Moten Word for the Day

mensin /me̞nsin/, noun: “cup; (outer) ear”

Eh… no, not like that ;).

Anyway, mensin is the diminutive form of menzola: “vase, jug”. It primarily refers to a small open container for liquids, i.e. a cup (not a glass though).

Probably through some kind of metaphorical extension, it has also come to be used to refer to the outer ear, i.e. what anatomists would call the pinna (or auricula). It doesn’t refer to the hearing organ itself, only to the visible part of the ear that projects outside of the head. In this sense, mensin is restricted to describing human ears. Animal ears are described using different words.

As a word, mensin is a typical case of what happens with derivations in human languages: however straightforward the derivation (here a simple diminutive), people will find a way to extend or change the meaning of the derived word in ways that couldn’t be expected just based on the meanings of the original word and of the derivation affix. So think about it when you create your conlang’s lexicon: it’s a great way to increase its vocabulary without having to agonise over yet another new root form :).

Questions?

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Moten Word for the Day

menzola /me̞nzo̞la/, noun: “jug, vase”

Basically any tall, open container, usually used to carry liquids, and/or things in liquids (like flowers). Moten doesn’t seem to make a distinction between vases, which usually have a wide open topside, and jugs, whose opening is usually narrow, and can be considered more on the side of the object rather than on top. For a Moten speaker, those are details and the same word works for both. As usual, context will generally disambiguate.

Okay, here’s a picture to illustrate (from now on I’ll try to illustrate my posts with pictures):

It’s relevant, the object on it could be considered both a vase or a jug depending on how you look at it! :)

Questions?

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Moten Word for the Day

imajtagej /imajtaɡe̞j/, verb: to love, to be romantically attracted to

I did liking last time, so let’s do loving now :).

As a verb, imajtagej works like “to love”: the subject does the loving, and the object is the person loved. It is strictly restricted to romantic love, so the object will normally always be a person (or you’ll get weird looks! ;) ). Also, it means it cannot be used to mark familial love (I’ll get to that in a future post). So it represents only a subset of what the English verb “to love” represents.

The noun itself is majta: “romantic love”. And since I know people are going to ask, “I love you” is imajtagde|n ito, pronounced [imajtagde̞ɲito̞]. Note that this is only the verb itself conjugated in the present imperfective. The arguments are unmarked, as Moten is aggressively pro-drop and omits anything that can be inferred from context.

Questions?

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Moten Words for the Day

Yeah, words, plural. These two verbs are best explained together, so you get two for the price of one today ;).

iteo|l /ite̞o̞ʎ/, verb: “to please, to like, to be fond of, to love”

igizej /iɡize̞j/, verb: “to please, to like, to enjoy, to love”

Both verbs will usually be translated as “to like” in English, but they have both their quirks:

• Both verbs have the opposite orientation from English “to like”, i.e. the subject of those verbs is the thing liked, while the object is the person doing the liking. It may sound weird, but that’s basically how the Spanish equivalent of “to like”: “gustar”, works (the French equivalent “plaire” works the same way).
• Depending on the nature of the subject (i.e. the thing liked), those two verbs represent different nuances of “liking”. And interestingly, it looks like their semantics criss-cross each other:
• Used with an animate subject (usually human, but animals are possible too), iteo|l refers to liking or loving as a friend, to enjoy someone’s company. But when used with inanimates (objects, concepts, events, activities, food, etc.), it takes on a stronger sense, one closer to “to be fond of”.
• Igizej works exactly the opposite way: when used with an inanimate subject, it indicates simple enjoyment, while when used with an animate subject, it denotes a strong, usually sexual, attraction to that person.

I know it’s a bit weird, but Moten is weird that way. Subject animacy is actually quite an important concept in the language, influencing the meaning of verbs or even whether certain verbs can be used at all with a specific subject, while being totally unmarked in any way.

Questions?

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