Haotyetpi Language

Welcome to the static page devoted to the Haotyétpi language! I use this page to list all posts I made about Haotyétpi, in order of publication. Seasoned readers can use it as a reference, and it's the perfect place for new readers to start learning about this interesting language and the fictional people who speak it.

Yes, "fictional". As you can expect if you know me a little, Haotyétpi is a conlang, i.e. a constructed language. It is not a natural language spoken natively by a group of people anywhere on Earth. Instead, it's a creation I made from scratch, spoken by the people of a fictive nation that exist purely to give this language someone to speak it. To be perfectly clear, Haotyétpi is an artistic language, i.e. one created purely for aesthetic pleasure, my own first, and hopefully yours as well. It's just a hobby: I don't have any grand scheme for it. My only goal when creating Haotyétpi was to let my creative juices flow again, after working too long on Moten had resulted in my brain pipes getting clogged (to stretch the metaphor close to the breaking point). Unlike Moten, it's a true fictional language: I am developing a conculture along with the language, although I'm not planning on using it for any other goal than building the language itself. It's still basically just an excuse for me to develop Haotyétpi as I see fit. In any case, Haotyétpi is a true language, in the sense that it's much more than a haphazard collection of words. It has a developed phonology, grammar and vocabulary. And while it is still very much in development, it has the potential to become a fully-fledged language capable of the same expressiveness as any other language, natural or constructed.

Background Information

Within the fictional world where Haotyétpi is spoken (of which I know little except that it is probably some kind of parallel Earth), it is the native language of the Sók am Tené or Mountain Folk, an ethnic minority living mainly in a mountainous area of the country of Mengō, whose majority group calls themselves the Mengāzen (I will omit the macrons from now on, to simplify typing). The relationship between the Mountain Folk and the Mengazen wasn't always amicable, and after centuries of war, followed by oppression of the Mountain Folk by the victorious Mengazen, then mandatory assimilation to the Mengazu culture (which was hardly any better than outright oppression), the Mountain Folk finally gained a measure of autonomy within the country (although with a far smaller territory than they originally had, historically speaking). Despite the oppression they were subject to, the Mountain Folk managed to keep their culture and language alive (although barely so: many of the more peripheral historical dialects of Haotyétpi are dead), and since they obtained autonomy, both have made a jump-start. Especially Haotyétpi, which was once very endangered, is growing again in number of speakers, with Haotyétpi-speaking households where children learn that language first. Still, basically all Haotyétpi speakers alive are at least bilingual in Haotyétpi and Mengazu, and that has had an influence on the modern form of the language.

Nonetheless, the Mountain Folk are proud of their culture and their language. They consider it a central part of their identity and teach it to their children. Primary and secondary schools there teach primarily in Haotyétpi. The Mountain Folk have also managed to negotiate a form of autonomy that allows them to use Haotyétpi even in their dealings with the government (up to a certain point), and their language has sparked the interest of many of that world's linguists, within Mengo, but also internationally. The future looks bright for Haotyétpi and its speakers.

The rest of this page is a list of links to what I've written so far about the Haotyétpi language. The posts are ordered in order of creation. I've also added next to each link a short abstract of the contents of the post, so that people using this page as a reference can find what they are looking for more easily, as well as a word count, so that people have an idea of the size of each post.

I will try and update this page regularly as I publish more posts about Haotyétpi. So don't hesitate to come back regularly! Also, don't hesitate to comment or ask questions. I strive to make future posts accessible and easy to read, so reader feedback is very welcome.

List of Posts

Fifth Lexember Month: for Something Completely Different, a Month of Haotyétpi Words (1504 words)

A compilation of the words I created for the fifth Lexember event, December 2015, the first time I participated in this event with Haotyétpi.

Sixth Lexember Month: Another Month of Haotyétpi Words (735 words)

A compilation of the words I created for the sixth Lexember event, December 2016, the second time I participated in this event with Haotyétpi.

Other Documents

Right now, the main reference for the Haotyétpi language is the Description of Haotyétpi I uploaded on Google Drive. Clicking on the link will send you to the Google Drive viewer, but from there you can also download the document itself, which is a PDF file. I regularly update this document, so do come back regularly to find new information. I will eventually start working on a separate Haotyétpi dictionary, but for now this document is also the only complete and up-to-date list of Haotyétpi vocabulary.

Notice that one thing that document lacks is examples, especially ones with full interlinear glosses. I will eventually add them, but I want the language to have truly stabilised first, and to have more vocabulary so I can put in more varied examples. However, if you cannot wait, I have a small PDF document uploaded on Google Drive which contains all the example sentences I've ever written in Haotyétpi, whether for Lexember entries or otherwise. All example sentences in that document are also fully glossed, using the Leipzig glossing rules. Notice, however, that it's not really meant to be a showcase document. Rather, it's a working document where I gather all the Haotyétpi example sentences I've ever written, so I don't forget about them. Don't expect anything fancy like explanations for the constructions used in the various sentences (you'll need the check the grammar description for that). Still, it may interest some people, so I made it public.