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.

Questions?

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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…

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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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