#korná

[niniralin]

Hey look I made a cool idiom in gatáusu qanton i yuhúšsu nahnan gasu ['χɑntɔn i ju'huꭍsu 'nɑhnɑn 'ʁɑsu] potato-DAT 3P.INANIM 3P.INANIM.SUBJ-be.dead-PRES water-ACC give-PRES

"To put effort into a doomed cause", lit. "to water dead potatoes."

[veriveryz]

amikor az emeberek arról írnak esszéket a facebookon hogy a korona vírus csupán egy humbuk és azért találták csak ki hogy a magyaroknak rossz legyen </3 

[niniralin]

oh goddmanit if one of me conlangs shamelessly steal the writing system from the local High Status culture that developed wriiting first, am I gonna have to borrow like 60% of that conlangs vocabulary from the language writing was created for? damn....... I don't wanna do that........m aybe I'll just handwave and go "no, that didn't happen, because I said so"

[niniralin]

Thinking about making another blog where i publish my worldbuilding stuff and also serially publish my story "the silver temple" set in my world............would anyone be interested in such a thing? Is there reason for me to do it?

[niniralin]

just realized that after the technoscientific revolution, it would make very much sense for someone to make basically the equivalent of the IPA. So im. gonna develop a gatáusu-based phonetic writing system for every language. mmmmmmmmmight not be an alphabet, but we'll see how the gatáusu script turns out because i'm not done with that

[niniralin]

Ninirāte lekame wiriro

"I am the one who created Ninirāte"

Ninirāte build-PAST person-COP

[niniralin]

[niniralin]

Introduction to Ninirāte!

Ninirāte oyhlolwa

Ninirāte is a conlang I've been working on for about one and a half years (on and off), and the oldest and most complete in my conworld Korná. It's spoken mostly by Ninirakxa in the empire of Ninir, but there are a *lot* of L2 speakers, since so many people trade or otherwise interact with Ninir. Today, I'll introduce it here!

Ninirāte on in onusik nirul, zakwak far matil, za lekaluzazhon hla sulur konawāyrāro kwil, za lekame kolungāro Koranāk fi uksikats mul, līr. Nihazil, Niniraluk Ninirakxāk nankwimāts, wirik korāma Niniratun venawasar hlen zwiwar matil tunlāzo, tintuts nankwin wir zāmāk. Txasil, singūl, za ilholwalushuns!

First, phonology

Zwik miral, onawāyrāro

The phonology of Ninirāte is rather unremarkable, but it does have a few quirks, such as a lateral fricative and affricate, bilabial instead of labiodental voiceless fricative, and nasal vowels (kinda). Here are the phonemes (I wish I could make a table):

Consonants

Nasals: m, n, ɲ , ŋ , ŋʷ

Plosives: p, t, k, kʷ

Fricatives: ɸ , v, s, z, ʃ , ʒ , x, xʷ , h

Affricates: ts, tʃ

Lateral Fricatives: ɬ , ɮ (ɮ is very rare)

Lateral affricate: tɬ

Approximant: r (allophone of z), l, j , w

Vowels

High: i, i: <ī>, u, u: <ū>

Mid: e: , o: (these are short in certain environments

Low: a, a: <ā>

Every sound is romanized with its IPA symbol unless otherwise specified, the generic nasal coda is romanized as <n>. Now, a few notes on the phonotactics and allophony:

The maximum syllable structure is CCGVGCC. Any phoneme can cluster with glides, but the only other permitted consonant clusters are voiceless obstruents. A generic nasal can take the spot of glides in coda clusters.

Vowels are nasal before nasals consonants. If these nasals are codas, they aren't pronounced and the vowel is long (except at word end). I still consider them codas, and nasal vowels as allophones, for various reasons (one is that the nasal reappears when a suffix is added. I.e "ilhan" in accusative is "ihlaman", where the m is pronounced but the n is not).

All word-final vowels are pronounced short.

The long vowels e and o are pronounced as short in semantically weak prefixes, such as augumentative ko- and 3rd singular inanimate possessive o-, unless stress falls on that vowel.

An open syllable with a short vowel is on mora. A closed syllable with a short vowel (this includes any syllable with a nasal coda) or an open syllable with a long vowel is two moras. A closed syllable with a long vowel is three moras. Stress falls on the third mora from the end of the word.

Glides are not permitted word-finally. Neither is x, h, or v.

Between vowels, ts becomes s, s becomes z, and z becomes r.

Various things happen to consonants word-finally, but it's irregular and I don't have the energy to figure out what's actually going on so I can explain it. The most important is that -z becomes -r after oral vowels and -s after nasal vowels.

A sample of randomly selected words:

Txor [txo:r] (noun, animate, -a conjugation): fire

Tsūngwi ['tsũ:ŋʷi] (noun, inanimate, -ī conjugation): dawn, morning

Ut [ut] (noun, inanimate, -i conjugation): a year

Tsawirutakxa [tsawiru'takxa] (noun, animate, -ā conjugation): an uncivilized person, a violent person, an unmannered person, an unhygienic person

Zir [zir] (number, -u conjugation): twenty (Ninirāte uses a vigesimal number system)

Nganyūts [ŋã'ɲu:ts] (adverb): still

Ihlolwa [i'ɬo:lwa] (noun, inanimate, -a conjugation): an introduction

An [ã:] (noun, inanimate, -n conjugation): a Niniran potato

Txakwin ['txakʷĩ] (verb, dynamic, -n conjugation): to open one's mouth

Lakizo ['lakizo] (noun, inanimate, -o conjugation): a dead fish

Grammar

Nyakal

This will be a very concise overview, skipping many things, because I don't feel like sitting here for ten plus hours figuring out how to describe everything.

Syntax

Ninirāte is an SOV language. Modifiers, such as relative clauses, possessors, and adverbs, are generally put before what the modify. Locatives generally come first in the sentence, except when the locative word acts as a converb.

Tsūngwīl, zur maten zhwal latekwin aripan nganyūts matilūx = morning-LOC 1p eye-ACC use-CONV be.green forest-ACC still see-ABL = In the morning, we can still see the green forest with our eyes

Nouns

Nouns have two genders: animate and inanimate. Pretty much only demonstrative pronouns change depending on the gender of a noun. Nouns inflect in a few ways, primarily case, tense (yes, tense on nouns), and possession. The cases are:

Accusative -an (only on animate nouns)

Ergative -s (only on inanimate nouns)

Genetive -k

Dative -tun

Locative -l

Locative-genetive -luk

Tense includes future -ngwi and past -zo. The tenses imply meanings like "what will be x" and "what used to be x". For example, the past version of "lak" (fish) is "lakizo" (dead fish).

Possessive prefixes are:

1s z(a)-

2s t(a)-

3s animate m(a)-

3s inanimate o-

1p zur(a)-

2p tut(a)-

3p animate yo-

3p inanimate iw(a)-

Possessive prefixes are used in cases of inalienable possession, whereas the genetive case is used in cases of alienable possession.

To express the meaning of "to be", the copula is used as a suffix on the second noun.

Ninirāte Ninir okonawāyrāro = Ninirāte Ninir 3S.INANIM.POSS-language-COP = Ninirāte is the language of Ninir

Verbs

Verbs don't inflect for person, but they have a number of inflections for tense, aspect, and mood, and can also be used as converbs. The unmarked form (usually ending with -r, -k or -n) is present tense, the ending is switched out for -me in past tense and -ven in future tense. The ending can be switched out for the copula to imply gnomic aspect. The last non-converbal suffixes added directly to the stem are the reflexive -apar, the passive -matir, and the desiderative -lans. Negation is done with the preverbal particle "hla".

If the ending is removed entirely, a verbal noun is created, to which case suffixes (including the now archaic instrumentative suffix -ts and the noun-tense suffixes that used to be locative case suffixes) can be added to create various converbs. Compare:

Za matil, yawār = I see, and I understand

Za mātun, yawār = I understand for the purpose of seeing

Za māts, yawār = While I see, I understand

Za matizo, yawār = Because I see, I understand

Za matingwi, yawār = Until I see, I understand

The converb suffix -l (-u is added at the end when another suffix follows) is used as the base for all hitherto unmentioned TAM conjugations. These are:

Experiential past -kwin

Immediate future -shuns

Continuous -zak

Causative -war

Perfect -zhon

Abilitative -ūx

Optative -siven

And a bunch of combinations of those. Also btw adjectives don't exist, stative verbs are used instead.

Writing

Hloles

Ninirāte uses the native Niniran writing system, an abugida derived from the old Niniran logography. It still has logographs for some common grammatical functions, such as cases and aspects. These are the consonants (the unlisted consonats are written as digraphs or, in the case of r, as z):

The grammatical letters are:

Vowels are written as diacritics to the left of the consonants. They are written as such:

The old logography is still used in super formal situations (mostly by religious and magical organisations). A full text (the first paragraph of this post) would look something like this (the writing direction is top to bottom, then left to right):

So that was it for this introduction! Thank you for reading!

Singūl, shun ihlolwa hloshuns. Ta nawanyawāzo zaloro!

[niniralin]

so with the silver temple and korná, my worldbuilding and writing feel like they could be so much more....... but im ginna finish writing this goddamned story anyway cause otherwise ill never get any writing thing done. then i think im gonna try to move on to some bigger, more detailed worldbuilding thingy and eventually write a longer story with like more POV characters

[niniralin]

do you have a color/numeral system in your conlang(s)? i think those are fun, it’s something most people never really think about. why are pink and red different colors yet light blue and dark blue aren’t? no one really asks, but i think it’s something fun to put in the conlangs. also numerals are just very fun to play with

Thanks for the ask! I don't really have a color system beyond the basicest of colors, but Ninirāte does have a somewhat developed number system.

It's a vegisemal system, so "69" would be expressed as 20*3+9, which in words is "hlurirukāpi" (hlu = 3, zir = 20, kāpi = 9). So Zekinkoetinir aka the Temple of the Myriad Gods, literally means Eightthousand-God-House. This vegisemal system has spread to most of the writing cultures in Korná due to Ninir's strong influence within mathematics and philosophy.

To count how many of thing there is, the thing is put into genitive, acting as possessor of the number, whereas to say "the nth thing", the number is put into genitive, acting as possessor of the thing. So,

Za nerik kokoriron matime (1s bird-GEN 400-20-ACC see-PST) = I saw 420 birds.

Za kokoriruk neren matime (1s 400-20-GEN bird-ACC see-PAST) = I saw the 420th bird.

That's about as much as I have, I'm afraid. For Aq̆q̆an, that I'm currently focusing on, I don't have either yet, but I'll get there in time. I'll make a base 10 system this time, since the language is to be used by me and I want to minimize my own confusion. Maybe I'll pull something with color, since the demons that speak Aq̆q̆an won't neccesarily have the same color vision as humans........ we'll see.