Tag: conlang

Food. It’s wonderful, it’s delicious, it’s nutritious. We need it to survive, but we have turned that necessity into one of the great simple pleasures of life. And let’s not forget about drinks, either. Without applying our knowledge of foods to the beverage side of things, we’d essentially be limited to drinking water and fruit juice.

In language, terms relating to food and drink can make up a large portion of a lexicon. There are just so many ways of creating a meal, so many ingredients you can use. The sheer size of this linguistic smorgasbord can be enormous. So let’s break it down into a few subtopics.

Preparation

One of the hallmarks of humanity is cooking. How many other animals go to the trouble of preparing food over a fire, or in a sealed box, or in boiling water? And cooking is an ancient practice, one shared by essentially every culture on Earth. We might do things a lot differently from our Neolithic ancestors, but they’d understand our reasons.

But there’s more than one way to cook. Think about all the different implements in your kitchen, and how each one serves a different purpose. We can bake, boil, roast, or fry our food, for instance. Fancier meals can be sautéed, modern ones microwaved. If you’re cooking Chinese, you might stir fry (a compound phrase). A Southerner like myself may instead want something barbecued. And the list goes on.

That’s just for the cooking part itself. Before that, we often perform a number of preparatory steps, and these can also fall under the umbrella of food-related vocabulary. A meal might call for diced tomatoes or chopped onions, for example. Sometimes, we’ll have to tenderize meat or slice some vegetables. Later on, we may need to stir. Many of these words are plainly derived—diced pieces of a food look like dice, naturally—but some can be native.

Let’s not forget the tools we use to cook, either. We’ve got the oven for baking, the stove for a lot of other jobs. Modern American homes are equipped with a microwave oven (usually shortened to microwave, which also functions as a verb, as we saw above). The cabinets will be full of pots and pans, as well as spoons, knives, and the like. Also, we’ve already seen things like cups and bowls that are needed by any would-be chef.

Preparing, like anything else to do with food, is culture-specific, but the basics are fairly general. Still, that hasn’t stopped a number of loanwords entering English, and the same would be true for any other language that comes into contact with a new way of making food. We’ve got, for example, the wok, used in Asian cuisine. There wasn’t a good word to describe the process of sauteing, so we borrowed the one the French used when they taught it to us. As we’ve seen so often, borrowings will be for those things the native language doesn’t already have words for, especially those concepts that aren’t really native.

Ingredients

Human nutritional needs have forced upon us the broad outline of a diet. We all need protein, carbohydrates, a set of vitamins and minerals, and at least some fat (not too much, though). Conveniently enough, in every location where civilization developed, the local flora and fauna offered some way of getting everything we require. For example, the Americas don’t have native wheat—it first grew in western Asia—but corn is a decent substitute, nutritionally speaking. Well, except that it doesn’t provide some essential vitamins. But never fear: beans do, and they grow in practically the same place! The same is true around the world.

Which plants and animals a culture eats will be very dependent on where—and when—that culture lives. In modern or future times, there will be a greater variety of food on the table. Pre-industrial cultures, by contrast, will have a more restricted set of “native” foodstuffs. In general, you can follow the guidelines in parts 19 and 20 for this.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. We eat a lot of different things, and most of them, even in ancient times, came from somewhere else. The most famous of these would have to be the spices. For millennia, these have been some of the most sought-after substances in the world, fueling wars, imperialism, colonialism, trade, exploration, and so much more. Had cloves and cinnamon and cardamom been native to France, Italy, and Britain, the world today would be a very different place. And many of the words we use for these spices are borrowed, often through a chain of languages that might include any of French, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, Malay, Chinese, and many more. On a more mundane note, simple salt is a necessary ingredient for our lives, and it’s far more likely to have a native name.

Mealtime

When do your speakers eat? We’re used to three meals a day nowadays, but that’s far from an absolute. And even when it is the case, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll always be breakfast in the morning, lunch around noon, and an evening dinner or supper. (What about second breakfast? Elevenses? Afternoon tea?) Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t gloss your conlang’s meal names into our three, but here’s a place to add in those subtle connotations. As an example of my own: one of my conlangs, Virisai, is spoken by a culture that values lunch as the most important social meal of the day, using it as a break from work, a time to converse with one’s friends, and so on. For them, breakfast is more perfunctory, just enough to wake you up, and dinner is strictly for family.

Whatever you do here, you can work on as many little details as you like. Maybe your speakers have words for different spoons. Perhaps a knife for cutting meat is named differently from the one that cuts pies. Or there could be a different set of meals for some days—or times when there are no meals at all, as with Islam’s Ramadan. Anything like this could have a native word or phrase to describe it.

Drinks

Water, of course, is the most basic drink. Everything else, technically speaking, would be a beverage, and they’re quite specific to a culture. Still, we can draw a number of conclusions by looking around the world. Juice is popular, for instance, though the fruits used are local or regional. Tea and coffee are drinks of choice for billions of people today; your speakers might imbibe them, or have something of the same sort. (Another example of mine: the speakers of my Virisai conlang, being descended from Native Americans, have neither of these, but they have a caffeinated herbal drink made from a native plant.)

Alcohol itself isn’t a drink (unless you’re crazy enough to drink Everclear), but beverages including it have been made for thousands of years, in just about every corner of the world. We’re all familiar with beer (and some of us even know the difference between ales, lagers, stouts, etc.), and any culture you can name will have its own brew, with its main ingredient probably one of the local grains. Grapes are the most common providers of wine, another popular drink throughout history. Fermentation can create other concoctions than these, like the fermented milk of Mongolia. (And where there’s alcohol, there’s sure to be drunkenness and a backlash against the stuff, but that’s for another post.)

Most stronger stuff (usually all described as liquor by laymen) came about later, as distillation became a thing. Here again we see cultural varieties springing up. The Irish have their whisky/whiskey, the Russians their vodka. Scotch, brandy, cognac, moonshine…the list could go on forever. But it’s a sure bet that almost all the words on that list will be loans, except those for the local creations.

Next time

The world of food and drink can keep you occupied for a long time, whether you’re exploring it in word or in physical form. (I’m writing this the day after Christmas, so it’s the latter for me right now.) It’s a great place to delve into the culture behind your conlang, though. And not only that culture. Loanwords and coinages abound in our dietary vocabulary. Even the most American American won’t balk at eating pizza (an Italian word) or a hamburger (literally someone from Hamburg, Germany). We may have more loans than most, thanks to immigration, but I doubt you’ll find, say, a Brit who’s never heard of curry.

Once you’ve cleaned your plate, so to speak, it’s time to move on. After a meal is a good time for reflection, so our next topic will be the mind. We’ll look at our inner thought processes, and we’ll see how language attempts to describe them. For now, it’s time to go. All this talk about food has made me hungry.

Linguistically speaking, one of the main differences between Ardari and Isian is that the former doesn’t use compounding to create the names of its rooms. The basic term for a room is dan, but room names all use the -ègh suffix denoting a place or location where an action takes place. So the bedroom is rhèchègh “sleeping place”, the kitchen a lòstyègh “cooking place”, and so on. These are actually generic terms created relatively recently, and some Ardari people still use older, nonstandard words for them.

Inside the rooms, things are much as you’d expect. The bedroom has a mäs “bed”, the dining room features kombas “table” and söton “chair”. In the kitchen you’ll find a sink, or pläsimi. The list goes on, but that’s assuming you’re allowed in. Ardari speakers value their privacy, so the front door will often have a lock (èpri), for which you will need a key (äkja).

Because Ardari has its more complex nominal morphology, we can see a little more of the cultural context here. Note, for example, the gender of some of the words for tools and furnishings. The basket (vevi) is feminine, as are the pot (gyazi) and dish (alli), whereas the knife (yagha) is decidedly masculine. This is most likely a result of certain tasks once being seen as preferring men or women—Ardari women do the cooking and washing, for instance, while cutting things is more of a man’s job. Finally, there’s the curious case of the masculine äkja and feminine èpri; this may be most easily explained as a kind of sexual connotation. Keys fitting into locks, you know.

Word List

Areas

• room: dan
• bedroom: rhèchègh
• bathroom: oznèrègh
• kitchen: lòstyègh
• dining room: tumègh
• living room: simègh

Tools

• blade: kirda
• brush: sols
• clock: khrona
• fork: bènk
• hammer: tojrin
• key: äkja
• knife: yagha
• lamp: djol
• lock: èpri
• spoon: lyom

Furniture

• basket: vevi
• bathtub: pläs
• bed: mäs
• bottle: cholya
• bowl: ghob
• box: aröng
• chair: söton
• cup: kykad
• desk: kyard
• dish: alli
• pan: mir
• pot: gyazi
• sack: sòpya
• sink: pläsimi
• table: kombas

Isian speakers have homes, too, and they’ve got no end of stuff in them. So let’s take a look at what they have.

First, as industrialization has come to their lands in modern times, the speakers have begun to adapt to the more typical division of rooms, or hiri. Their names are almost always simple compounds, usually of hir following a word that describes the activity for that room. (This seems to indicate an earlier period where houses weren’t commonly partitioned.) We’ve got the main ubahir, a kind of living room; more accurately, it would be a “sitting room”. Then, there are the twin pirihir “kitchen” and hamahir “dining room”, literally the “cooking room” and “eating room”. Washing is done in the bathroom or hishir (from hishi + hir), and sleeping is for the domhir “bedroom”.

Inside some of these rooms, you may find objects like a chair (ubadom, literally a “sitting bed”, which may indicate that Isian speakers once preferred a reclining posture for relaxation). We eat at the mico “table”, but some tables might be reserved for other uses, like the “writing table” rodomico: a desk.

The kitchen has pots and pans, fani and sicani, and no dining room is complete without a number of dishes or peyt. Of course, with those you’ll have the Western trio of tud “fork”, hasha “knife”, and muta “spoon”, and there may be a ticking decos “clock” on the wall.

These, and the extended list below, are only some of the things you might find around the Isian house. They’re a start, not the whole.

Word List

Areas

• room: hir
• bedroom: domhir
• bathroom: hishir
• kitchen: pirihir
• dining room: hamahir
• living room: ubahir

Tools

• blade: farit
• brush: fosh
• clock: decos
• fork: tud
• hammer: aplar
• key: kef
• knife: hasha
• lamp: olu
• lock: ikin
• spoon: muta(s)

Furniture

• basket: halban
• bathtub: hishido
• bed: dom
• bottle: odas
• bowl: uch
• box: garon
• chair: ubadom
• cup: deta(s)
• desk: rodomico
• dish: pey
• pan: sican
• pot: fan
• sack: hukho
• sink: shosuch
• table: mico

Think of this part of the series as a chance to catch up on some of that linguistic spring cleaning you’ve been meaning to do. We’ve all been in houses, and we know how many things can be inside them, so taking a look inside the home is a great way to flesh out a conlang with a vast array of terms for all those miscellaneous items we have lying around.

Room to move

Houses, as we know them, are generally divided into a number of rooms. Which ones a house has depends heavily upon the culture, the level of technological advancement, and a few socioeconomic factors. Many apartments, for instance, don’t have kitchens. And while it’s very common in America to have bathing and toilet activities in the same room—the bathroom—not every country does that. On the “technology” side of things, you’re not going to find an entertainment center in a medieval home, but that’s not to say there won’t be a room for entertaining guests. Finally, the houses of the wealthy will, obviously, have more (and more varied) rooms than those of the common folk.

For a conlang, this matters because it’s those rooms that are common to most speakers’ houses that will be most likely to occur as native roots. In English, we’ve got dens and kitchens, for instance, but most of the others are compounds: bedroom, bathroom, living room, etc. And then there are a number of rooms whose names we’ve borrowed, such as the foyer. You can draw quite a few conclusions about a culture’s history in this manner, such as the fact that most Anglo-Saxons didn’t have a foyer, but some wealthy Frenchmen later on must have.

Another question is what to call the “ideal” room itself. Because English has a couple of different terms for that. We’ve got room, obviously, as in dining room, but fantasy or historical literature might instead speak of the more archaic dining hall. And that’s okay. Halls are rooms, too. There’s a different connotation, and connotations are always nice to see. They’re where conlangs can distinguish themselves.

What’s inside

What’s inside those rooms is usually much more interesting than the rooms themselves. Looking around my own bedroom (where I write), I see quite a bit of furniture. There’s the bed, of course, because what’s a bedroom without a bed? And I’ve got my desk, a bookshelf, my chair, and a few odds and ends. Other rooms in the house will have their own larger fixtures—furniture and appliances—almost always tied to the room’s function. American bathrooms will have toilets and sinks, while kitchens will have counters and cabinets.

Beyond the major functions of a room, the space will contain many other things. Some of these are tools, like all those screwdrivers we can never find when we need them. Others are strictly for entertainment, such as TVs or toys. We could also throw in toiletries and clothes and other such things, but we’ll save all that for other posts. For this one, we should focus on those things that make our house a home.

Changing things up

Home items can display a remarkable amount of irregularity. That’s almost all cultural baggage, as the things we find in our homes change as we interact with other peoples. Everything in the room around you has a history, and so does every word you would use to describe those things. Household items are a great place to toss in loanwords, odd and idiosyncratic compounds, sketchy neologisms, and whatever else you can think of. It’s not uncommon today to have a television (pseudo-classical Greek) sitting a few feet from your coffee table (compound derived from Turkish and Old French), which is right in front of your couch (Old French again), where you’ll curl up under your blanket (more Old French, but they borrowed this one from Germanic). Even the most xenophobic American can travel linguistically around the world from the comfort of his home.

Coming up

So we’re in 2017, and the series continues. Part 23 will come next month, after the usual Isian and Ardari posts. It will cover food and drink, topics that are subtly different from the “flora and fauna” subjects we saw not too long ago. Until then, keep on creating!

For Ardari, things aren’t much different from Isian. There’s still the big difference between the agris “rich” and nydor “poor”, those who have a kroll “job” and those who don’t. Ardari speakers are a bit more worldly, however, as can be seen in the modern öskul “school” common to every town. Their larger cities also each have a bank (prèt), ready to lend (khipy-) money to anyone who might need it.

By contrast, the alz “farm” isn’t as central to Ardari culture as it is to Isian. Being more urban, Ardari speakers are more likely to work at (if not run) a chemba “shop” or pyuli “restaurant” instead. Many work at building (moll-), as their people are in a state of growth these days. Diggers (dròkön, the same term is used generically to refer to any “blue-collar” worker) are needed everywhere, as well. Most of these, however, are men, while women tend to do things like cook (lòsty-) or weave (urdè-). Most respected of all, though, is the sydonkön “teacher”, an important man (or, as is increasingly the case, woman) in every locale.

Although farming isn’t as big a deal as it once was, rural areas still rely on it heavily. The èmlokön remains a necessary and honorable profession; land is passed down from father to son as it has been for centuries. Mills (panad) are integral, even if the miller (tyokön) more often observes and pushes buttons these days. Finally, the market (virdègh) continues to act as the center of an Ardari community, no different from how our shopping malls used to be.

Next time…?

So that covers Part 21 of our series on creating conlangs. We’re nowhere near done—if you think about it, we’re never truly finished, but bear with me here. Now, I can keep going. I actually do have plans all the way out to Part 27. However, as you’ll see in the coming days, I’ve got other things on my mind. There are places I want to go with Prose Poetry Code, and that includes this series. So I might slow down a bit on these posts. Or I may continue on the current schedule, with three posts (comprising one part) a month. I’ll be good through the first half of 2017 if I do that. Stay tuned for my decision; in the meantime, keep creating, and have a happy holiday, whichever one you celebrate.

Word list

General terms

• job: kroll
• poor: nydor
• rich: agris
• to borrow: mänyt-
• to create: grät-
• to destroy: sògör-
• to lend: khipy-
• to repair: èbord-
• to use: qas-
• to work: nafèlo
• work: naf

Places of work

• bank: prèt
• bar (pub): om
• farm: alz
• inn: mäsoza
• market: virdègh
• mill: panad
• restaurant: pyuli
• school: öskul (borrowing)
• shop: chemba

Work actions

• to bake: mej-
• to build: moll-
• to clean: fènt-
• to cook: lòsty-
• to dig: drò-
• to drive: brech-
• to fold: sòv-
• to grind: tyokh-
• to guard: chud-
• to hunt: kwar-
• to pour: swar
• to press: akwèt-
• to serve: klo-
• to sew: wènt-
• to shoot: käzh-
• to sweep: nwèse-
• to teach: sydon-
• to tie: tölon-
• to wash: majtas-
• to weave: urdè-

Occupations

• baker: mejkön
• carpenter: mollkön
• cooking: lòstyënda
• driver: brechkön
• farmer: èmlokön
• hunter: kwarkön
• hunting: kwarönda
• janitor: nwèsekon
• laborer: dròkön
• miller: tyokön
• servant: klokön
• tailor: wèntökön
• teacher: sydonkön
• teaching: sydonda (from sydon- + -önda)

Isian, as you’ll recall, is a language whose speakers live in a remote part of our world. They’ve been cut off from modern civilization for a couple of centuries, but they’ve recently been rediscovered. Because of this, they’ve got a lot of native vocabulary to describe work, but some newer concepts require compounds.

In general, work is lodunas, an abstract noun derived from lodu “to work”. But a specific job, career, or occupation goes by bor instead. Most jobs are intended to create (tinte), but some instead destroy (dika), and a select few repair (efri) what is broken.

Workers (lodumi, plural of lodum) can perform many actions, based on their jobs. Some might teach (reshone), others build (oste). Makers of food include bakers (ogami, from oga “to bake”) and simple cooks (pirimi; piri “to cook”). These aren’t the only “domestic” occupations, either. Many Isian speakers, for their jobs, must clean (nolmi), wash (hishi) clothes, sew (seshe), or simply act as servants (dulcami; dulca “to serve”). More important for the town are craftsmen such as totasami (carpenters, literally “wood men”).

Isian is the language of a society that is still very agrarian. Thus, many of its speakers work as farmers (sepami) or just as assistants on a ban “farm”. In cities, however, most working men are instead simple lodumi, day laborers. Women who work are more likely to be reshonemi “teachers” or seshemi—in this context, a better translation might be “seamstresses”.

Finally, the places where people might work can be just as interesting as what they do. Well-to-do Isian speakers might run their own seb “shop” or chedom “inn”. Cooks can work at a restaurant (hamasim, literally “eating house”), though some isimi (“bars” or “pubs”) also serve food. And it remains common for most of the town to gather one day a week at the rishan “market”.

Word List

General terms

• job: bor
• poor: umar
• rich: irdes
• to borrow: mante
• to create: tinte
• to destroy: dika
• to lend: hente
• to repair: efri
• to use: je
• to work: lodu
• work: lodunas

Places of work

• bank: mantalar (from mante + talar)
• bar (pub): isim
• farm: ban
• inn: chedom
• market: rishan
• mill: mur
• restaurant: hamasim (hama “eat” + isim)
• school: teju
• shop: seb

Work actions

• to bake: oga
• to build: oste
• to clean: nolmi
• to cook: piri
• to dig: daco
• to drive: foro
• to fold: efe
• to grind: harca
• to guard: holte
• to hunt: ostani
• to pour: lu
• to press: hapa
• to serve: dulca
• to sew: seshe
• to shoot: chaco
• to sweep: wesa
• to teach: reshone
• to tie: ane
• to wash: hishi
• to weave: sumbe

Occupations

• baker: ogam
• carpenter: totasam (totac “wood” + sam “man”)
• cooking: pirinas
• driver: forom
• farmer: sepam
• hunter: ostanim
• hunting: ostanas (ostani + -nas)
• janitor: wesam or nolmim
• laborer: lodum
• miller: mursam (mur + sam “man”)
• servant: dulcam
• tailor: seshem
• teacher: reshonem
• teaching: reshonas (reshone + -nas)

We all have a job to do, whether it’s an actual career or simply the odd jobs we do around the house. Work is as old as humanity, so it’s not surprising that it is a very important part of a language’s vocabulary. For a conlang, it should be no different.

Working on work

Work is, at its core, about action, about doing things. Thus, many of the words regarding work will be verbs, and many others will likely be derived from those verbs in some way. To be sure, there will be nouns and adjectives that aren’t, but derivation gives us a powerful tool to create new words, and work is a great example of a field where derivation really shines.

Think about “working” verbs. We can cook and clean and teach, among hundreds of others. And when we do those things, in English, we become cooks, cleaners, and teachers. Two out of the three of these use the agent derivation -er, and that pattern is repeated throughout the language: agents are nouns that perform an action, so agents of working verbs naturally represent the “workers”. (Cook is an exception, but not much of one. Ever heard of a cooker? That’s not what you call the occupation in English, but another language could do things differently.) If your conlang has an agent marker, then creating occupational nouns is probably going to be easy and regular. Of course, there can be exceptions, especially once loanwords come into play, e.g., chef.

Another easy derivation takes us to abstract nouns representing the occupation itself. In English, this comes in the gerund form: “working”, “teaching”, etc. Other languages might have their own special cases, though. Note that this is not the same as the adjective form seen in phrases like “a working man”. That one is a different, yet equally simple, derivation; a language can use the same pattern for both, or it can separate them.

If your language has a gender distinction in nouns, then things might become a little more complicated. English has a few cases like these (actor/actress), but political correctness is starting to erase some of these distinctions. Romance languages, by contrast, have a larger, more stable, set of gendered agents. Now, a conlang with gender doesn’t have to have separate occupational terms for masculine and feminine, but it’s an obvious step that many natural languages have taken.

Which work is which?

The breadth of work words is another one of those cultural things that you have to take into account. A primitive society set in Bronze Age Europe isn’t going to have words for “computer” (originally, this was “one who computers”, a word for a person) or “investor”, because such concepts won’t exist. Similarly, a lost Amazon tribe might not have native words for “ironworking” and “blacksmith”, as those would be foreign concepts.

As with plants and animals, “foreign” work will often be spoken of in foreign terms, i.e., loanwords. This isn’t always the case, however. It’s entirely plausible that a language’s speakers will invent new terms for these new jobs. If they’re smart enough, they may even try to translate the meaning of the foreign root. Even if they do borrow the root, they may not import the agent marker with it. Instead, the borrowing can create a whole new paradigm: work verb, occupational agent, abstract occupational noun, and so on.

Irregularity

For naturalistic conlangs, regularity is anathema. With the field of work, there’s ample opportunity to introduce irregularities. The agent derivation doesn’t always have to work, for example—we’ve already seen English cook. Old verbs might be lost, leaving nouns (like carpenter) that don’t seem to fit anymore. Different derivations can be used on different roots, too; we speak of carpentry but also woodworking. And then there’s the oddity of English employee, one of the few instances where the language has a patient derivation to go along with the agent. (The full paradigm of “employ” shows exactly what we’re talking about, in fact. You’ve got the basic agent “employer”, the not-quite-irregular patient noun “employee”, and the abstract “employment”, which doesn’t use the usual participle form. Irregularity all around.)

Next up

In the next two posts, we’ll get a look at some Isian and Ardari working words. Over 50 of them, if you can believe that. Then, the future becomes murkier. We’re nearing the end of another year, so stay tuned for a special announcement regarding upcoming parts of the series.

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

We’ve previously seen that Isian is a language of the Old World. That means it’ll have a generally Eurasian stock of native animal terms. Isian speakers have many of the familiar domesticated animals, such as the dog (hu) and cat (her). Beasts of burden include the horse (tawl, only the most general term), among others, while tame meat usually comes from the tu “cow” (plural form tus for bulls, tur for cows) or the jeg “pig”. The speakers also enjoy many types of fish (pach), and sheep (lini, with the same gendered plurals as tu) are raised for both wool and meat.

Birds (firini) are also well-represented in the lexicon. Two of the more important ones are the choch “chicken” (a hen is a chay, plural chayr) and the duck. The latter has two words: masculine hanka and feminine hadi (plural hadir), with the feminine form being the default.

Isian’s speakers don’t like insects (eketi) any more than we do, but they’ve given names to some of the more common ones. Flies, mikhi, are everywhere in their land, as are iti “ants”. But not all insects are creepy-crawlies. There’s also the fifal “butterfly”, an object of beauty, and the source of delicious honey, the disi “bee”.

Out in the molad “wild” lands, there are even more animals. Plenty of Isian men hunt for onte “deer”. Some prefer smaller game, however, like the habas “rabbit” or hule “fox” (plural hules). Only the bravest or most foolhardy would go after the gor “bear”, though.

Finally, the speakers of Isian know that a certain segment of fauna has something in common with humans. Dogs, cats, cows, and goats (cawat or cawar) all produce milk for their young; the latter two also make it for human consumption. These are the melembini “mammals”, a compound literally meaning “milk-animal”.

General Terms

• animal: embin
• den: hosh
• insect: eket
• mammal: melembin
• nest: seb
• tame: caso
• wild: molad

Specific animals

• ant: it
• bear: gor
• bee: disi
• bird: firin
• butterfly: fifal
• cat: her
• chicken: choch (chay(r) “hen”)
• cow/bull: tu(r) (f.), tu(s) (m.)
• deer: onte(s)
• dog: hu
• dragon: varoc
• duck: hanka(t) (m.), hadi(r) (f.)
• elephant: alifan (borrowed)
• fish: pach
• fly: mikh
• fox: hule(s)
• frog: irpa
• goat: cawa(t/r)
• horse: tawl (generic)
• lizard: dolcot
• mouse: hish
• pig: jeg
• rabbit: habas
• sheep: lini(t/r)
• snake: shulbis
• spider: bidrin
• wolf: hoga
• worm: um