#wokuthízhű

[dedalvs]

This is the Valyrian glyph for landis "boot". This was the first boot glyph I created. Based on Jessie's drawing, I created a second boot glyph for our mouse language Wokuthízhű. It's much cuter.

[langtimestudio]

The word “nyűfi” means “moon” and was our Lexember 4th word!

[dedalvs]

If I may ask,

Ive been trying to make a polysynthetic language for quite some time but it always seems to go poorly. I know this is a really vague goal, but do you have any tips for this endeavour?

Thanks! (Also congratulations on the marriage! You two are the cutest couple ever)

Thanks! <3

Re: polysynthetic languages, they're a lot like isolating languages, but there are phonological cues that tell you that the big word you're creating is all one word. Try to get those phonological changes settled. For example, in Inuktitut, a word only ever ends with one of four sounds:

a vowel

-k

-q

-t

As a result, the kind of sound changes that occur are always similar. That is, /k/ will often change to the same thing when followed by a consonant or a vowel, and /q/ will often change to the same thing, etc. so it's really easy to tell that the word isn't done yet (in addition to stress).

When it comes to the kind of affix-building that happens, though, this is what you always need to keep sight of: (1) what constitutes a nominal and verbal termination (where the word is going to end), (2) what word base a suffix applies to, and (3) what the result is. The meanings will get confusing, but the lexical categories shouldn't.

Beyond that, when it comes to inspiration, honestly, the types of affixes you get in polysynthetic languages aren't very different from what you get in non-polysynthetic languages; the differences is that they can be piled onto a single word. The types of meanings you get are usually shunted off on auxiliaries in non-polysynthetic languages. Now they're not auxiliaries: They're affixes.

But, I mean, it's just tough. No two ways about it. In fact this coming Thursday @quothalinguist and I are revisiting our polysynthetic mouse language, and, let me tell you, it was difficult, we don't 100% get it still, and we likely made mistakes. But that's part of the fun!

[dedalvs]

Hey, for those who are interested, @quothalinguist and I have opened a RedBubble store with products featuring our LangTime Studio languages, plus some of the other languages we've created for other projects (e.g. Defiance and Dune). Take a look! There's some stuff there we're pretty proud of. :)

[langtimestudio]

When we decided (with our wonderful Patrons’ help!) that the mice would vote with pebbles and seeds, we realized that, while we had a word for seed, we didn’t have one for pebble. So we fixed that! “Pó” means “pebble.”

[langtimestudio]

For Lexember 5th, our new Wokuthízhű word is “ki,” meaning “to help.”

[langtimestudio]

Our Lexember 3rd Wokuthîzhű word was “sát’í,” meaning “acorn.” When @dedalvs asked me what the proto-form should be, I told him there had to be an ejective. If you’ve ever been hit on the head by a falling acorn, you’d agree the word needs an ejective!

[langtimestudio]

For Lexember second, our Wokuthízhű word was “ngéngé,” which means “eight.” The mice have a base-8 number system, and this word is a reduplication of their word for “four,” which comes from the noun “paw.” So ngéngé is “paw-paw,” or two paws’ worth of counting!

[langtimestudio]

For our final Lexember 2022 word, we present a very important word for our STEM-minded mice: “wákuf’íthí” means “math” and is the collective form of “wákuf’í” (“sum, total”).

[langtimestudio]

Today’s Lexember word is “th’anímile,” which means “minutes” (as in minutes from a meeting). This is a mega-compound of two smaller compounds: “th’yaní” (“meeting,” from “meet-speak”) and “mile” (“paper,” from “birch-bark”).

[langtimestudio]

Because our mice society is so committee-based, we definitely needed a word for “quorum.” If you have a warm room, you must have a quorum, or “zhólák’wa” (literally “warm nest”)!

[langtimestudio]

For Lexember 18th, we are getting decorative! Based our new verb “to shake” (yesterday’s entry), we created another verbal modifier: the iterative “-f’í.” Adding that suffix to the verb “lú” (“to cover”) creates the verb “lúf’í,” which means “to decorate.”

[langtimestudio]

Our new word for today is “f’í,” meaning “to shake, to jiggle.” If you didn’t watch our special episode that we recorded for Thursday, Dec. 15, you should! You’ll see why this word was created and why it makes me giggle.

[langtimestudio]

Building off yesterday’s entry, “t’échinyi” (“to list”) incorporates the “-nyi” modality, which provides a meaning of “thoroughly.” To make a list, you need to be sure you’re thoroughly counting all items!

[langtimestudio]

Our Wokuthízhű word for Lexember 11th is “fo,” which means “to hold.”

[langtimestudio]

Our word Lexember 9th is a special one—we finally have a word for “to vote,” which is a very important concept for our mice who love their committees: “yómósála”! At the root of this word is the verb, “yó,” meaning “to drop.” We decided that the earliest mice voted by dropping either a seed (a “yes” vote) or a pebble (a “no” vote) into a pile. The suffix “-mósála” means “traditionally,” so voting means you’re dropping something in a traditional way.