Vocabruary 12-13 - relational words

Bro is my favourite preposition in Europic. All prepositions are categorized as a sub-type of adverb, and they (mostly) consist of a single CV or CCV syllable. So it really was a moral imperative to make bro a specialized preposition meaning ‘related to’ or ‘associated with’.

I already briefly mentioned the ‑la suffix a few days ago bro the word katri-la ‘strange’, but I should elaborate that ‑la is a sort of “specialty” affix, along with its nominal counterpart ‑lu. The affix ‑la converts a word into an adjective, while ‑lu creates a noun. Normally, this is done by either changing the final vowel to ‑a or ‑u (e.g. wecku ‘poison’ ↔ wecka ‘poisonous’) or adding an adjectival suffix like ‑alya ‘having a tendency towards’ or ‑osa ‘‑ful’ or ‑eca ‘-like’, or adding a nominalizing suffix like ‑itu ‘‑ity, ‑ness’, but these only apply to standard verbs, adjectives, and nouns: All other “oblique” parts of speech use ‑la and ‑lu for these purposes (e.g. bi ‘beside’ + ‑la → ‘adjacent’, bi + ‑lu → ‘side, flank’). (The original proposal for Europic even used ‑la to create possessive pronouns, like **mu-la ‘my’ instead of current ma, and ma-lu, while rarer, still means ‘mine’) Hence, bro ‘related to’ + ‑la → ‘related, associated’, while bro + ‑lu → ‘relationship, association’.

Another useful suffix often added to prepositions is ‑ke, which generally converts a preposition or other adverb to a conjunction, or converts a phrasal conjunction to a clausal one. (More about that another time, maybe.) It is also used to convert an interrogative correlative into a relative one, but that’s also for another time. In this case, it converts bro-la ‘related’ into a conjunction that basically means ‘relatedly’, but there isn’t a great direct English translation for all of its senses; for instance, another definition of bro-la is ‘respective’ or ‘in order’, hence bro-la-ke can also mean something like ‘respectively’. 

Vocabruary 08‒11 – strange and remarkable annoyances

Sorry for not keeping up with Vocabruary the last few days – there’s a lot going on. Mostly good stuff (inventing a new conlang, getting some paid consulting work), but also some less fun things (yes, I used fun as an adjective. I won’t put up with that insufferable prescriptivist nonsense anymore), like my washing machine exploding and then falling on my arse in the snow… twice. But I guess it’s nice that we’re finally getting a proper winter in Nova Scotia.

For the first two words, I thought it was important to have a distinction between ‘strange: unusual’ and ‘strange: weird’. Katri-la is also a Classical calque which bumps up against a few other terms almost problematically enough to give it a miss, but that’s where the fun part of language grows: In addition to ‘strange’, katri-la is also a direct calque for ‘extraneous’, and its non-calque form means ‘outward-moving’.

Skervatu is a useful little word that is actually kind of a lacuna in English. In Europic, the suffix ‑atu is always a countable noun, while ‑acu is an abstraction, so skervatu translates ‘bother’ or ‘annoyance’ in the sense of a specific noun – “the result or product of annoying” – while skervacu translates the same words in the sense of a deverbal noun – “the act of annoying.”

There is nothing remarkable about the last slide, but it should be noted that a direct homograph, remarkable, could actually have two separate meanings: re-mark-abl-e ‘to be remarkable’ compared to re-marka-ble ‘to become noticeable again’. I hyphenate here for emphasis of the constituent parts, but the proper hyphenation would be re-markable versus re-marka-ble, respectively. This is why hyphens are important!

By the way, on a totally separate note,  I’ve made some revisions to the diachronic sequences leading from Iropich to Rupesh, and it’s getting… fihk. Hopefully in a good way that will line up better with Ox-Yew, with which is will be interacting heavily during the next phase of this language’s evolution. (Fihk also means ‘strange’ in Ox-Yew, but while it’s [fiçk] in Rupesh, in Ox-Yew it is pronounced [ʃiχˑ].)

Vocabruary 07 - le-va-bi-kinsa - preantepenultimate

The original deployment of Europic had a lot of hyphenation. A spelling reform in 2101 cut out about half of the hyphens, but a handful of words could not be reduced according to the new rules. This is one of them…

Note, too, that bi is also used in the example in the word bi-kapa, which is not a classical calque, but still carries the classical meaning of pen- here: kapa = primary → bi-kapa = “next-to-primary” = secondary.

Also, the preantepenultimate syllable of le-va-bi-kinsa does indeed have secondary stress, but, frustratingly, the primary stress of  “preantepenultimate” is antepenultimate.

(In case you’re curious: Yes, there is also a pro-le-va-bi-kinsa.)

Vocabruary 06 - ne-dapaspitu - inaccuracy

 Another Classical Calque (derivation) for you. I'm not feeling well today and I don't feel like writing much, so sorry you went through all the clicking for this.

Vocabruary 05 - de-grafacu - description

A lot of auxiliary languages, particularly those intended for use by the Western world, have a tendency to port classical vocabulary (those terms which most European languages have in common borrowed mainly from Latin and Greek) directly into the language with minimal modification to conform to phonological and morphological rules. Which, to be fair, is pretty much what most of the naturally-arising languages did as well. That’s how loanwords work.

Most of these came into the various languages as loanwords around the time of the Renaissance, save a few words which were descended directly from Latin and then borrowed from the Romance languages. For example, this is why we say comparison – from Old French comparison (which became modern French comparaison) – instead of the direct Latin **comparation.)

Very early under the influence of the Roman Empire, however, it was common to calque the components of words instead – that is, to break the word down into its constituent morphemes and then translate the parts individually into the new language. This was particularly common among the Germanic languages, which is how we end up with some parallel terms like forgive and pardon (Proto-Germanic *fra+gebaną likely calqued from Latin per+dōnāre)

By the way, it is always worth noting that loanword is a calque of German Lehnwort, and calque is a loanword from French calque ‘copy’.

Europic doesn’t do loanwords well, but there is a set of rules for creating calques of these classical terms. Here are some examples just based on some common prefixes:

• da- a-, ad- (‘to, at’): da-tire ‘attract’, da-nunk-atu ‘announcement’
• de- de- (‘of, from; down’): de-cende ‘descend’, de-grad-acu ‘degradation’
• di- di-, dis-, dys- (‘apart’): di-skute ‘discuss’, di-romp-atu ‘disruption’
• ka- e-, ex- (‘out’): ka-spete ‘expect’, ka-tir-atu ‘extraction’
• me- con-, syn- (‘with, together’): me-klide ‘conclude’, me-sent-acu ‘sympathy’
• mi- inter- (‘between’): mi-verpe ‘interject’, mi-kepe ‘intercept’
• ne- in-, non- (‘un-, not’): ne-kont-abla ‘uncountable’, ne-kred-abla ‘incredible’
• no- in-, en- (‘in’): no-hale ‘inhale’, no-fer-atu ‘inference’
• pe- per- (‘by way of, for’): pe-gane ‘forgive’, pe-kepe ‘perceive’
• pro- pro- (‘forward, for’): pro-duk-acu ‘production’, pro-verpe ‘project’
• re- re- (‘back, again’): re-rul-acu ‘revolution’, re-plene ‘reply’
• so- sub-, hypo- (‘down, under’): so-plen-atu ‘supply’, so-swiv-anta ‘subsequent’
• to- contra-, anti- (‘against’): to-dike ‘contradict’, to-no-dik-acu ‘counter-indication’
• tra- tra-, trans- (‘through’): tra-fere ‘transfer’, tra-yite ‘transit’
• va- ante- (‘in front of’): go-va-bi-kinsa ‘preantepenultimate’, va-kombru ‘anteroom’

It is worth noting that a few of these calque elements, usually for recognition purposes, do not always line up exactly with their usual Europic meaning. The prefix de‑, for example, generally means ‘of’, but in calques it translates Latin de- which often has a meaning more like ‘down’, better translated as sotri. Similarly, pro- translates Latin pro-, while it would normally be better translated by vatri. This may also lead to doublets like de-cende ‘descend’ and sotre-cende ‘go down’, or me-no-kadatu ‘co-in-cidence’ and  me-sketcu ‘co-happening’.

Vocabruary 04 - nesombu - archipelago

There are a number of “grouping” affixes in Europic, which may or may not be mutually exclusive.

‑opr‑ most readily translates to ‘pair’, but it can also be used for small, set numbers of things that belong together. For example, vidopru ‘pair of eyes’ and mankopru ‘pair of hands’ seem straightforward enough, but vidopru can mean more than two eyes if the default number is higher, e.g. a spider’s vidopru is usually made up of eight individual vidu. Similarly, pristu ‘finger’ becomes pristopru, which isn’t two fingers, but the total sum of fingers on both hands. (This is a rare example where ‑opr‑ is a larger number than ‑evl‑, which is our next stop.)

‑evl‑ can usually be translated as a ‘set’ – it doesn’t represent a specific number, but the number is usually fixed and paucal. For example, as mentioned above, pristevlu is the set of fingers on one hand. Generally this means five, but sometimes the thumb is not counted for various contextual reasons, and not everyone has the same number even if they have a complete set.

-erd- is a ‘group’, usually low in number, but larger than ‑evl‑. This is the most common suffix for describing groups of animals, like polerdu ‘flock of chickens’, picerdu ‘school of fish’, or kaprerdu ‘herd of goats’. Europic absolutely does not indulge in the nonsense that English enjoys in naming groups of animals random ridiculous things. Unlike ‑evl‑, the number is not fixed, but the members of the group share some kind of cohesion to the unit and belong together. An orchestra is a djenterdu, for although it may have a fixed number, that number is a bit higher than what generally comprises a djentevlu.

‑omb‑ is a large group of non-specific number which may or may not be a cohesive unit. It may be translated as a ‘bunch’ or a ‘collection’. 

A good example to clarify all of these affixes is the word djentu ‘person’:

• A djentopru is a couple. Or maybe a triad. Probably not a polycule, though.
• A djentevlu is a team, often purposefully assembled for some purpose. A band is a djentevlu (specifically a muzorevlu), as is a committee or a sports team.
• A djenterdu is a group with some kind of common purpose or interest; perhaps a fandom, a gang of friends, the congregation of a church (cf. “flock”), or the attendees at a wedding.
• A djentombu is a crowd or multitude. It may contain any of the other groupings within it, but most of them probably don’t know each other, and they are assembled for a single purpose that unites them only temporarily. The audience of a play or the spectators at an event form a djentombu, as does a group of random bystanders and passers-by at a crime scene. To take it a step further, me-djentombu (a “together-crowd” – a large group of people who do have a specific common bond) is a ‘community’.

When a specific number of people must be specified, the structure changes. The usual way to construct this is to use the number itself with the suffix ‑ru ‘one, person’; for instance, duwa-ru is a pair or couple (synonymous with djentopru), triya-ru is a triad or threesome, tcera-ru is a quartet, and so on. The Académie Française of Ancient Earth was sometimes referred to in Europic as tcera-deka-ru ne-mortanta.

Anyway, here is today’s Vocabruary word:

Vocabruary 03 - yanoldu - calendar

This is a badly-coined word, at least for an auxiliary language. Good thing I don’t believe in auxiliary languages, right?

First of all, a proper auxlang would probably derive this from the most common word shared across the languages of its target population, like Esperanto kalendaro, Uropi kalendar, Volapük kaled, Sambahsa calendar, or Ido kalendario. Which, of course, is not how Europic works at all – quite the opposite, in fact. If there’s any way around it, the Europic word will not be similar to Esperanto, mostly out of spite.

Secondly, the derivation is a bit questionable. A “year-holder”? A container for years? That doesn’t even make sense. Moreover, that’s not really how the suffix ‑old‑ is supposed to work: It indicates a container which is designed to hold multiple instances of something. A calendar usually only holds a single year at a time, which is better described with ‑ild‑ (a holder for a single item, like noju ‘knife’ → nojildu ‘scabbard’, branku ‘arm’ → brankildu ‘sleeve’, or even veklu ‘vehicle’ → veklildu ‘parking space’). **Mesoldu – “month holder” – would make a lot more sense. Or **djoroldu. But nope!

To add to the implausibility of this term, the Rivarian Calendar wasn’t implemented until 2281, a couple of generations after anyone had stopped speaking Europic (the Rivarians spoke Vulgar European), so it seems an odd sort of sentence – a bit like writing about French grammar in Latin.

Vocabruary 02 - vina-kisu - vinegar

I don’t really have a theme for Vocabruary this year (particularly since it wasn’t invented until late last night), but there are a few translations I’ve been working on for the purpose of terrorizing the internet with random quotes and bits of text in various conlangs, so I’m just using words that come up in the course of those translations. Today I translated the line (from a poem): “His voice makes vinegar from wine.” The poem is referring to a deity, but I changed it around a bit so that it could be interpreted as an insult if read by someone who was determined to be insulted by something. 

There’s nothing particularly interesting about the word vina-kisu itself – and in case you’re wondering, Syd Chrysanthi, the in-world creator of Europic in the late 21st century, is me, and I did indeed start off with a discrete root for ‘vinegar’ before I decided I didn’t care that much, and the Me-metatu (the notorious and funless “Deployment Committee”) is jaded future me from this morning, removing anything vaguely enjoyable from the language – but the interesting thing here is actually the word blivede ‘to cause to become; to turn (something) into (something else)’, which is a ditransitive verb that’s actually the causative form of the inchoative verb. Blivede always takes a direct object (na) and an indirect object (da), so “blivede na X da Y” is your basic pattern for ‘turning X into Y’.

The original line from the poem has a different structure: “His voice makes vinegar from wine” translates more readily to something like Ra vlostu derte na vina-kisu fra vinu. Here, the verb is derte (the long form of de, the causative, i.e. ‘to make’) with the direct object being the vinegar rather than the wine, while the wine takes the preposition fra ‘from, out of’.

Vocabruary 01 - bata-lingwu - conlang

First post of 2025, which is hard to believe, considering it’s been the longest January on record.

After a break from the grind of Lexember, my friend Jake has invented Vocabruary, so I’m jumping back in to beef up some Europic now that it’s gone a bit public. As always, it’ll probably take me a day or six to get my formatting and the rhythm of the thing down, but I feel this is a strong start:

Lexember Day 31 - confront

This is an interesting example of a weird thing that happens to the Germanic geminate /rr/ cluster. You can see that it started out in Proto-Germanic as /rn/, which was then assimilated to /rr/ in Gothic. Now, if Griutungi had had ‑j‑ in the stem (**storrjan), it would have been degeminated to **storjan and nothing particularly interesting would have happened, so the addition of J must have happened after 700ᴀᴅ, when geminate intervocalic R was degeminated through metathesis, giving us *stroran, and before 800ᴀᴅ when said ‑j‑ would have caused I/J umlaut, giving us Old Valthungian *strørjan (which would likely have been spelt ⟨streorjan⟩). Later, a little before 1200ᴀᴅ, two instances of R within a single syllable of each other causes dissimilation. Usually the first R would change to L, but in cases where this is phonotactically impossible (/stl/ is not a valid sequence in this stage of the language), the second changes instead, giving us *strøljən and eventually Middle Valthungian strœljen.

It’s been a great Lexember this year, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing everyone’s lexica grow on Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, and various other corners of the internet. I’ve also enjoyed spending some mental time muddling over some conundra that have bothered me for a while, and while I still haven’t solved all of my “L-Problems,” I’ve solved many of them and I have a plan to knock out the rest in the new year. Happy New Year—I hope 2025 is less bad than I think it’s going to be!

Lexember Day 30 - crunchy

Something weird happened to a lot of Valthungian nouns and adjectives starting around 600ᴀᴅ. (Well, at this time they weren’t so much Valthungian as maybe late Griutungi or pre-Old Valthungian.) Nouns and adjectives ending in voiced stops (that is, B, D, and G) went through some linguistic gymnastics, beginning with a series of voicing changes. Final ‑b(s) and ‑d(s) became ‑b(z) and ‑d(z), and eventually devoiced again to ‑f(s) and ‑þ(s), respectively. (E.g. halbs ‘half’ → halbz → halfs → haufs; bards ‘beard’ → bardz → barþs → braþs.) Final ‑gs, however, voiced to ‑gz, but didn’t devoice to **‑hs. This resulted in an awkward voiced ending that would eventually become /ʥ/ (e.g. dags ‘day’ → dagz → dagž → daǧ). 

This unaesthetic combination caused an avoidance of that particular combination in many words, especially in adjectives ending with the Germanic *‑Vgaz ending (cognate to English ‑y, German ‑ig, and Latin ‑icus), and it became common to replace this ending with its Latin counterpart, ‑icus (→ ‑ikus, e.g. maht-īgs ‘powerful’ → meaht-ikus → mǣtikus), or to convert it to a “long j-stem,” resulting in ‑agis or ‑ugis (e.g. manags ‘many’ → managis ‘crowded’ or grēdags ‘hungry’ → grēðugis).

By the way, something similar may have happened around late Middle English in verbs ending in -ȝen, whereby a number of very cromulent Old English verbs (stīgan, migan, hnigan, sigan, wigan) vanished from the language, leaving only stray archaic fragments like stile and sie.

In any case, some nouns and adjectives did their own weird things, like borrowing Latin ‑alis (e.g. unags ‘fearless’ → unagalis) or, in the case of today’s word, Latin ‑ceus.

Lexember Day 29 - silver, money

From afar it appears that some of the diachronic map is out of sequence; in particular, the Old Valthungian spelling of sivbvr looks like it ought to be representative of the earlier form shown at 700ᴀᴅ, and the Middle Valthungian spelling of the same looks more like the version from 950ᴀᴅ. That’s just how spelling convention works, though. Old Valthungian still spelled /ju/ as ⟨iv⟩ held over from an earlier diphthong /iu/, and Middle Valthungian still retained the “Palatalizing J” after all of the palatal consonants.

Lexember Day 28 - anvil

I have a migraine, so I don’t have anything interesting to say today. Sorry.