#it's not even a conlang because that would imply there are rules

[druidx]

what do you mean, there isn't a comprehensive dictionary I can google for a conlang I made up?

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[overmorrowpine]

as a certified Conlang Enjoyer one of my favorite things is to analyze fictional language snippets for their pieces, and as i've been reading the drizzt books recently, i've been fighting a lot with how drow words work (why is this language so IRREGULAR it's worse than english istg), So!

pluralization in the drow language and how it works:

several things seem to be happening here, first, the "base" plural, is -in or -en. see: haszak/haszakkin [illithid], ilharess/ilharessen [matron]. consonant endings will also be doubled if they are not already.

then, there are the really soft consonants. think like the letter L; a word ending in the letter L would be pluralized with simply -n. see: gol/goln [goblin]. no doubling of consonants seems to happen.

in words ending with N, the pluralization marker seems to be -a. see: brorn/brorna [surprise].

then, we get some really weird endings, because the wiki has SIX recorded pluralizations. SIX. my instincts are that the three above are fairly common, and the following two are much less so and likely to be only seen in a few words, especially considering the words seen are both versions of "spider".

"orb": spider. plural, "orbb".

"lhorb": specifically a dangerous spider. plural, "lhorbbyth".

i would assume those are more archaic endings, but who knows!

then there's "rivvil", which means human, and gets pluralized to "rivvin". don't really know what's happening there, ngl, although my best guess is that it used to be "rivviln" and the L sound got swallowed into the -n by drow speaking fast, especially considering that word would likely be used most commonly during raids where a lot of things are happening and you want to get orders out fast.

there's also "kulg", which means blockage/snag/hitch, and "kulggen", which means deliberate rampart/shield. this does not necessarily break the rules seen earlier, merely implies that "shield", in drow, is literally smth along the lines of "blockages". (which, for a society built around cutthroat survival, does kinda make sense).

there is also "kyorl", which means to watch, and then "kyorlin", which means guarding/watching/waiting. that one's funky; it has the -in ending which implies plurality, but it seems instead to be a tense marker here. however, it could make sense that it literally translates to smth like "multiple to-watch" instead, and only loosely translates to watching. it could also be leftover from a shift in language; we just don't know. it also doesn't have the just -n from a word ending in L like you see earlier in goln.

you see this again in "quarth", to command, vs "quarthen", commanded/ordered. could be a tense change, could be a pluralization marker that in english encompasses a tense change.

other thing i've noticed:

apostrophes seem to be in use when words get combined. see: abbil [trusted friend/comrade] vs khal'abbil [my trusted friend/comrade]. this also implies that many words translated as one word (such as para'dene, scapegoat, or qual'laelay, argument/disagreement) are compound words as well. an apostrophe in a name might imply that it's an unconventional name, combining two words not typically used in drow names, rather than name fragments more often used.

other cool things, assumtions, and speculation:

qu'ellar [house], qu'lith [blood], and qu'uente [guts] all seem to have the same root, which implies interesting things about the literal translation of "house". makes sense though, given what we've seen of noble houses and how they work.

colnbluth [non-drow] is quite possibly a compound word, even though it doesn't have the apostrophe; dobluth [outcast] seems to have the same suffix, so my guess is that -bluth translates to something like banished/exile. given that, colnbluth could literally translate to something like "outsiders-banished", with a pre-existing plural on "outsiders". if pluralized differently, likely to be "colnbluthen", or remain "colnbluth"; i'm not sure. outcast, though, would most likely be pluralized as "dobluthen".

darthiir [surface elves/traitors] does not seem to have a plural form, or is the plural form already. my guess is this, like rivvil/rivvin, is a word that got eroded by speaking quickly on raids, and that older forms of the language had it closer to "darthirrin" or "darthiirrin" or smth, following the same -in/-en ending.

in conclusion:

the drow language is wildly irregular, rather complicated, and yet does still have Some common threads along words that make it feel like a real language. go forth and write fic well with this new information and analysis or whatever

[emojiglyphics]

Christmas Tree

🦘🐰🐍🎵🐍✝️📅    🚦🐰🎄

KRSMS (Christianity, Calendar) TR (Christmas tree)

In Egyptian, you sometimes find multiple determinatives stacked up at the end of a word. In the word Christmas, I decided to use both the Latin Cross and the Calendar as determinatives for the christian religion, and to imply a specific day, which is established in the Emojiglyphic spelling for December, 🐶🐍🎵🐻🐰📅 

When I first came up with the idea to do this with emojis, I wanted to have a limited set of determinatives because I felt that if there were too many, it would be difficult to keep track of what they all mean. It turns out that since emojis were designed with communication in mind, finding one that is appropriate for a category of word is usually pretty easy. But I can’t just constantly find determinatives from scratch because that could complicate things.

Words ought to have one valid spelling. Allowing flexibility might seem like it would make a language more accessible. But it can also increase the burden on the learner who now has to learn multiple spellings of the same word. A consistent spelling also creates a connection between the spelling and the spoken word that is crucial to accurate comprehension. Inconsistent spellings create doubt for the reader. Does it really say what it seems to?

Written languages are languages, and in a way that makes Emojiglyphics a constructed langauge (conlang). And when you’re making a conlang, the tendency is to come up with a system for everything. A system for numbers, a system for prepositions, for pronouns, etc. As far as the creator is concerned, the rules themselves are the language. The dream is that a comparatively simple ruleset with absolute consistency will make everything easier; easier to document, easier to learn, easier to converse in. The languages makes itself from rules, and you don’t have to do anything.

Unfortunately real languages don’t work that way. One thing I know very well from growing up reading and writing English is that rules don’t mean dust bunnies. English spellings do not emerge from a system; they are kept in a vast, holy ledger called a dictionary. And you will never ever as long as you live successfully use the alleged rules of English spelling to override what it says in the dictionary. When you see “tough,” you will say “tuff”, if you try to say “towguh” you will be asked to leave that particular Starbucks. 

But the dictionary also contains a pronunciation guide. And the pronunciation guide does operate on rules. I just used that type of spelling in quotes in the paragraph above. You knew what sounds I wanted you to say based on those spellings because our brains know to switch gears when we see the actual sounds we make with our faces spelled out. The rules are simpler, they are consistent, and they are roughly based on selected spelling rules we already know. So why don’t we just switch to writing English that way? Wai nawt juhst spehl how wee heer?

Because a written language demands consistent spellings, and everyone hears differently. All the dictionaries write different spelling guides with different rules. If anything is ever going to come into wide enough use to compete with the current system, it will have to be consistent, and the only way to make something consistent is to abandon the delusion that you are going to come up with the perfect ruleset for encoding sounds, so perfect that everybody just writes exactly the same way automatically. It won’t happen. You need a dictionary, a big ledger, a big holy ledger that people respect more than their own intuition.

So even in cases where two determinatives seem like they could be equally good at the end of a word, I have to go with just one. And that will be easier if they are not too redundant. And that will be easier to actually accomplish if there aren’t too many of them.

[writingwithcolor]

“Fantasy Names” for Non-English Languages; One Language Per Continent?

@corrupted---minds​ submitted:

In my story there are different continents inspired by sections of our world; fantasy Europe, fantasy East Asia, fantasy Middle East, ect. And each continent, for convenience, speaks one language. Cantonese is fantasy East Asias language, for example.

Now on to naming conventions. While in fantasy Europe people have average european names, about 30% have fantasy names like Illumina or Crystal or Raten Firewalker. I want to try to keep the same naming ratio for the other continents, but I’m not sure if it would be offensive for me, as a white woman, to cut apart a language to make a cool sounding name for my characters that are POC.

If you have any insight, suggestions, or just flat out think it’s a bad idea, please let me know. I dont want to unintentionally offend anyone.

On the Issue of Worldbuilding

The salient point is to avoid using languages from real life outright. Already, I sense that your language and coding categories are too broad. It’s never a good idea to reduce such large regions containing so many ethnicities to a single language group/ setting. Think more granular and use single ethnicities instead. Rina has already written on naming conlangs, including pertinent resource links, that I think would be very helpful information for you. Please read her comments here. 

Furthermore, as a reader, I think it is more realistic and dynamic when the characters have names that mean something in their own languages. Most people already have such names IRL. I think in many Western cultures, some are simply too removed from the original root languages to know the word origins of their names. My pen-name here on WWC happens to mean “Jasmine” both in Sanskrit and Japanese, but Marika is a lot more culturally relevant than “Jasmine” as it expresses my bicultural identity much more effectively. Thus, I am curious as to why you wish to stick to this arbitrary 30% rule. Not only does it strike me as rather boring, but it also generates a lot of dissonance for me as a reader in conventional fantasy when a person “randomly” has a conventional fantasy name with no context given. 

If people are given atypical naming schemes, I’d much rather there be a sensible reason for this choice. It both provides context and lays the groundwork for world-building information that the reader can draw on unconsciously at a later time. For example, as I continue my role as this blog’s Tamora Pierce evangelist, the author has two such examples of atypical naming in her universes. In the Tortall series, the Shang warriors are given titles that reflect their prowess, with more legendary animals indicating higher levels of mastery. Thus, the reader automatically knows that Liam Ironarm, the Dragon, and Kylaia al Jmaa, the Unicorn, supersede Ida Bell, the Wildcat, and Hakuin Seastone, the Horse, in terms of skill. In the Emelan Universe, dedicates of the Living Earth religion choose names associated with plants, animals and natural phenomena ( e.g. Rosethorn, Frostpine, Moonstream) and lack last names. Academic mages, on the other hand, have last names that demonstrate what kind of magic they are proficient in (Goldeye, Ladyhammer, Glassfire), allowing us to immediately discern who is a dedicate in the Living Earth faith, who is an academic mage, and who is neither (whether they be from a different background or are still in training).  

Lastly, as a caution, we would like to warn many of our readers that words commonly associated with imagery used in Norse mythology are now often dog-whistles or outright references to white supremacy groups/ movements (Thanks Neo-Nazis!). Thus, particularly for white/ Western-coded characters, please check any name meanings against the following databases created by Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League (viewable here and here).

- Marika.

On Colonial Implications

I would like to emphasize how flattening it is to summarize any large region down to a single language: British Columbia and some of Washington State have 7 mutually unintelligible language families within a few hundred square miles. That’s an incredibly saturated amount of linguistic diversity in a very, very small region. And it’s not the only linguistic hotspot in the world.

Europeans often have an artificial sense of how many languages are natural in a region, because Europe is one of the least linguistically diverse regions in the world at about nine language families, with 94% belonging to a single language family. Meanwhile, China alone has at least nine families, and India has at least six. In North America, you have dozens if not hundreds of language families across the continent.

Note that these are language families, not languages. Each language family can have anywhere from 2 to 50+ languages within it. The aforementioned language family with 94% of Europe is Indo-European, which covers everything from French (the Romance branch) to Punjabi (the Indo-Iranian branch) to Russian (the Balto-Slavic branch).

Convenience should not come at the expense of linguistic diversity. Language destruction is one of the targets of colonialism, and doing such a flattening would leave an extremely sour taste in my mouth at the implied history of this world. Many, many Indigenous languages are extinct because colonial languages were forced upon the populations of the Americas (English, Spanish, Portugese, French), and this isn’t counting non-European colonialism. 

Widespread single languages across huge landmasses often come with an extremely bloody history (unless it was purposely crafted for ease of communication among groups, such as Plains Sign Language), and for your marginalized readers it will be unignorable. You don’t have to create a continent’s worth of languages, but you do have to acknowledge the diversity is there.

As Marika said, focus on individual ethnicities instead of such broad land masses. Doing your current track would pull anyone with even an ounce of linguistics education, or anyone who has had their access to language suffer because of colonialism, right out of the story.

~ Mod Lesya

I agree with Mod Lesya, especially when it comes to their point of language destruction being one of the targets of colonialism. East Asia already has a history of this, with languages being banned and punishments for speaking them, and even now in mainland China Mandarin is being pushed as the only dialect to speak vs. Cantonese, Hokkien, Sichuanese, etc. A suggestion I have is to perhaps have one common language for diplomacy/trade purposes that is used alongside other languages and dialects in certain regions. 

--mod Jess

[bestworstcase]

I dont know if this has been asked before, but what was your process when developing the seporian language? What tips/advice would you give other beginner writers who want to develop their own language and make it realistic/believable?

i have talked about this before actually! here’s one post and here’s another

my biggest tip is Use VulgarLang because it is a phenomenal tool for designing a conlang. my approach to developing saporian was to figure out some phonemes that i thought made some sense based on the saporian words that are canon (zarotho/zarothay) and then plug those into vulgarlang and start fiddling with phonological and spelling rules until it started spitting out results that looked “right” to me.

my second biggest tip is to do some cursory research on some other languages, including your native language and any other languages you’re fluent in. the best way to grok what the building blocks of a language are is to study real examples. what are the phonemes of, say, german? or korean? or welsh? how are those phonemes represented through script (ie how are they spelled)? what phonological changes are present? what’s the grammar and how does it fit together?

other tips:

pick one or two complex grammatical and phonological rules and implement those while keeping everything else simple. for example, saporian has a form of vowel harmony (look that up! it’s very interesting!) and has contrastive stress (when two words are identical but stressed differently and mean different things: like ADDress (noun) vs addRESS (verb) in english). but the spelling is completely phonetic.

decide on a few exception cases for your rules. for example in saporian, loanwords use saporian phonetic spelling but ignore the vowel harmony rule: zarothay breaks vowel harmony (a and o are broad vowels while ae/ay is slender so should not be allowed in the same word)… but bananas aren’t native to saporia so this is a loanword from another language that ignores that rule. or as another example the broad “a” is treated as a sort of wildcard vowel in the charcāthēn dialect in that it is broad or slender depending on the other vowels in a word.

having exceptions makes a language feel more real! there isn’t a single natural language in existence that doesn’t have some irregularities or inconsistencies, so if you want a naturalistic conlang make sure to give it a little weirdness!

think about grammar and how phrases are structured. in saporian word order is verb-subject-object [took he his hat] and prepositions are affixes that are attached to the word in a sentence the speaker most wants to emphasize, meaning that literal, direct translations would look like this:

he put the cat on the table -> put he-[on] the cat the table

he put the cat on the table -> put he the cat-[on] the table

he put the cat on the table -> put he the cat the table-[on]

so where emphasis in english is encoded by putting extra stress on the important part of the sentence, in saporian its encoded by attaching the preposition there; this is a very different way of encoding this kind of meaning but i think this flexiblity suits saporian even though it sounds very awkward in english, because saporian overall has a…spongier, more impressionistic approach to describing things.

which brings me to my next tip; steal things from real languages! i’m fascinated by the concept of kennings in old norse and old english poetry so i borrowed that kind of poetic construction and incorporated it into saporian in how descriptive phrases or words are utilized in the language: kenning-esque epithets for the ternary gods are common, like cresilinar (flower-maker) for zhan tiri, and there are words that are similarly oblique terms for mundane objects as well.

consider what culturally significant things might have an impact on the vocabulary. saporians worship zhan tiri and have at least a dozen different words for “tree.” consider also what words they might have that aren’t translatable: choimghē is a saporian word whose approximate meaning is “cusp” or “threshold” but it actually means like…the pursuit of balance, the yearning for the sublime and love for the profane, the primal need to dissolve the intrinsic tension between the magical and the mundane. or to use another pair of (much less developed) bitter snow conlangs: the vodnikian language of hvassish has the word qasz which is typical translated as “depth” but is actually an emotion: the feeling of black water and crushing pressure, sort of awe and dread and loneliness and intrigue all rolled into one. and lorbish has lörchkrawünschen, whose closest translation is something like “give-and-take” and is related to the lorbish understanding of “ownership” which is that nothing is truly owned; you just have something until it is taken away from you either by someone else or by natural circumstances beyond your control or because you no longer want or need it and choose to let it go.

coming up with these sorts of words is fun and a good worldbuilding exercise because it forces you to think outside the box: what kind of phenomena or feelings or perspectives might this culture value that your own does not, and how might they give a name to that? how would this word be translated? how would a speaker of this language struggle to convey this concept in a language that has no word for it? go nuts.

lastly: figure out the things that drive non-native speakers crazy when they’re trying to learn. are there like a million noun cases? is it an agglutinative language? does it have rare phonemes that are difficult for non-native speakers to articulate? (saporian has z,ź,zh and s,ś,sh all of which are very similar sounds that can be hard for non-native speakers to distinguish—and gender meaning is encoded in z/ź/ś/zh so the stakes are pretty high if you fuck up and accidentally imply someone is an “it” by using zh when you meant ź or ś). this is fun for flavor, especially if you have a character who is trying to learn a language that is very different from their native tongue. and it is also pretty good for creating a sense of naturalism: even very superficially similar languages can have differences that might trip a non-native speaker up, and then you can get languages that are geographically close but developed in very different ways like say, irish vs english.

[semper-draca]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Have all the stars.🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Oh man anon, I am so sorry it took this long to get back to you, it took me a while to assemble a list. Each star is for a behind-the-scenes detail of a fic (in this case, Iustitia) And I count.... eighteen stars!

1. In ch 59, Lorant drunkenly refers to Vitiate as “V-dude”. When I played through kotfe/kotet, amongst my friends I jokingly called Valkorion “V-dude” 2. This one is probably obvious, but many aspects of the Institutes were based on Native America/First Nations residential schools in the USA and in Canada. Including the uh... abundance of Absolutely Awful. 3. Every single character name for my ‘Big Eight’ player characters have their names based in Tolkien conlang. With the notable exception of Oren, my bounty hunter. He’s the special.  4. The ‘Lucian and Ille adopt a wrat’ plotline was 100% inspired by @fluffynexu‘s fantastic wrat worldbuilding posts. 5. Similarly, most of my military worldbuilding (if you can call it that) is based on @inquisitorhotpants‘s angry ranting about how space fantasy militaries should work and how they fuck up promotions. I include two exceptions in my fic to the ‘proper promotions’ rule - Baras, who doesn’t care as long as it serves his needs and is Sith so no one can stop him. And Kilran, who Does What He Wants.  6. Zirin’s blasters - Mischief and Anarchy - are real in-game cartel market weapons.  7. In very early concepts of the fic (before I even wrote the first version, so back in late 2015/early 2016), Celebris was actually white, with a very ‘snow queen’ design. I ended up changing this cause I didn’t like the idea that the only human character out of the ‘Big Eight’ was white, and because I felt as though a ‘snow queen’ design was overdone and often boring.  8. In ch 23, Gimrizh makes a comment about how Vette isn’t allowed to call her ‘whore’. It’s phrased in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge way to imply that it’s a kink of hers. 9. Pierce being aromantic was a deliberate ‘fuck you’ to the game devs, as in-game the SW is allowed to sleep with Pierce, but not romance him. I figured that if they weren’t going to allow SWs more options, I’d get some queer representation out of it. 10. Un-killing Eleena Daru was a relatively last minute decision. As soon as I knew Malgus would be involved in Vette’s resistance, I knew Eleena had to be alive. 11. Much of Gimrizh’s speed-based combat style is inspired by Namikaze Minato from Naruto, and his Flying Thunder God technique.  12. Megablast Death Engine’s name was inspired by Negasonic Teenage Warhead from Marvel.  13. In the old version, I was going to add a plotline where Gimrizh discovers that her parents were alive. I had even already introduced her mother as a character before the rewrite begin. This was one of the many things that got scrapped in the rewrite, as it didn’t really fit in anywhere and was ultimately pointless for both plot and character development.  14. Multiple chess games and chess metaphors take place in the fic. This required a lot of research, as I’m actually a mediocre chess player and rarely play. 15. Quinn’s old speederbike is based on the in-game Aratech Nightsythe mount. The bike he and Gimrizh build later is based on the Command Corsair mount. 16. Gimrizh’s proclivity for lightsaber tech was because originally I had her crafting skill in-game be Artifice. I swapped to Biochem once I started seriously raiding, but it became an integral part of her character beforehand.  17. @inquisitorhotpants was a guest beta for ch 47, as I asked her to look over a few scenes featuring Lorant and Pierce.  18. The ch 53 title, Early Summer Rain, was based on the Naruto OST track of the same name.

*long exhale* I hope all these tidbits were illuminating or interesting to you all, and thanks again anon (and sorry again for the delay)

[encyclopedia-drowica]

Simple Verb Conjugation

For complex verb conjugation click here.

Let's Talk Verb Conjugation!

Verb conjugation is an important part of any conlang, and while I think the Grey Company did a decent job establishing some verb conjugation, I don't think it's organized or structured in a concise manner that would otherwise make verb conjugation easier. There are also plenty of places in which canonical Drowic disobeys its own rules or seems not to have rules regarding verb conjugation. This is a symptom of the ailment I'm trying to cure which is that Drowic is currently not a proper conlang but a hack-job of a re-lexicalization.

Starting with the basics the way we say verbs changes depending on the conditions or the aspects of the actions they describe, but in their most basic form (i.e. “to _”) verbs are considered to be in the infinitive. For the purposes of establishing proper conjugation we will be working mostly with a regular verb “luth” meaning “cast” or “throw”.

First we will establish person, how the verb changes as the subject that is performing it changes. While in Common (i.e. English) we only change the verb conjugation for she/he/it/they (singular), in many other languages (most notably Latin root languages) the verb conjugation changes with every different case of person. This has the added bonus of simplifying the spoken verb such that one could say a verb without the subject simply because the subject is implied within the verb itself.

Also unlike English or even Latin root languages, some languages (such as Hawaiian, Lakota, Mandarin, and Tagalog) have a concept called clusivity, or the aspect of including or excluding the addressed party when using “we” as in “we _ together” versus “we _ but not you”. I chose to establish verb conjugation like this in order to make Drowic more functionally efficient to speak.

Simple verb conjugation continues under the cut.

Some verbs are irregular, specifically ones that end in any of the personal suffixes “a” or “e” such as “bautha” (to dodge), and “thalra” (to meet). In these special cases, the vowel is re-enunciated, and this is shown visually with an apostrophe, as follows.

Our next step is to address simple verb tenses other than present tense, namely past and future tense. These both cause the verb suffix to change in different ways, but for regular verbs, like “luth” the formula remains very similar for past tense verbs.

Things get a bit more complex in the future tense. Similar to English, in Drowic the predicate verb is not conjugated as the subject changes, however unlike English, the word “will” is treated as a verb and thus conjugated in the present tense. The verb “orn” (will) is taken to mean more literally “to be in the future” and exists exclusively for the purposes of making the verbs after it to be considered in a future perspective. Thus continuing with our example using “luth” follows:

Much as with previous conjugations, when using “orn” the subject pronoun can be omitted given enough context without losing meaning.

Forward on to complex verb conjugation.

[thesparringring]

Yet another personal meme (I love them)

Rules:

a) Always post the rules, answer the questions, then write 11 questions of your own.

b) Tag 11 people and link them to the post.

c) Tell the person who tagged you that you’ve answered their questions.

Tagged as usual by @idrelle-miocovani. Thanks!! These memes are so much fun, lol. Sorry it takes me ages to reply them! It’s a pain in the neck being always on mobile.

1. What do you want to be when you grow up? First, I wanted to be a vet. Then a marine biologist, and then a park ranger. As a teenager I had a band, and I thought I was going to be a world famouss bassist. Of course that didn’t happen, but music got me into one of my passions: languages, English in particular. I’ve recently (a week and a half ago!) graduated from university with a title on Conference Interpretation. In the near future, I’d also love to pursue an art-related career!

2. If you could go back and change anything, would you? Ugh. I guess I would? I mean, I’d make ONE choice differently, just to see what it would have been. Still, I’m really happy with who I am today, and I know that I wouldn’t be the same had I made that choice differently. So I guess the answer is no.

3. Cats or dogs? I can’t conceive my life without dogs. And I’m not a fan of cats. 

4. What are you favorite pizza toppings? Proper answer would be “what are your non-favourite pizza toppings?” to which the answer would be: anchovies. But only because they’re way too salty. Otherwise I love them all! Specially napolitan, margherita, cheese and onion, pineapple... GIMME ALL THE TOPINGS!

5. If you could have a harem who would be in it? This is such a weird question?? I’ll have to agree with @idrelle-miocovani​ in this one. Definitely not a sexy times harem, but rather a nerd group to geek out about whatever fancies us. (Also, dear Idri, should you start a D&D group, count me in please)(*nerdiness intensifies*)

6. Who would be your favorite in said harem? @ladymerewif​ and @idrelle-miocovani​ doubtlessly. Nerd queens, the three of us.

7. What would be your theme song or soundtrack? Huh. I’d say, bury me with Ruben Rada’s “Muriendo de Plena”, and Celia Cruz’s “La Vida es un Carnaval”. Because both talk about how good life is, how we should seize it and how death is not a bad thing. Hell, on my funeral I don’t want people to cry because I died; I want them to celebrate the fact that I lived.

8. If you could only play one game for the rest of your life what would it be? Again, I agree with Idrelle. I love Inquisition to pieces, but it’s way too buggy. Instead I’d pick Wonderboy. YES I KNOW IT’S SO OLD, but in 16 years I’ve *never* been able to finish it! 

9. If you were a protagonist, what would be your fatal flaw? All kidding aside, I’m terrified of murderers and dead people. I don’t know why- probably some trauma that comes from somewhere in my mind? So... I guess I wouldn’t be a very successful protagonist if that implied killing or possibly seeing dead people. ESPECIALLY IF THEY DROWNED, holy fuck drowned people terrify me. Nope nope *flies away*

10. What do you miss the most from your childhood? I miss being innocent and not understanding how the world works. I mean, I did understand it, but on my own way- that way a child does. And it was way happier and more magical than it is now. Also less real, but still better. 

11. Do you think you have to love yourself to be able to love someone else? No. I’ve always had a low self-esteem, and that hasn’t prevented me from loving my boyfriend, ever. 

@idrelle-miocovani​‘s 11 questions

1. Rogue, warrior or mage?

In the Dragon Age universe I’d pick rogue (archer!). Otherwise, mage. 

2. If you could be fluent in any language (including conlangs), what would it be?

ITALIAN. Only reason I took German classes but not Italian is because I could’t find a teacher in my city. My grandma is Italian so I guess she could teach me, but she doesn’t have any technical knowledge of the language.

3. What book or book series that hasn’t been adapted yet would you like to see turned into a TV series or film?

This is hard, because normally I prefer the way I imagine books than the way they are turned into TV! For example, I hate the fact that after so many films I kinda lost my own mental image of the HP universe (Still, I couldn’t resist watching the movies XD). The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss would be my pick. Or The Days of the Deer, from The Saga of the Borderlands, by Liliana Bodoc.

4. If you could see any play (musical or otherwise), what would it be?  

I’ve wanted to see a play called Plaza Lezama for *ages* but never got round to it. Also, there is this amazing comedy in Buenos Aires called Toc Toc. 

5. If you could have any fantasy animal as a pet, what would you choose?

Omg, I’d choose a pegasus!!! Or a dragon! Or a hippocampus! Or *continues endlessly*

6. If you could live in any fantasy world (from any book, film, TV show, video game, etc.), which would you choose?

Dragon Age. Yeah, with all the war included. Either that, or the Fertile Lands from Saga of the Borderlands, by Liliana Bodoc

7. If you could live in any past century or decade, which one would you choose?

Wow, hard one. I’d pick one when men hadn’t deteriorated the world yet. Probably 

8. You’re time travelling to the Middle Ages and there’s no guarantee you can ever come back. You can only bring one modern item with you. What do you choose?

9. You have the opportunity to bring a dead artist from the past (writer, playwright, visual artist, novelist, etc.) into the present to show them how their work has been received over the years. Who do you choose?  

I’d pick Carlos Gardel ‘The Song Thrush of Buenos Aires’. I don’t think he would have ever imagined that his music would become so famous, even nowadays, or that his name would eventually become an expression used in everyday conversations.

10. You’re stuck in a medieval fantasy RPG (Dragon Age, The Witcher, etc) as you are today. What do you think your chances of survival are?

I pick the DA universe. Considering how much I know about said universe, I guess I’d have a fair chance to survive? I’d try to steal some clothes and mimick the way people talk and try to come up with a different identity... Still. Such a deadly world. I don’t know how long would I make it in it. 

11. The fate of the world is in your hands. You can either sacrifice yourself and ensure everyone’s safety, or stay alive and let things run their course, possibly letting billions die. What do you choose?  

Aaaaaah, Idrelle, why? Why these questions? I think that, if it did come to that, I’d make a humongous effort to put my fear of death aside and sacrifice myself. But this is a hypothetical scenario, no? *hiperventilates*

MY eleven questions! 

- You have a terrible accident, and you lose one of your senses. Which one would you be more OK (or less upset) losing?

- Camping or top-notch hotel? And where?

- If you were thrown back on time to an era where machines and technology do not exist, what are the odds you survive? 

- 3 strengths vs 3 weaknesses.

- If you could UNmeet someone, who would it be and why?

- Who would you most like to meet and why? Would you like them to be your friend? 

- Do you have any fulfilled dreams? What about unfulfilled?

- What would happen if you were the main character of your favorite series and your sidekick was the main character of your most hated series/movie?

- How important is music in your life? Do you play any instruments? Do you wish you could play any instruments? 

- Open three books on page 138 and read their first sentences. Do they form anything interesting or funny put together?

- Would you change anything about you, if you could? (Physically or not, your pick)

DONE!!!

I’m tagging @ladymerewif, @kaoruyogi, @thecombustiongirl, @stregatadallostregatto, @thevirdirthara, @ellenembee (so sorry you’re home sick! I hope these are fun, at least?)