Daniel M. Bensen
  • Home
  • Stories
  • Bio
  • Subscribe
  • Blog

Work and Play

​The  Adrrixan Language

3/15/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture

(from my Patreon)

I'm working on the language of a big expansionist empire for an epic fantasy story. It's supposed to be light and fun (sigh). The conceit of the worldbuilding is that ghosts exist. The conceit of the storytelling is that not only is the language of the main character translated into English, but the other related languages are "translated" into conlangs that are more or less different from English (weee!)

So: Adrrixan is an Indo-European language about as closely related to English as Persian or Russian. It was rather conservative until about five hundred years ago, when its speakers got fed up with the ghosts of their ancestors interfering in their lives and created a cant to fool them. The rule of the cant is: for any word C1V1C2V1, make it V1C2C1V2. If you have an odd number of syllables, extend the final syllable with -ha, -wo, or -yi, depending on the preceding vowel. For  example the pre-Adrrixan *drama (soil) became amdra (<dr> is a single consonant /d͡ʑ~ʑ/). A lexicon developed: adrrásma ("earthworms" contracted from adra-awra-asma < *rada +*waramasa) andi ("they eat" contracted from anda-iyti) anámdri ("soil-acc" contracted from ana-amdra-iyi, from "in"+"soil-dat"). So far so good, but those <a> letters are actually schwas, and are easily elided. The sentence "earthworms eat soil" becomes Adrrásm'andi'námdri (I say it aʑrás.mandi.námdri).

With free word order, you can have:
Adrrásma'námdri'ndi (earthworms soil eat)
Anámdri'drrásm'andi (soil earthworms eat)
Anámdri'ndi'drrásma (soil eat earthworms)
Andi'námdridrrásma (eat soil earthworms)
Andi'drrásma'námdri (eat earthworms soil)

Thus, I have achieved the aesthetic dream of fantasy conglangs: apostraphes, acute accents, and unreasonably long strings of letters. My only problem is when I go back to English. The citation forms are all sort of same-y looking ("The city of Adrrixa lies between the Fields of Atrrába and the Apquasa Mountains"). I keep feeling the temptation to slice off the first to letters ("The city of Rixa lies between the Fields of Rába and the Apqus Mountains") but that is that arbitrary? Boring? What do you think?

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Daniel M. Bensen

    Archives

    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    March 2022
    July 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    December 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018

    Categories

    All
    Alternate History
    Announcements
    Centuries Unlimited
    Conlang
    Essay
    Fantasy
    Fellow Tetrapod
    Ghost Of Mercy
    Newsletters
    Review
    Scifi
    Specbio
    Stories
    Third Realm
    Videos
    Wealthgiver
    World's Other Side

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Stories
  • Bio
  • Subscribe
  • Blog