#if you are an actual linguist or have knowledge of linguistics pls spare me. i know. i am playing with my toys here

[doodlebeeberry]

Can you tell us about the structural quirk? Im interested!

YAY im so glad you asked! i hope your ready for several paragraphs of object show conlang silly stuff annon.

this got pretty long so i put it under a readmore. i also added a couple doodle is there for fun and to hopefully make some of it a little clearer hehe

(btw this ask is in reference to my notes on this abt a quirk with a word i used in the drawing)

So! Something of relevance to keep in mind about Roadspeak, as ive taken to calling it, is its function in the world of fwd: itself. in-universe it is kind of similar to something like Esperanto, both being kinda constructed languages that arent spoken by any one country or group as a main language (nor are they meant to be). The creation process for both, though, was different. While Esperanto was created explicitly for the purpose of being a lingua franca (or universal second language, if you prefer) Roadspeak, despite becoming one, uh, wasn't.

It developed among traders, travelers, merchants and similar groups as a means of bridging gaps in communication between both customers and peers when out on the road. This is where the name Roadspeak comes from--its the speak of the road! it is a very clever name i know.

(in particular, it formed by means of just...smashing languages together and jumbling up their sounds, words, and grammatical rules. into a big melting pot of mess. not going into detail on this for brevity's sake but it makes for some Mess lol)

As such, Roadspeak is considered first and foremost a language of travel and commerce. Though its used for many, many other things now, thats is what its purpose was and is deep deep down at its core, which gets reflected in its vocab and rules. One particular quirk is in the way some verbs are sort-of conjugated.

See, Roadspeak is a gender neutral language (as objects in fwd dont have genders) as well as an object-type neutral one. Rather, verb forms are decided by the position and/or direction of the subject carrying out the verb relative to the direct object, or the tlaow and lors as they call it. usually this is done by using one or two prefixes slapped onto the base/non-finite verb.

the tlaow (position) comes first and is also generally the less important one. you pull from a different prefix set depending on what your direct object is: if its a person/animal/inanimate thing, youd use something more like below, above, left, right, in front, so on. for a place though you use cardinal directions like north/south/east/west while concepts like numbers or thoughts are exempt from tlaow conjugation all together. some dialects of roadspeak kinda just forgo the tlaow entirely sometimes, this one is a liiiitle be optional, but still get used and taught.

the lors (direction) comes second. Unlike tlaow, this only pulls from one set of prefixes regardless of what the object is: forwards, backwards, sideways, around, upwards, and downwards. this is also seen as more of a requirement when conjugating in most applicable circumstances.

Its worth noting that not all verbs get conjugated on the basis of tlaow and lors. Generally this only applies to action verbs, and only ones that are viewed as being more physical, for lack of better term, or as occurring in a direction as a necessity. run, jump, fall, reach, grab, dance, all these kinds of words would be conjugated. think, sing, blink, dream, sell (sometimes), be, words like this dont really need to be conjugated. you still can, but its not ungrammatical or anything.

as an example, look at the sentence "Sweet sits with Mp3."

plopping this into Roadspeak's structure, you'd need to figure out what sweet's position is relative to mp3, and what direction she moved when she sat. if she sat down alongside them, (and also noting that, in roadspeak, the position of the subject and object are flipped in a sentence) then the sentence would literally translate to "Mp3 beside-downwards-sits Sweet". Meanwhile, if she sits up in front of them, it would be "Mp3 front-upwards-sits Sweet". If all you know is that she sat down, though, then youd just say "Mp3 downwards-sits Sweetie".

does that make sense? I hope it does! heres another example, this time using actual Roadspeak:

(yes this is just the daily that spurned this ask lol)

the letters there read "jodit mi pavirrthol me!" with the verb in this case being "pavirrthol," or forward-give. "thol" means give, which is considered an tlaow/lors verb. When you present someone with something, you are giving it to them in a forward-facing, direct sense, so you would use "pavirr-" for the directional/lors. However, while the use of 'you' would imply the use of a tlaow prefix, theres no way for them to actually know what their position is relative to you when speaking here. Are they below you? in front? its impossible for them to know! so instead, the tlaow prefix is skipped entirely due to that lack of info. this leaves us with the word "pavirrthol" !

and thats the long and short of it! tldr: the quirk is that the word "pavirrthol" is conjugated on the basis of direction and position, but doesnt technically follow the formal rules required for doing so.

id rattle off more details, like the rest of the prefix list or contexts in which youd tlaow/lors conjugate non-directional verbs (like think) but i think this post has perhaps gone on long enough hehe.