Tag: conlang

The fauna to plants’ flora, animals are those living beings that move. That’s not exactly a scientific definition, but it suffices for linguistic purposes. Plants just sit there, except when their leaves are falling or their seeds are blowing through the air. Animals, by contrast, are mobile. They walk or fly or slither or swim. They hunt, and they eat. From the perspective of language, they’re more like us.

Just as languages will have words describing plants, they will have a large portion of their vocabulary devoted to talking about animals. Think about how many names of animals you know. More than likely, you can probably recall a hundred or more. (Ubuntu managed to pick one for every letter of the alphabet, although they had to resort to a few obscure ones, like “eft” and “quetzal”.) Add to that the number of terms for animals’ body parts, their young, their meat, and you’ve got a laundry list of language.

The words a given tongue will have for animals can be roughly divided based on a familiar rule: those animals that are known to a language’s culture for a long time are more likely to have native names. Hence, English has dogs and cats natively, but it has to borrow raccoons and koi. “Foreign” animals get foreign or descriptive names, octopus being an example of the latter. And the more obscure ones often have compound names…when they didn’t have to settle for scientific ones. (Interestingly, this is one way linguistic historians can track the movement of a speech group. If they borrowed a name for a “local” animal, then they might not have always been in a place to get to know it.)

Domesticated animals

Those animals that have been domesticated will have the biggest chunk of vocabulary dedicated to them. Not only are there the general terms for an instance of the kind (dog, horse, etc.), but these are more likely to have gender differences even if the language doesn’t normally distinguish gender. In English, for example, we have pairs like horse/mare or bull/cow, where one of the gender-specific words is also the generic, and we also see three-way distinctions such as the generic chicken, male rooster (or cock), and female hen.

Domestic animals can also earn special words for their young. Sometimes, these are derived from the “adult” word: chick, kitten. Others are unrelated: puppy, pony. Note that these are not the same as diminutives. Those refer to smaller animals, not necessarily younger ones.

Languages may also give this type of animal a whole associated vocabulary. Breeding is a popular topic, as seen from words like thoroughbred or mutt. Purpose, for working animals, is often denoted by compounding—lapdog, workhorse—but separate terms can arise, e.g., an ox is merely a specialized kind of cattle.

These animals are also more likely to provide us with a number of metaphorical and analogous words or phrases. We can speak of someone being hounded after, then being cowed into submission. A coward is a chicken, while someone feigning death is playing possum. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as the saying goes—a rare bit of gender equality. The list goes on.

Wild animals

Those common yet untamed animals will be referred to by a different sort of terminology, but most of it will remain “native”, rather than borrowed. It’s still possible to have gender differences, but it’s more likely that the non-default sex will have a derived name: lion, lioness. Young may have dedicated words, but they probably won’t be specific to a single kind of animal. Bears and tigers both have cubs.

The rest of the vocabulary will be affected to the same, lesser, degree by wild animals. Some of the important ones get immortalized in metaphor (snake in the grass) or even slang (bear, as referring to a specific type of gay man). But they won’t be all that common.

Exotic animals

Even rarer are those animals which don’t really exist in the “natural” sphere of a language’s influence. For English, this includes anything out of the Americas, Africa, or Australia, along with quite a bit of Asia. These animals are much more likely to be called by borrowed names. Indigenous peoples gave us our words for a great many animals. As an American, I can point to raccoons, opossums, and moose, among others. An Australian would instead hold up the kangaroo, dingo, and wallaby, while South Americans and Africans can provide their own examples.

Another option (and this is, in fact, where many of the indigenous names come from) is onomatopoeia. Animals can earn names that resemble the sounds they make. It’d be like us calling a cow moo. Although that sounds strange, plenty of languages do just that.

Finally, a more scientifically advanced culture may try to give a name to everything. Our scientific names (or binomial names) serve to identify every living thing on Earth, including animals, plants, bacteria, and more. They are rigorously rational and mechanical, however, and every one of them is invented. (Not only that, but they’re then shoehorned into an entirely different language, Latin.) For a future language, possibly one needing to name alien species, this is an attractive option.

Mythological creatures

Not every animal named in a language actually exists. Some come from mythology and imagination. Greek myth, thanks to its influence on classical education throughout the West, has given us quite a few “creature” names: phoenix, basilisk, Pegasus, centaur. Dragons are common to many parts of the world, as are giants, which may be important enough to earn their own word. Elves, fairies, and anything else you can think of will fit in this section, as well.

Creatures of myth and legend can be named in any way. Many are derived terms (basilisk coming from the Ancient Greek word for “king”, wyvern from a dialectal form cognate to “viper”, werewolf combining “wolf” with an old term for “man”), but some are original. Sometimes, an entire “race” of creatures can be named after their mythological founder, as is the case with Pegasus.

Animal nature

Animals are very important to our lives. One of the ways we show that is by including them in such a large part of our language. Even the most generic terms have use, as we can speak of animal magnetism or the reptilian part of a brain. More specifically, an animal that we see every day, that we interact with regularly, will insinuate itself into our speech. We’ll compare things to it, judge others by it. And when we meet a new creature, we’ll give it a new name. Sometimes, we’ll relate it to what we already know. Other times, we’ll simply call it as the locals do. And that’s fine, too.

Still to come

After the usual Isian and Ardari posts, we’ll get back to more human concerns by looking at ways to work. Along the way, we’ll (finally!) pick up some more verbs, something we’ve been sorely lacking. I hope you’re having fun, because even though this is the 20th entry in the series, we’re not even close to done.

Ardari mostly inhabits the same region of space and time as Isian, as we have previously stated. It’s a little more…worldly, however. Yes, it’ll take in loans from outside languages, but not always, and it’ll often change them around to fit its own style. It has essentially the same “stock” of native botanical terms as Isian, though with a few quirks.

Word List

General terms

Remember that Ardari has a gender distinction in nouns. It’s not entirely arbitrary, although it may seem that way when you look at the vocabulary list. But there is actually something of a pattern. “Flower” words tend to be feminine (byali “berry”, afli “flower”), while “stem” words (pondo “stem”, kolbo “root”) are often masculine.

• berry: byali
• flower: afli
• fruit: zulyi
• grain: tròk
• grass: sèrki
• leaf: däsi
• nut: gund
• plant: pämi
• root: kolbo
• seed: sano
• stem (stalk): pondo
• to harvest: kèt-
• to plant: mäp-
• tree: buri

Plant types

Ardari doesn’t like compounds very much, but nature is an exception, as you can see from nòrpèpi “orange” below. The other words are pretty standard, with the “foreign” plants often showing up in loanword form: bönan, pòtato, etc. Note that the masculine/feminine distinction above doesn’t carry through the whole language, but there is a tendency for fruits and flowers to be feminine, while “ground” crops are more often masculine.

• apple: pèpi
• banana: bönan (loan)
• bean: bècho
• carrot: dälyo
• cherry: twali
• corn (maize): mescon (loan, “maize corn”)
• cotton: dos
• fig: saghi
• flax (linen): tintir
• grape: kalvo
• mint: òm
• oak: ulk
• olive: älyo
• onion: ösint
• orange: nòrpèpi (compound: “orange apple”)
• pea: myo
• pepper: pypèr (loan)
• pine: byuno
• potato: pòtato (loan)
• rice: izho
• rose: zalli
• wheat: èmlo

Later on

Again, Ardari has more words for plants than I’ve shown here, but I don’t want to be here all month. We’ve got better things to do. The next part of the series moves on to animals, from the tiniest insects to the biggest behemoths nature can throw at us.

We’ve already established that Isian is a language of our world. We’ve also set it somewhere in the Old World, in a place relatively untouched by the passage of time. By definition, that means it won’t have much contact with the Americas, so the most common plant terms will be those from Eurasia, with a few popular items coming from Africa. On the other hand, Isian has native words for all the different parts of the plant, as well as what to do with them. Again, this comes from our worldbuilding: Isian is spoken in an agrarian society, so it’s only natural that its speakers would name such an integral part of their world.

Word list

General terms

These are parts of plants, mainly the important (i.e., edible) parts, as well as a few terms for the broad types of plants. Note that all of these are native Isian words, and almost all are also “fundamental” words, not derived from anything.

• berry: eli
• flower: atul
• fruit: chil
• grain: kashel
• grass: tisen
• leaf: eta
• nut: con
• plant: dires
• root: balit
• seed: som
• stem (stalk): acut
• to harvest: sepa
• to plant: destera
• tree: taw

Plant types

This set of words names specific types of plants. These fall into three main categories. First, there are the native terms, like pur “apple”, which are wholly Isian in nature. Next are the full-on loanwords, taken from the “common” names used in many parts of Europe; these are usually the New World plants where Isian has no history of association. Finally, there are a few compounds, like cosom, “pepper”, formed from ocom “black” and som “seed”.

• apple: pur
• banana: banan (loan)
• bean: fowra
• carrot: cate(s)
• cherry: shuda(s)
• corn (maize): meyse (loan)
• cotton: churon
• fig: dem
• flax (linen): wod
• grape: ged
• mint: ninu
• oak: sukh
• olive: fili(r)
• onion: dun
• orange: sitru(s) (loan, “citrus”)
• pea: bi (note: not a loan)
• pepper: cosom (compound: “black seed”)
• pine: ticho (from a compound “green tree”)
• potato: pota (loan)
• rice: manom
• rose: rale(r)
• wheat: loch

Coming up

These are far from the only words in the Isian language regarding plants, but they’re a good start, covering a lot of bases while also illustrating how we can combine worldbuilding and conlanging to make something better. Next week, we’ll see things from the Ardari side of the fence. Spoiler alert: it’s not exactly the same.

Plants are everywhere around us. Grass, trees, flowers…you can’t get away from them. We eat them, wear them, and write on them. Growing them for our own use is one of the markers of civilization. Which plants a culture uses is as defining as its architectural style…or its language.

Every language used by humans will have an extensive list of plant terms. It’ll have names for individual plants, names for collections of them, names for parts of them. How many? Well, that depends. To answer that question, we’ll need to do a little worldbuilding.

The easy method

If you’re creating a modern (or future) language intended to be spoken by everyday humans, your task is fairly easy. All you have to do is borrow plant terms from one of the major languages of the day: English, Spanish, etc. Or you can use the combination of Latin and Greek that has served the West so well for centuries. Either way, an auxlang almost doesn’t need to make its own plant words.

Even naturalistic languages set in modern times can get away with this a bit. Maybe some plant terms have “native” words, but most of the rest are imported, just like the plants themselves. You could have native/loanword pairs, where the common folk use one word, but educated or formal contexts require a different one.

Harder but better

The further you get from modern Earth, the harder, but ultimately more rewarding, your task will be. Here’s where you need to consider the context of your language. Where is it spoken? By whom? And when? How much of the world do its speakers know?

Let’s take a few examples. The grapefruit is a popular fruit, but its history only extends back to the 1700s. A “lost” language in medieval Europe wouldn’t know of it, so they wouldn’t have a word for it. (Which is probably close to why it received the rather generic name of “grapefruit” in the first place.) Coffee, though grown in Colombia today, is native to the Old World, so ancient Amazonians would have never seen it. It wouldn’t be part of their world, so it wouldn’t get a name. Conversely, potatoes and tomatoes are American-born; you’d have to have a really good reason why your hidden-in-the-Caucasus ancient language has words for them.

For alien planets, it’s even worse. Here, you don’t even have the luxury of borrowing Earth names. But that also gives you the ultimate freedom in creating words. And that leads us to the next decision: which plants get which names.

Making your own

Remember this one general principle: common things will have common names. The more “outlandish” something is, the more likely it will be represented by a loanword. Also, the sheer number of different plants means that only a specific subset will have individual words. Most will instead be derived. In English, for example, we have the generic berry, describing (not always correctly) a particular type of fruit. We also have a number of derived terms: strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, huckleberry, and so on. Certain varieties of plants can even get compound names that are descriptive, such as black cherries; locative, like Vidalia onions; or (semi-)historical, such as Indian corn.

Plants often grow over a wide area, so it stands to reason that there will be dialectal differences. This provides an element of depth, in that you can create multiple words for the same plant, justifying them by saying that they’re used by different sets of speakers. Something of an English example is corn itself. In England, “corn” is a general term referring to a grain. For Americans, it’s specifically the staple crop of the New World, scientific name Zea mays. Back across the pond, that crop is instead called maize, but the American dialect’s “maize” tends to connote less-cultivated forms, such as the multicolored “Indian corn” associated with Thanksgiving. Confusing, I know, but it shows one way the same plant can get two names in the same language.

The early European explorers of America had the same problem a budding conlanger will have, so we can draw some conclusions from the way they did it. Some plants kept their native names, albeit in horribly mangled forms; examples include cocoa and potato. Some, such as tomatillo (Spanish for “little tomato”), are derived from indigenous terms. A few, like cotton, were named because they were identical or very close to Old World plants; the Europeans just used the old name for the new thing. Still others got the descriptive treatment, where they were close enough to a familiar plant to earn its name, but with a modifier to let people know it wasn’t the same as what they were used to.

The other side

In the next two entries, we’ll see what words Isian and Ardari use for their flora, and then it’s on to the other side of the coin, the other half of the couple. Animals. Fauna. Whatever you call them, they’re coming up soon.

This time around, let’s combine Isian and Ardari into a single post. Why? We won’t be seeing too many new words, as geography is so culture-dependent, and I’m trying to keep our two conlangs fairly neutral in that regard. Thus, the total vocabulary for this topic only comprises 30 or so of the most basic terms, mostly nouns.

Isian

For Isian speakers, the world is sata, and that includes everything from the earth (tirat) to the sea (jadal) to the sky (halac). In other words, all of amicha “nature”. And in the sky are the sida “sun”, nosul “moon”, and hundreds of keyt “stars”, though these only come out at night.

A good place to look at the stars is at the top of a mountain (abrad), but a hill (modas) will do in a pinch. Both of these contrast with the flatter elshar “valleys” and abet “plains”. Another contrast is between the verdant forest (tawetar) and the dry, desolate serkhat “desert”. Isian speakers, naturally, prefer wetter lands, and they especially like bodies of water, from the still fow “lake” to the rushing silche “stream” and ficha “river”.

Water isn’t quite as welcome when it falls from the sky in the form of rain (cabil) or, worse, snow (saf). Speakers of Isian know that rain falls from alboni “clouds”, particularly during a gondo “storm”. Some of those can also bring thunder and lightning (khoshar and segona, respectively), as well as blowing winds (nafi). But that’s all part of the cansun, or “weather”, and the people are used to it.

Natural world

• earth: tirat
• moon: nosul
• nature: amicha
• planet: apec
• sea: jadal
• sky: halac
• star: key
• sun: sida
• world: sata(r)

Geographic features

• beach: val
• cave: uto(s)
• desert: serkhat
• field: bander
• forest: tawetar
• hill: modas
• island: omis
• lake: fow
• plain: abe
• mountain: abrad
• river: ficha(s)
• stream: silche
• valley: elsha(r)

Weather

• cloud: albon
• cold: hul
• fog: fules
• hot: hes
• lightning: segona
• rain: cabil
• snow: saf
• storm: gondo(s)
• thunder: khoshar
• to rain: cable
• to snow: sote
• weather: cansun
• wind: naf

Ardari

Ardari is spoken in a similar temperate region, but those who use it as a native tongue are also acquainted with more distant lands. They know of deserts (norga) and high mountains (antövi), even if they rarely see them in person. But they’re much more comfortable around the hills (dyumi) and lakes (oltya) of their homeland. The rolling plains (moki) are often interrupted by patches of forest (tyëtoma), and rivers (dèbla) crisscross the land. Young speakers of Ardari like to visit caves (kabla), but many also dream of faraway beaches (pyar).

That’s all part of the earth, or dyevi. In their minds, this is surrounded by the sea (oska) on the sides and the sky (weli) above. That sky is the home of the sun (chi) and its silvery sister, the moon (duli). These are accompanied by a handful of planets (adwi) and a host of stars (pala), two different sets of night-sky lights, though most can’t tell the difference between them.

The sky, however, is often obscured by clouds (nawra). Sometimes, so is the earth, when fog (nòryd) rolls in. And Ardari has plenty of terms for bad weather (mädròn), from rain (luza) to wind (fawa) to snow (qäsa) and beyond. Storms (korakh) are quite common, and they can become very strong, most often in the spring and summer. Then, the echoes of thunder (kumba) ring out across the land.

Natural world

• earth: dyevi
• moon: duli
• nature: masifi
• planet: adwi
• sea: oska
• sky: weli
• star: pala
• sun: chi
• world: omari

Geographic features

• beach: pyar
• cave: kabla
• desert: norga
• field: tevri
• forest: tyëtoma
• hill: dyumi
• island: symli
• lake: oltya
• mountain: antövi
• plain: moki
• river: dèbla
• stream: zèm
• valley: pòri

Weather

• cloud: nawra
• fog: nòryd
• lightning: brysis
• rain: luza
• snow: qäsa
• storm: korakh
• thunder: kumba
• to rain: luzèlo
• to snow: qäsèlo
• weather: mädrön
• wind: fawa

Moving on

Now that we’ve taken a look at the natural world, we’ve set the stage for its inhabitants. The next two parts will cover terms for flora and fauna, in that order. In other words, we’re going name some plants next time. Not all of them; even I don’t have time for that. But we’ll look at the most important ones. By the end of it, you’ll be able to walk down the produce aisle with confidence.

The world is a very big place, and it contains a great many things. Even before you start counting those that are living—from plants and animals down to microbes—you can find a need for hundreds or thousands of words. So that’s what we’ll do in this entry. We’ll look at the natural world, but we’ll avoid talking about its flora and fauna for the moment. Instead, the focus will be on what we might call the natural geography. The lay of the land, if you will.

The world itself

For us, “world” is virtually synonymous with “earth” and “planet”. But that’s an artifact of our high-tech society. In older days, these concepts were pretty separate. The earth was the surface, the ground—the terra firma. Planets were wandering stars in the sky, so named because they seemed to change their positions from night to night, relative to the “fixed” background stars. And the world was everything that could be observed, closer to what we might call the “universe” or “cosmos”.

Within this definition of the world, many cultures (and thus languages) create a three-way distinction between the earth, sea, and sky. Earth is solid, dry land, where people live and work and farm and hunt. Sea is the open water, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, but not necessarily rivers and lakes; it’s the place where man cannot live. And the sky is the vast dome above, home of the sun, moon, and stars, and often whatever deity or deities the speakers worship. In pre-flight cultures, it tends to have dreamlike connotations, due to its effective inaccessibility. People can visit the sea, even if they can’t stay there, but the sky is always out of our reach.

Here, the details of your speakers’ world come into play. If they’re on Earth, then they’ll probably follow this terrestrial model to some extent. Aliens, however, will tailor their language to their surroundings. A world without a large moon like ours likely won’t have a word for “moon”; ancient Martians, for instance, might consider Phobos and Deimos nothing more than faster planets. Those aliens lucky enough to have multiple moons, on the other hand, will develop a larger vocabulary for them. The same goes for other astronomical phenomena, from the sun to the galaxy.

Land and sea

Descending to that part of the world we can reach, we find a bounty of potential words. There’s flat land, in the form of plains and valleys and fields. More rugged are the hills and mountains, distinguished with separate words in many languages; hills are really not much more than small mountains, but few languages conflate the two. Abundant plant life can create forests or, in some places, jungles, and a culture adapted to either of these areas will likely make far finer distinctions than we do. On the opposite end are the dry deserts, which aren’t necessarily hot (the Gobi is a cold desert, as is Antarctica). These don’t seem truly hospitable for life, but desert cultures exist all across the globe, from the Bedouins of the Middle East to the natives of the American Southwest, but they’ll always seek out sources of water.

Fresh water is most evident in two forms. We have the static lakes and the moving rivers as the most generic descriptors, but they’re far from all there is. Ponds are small lakes, for example, and swamps are a bit like a combination of lake and land. Rivers, owing to their huge importance for travel in past ages, get a sizable list: streams, creeks, brooks, and so on. All of these have slightly different meanings, but those can vary between dialects: what I call a creek, someone in another state may deem a brook. And the shades of meaning don’t cross language barriers, either, but a culture depending on moving bodies of water will tend to come up with quite a few words describing different kinds of them.

In another of the grand cycles of life, fresh water spills into the seas. Now, English has two words for salty bodies of water, “sea” and “ocean”, but that doesn’t mean they’re two separate things. Many languages have only one word covering both, and that’s fine. Besides, a landlocked language won’t really need to spend two valuable words on something that might as well not exist.

In addition to the broad range of terrain, terms also exist for smaller features. Caves, beaches, waterfalls, islands, and cliffs are just some of the things we name. Each one tends to be distinctive, in that speakers of a language have a set image in their minds of the “ideal” cave or bluff or whatever. That ideal will be different for different people, of course, but few would, for instance, think of the fjords of Norway when imagining a beach.

Talking about the weather

The earth and sea are, for the most part, unchanging. Scientifically, we know that’s not the case, but it’s close enough for linguistic purposes. The weather, however, is anything but static. (Don’t like the weather in {insert place name here}? Wait five minutes.) Languages have lots of ways to talk about the weather, and not just so that speakers will have a default topic for conversation.

Clouds are the most visible sign of a change in weather, but the wind can also tell you what’s to come. And for reasons that are probably obvious, there seems to be a trend: the worse the weather, the more ways a language has to talk about it. We can have a rain shower, a drizzle, maybe some sprinkles, or the far more terrible torrent, deluge, or flood. Thunder, lightning, snow (in places that have it), and more also get in on the weather words. In some locales, you can add in the tornado (or whirlwind) and hurricane to that list.

Culture and geography

Hurricane is a good example of geographical borrowing. It refers to a storm that can only form in the tropics, generally moving westward. That’s why the Spanish had to borrow a name from Caribbean natives—it was something they never really knew. True, hurricanes can strike Spain. Hurricane Vince made landfall in 2005, but 2005 was a weird year for weather all around, and there’s no real evidence that medieval and Renaissance Spaniards had ever seen a hurricane.

And that’s an important point for conlangers. Speakers of languages don’t exist in a vacuum, but few languages ever achieve the size of English or Spanish. Most are more limited in area, and their vocabulary will reflect that. We’ll see it more in future parts looking at flora and fauna, but it’s easy to illustrate in geography, too, as the hurricane example shows.

People living in a land that doesn’t have some geographical or meteorological feature likely won’t have a native word for it. The Spanish didn’t have a word for a hurricane. England never experienced a seasonal change in prevailing winds, so English had to borrow the word monsoon. Europe doesn’t have a lot of tectonic activity, but Japan does, so they’re the ones that came up with tsunami. The fjords of Scandinavia are defining features, but ones specific to that region, so we use the local name for them.

Conversely, those things a culture experiences more often will gain the focus of its wordsmiths. It says something about the English speaker’s native climate that there are so many ways to describe rain. Eskimo words for “snow” are a running linguistic joke, but there’s a kernel of truth in there. And English’s history had plenty of snow, otherwise we wouldn’t have flurries, flakes, and blizzards.

Time is also a factor in which lexical elements a language will have. Some finer distinctions require a certain level of scientific advancement. The cloud types—cumulus, nimbus, cirrus, etc.—were only really named two centuries ago, and they used terms borrowed from Latin. That doesn’t mean no one noticed the difference between puffy clouds and the grim deck of a nimbostratus before 1800, just that there was never a concerted effort to adopt fixed names for them. The same can be said for most other classification schemes.

Weather verbs

Finally, the weather deserves a second look, because it’s the reason for a very special set of verbs. In English, we might say, “It’s raining.” Other languages use an impersonal verb in this situation, with no explicit subject. (Our example conlang Ardari uses a concord marker of -y in this case.) For whatever reason, weather verbs are some of the most likely to appear in a form like this.

Perhaps it’s because the weather is beyond anyone’s control. It’s a force of nature. There’s no subject making it rain. It’s just there. But it’s one more little thing to consider. How does your conlang talk about the weather? You need to know, because how else are you going to start a conversation with a stranger?