Malt§egj Project 04.20.00.12.08.15.25

I have decided to make a small reform in the orthography again, and this will affect the runes (if and when i finally create some) as well as the latin transliterations. It is becoming increasingly difficult at times to relate where the accent should fall on certain words, and, although i know where it should fall in my head, i need a way to express that. Henceforth, the main vowel of the accented syllable will be marked by a circumflex, and any other prominent (particularly non-iambic) syllables will be marked with an acute accent. Oh, hell, lets make it interesting. If the secondary syllable comes before the main syllable, it will be marked as acute; if it comes after, it will be grave. Therefore, words like "nahadberi§" would become "nahádberî§." The secondary syllable becomes important when a word is non-iambic, such as in the word "nahádâpten."

Hmmm...as lovely as that all is, it's not going to be totally possible until i create the runes, since there is no way in this font to put a circumflex over an å. How about for now using an acute accent for the primarily accented syllable, and a grave accent for the secondary? We'll worry about making it pretty later. Besides, crǻga doesn't look that bad, actually.

Malt§egj Project 04.20.00.12.08.12.00

Mað is mother, since pað is father. It seemed only fair. Those seem to be words that are practically universal in nature; the word mother almost always contains a ma- while father almost always has some sort of bilabial or labiodental quality about it. (c.f. mother, Mutter, moder, madre, 媽媽, father, fǫðr, fader, Vatter, padre, 爸爸, and so on.)

Let's try another verse.

Ec man iǫtna, ár um borna
þá er forðom mic fœdda hǫfðo;
nío man ec heima, nío ívidi,
miǫtvið mœran fyr mold neðan.

New words we need:

giant	grålaga
year	avil
ago	-ið benþ
give birth	vercþid
there	ðraga
nine	nen
tree	victro
renowned	grava
ground	mo§ara

Sometimes it frightens me, the things that spring forth unbidden from my slightly misshapen cranium.

Jåg glacsi acgrålagaðul, vercþidwac acavilið benþ
ðraga parþ dyd cwarþ vercþid jågað
nen margað jåg glacsi, nen iviði,
e grava victraðulo mo§ariþ.

Some grammar here: since i've used it three times now, i think the suffix -wac will signify a past participle when it is used adjectivally (since, of course, there is no other sort of past participle in malt§egj). Also, the word benþ. This doesn't quite equate to "ago" as such, but emphasizes the -ið and together the two imply "ago." The word for "there" (ðraga) you may notice corresponds with its interrogative "where" (mlaga). I've decided that the ml- that denotes an interrogative word may be replaced with ðr- to indicate "this" or "that," and i may further extrapolate other grammar from these words in the future. Hence, we have several new words to look at:

mlåc	which	➨	ðråc	that, that thing
mlaga	where	➨	ðraga	there, in that place
mlaih	how much/many	➨	ðraih	that much, that many
mleð	who	➨	ðreð	that person
mlimiem	why	➨	ðrimiem	for that reason, because
mloc	which	➨	ðroc	wait, where did this come from?
mlumwe	when	➨	ðrumwe	then, at that time
mlycþid	how	➨	ðrycþid	that way, in that manner

Well, okay, i didn't realize that i had a mlåc and a mloc. I think i'll be doing away with the mloc. But moving on, since bleg means not, i'm going to rob the bl- and use it to create still more words...

mlåc	which	➨	blåc	nothing
mlaga	where	➨	blaga	nowhere
mlaih	how much/many	➨	blaih	none
mleð	who	➨	bleð	noöne
mlimiem	why	➨	blimiem	for no reason
mlumwe	when	➨	blumwe	never
mlycþid	how	➨	blycþid	in no way

I shall digress here for now, because it's going to take me a while to add these all to the lexicon.

I've come to this decision: diphthongs are fine and dandy, but in order to distinguish them from two distinct syllabic sounds, i and u when used in a diphthong will always become y and w, respectively. I've gone back and forth on this orthography a bit, but now as official decree of the High Council of Malt§egjaran, so mote it be. Anyway, back to updating the lexicon...

Malt§egj Project 04.20.00.12.07.13.25

Well, the PDFification of the first two sections is complete. Well, it's nice to know that that works, anyway. I hate the Arial Unicode MS font, but she serves me well, so i shouldn't care if she's ugly. I made a few corrections to the lexicon. There were two places where i still had the letter k in place of c, and i also did away with the aa and replaced it with å, since it makes the orthography a little more standard. The first two parts of the malt§egj project have been sent off and subjected to public inquiry, so now i wait with bated breath for public response thereunto. In the meantime, i need a new direction to go with the language; another facet of its structure that i haven't yet explored. I suppose simple is the way to go now, for although i can put together grand constructions like "acdje§tiniulo" (with those rulers, or, literally, plural-rule-person-with-those), it occurs to me i am lacking certain key elements like, for example, "hello."

Oh. Before i forget, d'après a strange conversation the other night during Xena, the word for "love" is now "ðblewcþ."

Okay, i guess we'll go traditional with greetings:

Bjole'temet	good morning
Bjolet bara	good afternoon
Bjolet apten	good evening
Bjolet beri§	good night
Bjolet nad	good day

Nothing really new there, just recycled. The only new word is:

nad

day

Mlycþid melem ec?	How are you?
Bjolet, cwestrioþ, e melem?	Fine, thanks, and you?
Jåg blynþ Brauð.	My name is Brauð
Mlåcam melem blynþ?	What is your name?
Parþ blynwac jågað Aðramul.	They call me Aðramul.

New words:

cwestrioþ	thanks (c.f. cwestriem)
blynþ	to be named
blynwac	to call

I'm starting to realize that i have about all the grammar i need. My main lack at the moment is vocabulary. It's that time again to find something to translate. The vǫluspá worked well the last time around; it could work again. Only from the beginning this time, and with a slightly different approach:

Hlióðs bið ec helgar kindir,
meiri oc minni, mǫgo Heimdalar.
vildo at ec, Valfǫðr, vel fyrtelia
vorn spiǫl fira, þau er fremst um man.

New words we'll need to translate this passage: silence, child, big, small, son, battle-slain, father, old, tales, men, early, & remember. And he did reach into his magic bag and pull out words of speech, and yea he saw that they were good, for all that Syd said was sacred. So mote it be:

silence	aþ
child	rata
big	borga
small	pelci
son/daughter	ratacaþ
battle	blocþ
slay	clågeh
father	pað
old	velc
story	gu§e
man	hanac
early	temtið
most, -est	naran-
remember	glacsi

So Spake Syd. Now let's try this...

Aþ, cwestriem, bjolet acrata,
borga e pelci, ratacaþ Heimdalu
Parþ dyd gjot cleg jåg, blocþumul-clågehnacu pað, ðac melemat
velc gu§ul achanacu, calc ec narantemtið calcað jåg glacsi.

Well, that was tiresome, but i did run across another grammar point. Comparitive and superlative adjectives. I think i am going to use prefixes for these (because let's face it--i'm getting a little too suffix-happy). Naran- is the prefix for "-est" or "most;" i suppose now i have to come up with some more...

palan-	least
pal-	less
nar-	more, -er
naran-	most, -est

Well, that's a good set of words for today. More to come.

[Editor's Notes]

This is the end of what i've been calling "Malt§egj Project Part I," as this is when I published the first PDF, "for posterity," (a.k.a. you), in order to insure that nothing went haywire in my random changing of fonts.  (The original word document at this point is quite unintelligible.)

Part II coming up...

Malt§egj Project 04.20.00.12.06.11.14

I've finally figured out the whole PDF thing; unfortunately that also meant getting rid of Times New Roman and changing everything over to Arial Unicode MS, which i think is a stupid looking font, but it has all the characters i need and doesn't seem to have the personality quirks of Times when i try converting it. Besides, this supports most of the characters i have been using without the need for different fonts. So here goes... I'll PDFify this one too and see how it goes with the malt§egj runes in there (even though i've decided firmly against using them by now).