare letters I had left over

Common english suffixes get reduced down so the pattern isn’t as obvious

If you want to include accent marks, this is your chance

I wanted to really emphasize the long “e” and long “i” sounds, so those got extra attention

Step 3: Translating

Oftentimes this is not perfect, or you end up with a word that just doesn’t fit the rest of your new vocabulary, because English is the bastard lovechild of German, Latin, Danish, and French.

I start with English, usually, but if the English word is too short or too long, I translate it first into another language, like Spanish, and go from there. Like “bus” vs “autobus”.

Using your matrix, go one by one. Let’s use a word like “letter”.

English: L-E-T-T-E-R

New: T-A-C-C-A-Z

Step 4: Polishing

So now I have my new word: “Taccaz”

Which is serviceable. I can throw an accent on either A or fiddle with the Z. I can start with “carta” instead and end up with “kizci”. The matrix is just a starting point. It’s designed to streamline the process when I’m otherwise feeling uncreative and in a rush, and it moves very quickly when I need to come up with full phrases and sentences that someone would actually say.

Step 5: Full sentences

This is only if you’re really digging deep and not coming up with the occasional fantasy curse word or new name for your fantasy land/realm/noun etc.

For this you’re going to need lots of tables. I based mine off romance languages because I know Spanish and romance languages make sense. This is where you decide how many pronouns, if any, you’re going to use, how the infinitive changes based on past, present, or future tense, how many nouns the word references, etc.

This is… a lot. Way more than you’d ever need for your manuscript. Ever. But I did it just for my own sake. Does it get long? Yes. Does it get tedious? Yes. The point here is to have little pre-manufactured word bytes you can plug and play with, with as little mental effort as possible so you can save it for the rest of your work.

I also came up with very common words already conjugated, like “to be” so I can just glance and type without having to remember to take “is” and go through the process over and over again.

Which means that I can take an entire sentence and translate it to my new language in about two minutes.

English: The payoff is worth it, this is so satisfying. New, roughly: Nu kioyb ela fyzip ne, iski ela valo nicenbalaev.

Of course, you can keep tinkering until you get something that’s easier on the eyes (I’ve been working with this language for years so I can read it pretty well), but not all languages are smooth and pretty and simple.

To be frank: Most readers will just gloss over this stuff anyway, but it shows that you put in the effort and it enhances the lore and the immersion when you do this. At least in the written medium. You can’t ignore it if this is meant to be in a screenplay.

Is this what a language professor would do or recommend? Probably not, I have no idea. Does it work? Yes. I have a fully functioning grammatical system where any input can give me a legible output.

To make this yourself, just change the order of the letters around, adjust your shortcuts, and come up with your own common sounds for those last two rows. The conjugation matrix is where you can really make it distinct, assuming you are basing yours off a romance language, which you don't have to.

—

And there you have it!

Don’t forget to vote in the dialogue poll before it closes!

[aikoiya]

LoZ: Wild - The 7 Heroines Symbol Analysis

Ya'll, with @alasse-earfalas' help, I realized that dang near every one of the Heroines' symbols all relate to mathematical symbols or phonetic symbols in some way!

To start off, one of them is most definitely a Lambda, which relates back to another theory, but that's for another time.

Anyway, here are the symbols in question!

The one in the upper left is the Lambdah (Λ/ʎ), which is the letter correlating to L in the Greek alphabet.

The Lambda is the 11th character in the Greek alphabet & according to Herodotus, Labda was the daughter of Amphion (demi-god son of Zeus & twin to Zethus, associated with the lyre) & the mother of Cypselus by Eetion. Cypselus eventually established the earliest known tyrant dynasty.

Evidently, it symbolized unity under oppression & is referred to as the Greek letter for “sameness.” It also corresponded with the number 30 in the Greek numerical system. Which, 30 was often associated with maturity, as well as the attainment of a certain level of experience or wisdom, especially considering the lifespan expectations in ancient times.

The origins of the letter is thought to depict a shepherd's staff, meaning that it has themes of guidance & authority. It's shape also resembles an arrow pointing upwards, which conveys an impression of accent or elevation. And this leads to metaphorical themes revolving around progress or advancement.

Not to mention, in physics, it refers to wavelength. But in calculus, it's a "formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction & application using variable binding and substitution."

Here are the symbols, as I know them. Λ (lambda, phonetic symbo, Ll; ʎ used in math), ʃ ("esh" & integral; phonetic symbol, formerly used to represent ���sh’) or ⎎ (technical symbol, hysteresis symbol, correlates to f), ǁ (math, parallel to; phonetic symbol, aveolar lateral consonant), : (ratios or scales), ❜ (phonetic symbol), o (phonetic symbol) or O (math, Landau's symbol, describes the asymptotic behavior of functions or represents the null matrix where all elements are zero), last is the drop-looking symbol that I'm struggling with.

It may be that the colors of them are also important.

Just for reference, asymptote is defined as "a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance."

Now, for the Heroines, here's what we know.

Rotana said that the powers were: "skill, spirit, endurance, knowledge, flight, motion, & gentleness."

However, the Stelae say that they are: "heart, skill, fortitude, wisdom, flight, mobility, & compassion."

Luckily, these are easily condensed: heart/spirit, skill, fortitude/endurance, wisdom/knowledge, flight, motion/mobility, & gentleness/compassion.

Heart & spirit are interchangeable as "heart" is likely referring specifically to one's spiritual heart based on Kokoro (心), which can translate to both.

For now, I believe that the Λ may be the symbol for the Heroine of either wisdom/knowledge or motion/mobility or possibly flight. Though, for the moment, I'm leaning more towards wisdom/knowledge.

And, because of the nature of spirit within Japanese culture, I'm inclined to believe that the symbol of the Heroine of heart/spirit may have been ❜.

Heart = ❜

Skill = "The ability to do something well."

Fortitude = "Courage in pain or adversity."

Wisdom = Λ?

Flight =

Mobility = Λ/O? "The ability to move or be moved freely & easily."

Compassion = "Sympathetic pity or concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others."

Also, the gifts left for the 8th were a gold rupee, a ruby, a sapphire, a topaz, a spear, a shield, a claymore, & scimitar.

These gifts were all positioned at the foot of a statue with, most likely the 8th being the one in the center.

Starting from front-left (Gerudo Shield), middle-left (Golden Claymore), back-left (Ruby), middle-back (Sapphire?), then going back-right (Topaz), middle-right (Gerudo Scimitar), front-right (Gerudo Spear), & ending in center (Gold Rupee?).

I haven't figured it all out yet, but if anyone has any suggestions or knows what the drop symbol is, I encourage assistance.

---

Edit: I'm sorry.

I just realized that it's very possible that the game already shows you which is which.

Look at the way they are always arranged.

It appears to be the same each time.

And, the Stelae, which may or may not have been carved by the Heroines themselves, write it out as "heart, skill, fortitude, wisdom, flight, mobility, & compassion."

Also, something interesting of note is the characters used for them in Japanese.

Shin or Kokoro (心) = Heart, spirit, mind.

Gi or Waza (技) = Skill, technique.

Tai or Taeru (耐) = Enduring, to resist or withstand (e.g. 耐火 is “fire-proof”).

Chi or Shiru (知) = Knowledge, wisdom.

Hi or Tobasu (飛) = Flight, used in a lot of verbs related to jumping or letting something fly.

Dō or Ugoku (動) = Motion.

Jū or Yawaraka (柔) = Gentleness, softness (it’s the “ju” in judo).

---

Heart = Shin (心; heart, spirit) = ❜ = Shield

Skill = Gi (技; skill, technique) = Λ = Claymore

Fortitude = Tai (耐; endure, resist) = O = Ruby

Wisdom = Chi (知; knowledge, wisdom) = : = Sapphire

Flight = Hi (飛; flight) = ⎎ = Topaz

Mobility = Dō (動; motion) = Drop Sign = Scimitar

Compassion = Jū (柔, gentleness, softness) = ǁ = Spear

...

Did I just figure it out?

... Regardless, even if I am right, I'm still ridiculously curious as to what the drop symbol is, though. Like, is it just the odd one out that they chose just to mess with us?

Are the gifts they left for the 8th in any way related to their Special Powers™ or the way they fight? Are the symbols?

And, if so, how?

Like, I'm pretty positive that, if I am right, then the Heroine of Heart's symbol is, in fact, a reference to the Mitama of Japanese myth & the Heroine of Fortitude's gift may have been a hint to the term taika (耐火) meaning "fireproof.

Though, I noticed that the weapon missing from this line-up is the Golden Bow. But, then again, it's possible that one of the Heroines that gave a gem might've used one. Possibly the Heroine of Flight. I mean, Hi (飛) is evidently used in verbs referring to “letting something fly,” so that might well be it.

I'm not entirely positive of the rest, though...

... That drop sign is gonna erk me until I get confirmation, won't it? 😮‍💨

LoZ Wild Masterlist