For Ardari, most of what was previously said about Isian still applies. It’s a Eurasian culture with Eurasian animals and little contact with the New World, sub-Saharan Africa, or Australia. As such, it has a lot of native terms for the animals common to Europe and western Asia (not as much the East, though), but most of its words for more exotic animals are borrowed, like èlfang “elephant”.
Where Ardari differs is in the way it treats gender. As a language with three functional genders, the sex of an animal becomes grammatically important. This is especially so in the case of common barnyard animals, where there is a lot of suppletion rather than derivation. Chickens are kukya, unless they’re hens, in which case they become tyemi. Cows are mughi, a bull is an arda, and the generic “cattle” comes out as an inflected form of khawm. A male dog is rhasa, but a female is sëdi. (Note that the latter word doesn’t have the same pejorative connotations as its English equivalent.)
Some other domestic animals show a more derivation-like approach. Horses can be koza “stallion” or kozi “mare”, or you can refer to them by the generic puld “horse”. Ducks are gèr, gèra, or gèri (neuter, masculine, and feminine, respectively). Similarly, goats are ägya or ägi; the slight difference in spelling is a quirk of Ardari orthography.
Finally, a few animals native to the region where Ardari is spoken are grammatically of a single gender. Cats (avbi) are always feminine, as are birds (pèdi) and spiders (visti). Rabbits (mèpa) and snakes (synga), on the other hand, are masculine by default, as are animals (blèda) in general. (Most others are neuter, but all of them can be “converted” by changing the inflection patterns.)
Beyond the mere grammatical minutiae, there’s not much to say about Ardari that wasn’t already said about Isian. They have about the same things in their menagerie. Ardari does, however, have far more words for specific types of animals, particularly those the speakers know well. Maybe we’ll see some of those later in the series.
Word list
A word of note here: most of these nouns follow the typical pattern for Ardari. Those ending in -a inflect as masculine, while nouns in -i are feminine, and consonant-stems are neuter. Where words are listed as gèr(a/i), that indicates a gendered pair or triplet, where the only differences are the final vowel and the inflection pattern. Words noted as “grammatically feminine” or “grammatically masculine” are fixed to those genders.
General terms
- animal: blèda
- den: mès
- insect: khind
- mammal: metyarn
- nest: plèz
- tame: okyan
- wild: fendall
Specific animals
- ant: äng
- bear: murk
- bee: bin
- bird: pèdi
- butterfly: vipyam
- cat: avbi
- chicken: kukya (m.), tyemi (f.)
- cow/bull: arda (m.), mughi (f.), khawm (n.)
- deer: ylap
- dog: rhasa (m.), sëdi (f.)
- dragon: osmal
- duck: gèr(a/i)
- elephant: èlfang
- fish: sum
- fly: chagh
- fox: pèz(a/i)
- frog: rhymi (grammatically feminine)
- goat: ägya (m.), ägi (f.)
- horse: koz(a/i) (m./f.), puld (n.)
- lizard: jèrz
- mouse: sik
- pig: rupa (m.), fowri (f.)
- rabbit: mèpa (grammatically masculine)
- sheep: dwen (n.), dwena (m.), illi (f.)
- snake: synga (grammatically masculine)
- spider: visti (grammatically feminine)
- wolf: vugh
- worm: gyud