Monday, September 17, 2001

04.20.01.09.17.16.40

I think i’ve finally succeeded in completely getting rid of all affixes and making this what i set out to create: a language where words exist in and of themselves without mutating, morphing, changing, shifting, or anything else. Kind of like chinese, in a way, but much more malt§έgjèsque! Of course that does away with my ever so poetic mlàwarán, but such is life.

All prepositions are now to be considered separate words. I know, there goes the whole idea that started this language in the first place, but oh well. I’ll probably be adding some consonants to a few of them as well. Prepositions will, however, still follow the word they modify. The prefix ac- for the plural will now become a separate particle, but will not be needed if a number is included in the sentence.

The short list of particles thus far, which is certain to grow as the language expands and i find new and exciting things to do with them, is as follows:

dydpastdyd narám jơgi wrote
cwarþperfectcwarþ narám jơgi have written
blaiprogressiveblai narám jơgi am writing
nagfuturenag narám jơgi will write
subjunctivelơ narám jơg(that) i (may) write
racpassivedyd rac narám clagthe book was written
§lþinterrogative§lþ dyd narám pul clag að?did he write the book?
acpluraldyd narám pul lεxέt ac clag
(but) dyd narám pul dan clag
he wrote many books.
he wrote seven books.

So let’s talk sentence structure for a minute here. I know we’ve been through this before, but i just want to solidify some things. Okay, basic structure is VSO, but depending on prepositions can be VOS. Let’s add to that. PVSO has become apparent in dealing with the verbs, but should there be an order to the particles themselves? Actually, that’s something that has to be determined by the individual particle i suppose. For instance, dyd must precede cwarþ, because otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. That would be like the difference between ‘he had gone’ and ‘he has went.’ I think i would like to see §lþ remain close to the verb, though, so we’ll say tentatively that §lþ must directly precede the verb. Ach, i’m starting to have flashbacks to those notorious ‘donkey tables’ in 9th grade french class... at least that’s what my teacher called them. She was a little weird though. (Ya know, cause the pronouns end in ‘y – en’...get it?...Ya know where you do the direct object pronouns and they go ‘me/te/se – le/la/les – lui/leurs – y – en’...okay, nevermind.)

Okay, so...

dyd - lơ – nag - cwarþ – blai – rac - §lþ - V – ac - S – ac - O

I’m not exactly sure why i put lơ where i did, but it seemed to make some sort of sense at the time.

Okay, nuff o dat. Let’s talk prepositions for a moment. They have heretofore all had an initial vowel so that they could be easily tacked onto the ends of nouns and pronouns. But now that i have sundered them, i think some can stand a few consonants to weight them down a little. We wouldn’t want any prepositions floating around on us, now, would we? But actually, that’s something i’ll work on gradually, because most of them seem to work quite nicely as they are. I still particularly like έloì.

Speaking of prepositions, i’ve decided to give one of them a bit of a rest. I’m still being way too anal about ‘u,’ and i have to get over this compulsion to genetivize everything! I mean, we can still keep it around for special occasions, but a simple combining of nouns can work just as well. I think i’ll keep it around for direct possession for the time being. So ‘the dlatci language’ will lose it’s u (dlát§i glơd) but ‘the man’s house’ will keep it (hanác u márga).

Back to particles, though, there are many particles to be found right in amongst the prepositions, like the lovely way we turn hunger into hungry with a simple oc or εm. Not sure what my point was, but i thought it was nice.

Tuesday, September 4, 2001

04.20.01.09.04.11.30

One more revision i would like to make today, concerning the subject of those nifty little esperantoèsque combination pronoun/adjective combinations i came up with. I wanted them to work something like dlatci, where a combination of them would generate new words, but in a language like malt§εgj they complicate things a bit too much. Hence, i’m splitting the words in two and they should still work just as nicely as they do in any other language.

ml+ðr+bl+mlauul, úli, úla...blεg
mlágaðrágablágamlau aránul aránblεg arán
mlaixðraixblaixmlau máraul márablεg mára
mlεððrεðblεðmlau hanácul hanácblεg hanác
mlímiὲmðrímiὲmblímiὲmmlímiὲmulímiὲmblímiὲm
mlơcðrơcblơcmlauulblεg
mlúmweðrúmweblúmwemlau ðlaiul ðlaiblεg ðlai
mlýcþidðrýcþidblýcþidmlau cþiðul cþiðblεg cþið

So we got a couple new words out of all that.

mlau what, which
blεg no, none (already means “no” also)
ðlai time
cþið manner, way

I decided to keep mlímiὲm, ulímiὲm, and blímiὲm just because they’re kinda cool. I replaced the ðr- prefix with the appropriate demonstrative adjectives, of which there are now four to choose from: ul, úli, úla, and úlot.

On second thought, these can still be written as one word, they’re just not going to have the strange mutation thing going on. Hence: mlàwarán, mlaumára, mlàuhanác or mlauláð, mlauðlái mlaucþíð, &c. Notice the lovely way in which i have sculpted the contraction of mlau arán into mlàwarán, the u being replaced by a volutuous w! Pure poetry!

Saturday, September 1, 2001

04.20.01.09.01.17.39

On the subject of adjectives, there are several which don’t actually exist, but relative nouns can be made adjectives by adding the suffix –oc (with). Hence, as with the “I’m cold, I’m hungry” phrases i was working on before these wacky numbers got into the mix, one could say “Hunger is upon me” (lauc jớgεm) or adjectify the noun, “I am with hunger” (jơg láucoc). This will be the case for very many words which have both forms.

It just occurred to me that i do actually use the letter h in a couple of words, so for the record, h is still with us. I kinda like it, sometimes, depending on what letters are accompanying it.