Let’s make a language, part 25c: Business (Ardari)

Ardari has a large vocabulary for dealing with business, and its agglutinative nature expands that even further. But we’ll stick to the basics here.

Business itself is prejn; in Ardari, the same word can also stand for “economy” or “a transaction”. This is different from the actual root for “to trade”, chachen-, which refers to any sort of exchange.

Grammatically, a number of “business” verbs can be ditransitive, taking two objects. These include mänyt- “to borrow”, dyem- “to buy”, khipy- “to lend”, and vird- “to sell”. In all of these cases, the indirect object is in the dative, and it marks the other party in the transaction besides the speaker.

Back in the list of words, we see a few interesting and idiosyncratic derivations. “Generous” is derived from the noun tyamin, meaning “charity”, which thus also stands for “generosity”. And dròv is the root for dròvymat “greed”, rather than the other way around. Also, the general term for money, dènyèr, is a loan, possibly deriving from the French denier, but almost assuredly related in some way to Latin denārius.

Finally, the Ardari verb fors- “to own” carries much of the same connotations as its Isian counterpart. It’s more than a simple possessive, rather indicating the possession of something worth having in the first place. The derived adjective forsynt, however, has a bit of an idiomatic meaning: it’s considered poor form to use it to describe human beings, as it connotes a master/slave relationship, something Ardari speakers do not approve of. The further derivation ärforsynt, though, is used as a religious term referring to demonic possession, and it only refers to people. Language is strange sometimes.

Word list

  • business: prejn
  • cheap: zelk
  • cost: kamnad
  • expensive: long
  • generous: tyaminösat (from tyamin “charity”)
  • greed: dròvymat (from dròv “greedy, grasping”)
  • job: kroll
  • money: dènyèr (borrowed)
  • poor: nydor
  • rich: agris
  • to accept: lèp-
  • to borrow: mänyt-
  • to buy: dyem-
  • to gain: gir-
  • to get: baj-
  • to keep: chòll-
  • to lend: khipy-
  • to lose: malyos-
  • to offer: makej-
  • to own: fors-
  • to receive: bèrill-
  • to reject: lèghan-
  • to sell: vird-
  • to steal: tyek-
  • to store: jols-
  • to trade: chachen-
  • value: säfyn

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