04.20.01.08.31.12.26

A couple of thoughts here. Foremost being why am i sitting at home writing up linguistical ideas on my birthday instead of, like, having a life? That’s easy—because i’m a dork. Moving on, then, i had a couple of ideas about phrases and a little grammar.

Words containing prepositions, that is, nouns or pronouns to which prepositions are affixed, will no longer require the use of a verb. “The book is on the table,” can quite easily be expressed with “tέflðàp ul clag” or even “tέflðàp clag” if i do indeed decide to kill off the definite article, as i am seriously considering.

In fact, yes, let’s tangentially go there for a moment. I think it seems perfectly fair to dispose of the definite article altogether and use other demonstrative adjectives and numbers to indicate if necessary. “uli,” “ula,” and “ulot” will suffice quite nicely if an article is needed. So consider “ul” to be a thing of the past, although now that opens us up stylistically to the use of the word “ul” as a contraction of any of the aforementioned three, or for use when no specific one of those is directly indicated, which is essence, i suppose, is the definite article anyway, so for now let’s just leave it at “the definite article exists, but is not necessary in most cases.” There, that was easy.

Anyway, back to prepositions not needing a verb, i would point out that although they no longer use “εc,” their tense can still be indicated with the use of “dyd,” “cwarþ,” “blai,” “lơ,” and “nag,” or combinations thereof. So to say “the book would have been on the table” it is now possible to say “dyd nag cwarþ tέflðàp clag.”

Finally, the other thought that was intruding my cluttered mind was that of certain phrases which seem to mutate in every language they encounter. You know, that old “i am hungry, i am cold, i am tired” category of idioms. You can find everything from “i am hungry” (English), to “i have hunger” (French, German), to “hunger is with me” (Welsh), and many more. In malt§έgj, this particular idiom will be prepositional in nature, something to the effect of “hunger/cold/tiredness is upon me.”

I am hungry - lauc jớgεm
Are you tired? - §lþ mέlεmὲm tarác?

I am... {	hot		heat	} ...is upon me. ⇒	faurx	} ...jớgεm.
	cold		cold		níli
	hungry		hunger		lauc
	thirsty		thirst		ðεwft
	tired		fatigue		tarác
	ashamed		shame		ðlεxt
	stupid		stupidity		dódup
	wet		wetness		úlac

04.20.01.08.31.12.26

I just noticed that there was a whole slew of words that i missed in the lexicon from part two of the project (04.20.00.12.07.13.25). The following corrections have been made:

cwὲstrióþ	thank you
rac blynþ	to be named, to be called
blynþ	to call
rac	passive particle
aþ	silence
ráta	child
bórga	big
pέlci	small
rátacàþ	son/daughter
blocþ	battle
clớgεx	to slay, to kill
vεlc	old
gú§e	story, tale
hanác	man (i’ll consider in a moment how to reconcile this with lað)
tεmtið	early, long-ago
glácsi	remember

Well, first things first. I’ve added the particle rac to the list, which basically makes a verb into a passive adjective. (Could one say that this is a particle which passifies verbs?) I had previously used this as a suffix, but i would rather come up with a particle to keep words simple.

As far as the hanác/lað situation, henceforth hanác will be the noun and lað the pronoun.

Okay, moving on. A few new words i came up with.

patáx	to be able, can, could
ðrέpnid	to be allowed, may
na§	must, to be necessary
mέlεx	to be likely, probably
ðráupnir	to become
cwέgir	to believe
mwil	bread
-ála	between

Also, whilst i was exiled to the kitchen table for yet another round of computer D&D, i came up with numbers. Well, the basic ones anyway.

1	am	10	(am) sεþ
2	dai	11	(am) sεþ am
3	tran	12	(am) sεþ dai
4	jamp	20	dai acsέþ
5	frεm	30	tran acsέþ
6	§e	100	(am) sam
7	dan	200	dai acsám
8	rεlc	300	tran acsám
9	nen	1000	§εp

I haven’t come up with any beyond 1000 yet, but my intention is to change the standard format a little bit by having each approaching decimal proceed to one place before the next, instead of in threes as do in most languages. Perhaps that’s badly phrased, but i’m not quite sure of the proper terms when talking about numbers. That is to say, most languages go up through ten and a hundred and start over... hence ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million, ten million, hundred million, billion, ten billion, hundred billion, trillion... and so on. Malt§έgj will be unique in that each new number will proceed to the number before it, so... ten, hundred, ten hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, ten hundred thousand, million, ten million, hundred million, ten hundred million, thousand million, ten thousand million, hundred thousand million, ten hundred thousand million... A bit like binary, really, only with ten digits. Hence there’s a lovely little conservation of numbers which mathematicians and scientists are bound to love for discussing such eternally relevant subjects such as the mass of the sun in grams or the distance between earth and the most recently discovered quasar in millimetres or perhaps the number of electrons in your average can of Mountain Dew. I’ve drawn up a little chart, because some conversion is needed, but please forgive any errors in my standard nomenclature, because to be honest, after vigintillion i started making it up. I’ve also heard nonillion, nontillion, and novillion for 10³⁰. I’ve added some pointers to show just how astronomically big these numbers actually are.

[still preparing chart... please try again later]

I didn’t actually notice this until i was in the process of creating the above table, but it’s more like binary than i thought. Notice that each new number falls on a binary power of ten (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128...). From this, we can assume that “sextillion,” if we should ever need a number quite that large, would be 1 x 10²⁵⁶. Or, in very tiny numbers:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Septillion, it then follows, is 1 x 10⁵¹². I’m not going to write that out, however.

Well, that was fun, however useless it may have been. I just have this strange obsession to conserve numbers, like i’m going to run out of them one day if i don’t. It’s not so bad, though, since they gave me those nice purple pills to take with the green ones.

04.20.01.08.26.15.20

Thinking back on this new VSO thing i’ve got going on, i realize that the contraction “parεc” is no longer useful. Which means i can finally get rid of that obnoxious “parac”! Paj sounds a little nicer anyway. And this only having one pronoun for he and she is getting old. It seemed a noble idea at the time, but it isn’t terribly practical. So he can stay pul, it can be paj, and she is now pel. The pronoun “one” can be assimilated by the new word lað.

04.20.01.08.26.13.16

I’m just working on the lexicon a bit, and i think i’m going to switch ʒ back to j. Sure, it looks a little prettier, but j is easier and would keep me from having to realphabetize quite a bit. For the record, ε now comes before e alphabetically, and ơ comes just after o, so the new alphabetical order is:

a b c d ð ε e f g i j l m n o ơ p r s § t þ u v w x ÿ y z

(a b k d ð ε e f g i ʒ l m n o ɔ p r s ʃ t θ u v w χ ɪ y z)

04.20.01.08.25.21.37

Just a brief note (in pen, no less, since at the moment i am being deprived of my computer in favour of a dungeons and dragons game of which my roommate is fond) about a few new things i’ve thought of.

First of all, the word mó§ara (ground) never made it into the lexicon due to some oversight.  This has been (or rather, when i get back to my computer, will be) corrected.

Secondly, i wanted to expound somewhat on the idea of degrees of comparison of adjectives.  There are now six degrees, and they have an interesting little sentence structure.  These are represented by inserting interesting little adverbs in front of the adjective, which follows not the noun in question, but the nominative (usually) noun to which it is being compared.  These are a slight modification of the system i developed in the second part of the malt§έgʒ project in section 04.20.00.12.07.13.25.  They are:

Negative superlative	(least)	pálan
Negative comparative	(less)	pan
Positive	(-)	-
Equative	(as...as)	áman
Comparative	(more, -er)	nan
Superlative	(most, -est)	náran

Hence:

She was the prettiest of all her sisters.
Dyd εc pul pulu àcadína náran dið.
(did be she her sisters most pretty)

The nights are worse than the mornings.
Ec ul àcberí§ ul àctεmέt nan xrơx.
(are the nights the mornings more bad)

Noöne is as good as my mom.
Ec blεð ʒớgu máðra áman bʒólεt.
(is noöne my mother as good)

I am not as pretty as she.
Ec ʒơg pul lεxέt pan dið.
(am i she much less pretty)

He is the unluckiest man I have ever seen.
Ec pul ul lað pálan crơlx calcáð cwarþ εn culóm ʒơg.
(is he the man least lucky which have ever see i)

New Words

dið	pretty, beautiful
lað	man, person
εn	ever

04.20.01.08.25.16.24

Now, to continue.  Some new words for the lexicon.  I’m kiping these from my nifty little welsh dictionary, but i’m trying to avoid using the same meanings.  I’m just taking words and plugging them into definitions that suit them, or in some cases doing some free association.  I am going to start with words already extant in the main lexicon so the malt§égȡ column doesn’t look quite so barren.

again	εlέm
against	-arác
air	fálasà
almost	cwirþ
alone	amát
already	dýdu
always	gwéðul
amount	mára
answer	péxεd
any	ðέfni
arm	tεlp
ask	ðεlέx
at all	(blεg) parúc
away	nέt§ni
back	nem
bad	xrơx
barely	iláux

04.20.01.08.25.13.59

Malt§égj Revision I – Project III

Some aspects are getting a little too complicated and others are drastically oversimplified, and the language as a whole is losing a bit of the flair I set out to achieve to begin with. There are a few sounds i have to add and a few that have to be gotten rid of. The definite article and demonstrative pronouns have to either become separable, change form, or just shrivel up and blow away, because it seems redundant to have more than one suffix on a word. The language as a whole has gotten far too a priori to the point that it is difficult to expand the vocabulary. The entire point, however, is that the language be as a priori as possible, but i’m thinking i need to start stealing some words or at least some sounds, because just sitting there thinking up new and exciting words is too exhausting. The alphabet has to go, because as cute as it is, the original runes were far too un-malt§égj-looking (they had a sort of korean cuneiform feel to them), and the later accepted runes which i’ve been using for malt§égj for the last few months are just tacky and awkward and wrong. And that whole vowel diacritic thing, which i like in theory, is really obnoxious in practice. Some of the words that do exist are far too complicated, and i have to get over this predilection for putting as many consonants together as i can without the aid of a vowel. The actual sound i would like to hear from Malt§égj is somewhat akin to that of welsh, only without that dreadful ll sound they have, and with a little more regularity of y’s and u’s. Or perhaps a little like russian, only with a few more vowels and some simpler words. I’ve even thought of adding in mutations, but i need to simplify the language quite a bit before i start re-complicating it.

The best way i can think of to perform this revision is to start over at the beginning and weed out what i don’t want, change what i don’t like, and then add new concepts once i get a firm idea of what i actually have here.

So from the beginning...
As, ul cwarco...

In those words alone i’ve modified quite a bit. First of all, let’s try the definite article as separate words before the noun for the time being, while i decide if i want to keep them at all.

Articles

Articles precede the noun they modify, as do numerals and demonstrative adjectives. All other adjectives will follow the noun. Nice little switch there, eh?

ul	the (definite article)
am	a, an, one (indefinite article)
uli	this
ula	that (i didn’t like ulo)
ulot	the other (cf. aquello in spanish)

This will also help to standardize the relationship between these and words like calc and mlăc.

Going back a step further...

Orthography

The orthography of the malt§égj langauge has gotten totally out of hand. And then some! It’s just like Mr. Fiedler always said, “Simplify and clarify.” So let’s revisit the actual sounds we use and then think about how we want to represent them.

b	v	d	z	g	ʒ	ð	γ	voiced consonants
p	f	t	s	k	ʃ	θ	x	unvoiced consonants
m	n	l	r					nasals and liquids
a	ɔ	o	u	i	ε	ɪ		vowels
w	j	h						glides and aspirants

For the time being, until a really cool idea for an alphabet comes to me that isn’t farcically complicated or otherwise unmanageable, a simple latin orthography is going to have to do. Since the sounds depicted above are rather clinical-looking, the following will be our new orthography:

b	v	d	z	g	ʒ	ð	ɤ
p	f	t	s	c	§	þ	x
m	n	l	r
a	ơ	o	u	i	e	y	ε
w	j	h

That seems æsthetic enough for me for the moment. I probably won’t be using the ɤ or the h, since they were only add-ins to balance out my little aleph rune anyway, which has gone the way of the dodo. I’m not sure why i chose the ơ to replace the ɔ sound; i think it might be partly because i just happen to like it and partly because the unicode standard contains grave and acute accents for this character, which brings me to my next point.

One of the things about the former orthography that i particularly did like was the addition of acute and grave diacritics to indicate stress. And given the non-standard stress of the language, these become quite necessary elements for pronunciation. So that rule will continue: In words of more than one syllable, an acute accent will indicate the stress; in words of more than two syllables a grave accent will indicate a secondary stress unless the middle syllable of a trisyllabic word is primarily stressed.

I would also like to add another vowel, if i may. (Of course i may—it’s my bloody language; i’ll do with it as i please!) I would like a definite distinction between e and ε. So i suppose i’ll have to use ε for now, and if i can’t find a decent looking diacritic for it i’ll just have to create one! Generally speaking, however, an e appearing at the end of a word will keep the e sound, while most others, with a few exceptions, will be ε. I’m also toying with the idea of adding additional vowels for ə or ʌ, oe, and maybe ʉ, but all in good time. I am afraid they might detract from the desired sound of the language.

As far as adding the aleph character to unsupported vowels, as i already mentioned that is now a thing of the past. All characters will be supported on their own in a latin-based context anyway.

From these premises, i will rewrite the lexicon... again...

Malt§égʒ	English
-a	prp. to, towards, at
adína	n. sister
-að	prp. to, at (accusative preposition)
-alm	prp. without
-alx	prp. on, on the side of
am	adj. one, art. a, an
-ap	prp. on, on top of
apþán	v.t. to know
áptεn	n. evening
-arán	n. -ary, place
-av	prp. after
avíl	n. year
badʒ	v.t. to have
bará	n. afternoon
baracóþ	v.i. to collapse
bεrí§	n. night
bʒólεt	adj. good, holy
blơc	prn. nothing
blága	adv. nowhere
blai	v.i. to be doing (progressive particle)
blaix	adv. none
blεð	prn. noöne
blεg	itj. no, not
blεucþ	n. winter
blímiὲm	adv. for no reason
bliv	v.i. to think
blot	n. god
blúmwe	adv. never
blýcþid	adv. in no way
bocúra	adj. favourite
bul	v.t. to study
bvláca	n. chair, stool
calc	adj. which, that
cfidʒ	n. autumn, fall
clag	n. book
clágaran	n. library
clεg	cjt. that (subordinate conjunction)
crớga	adv. very
crơlx	n. luck
culm	v.t. to see
cúlui	adj. all
cwarc	n. beginning
cwarþ	prt. to have (perfect particle)
cwεlm	adj., n. true, truth
cwὲstriέm	itj. please
dʒε§t	n. rule
dʒέ§tin	n. ruler
dʒogó§	v.i. to ought, should
dyd	prt. did (past particle)
ðac	v.t. to say, to tell
ðblεucþ	n. love
ðblέucþin	n. lover
ðrơc	prn. that, that thing
ðrága	adv. there, in that place
ðraix	adv. that much, that many
ðrεð	prn. that person
ðrímiὲm	adv. for that reason, because
ðrúmwe	adv. then, at that time
ðrýcþid	adv. that way, in that manner
-e	prp. in
e	cjt. and
εc	v.i. to be
-éci	prp. until
-εð	prp. around, about
-έloi	prp. about, of
-εm	prp. over, above
fram	v.t. to steal
frans	n. france
fransuglớd	n. french
fránsu	adj. french
frεm	adj. five
gam	itj. yes
gapác	n. fire
ga§ág	n. people, race
gðrantþ	n. spring
gεlc	v.t. to give
gʒobʒ	n. summer
gʒot	v.t. to want
glớca	v.i. to hope
glơd	n. language
grớlaga	n. giant, etin
gráva	adj. renowned
guþέx	v.t. to like
-i	prp. for
-ið	prp. before
-id benþ	prp. ago
-íla	prp. small
-íli	prp. next to, beside
-it	prp. behind
-iþ	prp. under, beneath
ʒơg	prn. I
ʒalc	prn. we
lơ	v.i. should (subjunctive particle)
latínuglờd	n. latin
lεxέt	adj. much, many
mága	n. yeast
mal	cjt. but, however
mála	v.i. to sit (down)
málci	n. dwarf
malt§έgʒ	n. maltschegj language
márga	n. house
maxát	v.t. to make, to create
mέlεm	prn. you. Note: informal but acceptable in most situations.
mεlmíne	prn. You. Note: only used in very formal situations like mandarin 您.
mlơc	adj. which
mlága	adv. where
mlaix	adj. how much/many
mlεð	prn. who
mlímiὲm	adv. why
mlúmwe	adv. when
mlýcþid	adv. how
nad	n. day
nafí§	n. metal, steel
nag	v.i. will, shall (future particle)
narám	v.t. to write
naxád	n. end
naxád	v.t. to break
nen	adj. nine
-o	prp. from
-oc	prp. with
-om	prp. before, in front of
páðru	n. father
párac	prn. it
parþ	prn. they
pul	prn. he, she, one
rεb	cjt. but
rélεb	cjt. or
scrav	v.t. to do
sεm	adv. together
som	n. solstice/equinox
svarð	n. blood
§lþ	prt. whether, did...?, what, (Esp.) ĉu, (Mand.) 嗎 (interrogative particle)
tamέc	v.t. to need
tέflðu	n. table
tεmέt	n. morning
t§ơ§	v.i. to come
t§εcmádð	v.t. to bring
t§oc	v.i. to go
-u	prp. of
ul	art. the
úla	adj. that
úli	adj. this
úlot	adj. the other, over there, Sp. aquello
-ut	prp. out, out of
vέrcþid	v.t. to give birth to, to beget
vέrcþidrac	adj. born
víctro	n. tree
vi§iví§i	cjt. maybe
vlơd	v.i. to be willing, would
xram	adv. tomorrow
yácni	adj. black

All in all not a bad transition, and much more reader-friendly!
The next revision i would like to make is with word order. Again i’m leaning toward the celtic languages here, although that is not my intention. I would like to instate a strict VSO order on this language. Or even VOS, as long as the verb is at the beginning. That way i can still have my nice little –a. ending for direct objects, but i really do like the feel of a VSO sentence. At first i was turned off by this trait in a language because it made me think of Yoda, but now i rather like it. I think this may actually be a subconscious lashing-out at german and all the hours i’ve spent reading on and on trying to find the end of the sentence just so i could find the verb and discover what was actually going on. I mean, seriously, folks, take the following sentence from Heinrich von Kleist:

In St. Jago, der Hauptstadt des Königreichs Chili, stand gerade an dem Augenblicke der großen Erderschütterung vom Jahre 1647, bei welcher viele tausend Menschen ihren Untergang fanden, ein junger, auf ein Verbrechen angeklagter Spanier, namens Jeronimo Rugera, an einem Pfeiler des Gefängnisses, in welches man ihn eingesperrt hatte, und wollte sich erhenken.

I mean, as far as cramming a lot of information into a simple sentence, Kleist was the master, but that’s just ridiculous. Note that i’ve highlighted the subject and primary verbs of the sentence, and they’re not exactly next of kin.

Hence, instead of “Jơg dyd gelc mélemà téflðamàð,” (an example I have previously used,) we would have something like “dyd gεlc jơg am téflðàð mέlεmà.”

Hence, instead of “Jơg dyd gelc mélemà téflðamàð,” (an example I have previously used,) we would have something like “dyd gεlc jơg am téflðàð mέlεmà.”

bvláca	bavláca
culm	culóm
ðblεucþ	(I’m not sure what to do with these two. I guess they’re all right for now until something better comes along.)
ðblέucþin
gðrantþ	granþ
t§εcmádð	t§εcmáð