Thursday, September 14, 2000

New Language Project, 04.20.00.09.14.15.05

Malt§egj Project

An Exploratory Journal into the Creation of a Neo-Ancient Runic Tongue.

I've decided to start a new project from scratch here. This will be a bit like dlaci, but more free-form, with room for creativity over mathematics, but not bound to a language subgroup as are tsœxisca and latinova.

Prepositional suffixes. I got this idea indirectly from Tolkein, not because of something he created but rather because i misread a little runic dwarf tablet, and thought "wow, that's cool," before i realized that i was reading it wrong. I'll present a list of the endings i've created here with a cross-reference in german, french, and esperanto for more specific accuracy.

about über de pri/koncerne -eloi
after nach après post -av
around um à l'entour de ĉircaû -eð
before bevor avant antaû -om
before vor devant antaû -ið
behind hinter derrière post, malantaû -it
for für pour pro, por -ic
in in dans, en en -um
next to neben près de apud -ili
of von de de -ul
on auf sur sur -ap
on an sur al, apud -alh
out of aus au dehors el -ut
over über au dessus super -em
to zu à al -at
under unter au dessous sub -iþ
until bis jusqu'à ĝis -eci
with mit avec kun -oc
without ohne sans sen -alm


This list is of course merely preliminary, and may and most likely will be changed many times, but this is just an idea for now. Prepositions will be added to the end of the word they modify, as in chinese or case endings in latin.

E.g., "The book is on the table"
"Klagul ec teflðapul"

Just in translating that last sentence, numerous chapters have been added to this log. Foremost is the definite article, which is the suffix –ul, and suffixed prepositions precede it. Why? Because i just said so. –apul sounds infinitely better than –ulap, don't you think? In the case of the phrase "of the," –ul will be used twice, only because i happen rather to like it. It has a lovely rolling sound, i think. (E.g. "of the table" "teflðulul")

New Words so far:

klagbook
-ulthe
ecis (I don't want to start thinking about verbs yet. I like it for now.)
teflðutable

I just decided that the word for table is teflðu, rather than just teflð, which would be monstrously difficult to pronounce, so henceforth, when a vowel ends in a noun, the noun will be supplanted by the adjoining suffix. (It's already hard enough to pronounce if you don't know that the l is broad.)

I'm going to be keeping a lexicon as i write this, because as i've already found with every other language i've ever worked on, if you don't keep up with it from the start it will quickly become a near-impossible task.

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