31st Lexember Word

idukstu|l /idukstuʎ/, verb: “to fill, to fill up”

ipuzdu|l /ipuzduʎ/, verb: “to pierce, to perforate, to empty”

Bvaj “XXX” de kojpej, emekedelun puzdul!

(note: you may need to go to my blog page itself to play the video above)

So, not a meme for the last day of Lexember, but the most epic music piece I know :). Lifts me right up when I feel down! It does fit one of today’s words even :P.

So, to finish with Lexember, I decided to give you two words for the price of one again :). Although I did cheat a little: those words are both verbs derived from words from the last few days by adding istu|l to them. That little verb gets a lot of mileage doesn’t it? :)

Idukstu|l is a verb derived from duki, and thus simply means “to fill something (up)”. It’s strictly transitive. Ipuzdu|l is slightly more interesting. Being derived from puza, it means both “to pierce, to perforate” (i.e. to make a hole in something) and “to empty (a container)”. The meanings are obviously related (try and perforate a container without spilling its contents! :P). Like idukstu|l, ipuzdu|l is strictly transitive, and takes the thing being perforated or emptied as its object.

So, there you have it! Lexember is finished for this year! I really enjoyed this edition, and I hope you did too! Thank you all for following me until the end. I hope you enjoyed the words I created and their descriptions. Don’t hesitate to let me know what you thought of it all via my ask box! :) And one thing is certain, I will participate again in December 2015!

Finally, to everyone, Happy New Year! Imonuj |ledan!

Questions?

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30th Lexember Word

dukpuza /dukpuza/, noun: “fullness, emptiness, level; contents”

Indeed! While safety margins are a thing, engineers do want to fit needs as strictly as they can. And it often comes back to bite them later ;).

OK, I just couldn’t have a full month of Lexember without giving an example of what I think is the coolest word formation pattern in Moten :). Really, it’s that rad!

So, think of all the things that are basically ranges, like age, height, weight, distance, good vs. bad (and everything in between), etc. Those usually have a name, as well as words referring to specific values (usually extremes) on them (for instance, related to age are the words “young” and “old”; related to weight we have “light” and “heavy”; and related to distance we have “close” vs. “far”). In English, the name of a scale is usually either unrelated to the words referring to specific values (see “age” vs. “young” and “old”), or related to only one of them (“height” is related to “high”, but not to “low”).

In Moten, while some scales also have unrelated names, most scales are named by taking the words referring to extremes on those scales, and compounding them together into a single word! For instance, from odun: “young” and ukol: “old”, one forms ukodun: “age”. In the same way, from sezgo: “fast” and bontu: “slow,”, you get sezbon: “velocity, speed”.

Dukpuza, then, belongs to that type of nouns. It’s a compound of opposites duki: “full” and puza: “empty”, and rather than referring to a specific (high or low) level of contents within a container, it refers to the concept of such a level itself (hence the translation “level” being probably the most accurate here, although dukpuza lacks many of the other meanings of English “level”).

Naturally, since languages abhor neat and symmetrical things, it had to be that dukpuza would develop another meaning, moving from the level of contents within a container to referring to those contents themselves (at least in general). But that’s language for you ;).

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29th Lexember Word

puza /puza/, noun: “hole, gap, lack, deficiency, emptiness; also as adj. empty”

I wish it was not so accurate!

So, today’s word is basically the opposite of yersterday’s duki. Puza's first sense is “hole, gap”, i.e. a hollow place or cavity, whether in a solid or on a surface. As an extension to that meaning, it also refers to the lack of something. And finally, it is used to refer to containers being empty of their contents.

Besides that, puza can be used, like its antonym, as a pseudo-suffix to form nouns that indicate a lack in something (much like words in “-less” in English). When used that way, puza always appears in its short compound form -puz, and the nouns formed that way are usually opposites of nouns in -duk (not always though. In particular, nouns ending in -som (which indicate ability or capacity to do something) will sometimes have opposites in -puz).

Questions?

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28th Lexember Word

duki /duki/, noun: “solidness, fullness, completeness; also as adj. solid, full, complete”

Which is basically how I feel right now after so much feasting :). That’s the holidays for you!

Duki refers firstly to solidness, in the sense of lacking holes, being made of one piece. As an extension to that meaning, it also refers to containers being full, and to things in general being complete.

As such, it’s not a particularly interesting word (although it’s a useful one). I does actually get more mileage though, in that it’s commonly used as a suffix (I call such nouns “pseudo-suffixes”, because they behave much like derivational suffixes despite being full nouns) to form nouns that indicate possession of a certain quality (pretty much like “-ful” in English). When used that way, duki always appears in its short compound form -duk.

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27th Lexember Word

|no|som /ɲo̞t͡so̞m/, noun: “stability, presence, existence; also as adj. stable, present, existing”

To be fair, the man had worse issues than just that :P.

OK, I have no idea what the deal with this word is. First, its senses. Now, I’ve seen my share of polysemic words in Moten. And I get why “existence” and “presence” could feel related enough to use a single word. But “stability”? Yet here it is…

Second, its etymology. |No|som is a compound, and quite a transparent one at that. But it’s a weird compound. First, I will focus on its second part, which is the least weird :). Som, in Moten, is a noun with a lot of cultural baggage. And since I know so little about Moten culture, this means I have difficulties translating it. In my lexicon, I glossed it as “primordial essence”, “fundamental matter” and “source of everything”. It seems to be a philosophical concept that refers to the source of all energy and matter. But it also has a more mundane meaning of “energy, the capacity to do work”. In that sense, it’s commonly used as a suffix to form nouns that indicate capacity or ability, or other abstract but measurable concepts (an example of that is negzom: “power”, from |negi: “to do, to accomplish”).

So that’s how it’s used in |no|som. But there is one issue: som is normally added to verbal stems, while |not, the first part of |no|som, is a nominal one. It’s actually a noun, with various meanings like “(abstract) source, origin”, “(abstract) cornerstone, main part” or even “head (of a body)”. All things that, while tantalisingly not completely unrelated, are still rather far semantically from “existence” or “presence” (“stability” sounds about right, given |not's meaning of “cornerstone”. But |not is strictly abstract, while |no|som can refer to the physical stability of a building).

So there you have it. A weird noun, with weird etymology and weird polysemy :). It’s probably just a very old formation, which then suffered semantic drift while its components suffered a different kind of semantic drift. Still, it’s not your average noun :).

Questions?

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26th Lexember Word

kelsin /ke̞lsin/, noun: “snowflake”

"You’re all individuals!"

"We’re all individuals!"

"I’m not!"

So, today’s Boxing Day, and since I’m lucky enough that the Netherlands also celebrate that one, I get to be lazy as one is supposed to be on that day, and just make a derivation from yesterday’s word :P.

Kelsin simply means “snowflake”. That’s it. Nothing special :). In terms of formation, it’s also quite simply the diminutive form of yesterday’s keli. The diminutive, in Moten, is often used to mark a unit or small quantity of something, and this is what it does here :).

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25th Lexember Word

keli /ke̞li/, noun: “snow (when falling from the sky)”

Literally…

Since people tend to be so obsessed with the idea of a white Christmas, I thought that this was a fitting word for today :P (although given the weather here white Christmases are quite rare where I live).

So, keli is a word for “snow”. But it’s not a generic word for “snow”. Rather, it refers strictly to snow as it is falling from the sky. Once it’s settled on the ground (or your roof ;)), it’s referred to as |no, which also means “ice” and “frost” (as well as referring to temperatures lower than the freezing point. |No is a very versatile word :)).

Another way to understand this distinction: |no refers to snow as a kind of stuff, while keli refers to snow as a meteorological phenomenon. And indeed, the way to say “it’s snowing” in Moten is keli ivda|n ito, i.e. literally “(falling) snow is happening”, using the verb ivdaj, a special Moten verb meaning “to happen”, but restricted to weather phenomena only (i.e. rain, wind, storms, the sun, and indeed snow, among others).

Now, interestingly, while we have the word keli for “(falling) snow”, there’s also the word kele meaning “winter”, and it’s very tantalising to consider them related to each other. Yet I have no idea if they are, or if it’s just a coincidence that they look similar. Add to those two kel, which means “moon”, and you could make quite a few claims (was snow considered by ancient Moten speakers to be bits and pieces of the moon falling from the sky?), but it’s all pure conjecture.

By the way, if you’re wondering, “white Christmas” in Moten is konvoj Noel, literally “Christmas made of (lying) snow” (konvoj is |no in the instrumental, itself overdeclined in the genitive case to allow it to complete a noun).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your day. Merry Christmas! Noel |ledan!

Questions?

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24th Lexember Word

isfomstu|l /isfo̞mstuʎ/, verb: “to pour, to serve”

It used to happen to me all the time! But practice makes perfect ;).

Anyway, since today is Christmas Eve, and the drinks are gonna flow everywhere, I thought this was a fitting word :).

Based once again on istu|l, and on yesterday’s sfom, isfomstu|l is a transitive verb referring primarily to pouring liquids into some kind of recipient (usually for it to be consumed, but not necessarily). Pouring champagne into a glass, soup into a bowl, or water into a tub, these are typical actions that can be described using isfomstu|l.

However, probably because of the prevalence of pouring drinks intended for consumption, isfomstu|l has also taken on the meaning “to serve (sthg to s.o.)”. In that sense, it is not restricted to liquids, but can be used with anything that can be consumed (mostly food). Basically, it’s the catering word par excellence :P.

Questions?

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23rd Lexember Word

sfom /sfo̞m/, noun: “flow, current; course (of a river), path; period, length (of time); (heavy) rain, downpour”

isfomi /isfo̞mi/, verb: “to flow; to float; to change”

That’s how I often feel my work flow looks like…

Anyway, once again we’ve got one of those polysemic roots, compounded with the fact that this one can be used as a noun and as a verb.

As a noun, the primary meaning of sfom is “flow, current”. In that sense, it refers strictly to liquid flows. For instance, the current of a river is sfom. Electric and air currents, on the other hand, are not.

As a semantic extension to the idea of the flow of a river, sfom is also used to refer to its course, or path taken, and to all paths in general. And because Moten has this permeating metaphor that equates time with a flowing river, this in turn has caused sfom to take on the meaning “period of time”.

Finally, sfom refers to water flowing not only horizontally but also vertically, i.e. it can be used to refer to rain. In that sense, it only refers to heavy rainfall. Light rain is referred to by the word tlap, which is probably of onomatopoeic origin.

As a verb, the primary meaning of isfomi is “to flow”, and is once again only used of liquids. As an extension to this meaning, isfomi can also refer to objects caught within or on the surface of a flow of liquid, leading to the meaning “to float”. Finally, the time metaphor appears again, and isfomi can also mean “to change, to evolve”, or more precisely “to change as a result of the passing time”.

In any case, isfomi is always strictly an intransitive verb.

Questions?

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22nd Lexember Word

(warning: the following discusses profanity and swear words without censuring them)

tneban /tne̞ban/, interjection: “damn, damn it”

Even when I double check, these stupid autocorrect typos keep getting through :(.

So, OK, technically I’m breaking the rules of Lexember, since this is not really a different word from yesterday. But since my 10th Lexember word was actually two words, I feel like I’m allowed a little leeway here :P. And I also felt this specific use of tneban was worth a separate post. It’s different enough that it can nearly be considered a separate word after all.

So, while many people seem uncomfortable discussing this subject, it’s still a fact that all languages have profanity and swear words. They may vary in their propensity to use them (Japanese seems to be rather mild in that regard, while Spoken French seems to have elevated swearing to an art form), but they all have them. As for what is used for swearing, well, the usual suspects seem to be bodily functions, especially those related to sex and excretions, with blasphemy as a close second. Some languages also have their own idiosyncratic swear words (Dutch, for instance, seems to have a fondness for diseases, especially cancer, typhoid and cholera).

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that if you’re developing a naturalistic conlang, you will, at some point, have to think about profanity. And that’s something that’s kept me busy in Moten. Fortunately, with yesterday’s word, I finally have a basic Moten swear word.

Basically, since Moten speakers seem to elevate peace (|la) to a high level of virtue, it simply makes sense that its opposite will be seen as pejorative, making it a prime candidate to turn into a swear word. And indeed, for Moten speakers conflict and war are seen as vulgar and undesirable, and swearing by calling them out brings in the shock value a swear word should have.

So tneban can be used as an interjection. When used that way, it’s a generic swear word. Although I translate it as “damn” or “damn it”, it’s actually a bit stronger than that. I’d say it’s between “damn it” and “shit” in terms of profanity.

Tneban can also be used as an adjective, in which case it corresponds to “(god)damn + noun” in English. And then there’s the expression tneban ba, which I’d say is between “damn you” and “fuck you” in terms of strength, depending on context.

In all cases, tneban as a swear word is used when people feel angry at something. That makes it somewhat different from its usual translation “damn”, which in English can also mark surprise rather than anger.

Questions?

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21st Lexember Word

tneban /tne̞ban/, noun: “war, warfare, conflict; bad health, also as adj. unhealthy”

Other relevant memes just looked too depressing…

Anyway, I know this is the time of “peace on earth” and all that, but it’s difficult to talk about peace when you can’t talk about war. And while Moten already had a word for “peace” (|la, a very important concept to Moten culture), it lacked one for “war”. This is now solved thanks to the word tneban.

Basically, tneban is the full opposite of |la. And since |la refers not only to peace but also to good health, tneban refers not only to war and conflict, but also to bad health. And like |la can be used as an adjective to mean “healthy”, tneban can be used as an adjective to mean “unhealthy” (Moten speakers seem to consider a peaceful society to be equivalent to a healthy organism. There are worse metaphors :P).

And if you wonder whether tneban is related to yesterday’s itneboj, the answer is “yes”, but not in a productive way. There is evidence that as some point, Moten had an agent suffix -an(a). That suffix isn’t productive anymore, but it’s left its mark on the language in the form of various nouns ending in -an which still look related to verbs, although semantic drift has somewhat changed their meanings from straight agent nouns. Other examples include linan: “bird”, from |li|n: “to fly” and oskan: “event, show” from joski: “to happen, to proceed, to last”.

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20th Lexember Word

itneboj /itne̞bo̞j/, verb: “to hurt, to injure, to damage”

I think the red sliver is still too wide.

Itneboj is a transitive verb, so it refers strictly to the action of damaging something or someone, rather than the result of that damage. In other words, it means “to hurt” as in “I hurt my leg”, not as in “my leg hurts”. Unlike English verbs, Moten verbs are very strict when it comes to valency.

Another thing to remember is that itneboj refers strictly to physical damage. Hurting someone’s feelings requires another verb.

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19th Lexember Word

sili /sili/, noun: “exterior, outside”

I hear outside doesn’t even have checkpoints and implements permadeath in such a way that you can only ever play it once! Who let people release reality when it’s obviously still in alpha?!

So, I had a word for “inside” (melag), but not one for its “mythical” antonym. How silly! (pun intended) This is now corrected, with the word sili referring to the exterior or outside (of whatever we are talking about).

Generic location words like melag and sili are quite important in Moten. Since Moten lacks adpositions, and its cases do no allow precise positioning, the way it handles marking precise location is by making use of such words in adverbial phrases, with a noun phrase in the genitive case in front of them. For instance:

• umpevi (mo)meleag: “in the house” (literally “in the inside of the house”);
• umpevi (mo)siledin: “(moving) out of the house” (literally: “to the outside of the house”).

They can naturally also be used on their own, as in the annoyed mother’s staple: siledin!: “(go) ouside!” :)

Questions?

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18th Lexember Word

jelzdu|l /je̞lzduʎ/, verb: “to choose, to select, to pick out”

Talk about picking the right side of the fight :P.

So, once again we have a compound verb based on istu|l: “to summon, to call”, this time with yesterday’s elbo. So jelzdu|l means literally “to summon a rib”… Eh no… I mean “to summon a side”, i.e. “to choose”.

I actually can’t believe that after all that time working on Moten I still didn’t have that verb. Oh well, the gap’s filled now :).

Questions?

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17th Lexember Word

elbo /e̞lbo̞/, noun: “rib; flank, side (of a symmetric object); side (of an argument)”

What?! No cookies?! Then no dark side, sorry.

So, the canonical meaning of elbo is “rib”, i.e. the curvy bone. Unlike other words referring to parts of the body though, this one can be used with anything with ribs, whether they are human, large animals or small animals.

But elbo has seen quite a bit of semantic expansion. First, it can be used to refer to the flank or side of a person or animal, and more generally to the side of any object with a left-right symmetry. And second, it can be used more abstractly to refer to the various sides of an argument.

It’s quite a useful word that one, especially when you see what you can make of it tomorrow :).

Questions?

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16th Lexember Word

funma|z /funmad͡z/, noun: “present, the current moment in time”

I promise that’s not what made me publish this one 6 hours too late! It was… simply to make a relevant joke. Yeah, that’s it! No procrastination, just a joke :/.

So, as I wrote before, in Moten the metaphor of time is related to a flowing river. Basically, the present moment is an unmoving observer on the riverbank, while events go with the flow. Future events have not passed by yet, so they are upstream (and indeed, the word for “upstream”, zekjem, also means “future”), while past events have already passed by, so they are downstream (and indeed, the word for “downstream”, so|nem, also means “past”). Given this metaphor, one would expect the word for “present” to at least be related to ma|z: “riverbank”. And that’s indeed the case: funma|z is a compound of ma|z with funa: “second, moment”, and refers to the present moment, as opposed to both the past and the future.

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15th Lexember Word

imazdu|l /imazduʎ/, verb: “to cut (sthg)”

Using a Willy Wonka meme that ironically comments on the use of Willy Wonka memes, just because it uses the phrase “cutting edge”, to illustrate a word for “to cut” in a language where that word is derived from a word meaning “edge”… That’s either really cutting edge, or I’ve just created so much irony this post is going to collapse on itself and create a black hole. Either way it’s entertaining :P.

So, as I wrote above, imazdu|l is a compound of yesterday’s ma|z, together with istu|l, a verb meaning “to summon, to call”. In other words, in Moten “to cut” is literally “to summon an edge” :). It feels extremely right :).

Istu|l, by the way, is very commonly used to form verbs based on nouns or other verbs

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14th Lexember word

ma|z /mad͡z/, noun: “(river)bank; edge, side (of a 2D figure)”

Not exactly what I meant but close enough :P.

Ma|z is not a difficult word to understand. As I mentioned in the past, Moten people seem to place special importance in rivers, and bodies of flowing water in general (basing their entire metaphor of time on them), so it makes sense that they’d have a word for the piece of land that adjoins flowing water. And that’s basically what ma|z means. Notice that I clearly mentioned flowing water. Ma|z cannot be used to refer to a lake or sea shore.

Ma|z's other meanings (“edge” (of a solid object) and “side” (of a 2D figure)) are simply natural generalisations of its original meaning. After all, a riverbank is nothing but the edge between water and land!

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13th Lexember Word

buzi /buzi/, noun: “candle; spark plug”

I must admit I like skeptical candle’s style :P.

Today’s word is a borrowing from French bougie, which may explain its weird secondary meaning (and yes, the French word does mean both “candle” and “spark plug”. In fact, it was borrowed in other languages, like Dutch and Modern Greek, in its meaning of “spark plug” only). Buzi is simply the closest approximation of the French /buˈʒi/ that Moten phonology allows.

As for why a borrowing, don’t forget that the only known native Moten speaker has been suffering from amnesia since he was a child. There’s bound to be some holes in his vocabulary (as an alternative, it could also be that Moten culture simply doesn’t have candles. They might prefer oil lamps themselves. Who knows?). When such holes appear, what he and I usually do is either try to create a new word based on Moten stock, or simply borrow a word from another language (usually French, my native language). Which alternative happens is pretty much dependent on our fancy of the moment. There’s no rule :P.

So in this case, since I was on a roll with words related to light, I decided having a word for “candle” was the next natural step, and making it a borrowing from French seemed like the right thing to do :).

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12th Lexember Word

bego /be̞ɡo̞/, noun: “light source, lamp, light”

I understand exactly how you feel little light.

So, for the second time in a few days, we have a compound word with 8th Lexember word ugo: “source, spring, origin”. This time it’s a compound with yesterday’s bem: “light, glow”, forming the promised word for “light source”.

There isn’t much to say about bego. It refers to light sources in general (from the sun and the stars to your smartphone’s screen in the dark :P), as well as to lamps in particular. Basically, if you wanted to say “turn off the light!”, this would be the word to use (rather than bem which, as I explained yesterday, refers strictly to light itself rather than to its sources). In fact, I can even translate that small example for you:

Begedon dulak!

So, next time your Moten-speaking roommate prevents you from sleeping by keeping all the lights on, you know exactly what to say :P (in fact, if you think that example is not forceful enough, just wait a few days and I’ll be able to tell you how to say “turn off the damn light” :P).

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11th Lexember Word

bem /be̞m/, noun: “light, glow, illumination”

ibemi /ibe̞mi/, verb: “to light, to illuminate, to shine on”

Sage advice.

So, today’s not “two words for the price of one” day again. It’s just that I create stems rather than words per se, and it just happens that this stem can be used both nominally and verbally (not a common occurrence in Moten, but still happening from time to time).

Bem, as a root, refers to the idea of “light”, i.e. the electromagnetic wave that ensures we’re not constantly hitting walls :P. As a noun, it means “light”, “glow” or “illumination”. As the transitive verb ibemi, it refers to shining light on something.

Notice that bem refers strictly to the light or glow itself, and the illumination it causes on other things. It does not refer to sources of light (that’s tomorrow’s word ;)).

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10th Lexember Word

|labo /ʎabo̞/, |lemekel /ʎe̞me̞ke̞l/, noun: “rainbow”

Seems legit :).

So, today’s “two words for the price of one” day. They are synonyms, and probably similar in etymology, so I’ll treat them as a single Lexember entry. But it also means that if I miss one day later this month, you all won’t be so hard on me, okay? :P

So, despite being the guy who wrote this, I still didn’t have a word for rainbows in Moten. So naturally I had to overreact and make two! So, |labo and |lemekel both mean “rainbow” (referring to the optical and meteorological phenomenon). The main difference between the two is that |labo is seen as more mundane, while |lemekel is somewhat more lyrical and poetic. The result of light refracted through a prism will also more commonly be called |labo, while a clearly visible rainbow in the sky will more commonly be called |lemekel.

I must say I am uncertain of the etymologies of these words. They are clearly derived respectively from bo: “sky, day sky” and emekel: “skies, heavens” (basically a more poetic word for “sky”, formed as a dvandva compound of eme: “sun” and kel: “moon”), but the nature of that derivation is unclear. They could be either compounds of those words with |la: “peace, good health” (given that Moten seems to give a special status to that concept, it is a distinct possibility), or results of the nominalisation by surdéclinaison of adverbial phrases formed using the benefactive prefix |la- (such nominalisations are common with body parts, to form nouns referring to jewels that are worn on these body parts, like |lapoma: “necklace” from poma: “neck”. It’s quite possible that the rainbow was seen metaphorically as a kind of “jewel of the sky”). Both these etymologies are equally possible and make sense, so I have no way to know which one is right.

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9th Lexember Word

omgo /o̞mɡo̞/, noun: “tree”

Well, it’s cute, in a way :).

Wait a minute! Didn’t I already create a word for “tree”, just two days ago? And isn’t that word suspiciously similar to omgo? It is indeed, it’s om. And as I explained two days ago, it means both “tree” and “wood (material)”. So what’s happening here?

Well, while I can only guess (remember, I don’t have access to a handy community of linguistically savvy Moten speakers), it seems that in some cases Moten speakers have trouble with their polysemous words. Either they have too many different meanings and cause ambiguity, or their meanings are close enough yet different enough to cause misunderstandings. When this happens, it’s not uncommon for one of the senses of those words to be singled out and a new word to be created to represent it, usually a compound involving the original word. For instance, Moten |no means “ice” or “snow”, but also “glass” (the material). Probably due to ambiguities, the compound |nolum appeared to refer exclusively to glass (it basically mean “fake ice”). In the same way, |not means “source, origin”, but also “cornerstone” or even “head”! When one wants to refer to sources without ambiguity, one can then use instead the dvandva compound |za|not, literally “beginning and source”.

Omgo seems to be such a word too, being a compound of om and yesterday’s ugo: “concrete source, origin”. And it’s not as if om cannot be used anymore to mean “tree”. It definitely can. But if the speaker is afraid of ambiguities, they can make things clear by using omgo instead.

Notice that I’m not aware of a similar word for the “wood” meaning of om. Maybe Moten speakers are more afraid of ambiguities when talking about plants than when talking about the material they are made of…

Questions?

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8th Lexember Word

ugo /uɡo̞/, noun: “source, spring, fountainhead; origin”

Ouch! I think I sprained my spelling muscle just looking a that pic!

Anyway, ugo refers primarily to a water spring, i.e. the location where a stream of water surfaces. However, it can also refer to other kinds of concrete origins, i.e. locations or items something comes from.

Notice how I emphasised the word “concrete” here above. That’s because ugo is restricted to origins of concrete items. That’s unlike the english words “source” and “origin”, which can refer to both concrete as well as abstract origins (like the origin of a piece of information, or the origin of an idea). In Moten, origins of abstract items are called |not (or its more common synonym |za|not).

Notice also that I did write “origins of concrete items” and “origins of abstract items”. The key factor in deciding whether a source is ugo or |not is not whether the source itself is concrete or abstract, but whether the item that originates from the source is concrete or abstract. This may seem like a weird distinction, but it’s the one Moten makes.

Questions?

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7th Lexember Word

om /o̞m/, noun: “tree, wood (material)”

That’s a tree I suggest you get away from very fast :).

OK, there’s little to say about today’s word. Om refers to large wooden plants, as well as the material they are made from. That’s it. No more to read in this. No insights into Moten culture. Just a plain old word. Not even a derivation.

What a waste…

OK, I might have something to say about this word, but you’ll have to wait for two days. I trust you are all patient, right?

Questions?

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6th Lexember Word

joami /jo̞.ami/, verb: “to feel, to sense, to notice; to smell, to taste, to feel by touch”

That… is surprisingly a correct example of how joami is used. And incidentally also how my dog reacts to cheese :).

When it comes to feelings, Moten is quite complicated, using different words depending on whether we are talking about internal or external sensations, whether it’s the speaker speaking about themself or someone else, etc. Joami, however, is not the most complicated one of the bunch. It simply refers to experiencing something from your environment using one or more of your senses. Basically, if you can see, hear, smell, taste or feel something by touch, you can use joami to describe that experience. That’s what you call a hypernym (here of the various verbs of sensing). And given this generic meaning, it can also be used where English people would say “to notice”.

This said, the fact is that in Moten, there are specific verbs referring to seeing/watching (ipe|laj) and hearing/listening (jezeti), but none for the remaining senses. So it’s common for joami to refer only to those remaining senses, in which case it’s more a counterpart of ipe|laj and jezeti, and it can mean “to smell”, “to taste” or “to feel by touch” depending on the context.

As with all transitive verbs, the exact meaning of joami depends on the form of its subject. If that subject is in the nominative case, it marks an active form of sensing or probing (compare once again ipe|laj and jezeti, which mean “to watch” and “to listen to” respectively, with a subject in the nominative case). If that subject is in the instrumental, it marks it as an experiencer, i.e. a passive recipient of sensory stimulations (in that same case, ipe|laj means “to see”, and jezeti means “to hear”).

Questions?

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5th Lexember Word

sej(f) /se̞j(f)/, noun: “steam, water vapour; smoke, fume; blur, also as adj. blurry, blurred”

Eh… no. Not that kind of steam…

Sej(f) is a typical example of how Moten tends to stretch its words near breaking point, piling semantic generalisation upon semantic generalisation while keeping the original sense of the word alive.

In this case, the original meaning of sej(f) is “steam, water vapour”. Basically, It’s the one word for water I was still missing (since Moten has various words for water depending on temperature and one for non-drinkable water, as explained here, as well as a word for ice and snow: |no, water vapour was basically the last gap here).

By extension, sej(f) also refers to any kind of vapour coming from burning or boiling materials, hence the meanings “smoke” and “fume”. And finally, because of the way the air gets blurry when there’s smoke in it, sej(f) got metaphorically extended to mean “blur”, also used as an adjective meaning “blurry”.

As for the shape of this root, it contains what I call a “fragile coda consonant”. Basically, Moten phonotactics only allow single consonant codas. However, some roots happen to have two coda consonants. When that happens, the second one becomes fragile, and normally drops, only resurfacing when compounding or suffixes make it pronounceable. In other words, the word sej(f) will most often appear simply as sej, with the final -f resurfacing only when suffixing or compounding turn it into the onset of a new syllable. That’s what I’m trying to show by putting the last consonant of that word in parentheses.

Questions?

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4th Lexember Word

ba|zip /bad͡zip/, noun: “(table) salt, sea salt, sodium chloride”

That’s the expression “table salt” taken to a brand new level!

Another word related to cooking, ba|zip refers strictly to salt used as a condiment and for preservation, i.e. sodium chloride (or at least to something containing mostly sodium chloride, like sea salt). It’s not used for other combinations of acids and bases, like the English word “salt” is used in chemistry.

In terms of etymology, ba|zip seems to be a head-first compound of bale: “brine”, the 1st Lexember word, and |zipuz, the participle of i|zipi: “to boil”, the 3rd Lexember word. In other words, it originates from the erosion of the expression bale |zipuz: “boiled brine”, which could be an indication of when Moten speakers discovered salt for the first time :). Such compounds are common in Moten, and the amount of erosion this one suffered seems to indicate that it’s relatively old.

And I guess you’ve noticed that of the 4 words I’ve created so far, only two are truly new roots, with the other two being derived from them. It’s a good illustration of the way I work: I never create words in isolation, preferring instead to create roots and derivations together. And since the rules of Lexember allow it, why shouldn’t I create related words if I want to?

Questions?

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3rd Lexember Word

i|zipi /id͡zipi/, verb: “to boil, to bake, to cook”

I don’t actually have a smoke alarm. Doesn’t say anything about my cooking though! :P

So, here we have a new verb. Moten so far has had a very big lexical gap in the area of food and cooking, so I decided to start filling it by looking at the basics. And the basics are to have a word for cooking itself ;).

I|zipi's original meaning is “to boil”, with the subject being the thing boiling (i|zipi is strictly an intransitive verb, with the subject always being the undergoer of the action). As in English, it can refer to liquids boiling, or to solids being boiled in liquids. And through generalisation, it has also come to refer to any form of cooking that involves heat, with or without liquids involved.

Questions?

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2nd Lexember Word

balebale /bale̞bale̞/, noun: “sea, ocean, salt lake”

The pun is only marginally better than yesterday, but at least the picture is cute :).

So, the reason why I created the word bale yesterday? Just so I would have a source to today’s word! Yeah, languages can be quite roundabout can’t they? :P

Anyway, balebale refers to any kind of large expanse of salt water. I.e. it refers to what in English are called seas, oceans, and salt lakes. And no, there are no more specific words in Moten for various types of salt water expanses. It seems that to Moten speakers, it’s more important to know whether the water is drinkable, than to know whether the water feature is landlocked, just big, or freaking huge. To each their own :).

As for the derivation, balebale is simply the full reduplication of bale. Full reduplication in Moten usually means “all the…”, but such words are often subject to semantic shift, and it seems this has happened to this one as well.

In any case, you can’t argue that this word isn’t an everyday word! :P

Questions?

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1st Lexember Word

bale /bale̞/, noun: “salt water, seawater, brine, non-drinkable water”

I know, it’s bad, but try finding brine memes!

Anyway, as promised, here is the first Lexember word for Moten. Yeah! :) And as promised, it’s an everyday word (for some value of “everyday” :P).

Bale is an underived stem that refers to salt water (also called “brine”), sea water, and by extension any kind of non-drinkable water. If you’re wondering whether salt water actually deserves an underived stem, you have to realise that Moten already has unrelated words for liquid water at various temperatures (vone means “cold water”, zuba is “warm water”, while den is “hot water”). So having an unrelated word for water that is unsuited for human consumption (mostly because of salt contents, but possibly because of other reasons) doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

And if you’re wondering whether bale really qualifies as an “everyday” word, let’s just say that I needed it for tomorrow’s word, which should really qualify for that distinction. I hope you’re looking forward to it! :)

Questions?

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Lexember Starts Tomorrow!

So, tomorrow is the 1st of December, i.e. the start of the Lexember month! And as I promised, I will participate by publishing my newly created Moten words on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and for the first time for me on Tumblr! (with all the Tumblr posts being mirrored on my blog for good measure ;)) And I encourage everyone who is interested to join by creating words for their own conlangs and publishing them with the #lexember tag! I will track this tag here on Tumblr, so as not to miss any of your creations :). You might want to do the same ;).

In order for everyone to be on the same page, here’s a quick recapitulation of the Lexember rules:

• For the entire month of December, every day, once a day, create and publish a new word for one of your conlangs (it’s nicer to use the same conlang throughout, but that’s up to you). The publication should contain the word, its definition, and whatever etymological and usage notes you feel like sharing. Examples are welcome but optional :). Don’t forget to use the #lexember tag on your posts!
• The created words should be everyday words relevant for the environment where the conlang is spoken (e.g. its conculture, if it has one). The idea is to identify semantic gaps in your conlang vocabulary, and fill them. So no jargon or technical terms, unless they are also used in daily life by your conlang speakers. Slang terms are welcome, but in order not to hurt sensibilities it might be worth warning people in the title of your post when you create such words.
• The created words should truly be new, i.e. new stems, new derivations and/or new compounds. Just adding a new meaning to an existing word doesn’t count ;).
• Using other people’s Lexember creations for inspiration is not only allowed, it’s encouraged! (as long as it’s relevant for your conlang naturally :P) As is commenting on other people’s words. This should be a social event :). Don’t hesitate to link to the post that inspired your own creation when you publish it!
• While the goal is to create and publish one word per day, we all know that December is home to various other social occasions, so it’s understandable if you are unable to publish your creations everyday. In order not to destroy the flow of Lexember, my advice for everyone is to create a few words in advance, and use the queueing and scheduling capabilities of Tumblr to create a buffer. This way, it should allow you to bridge all the festivities without missing a Lexember day :).
• Have fun! This should feel like a game, not a chore! :)

That’s it. Personally, I will publish each one of my Lexember words everyday at 12PM CET. You’re welcome to use whatever schedule fits you best :).

So, let’s unleash our vocabulary creation powers, and fill December with our creations. Happy Lexember!

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Moten Words for the Day

|li|n /ʎiɲ/, verb: “to know (by instinct), to be aware of”

jolnesi /jo̞lne̞si/, verb: “to be an expert in, to know (by heart)”

Well, I actually do. I mean, if I’m not an expert on the subject of Moten, then who could ever be?

So, here we are looking at how to indicate that you know something. In English it’s relatively simple: you use the verb “to know” and you’re done. It’s used with people, things, skills, etc. (although with skills it’s common to use “can” instead, as in “I can swim”). Not all languages are that straightforward though. French, for instance, has not one but two counterparts to “to know”, and confusing them will result in nonsense sentences. One is “savoir”, which basically means “to have knowledge of”. It’s used mostly with skills (“je sais nager”: “I can swim”), and when the object is an entire clause (“je sais où il est”: “I know where he is”). The other is “connaître”, which means “to be familiar with”, and is used mostly with people (“je connais Jean”: “I know John”) but also with things (“je connais bien Paris”: “I know Paris well”). And other languages are quite similar to French in that respect (Dutch, for instance, has “weten” and “kennen”, in a similar, if not identical, distribution as French).

Moten is similar to French for not having a single straightforward counterpart to “to know”, but that’s where the similarity ends. In fact, Moten completely lacks verbs that indicate simple knowledge. The closest ones are the verbs mentioned above in this post, and they are very specialised:

• |Li|n indicates instinctive knowledge, i.e. knowledge that’s innate or so deeply ingrained you forgot how you came to know it. Instinctive skills (like seeing or hearing) can be described by |li|n. Speaking cannot, as it’s known that it’s something that is acquired later in life. Walking cannot be described by |li|n when referring to humans (as it’s an acquired skill), but it can be described that way with animals that manage to get up within a few hours of their births. |Li|n can also used to mark plain awareness, i.e. when you know of something rather than know something, although only when you can’t remember how you came to that awareness.
• Jolnesi indicates expert knowledge, i.e. intimate familiarity with a subject due to years of training, research, education, companionship (when used with people as an objet), or simply because you invented the damn thing! :) It shouldn’t be used lightly: if you claim to know maths using this verb, the listener will assume you have at least a college degree in maths. So it’s not used often.

So, if the only two verbs anywhere close to “to know” have such narrow semantics, how does a Moten speaker indicate simple knowledge of a person, thing or issue? It’s actually pretty simple: they simply indicate by which process they came to become aware of that person, thing or issue, and put that sentence in the perfect aspect, which marks a present situation that is the consequence of a past action.

For most skills, for instance (including languages), you can indicate that you know them by simply saying that you've learned them (e.g. motenku|ledun vajaguz ito: “I know Moten”, literally “(I) have learned Moten”, with the verb ivajagi: “to learn, to study, to teach”). With people, you can simply say that you've met them (usually eksaz ito, from jeksaj: “to touch, to hit, to run into, to meet by chance” or pe|laz ito, from ipe|laj: “to see, to watch, to meet”), at least if that’s the way you actually came to know them (nothing prevents you from lying, of course ;) ). With a book, you can say that you've read it (oknestuluz ito, from joknestu|l: “to read, to peruse”). And with an event, you could have experienced it directly, learned about it, or simply heard about it.

In any case, this is how it works in Moten: “to know something” is simply seen as the state resulting from the action of learning about that something before, and is indicated accordingly.

Questions?

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Moten Words for the Day

jemagi /je̞maɡi/, verb: “to sail, to travel”

ibnamagi /ibnamaɡi/, verb: “to walk, to travel on foot”

jugejugej /juɡe̞juɡe̞j/, verb: “to walk; to step”

Not me though. I usually fall asleep before the plane even takes off! :D

So, three verbs this time, all somewhat in the same semantic range, but with specific meanings that do not neatly fit with English counterparts.

Let’s start with jemagi. Its original meaning is “to sail”, i.e. “to travel by boat” (indeed, it’s a compound of jem: “river, brook” and jagi: “to go, to leave”). But its meaning was actually broadened with time, to refer to travelling with any kind of vehicle (including animals like horses). So its most common translation is simply “to travel”.

Yet jemagi doesn’t exactly correspond to “to travel”, because it doesn’t cover travelling on foot. There’s a specific verb for that: ibnamagi (from jagi and bnam: “foot, leg”). So you can’t simply say in Moten that someone travelled somewhere: you have to indicate at least whether they did it mostly on foot (in which case ibnamagi is used) or mostly using vehicles (in which case jemagi is used). My own theory about this semantic split is that long ago, the Moten speakers were a riverside community, and the main means of travel were either riverboats or just travelling on foot (maybe they didn’t have any animals capable of sustaining their weights or pull carriages). This led to two verbs being used for these two forms of travel. When other forms of travel appeared (maybe draft animals were introduced into their community), the verb already used to indicate travel in a vehicle was extended to cover other vehicles, while travelling on foot, i.e. using one’s own strength, kept its own verb.

Since ibnamagi refers to travelling on foot only, it can be translated as “to walk” (as in “he walked the whole way from Paris to Amsterdam”, something I will never do! ;) ). But that’s only true when “to walk” refers to travelling. If you want to refer to the physical activity of walking, i.e. to the act of making one step after the other, there’s another, specific verb for that: jugejugej, from uge: “step, footstep”. So once again here is a place where Moten and English divide the semantic space differently: “to walk” must be translated differently depending on whether one refers to the physical activity of walking, or the act of travelling on foot.

And to complicate matters, jugejugej can also be translated as “to step”, i.e. “to go through a list of actions”. Confused already? ;)

Questions?

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Moten Word for the Day

nud /nud/, noun: “(extended) family, clan, tribe; bond, connection, affiliation; (abstract) link”

Given that by the time you see this post I’ll be in France visiting my family, I thought it was appropriate :). And in my case, I solve the issue by spending time with the non-dysfunctional part of my family ;).

In any case, as with any culture-laden word, it’s difficult for me to explain exactly what the Moten word nud means, given we know so little about Moten culture itself. As far as I understand it, nud doesn’t refer to the nuclear family. In fact, I’m not even sure Moten even has a word for that specific meaning. Rather, nud refers to something bigger, hence the glosses “clan” and “tribe”. I’m not even sure nud requires blood connections or similar (adoption). In fact, I’m nearly positive strong friendships result in becoming part of someone’s nud. Exactly how that works, though, I don’t really know.

As an extension of meaning, nud can also refer to connections and bonds in general, and not necessarily between people or even animals. In fact, it can even refer to abstract links in general (for instance when talking about the link between two events). The “family” meaning, however, is the most common.

Questions?

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Moten Word for the Day

sezbon /se̞zbo̞n/, noun: “velocity, speed; timeliness”

OK, maybe the worst pun ever, but it made me chuckle :P.

So, as I explained before, it’s common to form the generic name for a scale by compounding two words that refer to extremes on that scale. Sezbon is such a word, being a compound of sezgo and bontu. And given the meaning of these words, it’s logical that sezbon refers to the scale of speed, or velocity, in general, as well as to the notion of timeliness (i.e. whether someone is late, early, or just on time).

Perhaps the only weirdness of this noun is that it’s formed by compounding two nouns that are both in their short compound form (sez- for sezgo, and bon- for bontu). That’s rather uncommon, as most compounds usually have at least one element using its full stem.

Questions?

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Moten Word for the Day

sezgo /se̞zɡo̞/, noun: “high speed, quickness, earliness, also as adj. fast, quick, early”

I’m not lethal, I promise! But using the same image to illustrate two opposites? Too good to pass ;).

So, to make up for not ignoring Word for the Day fans for two weeks, and to keep with the theme of today, I decided to quickly get another word out :). Sezgo is simply the opposite of bontu, and refers to high speed rather than low speed. And since bontu can also mean “late”, sezgo can also mean “early” (once again, a way to understand this is to remember the watch metaphor, with “this watch is fast” meaning that the watch indicates a time too early, rather than the watch ticking literally faster than normal). Once again, context solves most if not all ambiguities.

And so now if you’ll excuse me, I have to run! ;)

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Moten Word for the Day

bontu /bo̞ntu/, noun: “low speed, slowness, lateness, tardiness; also as adj. slow, late, tardy”

Yeah, I know, two weeks since the last Word for the Day. But see picture above ;).

Anyway, bontu is once again one of these abstract nouns that can be used as adjectives as well. It represents the idea of low speed or slowness, and as an extension to it also refers to lateness (just like we say in English “your watch is 10 minutes slow”, when we really mean that it’s indicating a time ten minutes too late, rather than the watch being literally slower to tick than normal). And if you’re wondering, really context usually disambiguate between the two meanings :).

Not much more to say about this word, as it’s a rather straightforward one. But after taking so long to write another Word for the Day post, it was relevant ;).

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Moten Words for the Day

voslim /vo̞slim/, noun: “beauty, appropriateness, fitness for purpose”

uflebe /ufle̞be̞/, noun: “quality, objective value, value”

kemabal /ke̞mabal/, noun: “opinion, subjective value, value”

No meme right now.

Okay, those nouns are going to need a small explanation. If they look familiar, it’s because they are: they are formed by mashing together the pairs of words I presented in the last three posts.

What’s happening here is that in Moten, when two nouns are semantically opposites (i.e. like “big vs. small”, “wide vs. narrow”, “rich vs. poor”), it’s common to form the noun that refers to the generic concept underlying them by compounding them. In English, it would be as if the generic concept of “size” (in general, rather than a big or a small size) was referred to by the word “bigsmall” :).

So that’s what’s happening here:

• Voslim is the combination of vo|sa and slim, and refers to appropriateness or fitness for purpose in general;
• Uflebe is the combination of ufan and tlebe, and refers to objective quality in general;
• Kemabal is the combination of kemi and abal, and refers to the concept of opinion in general.

In all cases, those nouns refer to a generic concept, and not to a specific value of that concept. It’s easy to understand with a word like kemabal, where the translation “opinion” is also neutral. It’s slightly more difficult for a word like voslim, where the usual translations (“appropriateness”, “fitness for purpose”) tend to have a positive connotation in English. But voslim doesn’t have a positive connotation in Moten. It’s perfectly neutral, just like kemabal. It doesn’t refer to appropriateness as a positive quality (that’s what vo|sa means), but to the generic concept of appropriateness. You can see vo|sa and slim as extreme points on a scale, while voslim refers to the entire scale itself.

The idea of compounding opposites to form the name of a generic concept is common in Moten, so keep it in mind as I describe new words in future posts.

Questions?

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Moten Words for the Day

kemi /ke̞mi/, noun: “pleasantness, wonderfulness; also as adj. pleasant, wonderful, good”

abal /abal/, noun: “dreadfulness, lousiness; also as adj. dreadful, lousy, bad”

There, feeling better? :)

So, we’ve already seen two ways to translate “good” and “bad” into Moten: vo|sa and slim, which refer to fitness for purpose, and ufan and tlebe, which refer to objective quality. Today, we’re adding two more possible translations, this time referring to “good” and “bad” as simply a matter of opinion.

Kemi and abal are respectively positive and negative statements of opinion, and only opinion. They simply indicate whether someone likes whatever is qualified, or not. They are different from vo|sa and slim in that there is no need to have a purpose in mind in order to like or dislike something, and they are different from ufan and tlebe in that you don’t need to be able to objectively justify your opinion on something. As such, if you state that something is abal, you won’t be expected to explain for what purpose it is, nor will you be expected to justify your statement based on objective qualifications. At most, people will ask you why you are harbouring such an opinion.

To illustrate the difference between these three ways of translating “good” or “bad”, consider an example I gave earlier: that of a chair. A chair is ufan if it’s made of quality wood and built by a master carpenter (for instance). A chair is vo|sa if it sits comfortably and can easily handle your weight. Finally, a chair is kemi if you like it :).

Notice that these three forms of “good” are not necessarily companions. A chair that is ufan can still be slim if it’s uncomfortable. A chair can be both ufan and vo|sa and yet still be abal, if you just don’t like its design. Finally, a chair that is a heirloom from your favourite relative, who specifically donated it to you, can still be kemi, even if it’s both tlebe and slim. All those words refer to specific facets of goodness and badness, which are mostly independent from each other.

With these two, we have the three main pairs of words used to translate “good” and “bad” in Moten. There are others, naturally (just like English has things like “awful”, “fantastic”, “nice”, etc.), but those are the main ones and the most commonly used.

Questions?

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Moten Words for the Day

ufan /ufan/, noun: “greatness, also as adj. great”

tlebe /tle̞be̞/, noun: “mediocrity, also as adj. mediocre, bad”

That squirrel knows its stuff.

So, last time I explained that Moten doesn’t have generic words for “good” and “bad”, and introduced vo|sa and slim as a less generic pair that can be used to replace them. It makes sense to carry on and introduce another pair of words that can be translated as “good” and “bad”, with a different specialisation.

Here, ufan and tlebe are the extremes in the range of objective quality. In other words, something is ufan when it can be objectively argued that it has excellent quality. Its opposite tlebe, on the other hand, denotes mediocrity, in the sense of a lack of objective quality.

By “objective quality”, I mean a characteristic that is not up for opinion. For instance, a manufactured object will be ufan if it’s a sturdy, good build, and made of quality materials. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the object will be fit for purpose (i.e. vo|sa) or even that the speaker has to actually like it. For instance, a dish will be ufan if it’s masterly cooked from quality ingredients. That doesn’t mean the speaker has to actually like the dish (those ingredients may not be to their liking), or even that the dish is fit for purpose (it might be a starter when the speaker was expecting dessert!). But as long as it can be objectively stated that something is excellent, it will be ufan.

By the way, ufan is too strong to be translatable as “good”. That’s why I translate it as “great” instead. If one wants to indicate that something is simply of good quality, rather than really excellent, one can use the diminutive ufsin instead, which reduces the meaning of ufan while still keeping it positive. Tlebe, on the other hand, works rather well as a translation of “bad”.

Also, while I’m saying that ufan and tlebe are to be used only when one is talking about objective quality, I’m not saying that Moten speakers never use them subjectively: Moten speakers are just as likely to lie, exaggerate, mislead or simply be incorrect as anyone else ;).

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Moten Words for the Day

vo|sa /vo̞t͡sa/, noun: “beauty, appropriateness; also as adj. beautiful, appropriate, good, fit for purpose”

slim /slim/, noun: “ugliness, inappropriateness; also as adj. ugly, inappropriate, unfit for purpose”

Not sure if this meme represents vo|sa or slim here.

A peculiarity of Moten is that it lacks truly generic words meaning “good” or “bad”. Instead, it has pairs of nouns that approximate those meanings, but always with a more restricted semantic range. Vo|sa and slim are one such pair.

Vo|sa and slim are basically the extremes in the range of appropriateness. That’s to say, vo|sa represents the quality of things that are good because they are fit for purpose, while slim represents the quality of things that are bad because they are unfit for purpose. The keyword here is purpose, by the way: vo|sa and slim are never used as absolute judgements of value, but only have a meaning when the speaker has some goal or need in mind, and judges the appropriateness of something based on the idea of fulfilling that goal.

For instance, a chair should be vo|sa when the goal is to sit down, but it’s not surprising if it’s actually slim when your goal is to reach the ceiling to change a lightbulb! And a chair that is slim when your goal is to sit down is basically an uncomfortable chair that misses its purpose. It may be of good quality, i.e. sturdy and made of pricey materials, and it may look nice, but if it doesn’t sit comfortably, it will still be slim.

Notice that I also translated vo|sa as “beauty” and slim as “ugliness”. That’s because for some objects, their purpose is simply to be aesthetically pleasing, so in that case “fitness for purpose” is equivalent to “beauty”. This is also true of ideas and concepts, which can be aesthetically pleasing even without looking at any kind of specific purpose, so vo|sa and slim can also be applied to abstractions in that sense.

Notice, however, that these nouns can never refer to the physical beauty of a person or animal. It seems Moten speakers rather balk at the idea that the entire purpose for the existence of a human being or animal could solely be to be aesthetically pleasing. Good for them!

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Moten Word for the Day

ivalstu|l /ivalstuʎ/, verb: “to dream, to fantasise (about)”

Recursive sleep. Mmm… I could do with some of that!

So, this will be the last verb based on istu|l for now. After so many examples, you should have got an idea of how productive this verb is :).

In terms of morphology, this verb is formed with va|le, a noun meaning “image”, “idea” or “fantasy”. Here again, va|le is in its short compound form val-. So “to dream” is “to summon an idea”.

In terms of semantics, it mainly means “to dream”, but can also mean “to fantasise” (or “to imagine”), when the fantasy in question is considered implausible or at least the speaker treats it that way. When someone fantasises about things that are plausible, in Moten one will use the verb ivalpinasi instead, which is also a compound with va|le, but in this case with the verb ipinasi: “to feel, to look”, a verb that is worth an entry in this series all for itself, so I will not discuss it further for now ;).

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Moten Word for the Day

ikulstu|l /ikulstuʎ/, verb: “to create a language, to conlang”

It only gets worse with age…

So, a conlang having a word for conlanging. So meta! ;)

Seriously, this verb is simply formed by adding ku|lu: “language, tongue” to istu|l, making conlanging literally “to summon a language” (more probably, it’s some kind of portmanteau between ku|lu and idatistu|l: “to invent”, or at least it was coined based on that verb). Notice that ku|lu in this compound comes out as kul-. It’s what I call the “short compound form”. Stems can form compounds in both full form and short compound form, although it’s usually not predictable which form will be preferred.

Two interesting facts about ikulstu|l:

• it’s the base word for referring to conlanging. Other words (such as kulstuluz: “conlang”, kulstulbel: “conlanging” and kulstulnon: “conlanger”) are derived from it. It’s quite common in Moten for the base word that refers to some concept to actually be a verb, and other words, including nouns, to be derived from it. That’s unlike English, where conceptual base words tend to be nouns.
• It’s strictly a transitive verb, taking as object the language being created (or its name at least). That’s why the form kulstuluz, which is actually the participle of the verb, can take on the meaning “conlang”: the participle when used as a noun usually refers to the object of the verb. In fact, even when the object is not mentioned in a sentence, it will be implied (that’s pro-drop for you! :) ). It is possible, however, to remove the object entirely from the equation (i.e. if you want to say that you are conlanging in general, without any reference to which conlang you are working on), by putting the verb in the middle voice, a very common way in Moten to turn transitive verbs into generic intransitive ones.

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Moten Words for the Day

idatistu|l /idatistuʎ/, verb: “to make up, to think up, to create, to invent”

ipistu|l /ipistuʎ/, verb: “to build, to construct, to create, to invent”

In this case, created awesomeness! :P

Today, two verbs based on istu|l instead of one! And all because they are similar in meaning and form a natural group :).

In Moten, there’s not a single word for “thing”. Rather, Moten works similarly to Japanese by separating things into “concrete things” (mono in Japanese, ipi in Moten) and “abstract things (koto in Japanese, dati in Moten). Basically, ipi means “thing, object, tool, machine”, while dati means “thing, concept, way, manner”. And when combined with istu|l, they form two different verbs both meaning basically “to create” or “to invent”, with ipistu|l focussed on the creation of concrete things (hence “to build”) and idatistu|l focussed on the creation of abstract things (hence “to think up”).

So “to invent” in Moten is literally “to summon a thing” :).

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Moten Word for the Day

ibivostu|l /ibivo̞stuʎ/, verb: “to count, to measure”

I kept getting memes about the wrong kind of “count” (and most measuring memes were NSFW ;) ).

This time, we have istu|l added to the noun bivo: “quantity, number”. It means “to count” when referring to discrete items, and “to measure” when referring to continuous ones (which is in line with bivo's main sense of “quantity”). Here again, istu|l is mostly a semantically bleached quasi-suffix here, although the idea that “to count” translates as “to summon a number” is not that far-fetched :).

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Moten Word for the Day

ipa|nastu|l /ipaɲastuʎ/, verb: “to give birth to (s.o.)”

I actually did, until I decided to stop caring. Long story.

In any case, here we have a compound of istu|l with the noun pa|na: “birth”. It’s getting a bit more difficult to argue that istu|l still has its main meaning intact here (“to give birth” as “to summon birth”? Can work, but is a bit weird). It’s more a semantically bleached quasi-suffix used to form a verb out of a noun (as I mentioned before, Moten stems are usually stuck in a single part of speech, unlike say English stems which are happy to be verbed and nouned freely).

One thing I need to mention is that ipa|nastu|l is the standard verb used to refer to someone’s birth. But it focusses on the mother’s action, unlike the English “to be born”, which focusses on the child. So if you want to say that you were born on the 25th of March, you actually have to say in Moten that someone gave birth to you on that date. Since Moten is aggressively pro-drop, you don’t have to specify a subject at all, but it’s still considered present. The expression looks like this:

Gdan zoba|saj (opa) egevel|ziza ipa|nastu|l etok.

Literally: “gave birth to me on March 25th” (the word in parentheses is opa: “and”, which is optionally present between the name of the month and the name of the day).

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Moten Word for the Day

ipenlastu|l /ipe̞nlastuʎ/, verb: “to invite; to ask out”

And then? Looks to me that this plan hasn’t been thought out thoroughly enough ;).

Once again we are looking at a verb-verb compound, this time with istu|l compounded with ipenlaj: “to wait for; to expect”. In other words, that verb means literally “to summon and wait”, which is pretty much what inviting people is about (I always get nervous waiting for people to show up, and constantly worrying they won’t actually bother…).

So far, all the compounds I’ve shown “make sense”, i.e. in those compounds istu|l is used in a way that is semantically meaningful. In the next compounds though, it will only be used as a sort of “verbal carrier”, i.e. a semantically bleached suffix there to ensure the resulting word is a verb. So expect a bit more variety in the next words for the day! :)

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Moten Word for the Day

ipe|lastu|l /ipe̞ʎastuʎ/, verb: “to show; to reveal”

Yeah, couldn’t find anything better. Vepe|ne ! ;)

As promised, this one is slightly more interesting than the previous compound. First, it is a verb-verb compound, something that speakers of European languages won’t be very familiar with. It’s also a dvandva compound, i.e. a compound where both elements are at the same level and are connected with a notional “and”.

It is formed by adding ipe|laj: “to see, to watch” to istu|l. The resulting verb ipe|lastu|l literally means “to summon and see”, which is basically what “showing” or “revealing” is (calling someone so that they can see something :) ).

Verb-verb compounds are common in Moten, so don’t be surprised if you see a few more appearing in this series, or even afterwards ;).

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Moten Word for the Day

imikostu|l /imiko̞stuʎ/, verb: “to phone, to call on the phone”

I did warn you! Can’t get enough of the calling dog ;).

When looking at compounds of istu|l, imikostu|l is probably the most boring one. It’s formed by compounding istu|l with miko: “remoteness, long distance, far”, i.e. “to call from afar”.

The main reason why it’s so boring is that istu|l basically keeps its meaning in this compound, making imikostu|l just a subset of istu|l. And indeed, just like in English one can simply say that they “called” someone and people will understand that they meant “by phone”, in Moten it’s common to simply use the verb istu|l when one actually means imikostu|l.

Don’t worry though, I promise the next compounds will be more interesting to look at :).

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Moten Word for the Day

istu|l /istuʎ/, verb: “to summon, to call; to bring along”

I can’t get enough of the calling dog :P.

Here we have a very common Moten verb. On its own, it’s nothing special, and its two main meanings (“to call” and “to summon”) are rather standard. It also means “to bring (someone) along”, which sounds a bit weirder but is really just a straightforward extension of the “to summon” meaning.

However, istu|l is mostly common in Moten because of its very frequent use to form compound verbs based on nouns or other verbs. Used in this way, it’s nearly ubiquitous, similarly to how suru (“to do”) is used in Japanese. And to show the wide range of verbs that can be created using istu|l, I will devote the next few words for the day to it :). I hope you’ll enjoy them!

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Moten Word for the Day

badi /badi/, noun: “dog”

My desktop background (half of the year in any case. I’ve got an alternative for the winter months ;) ).

I can’t believe I haven’t done that word yet!

Anyway, it’s the generic word for “dog”. It doesn’t specify nor imply gender in any way.

And yes, this word comes from my dog’s name, Buddy :).

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Moten Word for the Day

mejto /me̞jto̞/, interjection: “hello, hi”

Dogs and conlanging, the two main themes of this blog in one single post. My life is complete now ;).

Anyway, mejto is the most basic way to greet people in Moten. It’s neutral and can be used in all situations unless you want to be very polite, it’s symmetrical and you can just answer someone using it by repeating it back to them, and it’s usable in all situations, whether face to face, on the phone or through written text.

In terms of etymology, it seems pretty clear that it’s related to the verb imeti: “to greet (someone)” (especially when you remember that the root of this verb is met, with i-…-i being a circumfix marking the infinitive). The exact nature of the relationship is unclear though, or at least, there’s no productive derivational pattern in Moten that could explain the form mejto. There is, however, another interjection that seems to have arisen much the same way: the word davi|zo means “thank you” in Moten, and is obviously related to the verb idavi|zi: “to be happy with, to thank”. Both mejto and davi|zo seem to be derived from their respective verbs in the same way: an infix -i- after the last vowel of the stem (usual phonotactic rules in Moten easily explain why that infix ends up as -j- in mejto and disappears next to the i of the davi|z stem), along with a suffix -o (Moten productively marks case with the combination of an infix and a suffix, so it’s pretty much standard fare for the language). This probably used to be a productive pattern in Moten, but as the language changed it stopped being used and the two words mejto and davi|zo got fossilised as interjections.

As to the original meaning of the -i-…-o form, my bet is that it must have been some kind of hortative. It’s probable that in the past, verbs in Moten had more finite forms than they have now, and this might simply have been one of them. So the original meaning of mejto may have been “let (me) greet (you)”. An alternative explanation is that it may have been an optative (“(I) wish to greet (you)”). Both are possible, and without more evidence it’s impossible to rule one out.

One bit of evidence that both mejto and davi|zo probably started as finite verb forms is that even today they can take adverbial phrases, and when they do those always appear in front of them (i.e. they take the typical final position verbs normally always take). One can for instance say (using a benefactive): |laba mejto: “hello to you!” or |laba davi|zo: “thank you”. It’s not definitive evidence (in particular, since imeti is a transitive verb with the person being greeted as the object, one would expect the expression *bdan mejto, with the pronoun ba: “you” in the accusative case, to be licit. Yet it’s not, at least not in Moten as it is currently spoken), but it is tantalising.

In any case, what you can take away from this particular word as a language creator is that even if you don’t create your language according to the historical method (i.e. derive it from a proto-language), you can “fake” historical depth in your naturalistic conlang by peppering it with recognisable but non-productive derivation patterns, that hint at a previous stage where the language was somewhat different. Do not overuse it though: if a pattern is really common, why should it ever stop being productive? But used sparingly and with care, it can really add depth and naturalness to your language.

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