Two Languages Needed for Graphic Novel

Two Languages Needed for Graphic Novel:

Description Hal Flowers is looking for a conlang expert to create two languages for his first sci-fi graphic novel. The graphic novel itself is in early writing stages, and the author is planning o…

This looks like a great job offer! Don’t hesitate to apply!

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Moten Words for the Day

no|se /no̞t͡se̞/, noun: “brightness; also as adj. bright”

leksod /le̞kso̞d/, noun: “darkness; also as adj. dark”

Here again, two words that are best explained together.

Like many other abstract words, no|se and leksod can be used as adjectives as well as nouns. They are used strictly to refer to the physical phenomena of brightness and darkness, not for the metaphorical extensions that their English counterparts have.

More interestingly though, they are also used to refer to colours. And I don’t mean as some kind of modifier (as in English “bright/dark red”), but as basic colour terms. What’s happening here is that Moten, unlike most, if not all, the languages you are probably familiar with, lacks basic words referring to specific colours, i.e. words like red, blue, green or yellow. Instead, it uses no|se and leksod to cover the entire spectrum.

Besides indicating brightness, no|se refers to colours usually identified as “light” (i.e. white or yellow) or “warm” (like orange and red). In the same way, leksod refers not only to darkness, but also to “dark” colours (like black and brown) or “cold” colours (like blue and green). Interestingly, the separation by hue is almost absolute: even light blue (as in the colour of a cloudless afternoon sky) will be called leksod in Moten, despite people probably finding a cloudless afternoon sky rather bright!

But unless you live a very monochrome life, you’ll probably have to be able to distinguish more than two colours (for instance two objects whose only distinguishing features are their respectively blue and green colours), and to name them accordingly. How do Moten speakers do that? That’s what I will explain in the next Word for the Day post :).

Questions?

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Moten Word for the Day

|lamensin /ʎame̞nsin/, noun: “earring”

And now you see where the two previous words for the day were leading to: back to my earring posts! We’ve gone full circle! :P

|Lamensin is a typical example of Moten’s way to handle its paucity of derivational forms (besides the diminutive mentioned before and some suffixes used to form actor nouns, Moten has no derivational morphology whatsoever): taken literally, it’s actually an adverbial noun phrase meaning “for an ear”! (really, |la- is a benefactive prefix, which can be translated as “for”, “to” or “for the benefit of”)

What’s happening here is a phenomenon called surdéclinaison (to use a good English word ;) ), which is the ability for various inflected forms in Moten to be nominalised as is, i.e. to form new noun stems without having to receive an explicit nominalising affix, and take inflections again. It’s a feature that I stole from my beloved Basque language, which uses it to great profit, and in Moten it is commonly used where other languages would tend to use derivational morphology.

In the case of |lamensin, we have the noun mensin, here meaning “ear”, put in the benefactive “case”. When used with inanimate objects, the benefactive means something like “to improve on, to make better”. Clearly, Moten speakers seem to think jewels “improve on” the body parts they are worn on, and so the benefactive form of a body part came to be used as a name for the jewel worn on that body part. Other examples include |lapoma: “necklace” (from poma: “neck”) and |lajespoma: “bracelet” (from jespoma: “wrist”).

Questions?

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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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