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coinandcandle · 1 year

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Familiar Spirits and The Witches' Familiar - Coin's Notes

What is a familiar, and how do they fit into modern magic?

Definition

Familiars are spirits that act as assistants or guides to magic users, helping them with domestic and/or magical duties.

Familiars were and sometimes still are classified as a type of demonic spirit that often take the form of an animal, mostly thought to be cats, dogs, toads, and hares.

They are thought to help witches or magic users in domestic areas as well as in their magical affairs. Familiars can take on any color or shape.

In the 17th century, Familiars were more likely to be called “Imps”!

Etymology

The word Familiar comes from the Latin familiaris meaning "of or belonging to the family". Familiaris may come from the Latin word famulus meaning "slave" or "servant".

As far as we know, the first usage of the word in the context of witchcraft is attested from the 1560s. Before this, it was used as a noun meaning “familiar friend”.

History

The idea of familiars being a witch’s helper spirit was especially strong in the 17th century when King James I wrote about them in his book titled Daemonologie in which he talks about witches and their supposed "relations" with the devil.

This belief was most popular in East Anglian Europe and was scarcely found elsewhere during the witch trials.

The first recorded witch trial to reference a familiar in witchcraft is that of Dame Alice Kyteler, in 1324 (Wright 1833, p. 2) but it would be two centuries later that the idea of the witch's familiar took off.

Margaret Alice Murray talks about two different kinds of familiars The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: "those by which the witch divined and those who attended on the witch to obey her commands." *

Many historical accounts that we have regarding the confessions of supposed witches were likely falsified since the people being accused were under duress as they were being tortured. This doesn’t mean all historical accounts of Familiars are false, but we should take them with a grain of salt.

Most of the time those accused of witchcraft and of having "familiars" were lonely or isolated folks, likely older in age, that would talk to the animals probably similar to how we speak to our pets now.

However, keeping animals as pets wasn't too popular among the working class, and relationships with animals that were more than a farmer and his stock were seen as unnatural.

Cunning folk practices were said to involve familiars as well, though were often thought to be different than the witch’s “demonic” familiar and were sometimes referred to as the “fae” or “fairy” familiar in literature.

Side Note: We can’t talk about familiars without talking about demons!

“The noun meaning 'demon, evil spirit that answers one's call' is from the 1580s (familiar spirit is attested from 1560s); earlier as a noun it meant "a familiar friend" (late 14c.). The Latin plural, used as a noun, meant ‘the slaves,’ also ‘a friend, intimate acquaintance, companion.’ The usual ancient Greek sense, ‘supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god, ministering spirit’ is attested in English from the 1560s and is sometimes written daemon or daimon for purposes of distinction. Meaning ‘destructive or hideous person’ is from the 1610s; as ‘an evil agency personified’ (rum, etc.) from 1712.” (etymologyonline)

Famous Familiars

Familiar spirits were confessed to during the witch trials of Huntingdon. Two of their names were Greedigut and Grissel and they were given to the witch in spirit form by a demon who went by the name Blackeman. They were said to look like black dogs with hoglike, bristled hair on their back. -> It was said that they would do whatever their master requested and when they were not given a task would attack or rob passersby.

Agathion is a type of Familiar demonic spirit that can appear as an animal or a man. Once bound as a familiar it will live inside a ring or talisman of some sort. They were said to only appear at midday or to be most powerful at midday.

Sybacco was the familiar to the Comte de Corasse, the Comte de Foix, and Adriano Lemmi. Described as having bull horns and three eyes on his forehead, he is under the command of the demon Botiz.

Thomas "Tom" Reid was said to be the Familiar of Bessie Dunlop of Scotland, who was tried in 1576. Tom was described as the spirit of a soldier as well as an honest, elderly man. Tom told Bessie that he lived in Elfhame with the fae.

Boye was Prince Rupert’s dog that some believed to be his familiar due to their closeness and Boye’s tagging along during the British Civil War, though this was likely a smear campaign against the prince.

Similarities and Comparisons

Fylgr, a Norse guardian or “follower” spirit, was attached to a person related to their fate. These were often only seen by those with the ability to see the supernatural. In some cases, they would foretell the death of the person they followed but they weren’t inherently a sign of death.

Ancient Romans had genii that fall under the “helpful spirit” category, such as Lares Familiares which were household deities or spirits that were guardians of the family.

The Greeks believed in daimons which refer to supernatural beings between men and gods, such as minor gods or spirits of dead heroes. -> Some believed you could have personal daimons that acted as guides, guardians, or spiritual companions. Socrates was said to have a personal daimon, see: De Genio Socratis.

Fetches, historically considered bad omens, are now sometimes seen as a servitor spirit with a time limit that a person creates for a specific purpose. The Fetch will disappear once their task is completed or they’ve been dismissed. (pg 63-66 Barbarous Words) -> Originally, fetches were seen as a sort of spectral doppelganger, and seeing one foretold the death of the person they took the shape of.

Familiars in Modern Magic

Not dissimilar to their old definition, Familiars are seen as spirits that aid and guide witches. They are teachers, helpers, and companions.

Familiars can teach you magic, help with spells, or perform tasks for you.

They are not a pet. Treat a Familiar the way you’d treat a colleague or even a friend.

Divination is a great way to contact familiars. If you've done spirit work before then it's similar to contacting any other spirit.

Familiars are usually seen as a contractual spirit relationship.

Enjoy my posts? Consider leaving me a tip on my ko-fi!~

Resources and References

On Familiars Familiar - Britannica Etymology of Familiar - Etymology Online Notes on Familiars by Early Modern Whale Guardian spirits or Demonic Pets by James A Serpell CunningFolk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials. by Helen Parish

On the Witch Trials Witch Persecutions edited by George L. Burr. Malleus Maleficarum or The Witch’s Hammer by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray Daemonologie by King James I

*Note: While her witch-cult theory has been thoroughly debunked, Murray helped shape modern witchcraft whether she meant to or not and as such her texts are worth a read.

Misc Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures by Theresa Bane The Folklore of Isle of Man ch. III by A. W. Moore Barbarous Words: A compendium of Conjurations, British folk magic, and other Popish charms by George Hares The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early modern England and Scottland

#familiars #witchblr #witch history #witchcraft #familiar spirits #coin's notes

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ranahan · 5 months

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Agent nouns in Mando’a

No, not the 007 kind. I mean different ways to derive words for a “doer” in Mando’a. There are half a dozen different ones. I’ve included some examples, but not an exhaustive list of all the instances these suffixes/derivations appear in the canon dictionary.

In no particular order (because tumblr on mobile doesn’t allow me to drag these into a more logical order):

-ad

As a noun, ad means “a child”. It’s kind of hard to say whether it should be analysed as a suffix or as a part of a compound word in derived words. Whichever way, in derived words the meaning is “person”, somewhat like “man” in English words like foreman, fireman, Englishman, etc. In demonyms, it’s perhaps best translated as “a child of…”. It also appears in other types of nouns and some adjectives, but that’s a story for another time.

In canon, it appears in words such as:

Alor’ad, (n.) ‘captain’ < alor (‘leader’) + ad

Ramikad, ‘commando’ < ram’ika ‘raid’ + ad, “raider”.

Kyramud, ‘assassin’ < kyram (‘death’) + ad (ad dissimilates to -ud)

Mando’ad, (n.) ‘a Mandalorian’, “child of Mandalore” < mando (‘mandalorian’) + ad

+1 non-canon example, since I promised to explain my reasoning for deriving the word for a pilot from sen (‘fly’) + ad > senad (rather than one of the other suffixes): it’s not that I think -ad is the only one or even the most common way to derive a noun for a profession—rather, it’s my observation that pilots seem to hold flying as something that’s more than just a job, and more like a part of their identity. And I wanted the word for a pilot to reflect that. So this one is for all the pilots in my family tree.

-ur

Nominal suffix which seems to denote a doer or an instrument (we also get it in gaanur, ‘hand tool’ < gaan (‘hand’) + ur).

Baar’ur, (n.) ‘a medic’ < baar (‘body’) + ur. My take on this word is that it’s rather like English “physician”, which derives (via French and Latin) from Ancient Greek φυσικός, which means ‘natural’ or ‘physical’. I tend to think that baar’la also means ‘bodily, corporal’ (I’m hardly original in this, my dictionary file lists no less that four authors for baar’la).

Cabur, ‘protector, guardian’ < *cab- (‘protect’) + ur

-ii

A nominal suffix denoting a doer, also used in demonyms (but not professional titles, at least not in the small canon sample). My take on -ii is a neutral agent suffix, much like English -er. It also appears in demonyms, which I’ve written about in here. The tldr is that I think it’s a neutral suffix—but it can be derogatory depending on the context.

Parjii, ‘victor, winner’ < *parj- (‘win’) + -ii

Aruetii, ‘outsider’

Kaminii, ‘Kaminoan’ < Kamino + -ii

-aar

Short. Punchy. I don’t know what else to say.

Chakaar, ‘thief’ < *chak- (‘steal’) + -aar, “stealer, robber”.

Senaar, ‘a bird’ < *sen- (‘fly’) + -aar, “flyer”.

Galaar, ‘a hawk’ < *gal- (‘plunge, plummet, dive’) + -aar. Literally “plummet-er” or “diver”, after its characteristic way of hunting.

-an

This is a fun one. As an independent word, it means ‘all’. As a suffix, it has a couple of different collective senses. When forming an agent noun, the best way I can formulate the meaning is X-an > “one who can all X”.

So cuyan < cuyir (‘to be, exist’) + an is not just any kind of a exister or liver, it’s one who lived through it all, i.e. a survivor.

And a goran < *gorar or possibly *gor + an, is not just any maker or creator, but one who can make everything (or everything that counts, anyway), i.e. a smith, an armourer.

Aran, ‘guard’ < *ar- (my best damn guess is this root means ‘against’) + an, so “one who can (stand) against everything”, probably.

Compound words

I’m still working out the compound word rules in Mando’a so take this analysis with a big heaping of salt. Most compound word titles/agent nouns seem to be a combination of a verb and a noun (like English “woodcutter”) and they don’t need a suffix in addition (“woodcut” rather than “woodcutter”).

First we have a couple of N + V (without the verbal suffix) type compounds. This compound noun type is really common in Mando’a in general.

Gotabor, ‘engineer’ < gota (‘machine’) + bor(ar) (‘work’), “machine-worker”.

Meshurkaan, ‘jeweler’ < meshurok (‘gemstone’) + hokaan(ir) (‘cut’), “gem-cutter”.

The V + N compound word type seems equally well attested:

Tay’haai, ‘archivist, reporter’ < *tay- (‘hold, preserve’) + *haai (probably ‘’), either “hold-truth” or “hold-see(ing, maybe?)”. The problem is, we don’t have a definition for haai. There’s haa’it (‘vision’) and haa’taylir (‘to see’), but no haai. The -i is a noun suffix, so that makes me tentatively place that as a noun.

Al’verde, ‘commander’ < *al- (‘lead’) + verde (‘soldiers’), “soldier-leader” or “lead soldiers”.

Demagol, ‘’ < dem(ar) (‘carve’) + agol (‘flesh’), “flesh-carver” or “carve flesh”.

Others

Sometimes what looks like a verbal suffix -Vr is actually a noun. There are enough of these in the dictionary that it’s either not just zero derivation or it’s a really common one (especially -ar).

Alor, ‘leader’ < *al- (‘lead’) + or

Hibir, ‘student’

Mirci’t, ‘prisoner’. Honestly, this one has a noun suffix that’s otherwise exclusively applied to things, not people. Proceed with caution if you want to take it as an example.

This is my (not exhaustive) analysis based on Traviss’ word list and other works, but I am of course not Karen Traviss and neither do I have access to her notes. If you disagree on something, let me know in the comments or even better, post your own analysis as a rebuttal.

#mandoa #mando’a #mando’a language #mando’a linguistics #ranah talks mando’a #mando'a #mando’a morphology #mando’a analysis

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noosphe-re · 5 months

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Etymology of 'mentor'

"wise adviser, intimate friend who also is a sage counselor," especially to one who is young or inexperienced, 1750, from Greek Mentor, in the Odyssey" the name of the friend of Odysseus and adviser of Telemachus (but often actually Athene appearing in disguise). The name perhaps ultimately means "adviser," because in form it is an agent noun of mentos "intent, purpose, spirit, passion" from PIE *mon-eyo- (source also of Sanskrit man-tar- "one who thinks," Latin mon-i-tor "one who admonishes"), causative form of root *men- (1) "to think" [Watkins]. Compare monitor (n.). Often capitalized, even in the general sense, into mid-19c. The general use of the word probably is via later popular romances, in which Mentor played a larger part than he does in Homer. Related: Mentorship.

—Etymonline.com

#quote #etymology #mentor #mentorship #wisdom #language #linguistics #thinking

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hungwy · 1 year

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do you know if the word fact derives from factory or vice verse?

English fact pretty directly comes from Latin factum, the nominal use of the past participle form of facere "to do" -- essentially, fact means "something that has occurred; an event". Factory also stems from factum: first, the agent noun form factor "doer, maker -- someone who 'does'"; then, factorium, lit. "place of doers, makers", which apparently had connotations in Roman culture for "office" but also "oil press, mill". Then from factorium we get French factorie, and thus English factory.

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marztheincredible · 1 year

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So, I might be asking too much at this time, but your rambling made me think, how are adjectives connected to words? In the languages with cases I learned (mostly Latin) the adjectives are matched by matching cases, but that doesn't seem the case here. Does the word order connect adjectives? Or is it the glottal stop (and that's why you rambled about it)? Also, it's sneaky how you didn't introduce the third case, the "neutral case", or are there more? Thanks for answering!

With holding information is difficult with your wonderful questions AGH

Yall are also VERY perceptive which I love entirely.

Nouns have:

Agentive Case- Witch(doing the verb)

Patientive Case-(verb done to) Witch

Dative Case- to Witch (think of the sentence "Eda gives a gift to Luz" to Luz would have the Dative case)

Genitive Case- Possession; Witch's

Verbs can be intransitive or transitive, which is a topic we'll have to dive into another time. Just keep in mind that "Eat something" <- Eat (vtr.) is a transitive verb. "Run something" Run <- is intransitive

So technically the phrase zho rachǔ (I eat) is a full sentence in Old tongue.

As for adjectives, yes! The glottal stop connects adjectives to nouns, there's also an affix for it when lenition happens. the sound o is added to the adjective, with the sound 'pointing' to the side of the noun. However, the standard is the glottal stop. Adjectives in Old Tongue can come before or AFTER a noun they're describing:

"The smart witch" -> kawdh'thekǂ OR thekǂ'kawdh

To emphasize smart -> "The really smart witch." you use the same adjective on both sides kawdh'thekǂ'kawdh that last part can be difficult with both the ejective click kǂ and the glottal stop. So alternatively you can say kawdh'thekǂokawdh and it would be the same.

"The smart witch drinks the bad potion."

af'sojík zhong kawdh'thekǂíf

Subject

Direct Object

Verb

Adjective

#Titan's Blessing #the owl house #toh #toh fanfic #fanfic #ask #Old Tongue #Conlang #Linguistics

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gwendolynlerman · 2 years

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Languages of the world

Solresol (Sol-Re-Sol)

Basic facts

Number of speakers: ?

Spoken: ?

Script: Latin, 7 notes

Grammatical cases: 0

Linguistic typology: analytic, SVO

Language family: constructed

Number of dialects: 0

History

1817 - Solresol is first developed

1866 - the first book about the language is published

Solresol was invented by François Sudre, a musician, composer, and music teacher. He called it la langue musicale universelle (the international musical language) or Solrésol, which in Solresol means “language, idiom, dialect, linguistics or philology”.

Sudre hoped Solresol would be used to facilitate international communication and deliberately made the language simple, so it would be easy to learn, and unlike any natural language, to avoid giving an advantage to any particular group of people.

Solresol was the first artificial language to be taken seriously as an interlanguage. It is also the first and only musically-based interlanguage, or at least the only one to make any headway.

Solresol has seven syllables based on the Western musical scale: do re mi fa sol la si. The total number of words is 2,660: 7 words with one syllable, 49 with two syllables, 336 with three syllables, and 2,268 with four syllables.

Writing system and pronunciation

Solresol has several written forms:

Using the Latin alphabet: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si

Using the Latin alphabet without the vowels (except the -o- of sol to distinguish it from si): d, r, m, f, so, l, s

As numerals: 1 (do), 2 (re), 3 (mi), 4 (fa), 5 (sol), 6 (la), 7 (si)

As notes on a musical scale of just three lines:

Using the Solresol stenographic script invented by Vincent Gajewski:

Solresol can also be represented by the seven colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), by manual signs, with different colored flags, or by painting.

Here are some sample words in the stenographic script:

Double syllables are indicated with a line through them.

Grammar

Many words in Solresol are grouped according to their first syllable:

do = physical and moral properties of people, their intellectual faculties and qualities, and food, e.g. doredomi (body), domilafa (reason, sense), dofamisol (wisdom), dolamisi (to eat), dolasoldo (meat)

re = things in the home, housework, and family, e.g. redoredo (clothes), remifala (house, home), remisolla (room), resolmire (to sweep, broom), residosol (family)

mi = actions and flaws, e.g. midosolfa (to complain), mifadore (character, nature), milamido (to talk nonsense), milarefa (to critcize)

fa = country, travel, war, and the navy, e.g. fadoremi (countryside), fadomido (mountain, hill), fadofasol (tree), famidomi (soldier), fasisolfa (road), fasidore (to travel)

sol = fine arts and sciences, e.g. soldoremi (theatre), soldomido (opera), solsifasol (to invent, create), solsidofa (novel, story)

la = industry and commerce, e.g. ladoremi (to manufacture, make, factory), ladomifa (workship, studio), larelado (accounting), lamiresol (trade)

si = city, goverment, and administration, e.g. sidoredo (city, town), sodofasi (market), siresire (politics)

Nouns have two genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). Feminine words (for female beings) are indicated by accenting the final vowel of a word. In writing this can be indicated with an accent: domifado = man, domifadō = woman. Accenting the final vowel also indicates the plural.

Accents are also used to indicate the category of word. They are not normally indicated in writing but can be added as a macron, acute, or circumflex. When singing or playing Solresol on an instrument, accented syllables are given two beats.

unaccented = verb, e.g. solremifa = to sing

accented first syllable = abstract noun, e.g. sōlremifa = song

accented second syllable = agent/doer, e.g. solrēmifa = singer

accented penultimate syllable = adjective, e.g. solremīfa = song-like

accented final syllable = adverb (or feminine/plural), e.g. solremifā = singingly, tunefully; sisol = Mr. — sisōl = Mrs.; dore = I, me — dorē = we, us

Some words form their opposites by reversing the syllables. For example:

misol = well, good — solmi = wrong, evil

fala = good, tasty — lafa = bad

fasi = much, very — sifa = little, scarely

solla = always — lasol = never

solsi = to go up, climb — sisol = to descend

solsifa = to laugh — fasisol = to cry

simila = ease — lamisi = difficulty

doladomi = to accept, consent — midolado = to refuse, reject

dola = one, someone — lado = nothing, zero, nobody

simi = good morning/afternoon, hello — misi = good evening/night

dore = I, me, we — redo = my, mine

dofa = you — fado = your

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, and aspect. Tenses are indicated as follows:

dodo = imperfect/pluperfect, e.g. dore dodo domilado (I was speaking/had spoken)

rere = simple past, e.g. dore rere domilado (I spoke)

mimi = future/future perfect, e.g. dore mimi domilado (I will speak / will have spoken)

fafa = conditional/past conditional, e.g. dore fafa domilado (I would speak / would have spoken)

solsol = imperative, e.g. solsol domilado (speak!)

lala = present participle, e.g. lala domilado (speaking)

sisi = past participle, e.g. sisi domilado (spoken)

#langblr #lingblr #solresol

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imuybemovoko · 1 year

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so I made a language by putting proto-indo-european in a blender and leaving it on the liquefy setting for an afternoon

Yeah.

Today I'll be describing my hypothetical Indo-European conlang Bèhsráto. It's an isolate within the family, but there's considerable influence from Slavic languages, Latin, Greek, and a bit from Albanian and Hungarian, mostly in the form of loaned vocabulary.

PHONOLOGY

I made a lot of interesting decisions here.

Breathiness in vowels spreads forward in a word except when there's a consonant cluster, then it's blocked. ɴ arose from breathy vowels via rhinoglottophilia, i.e. V̤ > Ṽ > ɴ, in stressed syllables and at the end of words.

Consonant clusters can get a little crunchy, though at the beginning of words they're fairly limited to s or ʃ followed by a voiceless stop, z followed by a voiced stop, an obstruent and then a sonorant, a cluster of a stop and then a fricative of the same voicing, or just about any sequence of /x/ and then another consonant. For one example of a crunchier consonant cluster, the name of the language is pronounced [bɛ̤xsrɐtɔ]. Stress is ...weird, but typically on the penult (as here) or the antepenult.

Bèhsráto is a satem language, meaning the Proto-Indo-European palatal stops shifted to fricatives and affricates and the labiovelar *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ merged with k g gʰ. The word for hundred is státo [stɐto]. (For a while, the postalveolar affricates the palatal stop series yielded surfaced as retroflex sounds, and some very strange things happened to some of them, yielding these st- or zd- clusters.)

Another fun note: Bèhsráto retains the laryngeals from Proto-Indo-European as /x/ in some environments. This is where a lot of those weird initial clusters involving /x/ come from. *h₃mígʰleh₂ surfaces as hmáglej [xmɐglɛj] "fog", *h₃rḗǵs as hris [xris] "king", *h₂ékʷeh₂ as hakoj [xakɔj] "drinking water", and so on.

ORTHOGRAPHY

I decided to write this language with the latin script like a basic bitch. I'm kind of assuming it's spoken on the coast of the Black Sea, but I didn't put a ton of effort into the history, I was more interested in bullying the phonology and grammar until they took a new, strange form. I could justify using Cyrillic or Greek alphabet for this but I didn't want to think about it, so I simply didn't.

GRAMMAR

This is where I did some of my weirder things.

Bèhsráto is a topic-prominent language. It retains a nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative case in pronouns, but in most nouns there is only the direct (serving the roles of both nominative and accusative) and the indirect (a catch-all for all others, most often clarified via prepositions). Word order is topic-initial.

Here's the personal pronouns:

In ...most... of these, four cases remain distinct. The genitive serves double purpose as an ablative, and the dative is also a locative and instrumental.

The topic marker agrees in animacy, number, and case with the marked noun:

The topic marker developed from a historical definite article. The historical indefinite article developed into a sort of indirect particle that can apply to the indirect object for emphasis when it isn't the topic, singular form ojno, plural ojna.

Also here's the case endings:

Direct case means it's either the subject or the object; indirect case means it's anything else. The direct case is a -j suffix when the noun ends in o, else it shifts any final vowel to o or is a suffix. Adjectives agree to the noun in case and number, i.e. șrego "darkness" en șregoj in darkness-IND "in darkness" en țonákoj șregoj in hellish-IND darkness-IND "in hellish darkness" (these examples are very My Immortal, I know, don't @ me)

The verb agrees to the topic of the sentence and so has direct and inverse endings to mark which is the agent and which is the patient. More on that later. For now let me crack out a few example sentences to explain just what is going on here:

Sa testu teset legâsna TOP.DIR carpenter make-PST.3S.DIR bed "The carpenter made a bed"

Tod legâsna testor testu TOP.DIR bed make-PST.3S.INV carpenter "It was a bed that the carpenter made"

Basically, since word order is determined by the topic and not by who's doing what, the verb has different endings to determine which noun serves which role.

Now let's do something with an indirect object:

Sa hmoj dâgantèr zgome esto per ojno dzero TOP.DIR 1S.GEN daughter ride-3S.IPFV.DIR horse through IND gate-IND "My daughter is riding a horse through the gate"

The particle "ojno" here adds a degree of specificity and secondary emphasis to the noun it's marking; this is an example of the way the indirect case operates, where it's part of the constructions that use prepositions.

Now let's mark this gate as the topic:

Per tod dzero hmoj dâgantèr zgome esto. through TOP.DIR gate-IND 1S.GEN daughter ride-3S.IPFV.DIR horse "Through the gate is where my daughter is riding a horse"

In this case, the indirect object is fronted and the old SVO default word order is returned.

Now let's get into some of the uses of the indirect case.

The possessive construction uses the preposition hapo "off, away" and places the possessor noun in the indirect case, i.e. hneumo hapo táranoj "the name of the tyrant".

Other constructions that deal in origin use the preposition haz "from", i.e. záuro haz poloj "the man from the city"

There's a benefactive-type construction using the preposition pro "leading to", i.e. dèștâ pro Aținoj "altar for Athena"

There's a locative construction using en "in", i.e. en Ațínoj "in Athens" (btw that's not a typo, the name of the city and the name of the goddess are a minimal pair of /ɨ/ and /i/)

There are two instrumental-type constructions, one for a living thing and one for a tool: jágo estoj "with a horse"; zájzdo nehábâ "with boats". (It took me this long to use literally any plural? shame.)

So that's basically nouns.

VERBS

I'm going to drop tables for the direct endings and the inverse endings, and then things get weird. Basically these are suffixes, but they'll tend to replace the last vowel of the root. Not always, but often.

Direct endings:

"Subjunctive 1" refers to the fact that I have two things I couldn't come up with a better label for than "Subjunctive" and the number just differentiates between them. Subjunctive 1 is a bit softer, deals in hopes, preferences, etc, in a way that's adjacent but distinct from the optative, and subjunctive 2 is needs, ought statements, etc.

"Direct" here means that the topic is also the subject, or that the topic is the indirect object and the order of subject, object, and verb is the default SVO.

Inverse endings:

"Inverse" here means the topic is the object. The personal agreement is still based on the subject of the sentence, but this means it's not the topic.

Now, there are several tenses that affix after these endings:

Example: Ṣediștâ eat-3S.DIR-SUBJ2 "He needs to eat" (Note here that the t in the 3S.DIR ending, normally -ti-, is lost here because of the voiced stop.)

These five suffixes are actually derived from converbs, which function in a rather similar way.

CONVERBS

Here's each converb suffix and its main meaning:

These can have broader meanings than the above; I just listed the basic ones to save a bit of space here. Going into what each of these does would be annoying as hell for the purposes of a post like this. Anyway, let's crack out an example sentence or two:

Ṣedáneutá hmá, taj haște ze stejgìr ha ojno bèjzdo. eat-3P.DIR-CONV.instead 1S.ACC TOP.P bear-P REFL.IND climb-3P.IPFV.DIR on IND.S hill-IND "Instead of eating me, the bears are climbing on a hill."

(I use the reflexive and a locative construction here because the verb stejgè "climb, march" doesn't take an object, and specifically the indirect reflexive because they're using their body to do an action and not really doing it to themselves.)

Zorozmautá, zdo tetol hmoj zdensèrè ne henáko. stir-1S-CONV.NEG.SUBJ 1S.NOM hold.up-1S.DIR.PST 1S.GEN hand-P NEG breathe-1S.DIR-and "Needing not to move, I held up my hands and didn't breathe"

(When they are subject, pronouns are by default the topic and need not be marked if in topic position. Also, the suffix -ko is "and" or "any", and the suffix -zi means "or", and these can apply to nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Also, particle ne is one of the negation pathways. There are three, more on that later.)

AUXILIARY VERBS

There are two auxiliary verbs, bỳh "to become" for the future tense and hajs "to have, to obtain" for the past perfect tense. The auxiliary verbs take the endings and the main verb is in participle form. An example of each:

Zdo bỳhoz hládòt h'Afroditeu en Sofijo 1S FUT.1S.DIR.PERF arrive-PTCP.DIR on Friday in Sofia-INDIR "I will arrive in Sofia on Friday"

(Here the preposition ha "on" is cliticized. That happens with initial vowels. Also, weekdays are derived from the names of Greek gods. Aphrodite gets Friday. A note that's not super relevant to this example but seems useful to include: Saturday, Kroníu, can also be Síbota, or "sabbath", and which is used varies some by region but Síbota is universally far more popular among devout followers of Abrahamic religions.)

Sa Aleksada hajsti zejdot sjo zásto. TOP.DIR Alexander have-3S.DIR find-PTCP 3S.GEN dog "Alexander has found his dog."

NEGATION

There are three forms of negation. The general one is the particle ne. It negates verbs, serves as an answer, etc.

Another, now primarily a derivational form, is the prefix o(n)-, meaning "without", "not", etc. Example: zásteto "holy", ozásteto "unholy"

The third is the command form, the particle ma. Example:

Ma se zejdâ! NEG.IMP REFL tremble-2S.IMP.DIR lit. "Do not tremble", basically "B̴̻̐͑̚Ȇ̵̱͔͘͜ ̵̳͂Ṉ̷̙͑͘O̶͎̫̮̾T̴̪̺̉̈́ ̷̬͕̬̔Ã̷̛̜͒Ḟ̸̳̺̯R̶̝̒̈Ȃ̵͉͓̎̒I̷̠͚͊̓D̴̡͛̇͘͜" as a biblical angel might say. bèjà is a general term for "to fear, to be afraid"; se zejb- is a way of saying the same thing that is intense and often has religious connotations.

INTERROGATIVES

it question tiemn binch

That's right, we have quite a stack of question words. Several that take more than one word in English, and singular and plural forms. The question word is generally going to be the first thing in the sentence.

kí/ko here is a term that shows up in questions that aren't covered by these others or can function as "What?" as in asking for clarification, repetition, etc.

A couple of examples:

Kosmud gomosi? where.from come-2S.DIR "From where have you come?"

Ska sa proruka șesti? who TOP.DIR prophet be-3S.DIR

RELATIVE CLAUSES

Relative clauses use the relative pronoun, singular jo plural je, and sometimes an appropriate interrogative. I'll give just one example because anything is able to be relativized.

Example:

Taj goneje je zejd hmoj hagno hajsir zesezo halbè zeste TOP.DIR woman-P.DIR REL.P find-PST.3P.DIR have-IPFV.DIR.3P wear-PTCP.IPFV white-P clothes-P "The women who found my lamb were wearing white clothes"

It's technically also correct to render this as Taj goneje je kítaj zejd hmoj hagno but it's not mandatory.

REFLEXIVES

There are two reflexive, a direct and an indirect one, se and ze respectively.

Let's bring back the times I used these and talk about the reflexives specifically a little bit more.

Ma se zejdâ! NEG.IMP REFL tremble-2S.IMP.DIR "Be not afraid!"

Se is used for an action done directly and consciously to oneself; in this case, since when angels issue this as a command it implies agency over one's own fear, it qualifies.

Ze carries less intentionality in contexts like the above, but is also an indirect form. The action is, in this case, technically without object, so you use the indirect reflexive.

And that basically sums this thing up. Here's a translation I had a lot of fun with.

Cave Johnson's announcement about mantis men

Ysmá je benhpreste pro taj DNAje hapo bugolmoka inikermedà zej, zdo taj zese zerde trejsteko dàr. DAT.2P REL.P volunteer-2P.PST.DIR towards TOP.P DNA.P off mantis inject-1P.SUBJ.INV 1P | 1S TOP.P excellent.P word-P sad.P-and give-1S.INV To you who volunteered so that we would inject you with the DNA from a praying mantis, I give happy words and sad ones.

Trejstá, taj teste prolatomosdàștâ hed telo hapo tímpo. sad TOP.DIR.P test-P delay-1P.INV-SUBJ2 until end off time.IND Sadly, we must delay those tests until the end of time.

Zesá, sa nezo test hajsmosdà ysmá: Jy bỳhțe keutásnezo serkáty zdánáto bugolmoke-záure. excellent TOP.DIR new test have-1P.INV 2P.DAT | 2P become-2P.DIR.IPFV fight-DIR.IPFV.PTCP army made.of mantis-P man-P Happily, we have a new test for you: You will be fighting an army made of mantis men.

Gàbàdâ pușka; sa zdèlò șejter seksadâ. take-2S.IMP rifle | TOP.DIR yellow path follow-IMP.INV.2S Take a rifle; follow the yellow line.

Ty bỳhsi zojdot jo kídeh sa test kene. 2S become-2S.DIR know-PTCP.DIR REL when TOP.DIR test begin-3S.IPFV.DIR You will know when the test is starting.

#conlang #i stabbed proto indo european right in the left kidney and this is the result #"B̴̻̐͑̚Ȇ̵̱͔͘͜ ̵̳͂Ṉ̷̙͑͘O̶͎̫̮̾T̴̪̺̉̈́ ̷̬͕̬̔Ã̷̛̜͒Ḟ̸̳̺̯R̶̝̒̈Ȃ̵͉͓̎̒I̷̠͚͊̓D̴̡͛̇͘͜#cave johnson

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xovvo · 1 year

Text

English Wordsmithing Pt. 1: From PIE to Proto-Germanic

Ok, so intro post with the basics of PIE is done. Now we can actually get to making these words! Today, I'm feelin' like I want some good words for clergy/pagan priestly roles since pretty much all native English words for them have been Christianized.

There are a few PIE roots we could select (including *weh₂t-, which yielded Latin "vātēs" for an Oracle, prophetess, or seer, Odinn, and several words in English and other Germanic languages meaning "madness", "excitement", "singing", "rage", etc. It's a fun root, but not what I'm looking for right now. Maybe later.), but for this purpose, I want to explore *seh₂k-, which gave us Latin "sacer", "sanctus" and English "sacred" and English/French "saint". It has meanings of making or being holy, as well as making a pact---which is great! Perfect!

A note on Orthography: since my system can't render ḗ correctly, nor é̄, a long vowel bearing accent will be written as e̋.

Now we need to choose endings. I'm going to focus on endings that derive agent nouns from roots or verbs. The first that springs to mind is *-te̋r, which throws the stem into the ø grade. Because it derives nouns from adjectives, I could actually append this not just to the bare *seh₂k- root, but also the various infix-presents, and the factative and causative forms. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough yet with PIE word-formation, so I don't have a good idea of what happens when I need to adjust stress/ablaut on more than one syllable.

Wiktionary also claims that *-lós is also a suffix that derives agent nouns from roots/verbal nouns. Great, add it to the pile.

Lastly, I want to explore is actually three endings connected by ablaut. We have *-mén(s) > *-mën, *-mon(s) > *-mō, and *-mn̥. I'm tempted to think *-mn̥ is the original ending since *-mō is its collective/plural, and that was a common path for new words to get coined in PIE (and it's how we got the feminine gender in Post-Anatolian PIE!) and *-me̋n created in analogy, but I don't have data for that. It should be noted that *-mn̥ is neuter and both *-mō and *-me̋n are masculine. Also technically only *-me̋n and *-mō create agent nouns---but in Proto-Germanic two of the endings collapse together, and by the time we get to Old English, they're all the same ending.

as a bonus, I'm also including *seh₂klōys, which only has descendents in Anatolian languages and meant something like ‘custom, customary behavior, rule, law, requirement; rite, ceremony; privilege, right’, according to Dr. Kloekhorst, in his Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon which is great and I love it.

So, our candidate words are:

*sh₂kme̋n ~*séh₂kmō ~ *séh₂kmn̥

*sh₂klōs

*sh₂kte̋r

*seh₂klōys, for funsies

Now, the forms for the genitive and the plurals were distinct, so I'll be listing these words in tables with these four forms of the word (Nominative Singular, Nominative Plural, Genitive Singular, Genitive Plural). Because the oblique cases merge so fast (to the point where we go from PIE's fulll Nominative-Accusative-Genitive-Vocative-Ablative-Allative-Dative-Locative-Instrumental system to Old English's Nominative-Accusative-Genitive-Dative system that was already just a Nominative-Genitive system except for a few rare forms.) and I'm currently not looking to make new words out of oblique forms, we're good leaving them off.

So! our initial tables are:

Image captions coming once I figure out how to trick screanreaders into pronouncing IPA

So, for the purposes of this post, I'll be following a roughly chronological order for the sound changes, but if you're following along at home, the chronological summary of sound changes can be found on page 152 of A Linguistic History of English, Volume I: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic by Don Ringe, but it's recommended that you definitely follow along by reading from section 3.2.1.

Now, Immediately, several sound changes are relevant to our words:

Syllabic resonants prepend an epenthic "u"

Word-final bimoric ("long") -ō lengthens to trimoric ("overlong") -ô

Word-initial laryngeals are dropped before consonants, laryngeals that precede a vowel color /e/ and /ē/ and are dropped, laryngeals that follow vowels lengthen them and color /e/ and /ē/ and are dropped, AND because neither Cogwill's nor Osthoff's law apply here, laryngeals between consonants are replaced by epenthic "ǝ"

Giving us:

Once again, this image uncaptioned until I can make a reader read it comprehensibly, I'm so sorry

At this point, the biggest changes we need to handle are Grimm's and Verner's Laws.

Grimm's Law shifts the "voiceless" series of consonants to voiceless fricatives ([ p, t, k ] > [ f, þ, x(orthographic "h") ]), "voiced" obstruents to voiceless obstruents ([ b, d, g ] > [ p, t, k ]), and "voiced-aspirated" obstruents to voiced obstruents (which also had voiced fricative allophones in many positions; [ bʰ, dʰ, gʰ ] > [ b, d, g ]). Now, clusters of obstruents block the shift such that only the first obstruent shifts. Which means for our purposed, only one consonant---the final "k" in the root is affected and nothing else.

Verner's Law and is more complicated. To quote Dr. Ringe in Section 3.2.4: """ After the PIE voiceless stops had become voiceless fricatives by Grimm’s Law, they became voiced by Verner’s Law if they were not word-initial and not adjacent to a voiceless sound and the last preceding syllable nucleus was unaccented; *s was also affected, and became voiced *z under the same conditions """

Also, really only affecting the genitive singular of *-ós: *-ósyo, is apocope, wwhich actually ends up chopped back to *-ós.

So now, at this crossroads we have:

At this point, stress moves to the initial syllable (so I will no longer be marking stress) which strengthens ǝ > a, and then two sequences of changes happen at the same time:

m > n at the end of words, then Vn > V̨ word-final /n/ is lost while nasalizing the preceeding vowel, and then ę̄ > ą̄

unstressed /e/ > /o/ before wC, unstressed /e/ > /i/ everywhere else

after this, the next two big changes happen before the Late contraction of vowels in hiatus wraps everything up:

ji > i, kicking off the general loss of j between vowels except the environments *ijV > *ijV and ǝjV > *jV

After stress moved to the initial syllable the low rounded back vowels unrounded: [ o, ō, ô ] > [ a, ā, â ], then after ę̄ > ą̄ and VjV > VV, the long low vowels re-rounded, regardless of nasalization: [ ā, â ] > [ ō, ô ]

The contraction of vowels in hiatus wraps everything up. For the most part, the contraction meant /o/ and /a/ got lengthened, capping at trimoric length.

So, our words are now in their Final Proto-Germanic state:

It's almost comprehensible to screen readers!

Right?

Well, not quite. Because we have to take into account he morphological changes that were made as native speakers remodeled declensions and shit to suit how they interpreted their language to work.

Here, it's just Nom. sing. "saglas" > "saglaz"

And also the leveling of sag- and merger of -mǫ̂ + -mō endings (with light remodelling.) Now we're ready to head into the next post where we cover the Intermediate stages between Proto-Germanic and Old English, with this set:

Soon, I promise

#linguistics #proto indo european #proto germanic #conlanging #conlang #I still feel like I missed something during the o > a change bc that was more remodelling than expected #Sound changes say -mnes that /m/ is a syllabic resonant and should receive an epenthic /u/ if it doesn't have a vowel against it #yet all the endings have -minis or -miniz

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daxieoclock · 11 months

Note

How did you came up with Dia’s full name? (As a question about your OCs)

Ty for the ask!!! :D

Dia’s full name is actually a specific synthetic chemical used in the creation of homunculi, acting as a binding agent, something to convince the body not to reject the foreign artificial soul upon its initial implant. It’s also heavily toxic on its own, being a Soul suppressant similar to immune suppressants taken by recipients of donated organs. That’s been true since early in Dia’s conception.

However, her current full name (Septigrininat-un-Diadelixaphage) isn’t her original drafted full name; that would be “Deoxyribonucleiphage” as a portmanteau of the chemical name for DNA with “-phage”, a suffix meaning “to consume.” That suffix remained as I iterated on the story, and her current name is a particular gibberish mix of Latin suffixes and prefixes, with various European phrases thrown in to complete its particular rhythm.

Septi - Latin “sept-“ meaning seven.

Grinin - Turkish for “grey,” with “gri-“ being a suffix in a few other languages, also meaning grey. This one has a very nice internal rhythm, which is primarily why I chose it.

At - Suffix used in various languages, generally originating from Latin “-atus,” for conjugating nouns into possessive adjectives.

Un - Also multiple languages, generally referring to a singular object (“a something” / “an object”). In this case, it’s closer to “and” or “of,” but it’s a general conjoining phrase.

Dia - Feminine of Dius, Latin for “divine” but can also mean “by day” (over the course of the day, i.e. a long time).

Del - Used in a few European languages, can mean either “a part of something” or “of/from, belonging to” but also evokes “delete.”

Elix - Old English “to extract,” but also evokes both “helix” and “elixir.”

Phage - as mentioned, an English suffix, “to consume.”

A rough translation could potentially be: “with divine intent/authority, (this) extracts and consumes (single action, the way one might scoop up food with hands and bring it to mouth to eat) a sevenfold grey (thing).” Sevenfold grey in this case tying into creation myths about the origin of Soul, so it’s a poetic shorthand for Soul itself.

#ebb and flow #Dia

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winter-weepingwillow · 2 years

Text

Teyvat Nations (and more) and their meanings: a summary

So, I figured I could post here some notes I jotted down, back when I first started the game and did some research after seeing the trailer, then kept on adding studies as I went on.

Hope it'll be useful! And I hope I'm not missing anything. Enjoy!

Mondstadt (German) [Anemo; Freedom]: "City of the Moon" ;

Liyue (Chinese) [Geo; Contracts]: 璃月 Líyuè, "Glazed Moon" ;

Inazuma (Japanese) [Electro; Eternity]: 稲妻 "lightning" ;

Sumeru (Buddhism, Pali, Hinduism, Sanskrit, Jainism, Prakrit, the history of ancient India, Marathi, Hindi) [Dendro; Wisdom]: (सुमेरु) "excellent mountain"; it represents one of the "eight mountains" (parvata) as defined in the Dharma. [See "Truth Amongst the pages of Purana" in the trailer !!! The Purana (पुराण, purāṇas) refers to Sanskrit literature preserving ancient India’s vast cultural history, including historical legends, religious ceremonies, various arts and sciences.] ;

Fontaine (French) [Hydro; Justice]: Fountain ;

Natlan (Nahuatl) [Pyro; War]: "place near where there is abundance of Na" (See also: this) ;

Snezhnaya (Russian) [Cryo; Love? My speculation: rebellion (against one's fate), redeem oneself]: Снежная, "Snowy" ;

EXTRA: KHAENRI'AH and CELESTIA

Celestia: a variant of Celeste, which means "heavenly" or "of the sky" in Latin and Italian. In this case, it can be translated as "Heavenly Land" ;

Khaenri'ah: Norse culture, mostly, but it was a unified nation, so maybe there are other cultures mixed in as well:

Old Norse: "little knower" (from Celestia's perspective?) About this, I found an interesting source (the same as the Old Norse meaning, mentioned just above): here is a summary; however, I wasn't able to draw a clear conclusion from it. Kanna means "explore/inquire" in Old Norse, (kannaðr means "explorer"). Kenna is the common verb for "to know" (this would imply that they seek greater knowledge, which fits their advanced technology and therefore posing a threat to even Celestia. Furthermore, kanna stands more for "to find out") ; Kenna has a version with the agent suffix, kennari, which means "teacher" (note that agent nouns tend to be more specific than just an abstract [verb]+er, for instance ríðari it should mean "rider" but is mainly used to identify knights) ; maybe it was because they taught humanity how to use a "power from beyond"...?

Coptic: "to set free the (God of...?) knowledge from a cell" (source:) ;

Arabic: "Khaen", betrayer; "Ri'ah", winds; "Kha-en-ri-ah" could be the transliteration of خائن رياح ;

Persian: "Kha-en-ri-ah" خنريه or خانه ریاض Where ریاض means "training, practice, toil" and خانه (xâne) means "house" (I'm not too sure about this one, so please take it with a grain of salt, since my only source was a dictionary found online. I wasn't able to find out more about this).

KHAENRI'AH EXTRA

Art of Khemia: Inspiration from Greek and ancient Egypt culture;

Here we can find some evidence that Khaenri'ah could have been a unified nation with different cultures within, like I mentioned above.

From Genshin Impact Wiki:

Khemia is phonetically similar to several etymological origins for the modern terms alchemy and chemistry. The origin of these terms are uncertain and multiple derivations exist.

• One possible derivation is from the Arabic كيمياء kīmiyāʾ, "chemistry", which comes from Coptic term ⲕⲏⲙⲉ kēme, "Egypt". The Coptic term ultimately derives from the ancient Egyptian word 𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖 kmt, referring to both the country Egypt and the color black.

• Other possible derivations are from the Ancient Greek χημεία khēmeía meaning "pouring" or "infusion," or the Ancient Greek metallurgical term χυμεία khumeía originally meaning "pouring together," "casting together," "weld," or "alloy."

• In Arabic, "alchemy" translates to خيمياء ḵīmiyāʾ.

So we have Arabic, Coptic, Ancient Egyptian and Greek, the latter of which can also be traced back to Enkanomiya, which, as we know, had a (commercial?) relationship with Khaenri'ah. But this is for another story and yet another (etymological) analysis.

To conclude, other bits of culture could be the Celtic and old Germanic ones, as we can see in the latest world quest in Sumeru (I am not going to spoil it though. I'm just going to say the keyword: Schwanenritter, the Swan Knight), together with the Arthurian legends, scattered EVERYWHERE in the lore regarding the destroyed nation.

And another story will also be the analysis of Dainsleif's name, together with his power, element and role as the boughkeeper.

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR OMG YOU HAVE SUCH PATIENCE! HERE, HAVE A COOKIE 🍪

#原神 #genshin impact #genshin speculation #genshin lore #genshin analysis #genshin impact study #genshin impact notes

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kchasm · 1 year

Text

Lucario: Borrowed from Italian, ultimately from Latin "lux" ("light") + "-arius" (suffix forming agent noun, e.g. English "-er"); cf. "Lucifer".

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imjustheretoseetheprivateblogs · 2 years

Note

Both of your Spy x Family WIPs sound amazing~ can I get a snippet of either?

I'll see what I can do

Here's something from the Damianya age swap one

"There you are!"

Damian felt himself stiffen at the sound of her voice, but made no motion to remove his copy of Doctor Zhivago from over his eyes.

If I don't move, maybe she'll forget I'm here, he thought.

Unfortunately, God saw fit to remind Damian Desmond, Colonel of the State Security Service, that a woman's ability to detect motion and a rhinoceros's are not in the same range. Anya pulled the book from over his face.

"I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"Why?" Damian asked, rising from his place reclined on the stone bench, "And did you really search to whole hedge maze to find me? That's hardly in your job description."

Anya pouted.

"Yor and Yuri are looking for you," she said, "you're their father. And your entire family is here."

"All the more reason I can let them be for now," Damian said, "I promised them we would watch one of those superfluous Bondman movies tonight."

Anya gasped.

"You take that back! Unless 'superfluous' means 'amazing!"

Damian stared at her.

"Don't tell me you watch those," he asked, "you're a spy? Bondman is a propagandistic piece of nonsense that barely resembles the actual work of espionage.”

“Are you calling Bondman nonsense? You… you frivol!?”

Damian stared.

“What?”

“You heard me. You’re a frivol. As in a frivolous person.”

“Frivolous is derived from the Latin word ‘frivolus’. Not every word ending in ‘ous’ has a noun root.”

“Well, it should be a word. They should invent it to describe a jerk like you who doesn’t want to spend time with his kids.”

“I love my children! I spend every moment I can with them. It’s the rest of my family I have a problem with! Not that I’d expect a mercenary agent whose idea of childcare is to let them ride a half rabid horse!”

“Leave Loid out of this!”

“I loathe you.”

“If I knew what that meant, I’d loathe you too.”

“Loathe. Verb. To feel intense dislike or disgust for.”

“You can just say you hate. I bet you don’t know how to do anything without being a snobby fancy-pants about it.”

“And I bet you can’t do anything without draining it’s dignity like it’s a stuck pig!”

“Why would a pig getting stuck somewhere drain it?”

And here's a piece of From Ostania with Love

"I don’t claim to be a saint. I oversee three casinos that only pretend to be part of the Ostinian Games Commission. I own a winery that provides asylum to anyone who has the proper payment. It’s just the way I was raised, coming from nothing. Every penny counts… well, suppose I should say every pent counts."

Despite the dimness of the office lights, the weight of fifty-nine years could be seen on Emory Goodnight’s face. The droop of his mustache to the furrow of his beetle brow, he even dressed like an old man; all tweed and variations of monochromatic colors.

Goodnight was every bit the man who no-one would think twice about. Making him the perfect secret keeper.

“So, I was called in early this week to the office of the deputy treasurer of the national unity party. The man says that he needs me to hide his son for a few weeks on my winery. I ask him why. He hands me a stack of money and tells me I’ll get the same amount every week he’s there, plus expenses. I said yes.”

I hope these satisfied your curiosity

#ask #asks #thanks for asking #feel free to send another #Spy x Family #Damianya #Twiyor #my writing

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ranahan · 4 months

Text

*ver- (‘earn’)

Not entirely my own analysis, but rather something I’ve picked up from various Fando’a dictionaries and expanded upon.

Let’s look at canon instances of verd and its derivations first, then *ver- without the d, then some non-canon derivations, and lastly a bit of Mandalorian history for those who care to read that far.

Canon: verd & derivations

verd (n): soldier

I think this is a contracted form of ver-ad, ‘one who earns’ (see this post about agent nouns or this post about ad for more), making this construction equivalent to English soldier. Soldier comes (via French) from Latin soldarius, lit. ‘having pay’, ultimately from solidus, the name of a Roman gold coin. So this word refers to the traditional Mandalorian trade of working as mercenaries, which is probably the original meaning of this word.

And then we have many derivations and compound words with verd:

neverd (n): civilian

“Not a soldier”

verd’yc (adj): aggressive

Not a bad quality in Mandalorian culture! You could also translate this as spirited, decisive, bold, audacious, daring, or go-getter.

al’verde (n): commander

“Leader of soldiers”

ver’verd (n): mercenary

This is etymologically funnily enough “mercenary-mercenary”. Such doublets happen all the time in natural languages though, as the original word changes meaning.

Canon: *ver- in other words

*ver- also occurs in:

ver’alor (n): lieutenant

“Paid leader” or “hired leader”. Comparable to Commissioned Officers, I think, hence the translation as lieutenant (mando ranks probably aren’t exactly the same as ones in any particular country on Earth). Possibly represents e.g. the permanent command staff of a mercenary company, rather than the rank and file who might contract for a season or for a specific campaign. Traviss describes mando military organisation as “a flat pyramid”, e.g. lots of people at the bottom, few on top; so this probably refers to fewer people than English CO does.

veriduur (n): courtesan, sex worker

“Paid spouse”

ver’mircit (n): hostage

“Prisoner for money”

beroya (n): bounty hunter

This could be either be-roya, “of hunt”—or it could be ver-oya, “pay hunter”. The v and b sounds are very close to each other, especially if you pronounce v as a bilabial fricative /β/, and the sound change v > b is very plausible. So it’s possible that *ber- is an alternative form of this root, or that beroya was loaned into “standard Mando’a” (no such thing, I know) from another dialect of Mando’a where that sound change has happened.

Non-canon derivations

vere (n.): wages, payment (from Tuuri)

Lit. “earnings”.

berir (v): to pay, to buy (from Oyu’baat)

By analogy to beroya.

berii (n): buyer

From ber + ii.

verar (v): to earn, deserve

Two verbs from the same root, diverged meanings. Happens all the time in natural languages. Gave it a different vowel so it wouldn’t get mixed up as easily.

verdin (n): merit, reward; share

From ver-din, sort of “earnings given” or “give what’s earned”. From here you also get verdinyc ‘meritorious, rewarding’ and verdinir ‘to reward, merit’.

verdir (v): to work as a mercenary

Lit. “to soldier”, but keeping the original sense of verd here.

vergam (n): uniform

Whatever monkey suit you’re paid to wear that’s not beskar’gam.

A history lesson

When thinking of these derivations, I went back to the time of the Mandalorian wars. (And my theory of Modern Mando’a being a creole language that developed in their aftermath.)

So consider the Taung: these are the ancient Mandalorians, who have come to worship war in itself (or in other words, have come to see waging war as an expression of the divine). They’ve conquered large swathes of the galaxy and slaughtered entire peoples in this pursuit. But war is a hungry beast that gobbles up both men and machines, so this warfare must have taken a toll on the Taung even if the plunder fills their coffins.

So the revelation that Mandalore the Ultimate receives on planet Shogun is probably honestly less about other races being worthy of being Mandalorians*, and more about the strategic insight that if instead of total slaughter they assimilate the conquered peoples and draw from them to fill up their ranks, they can go on to conquer indefinitely.

*At this point there’s already a precedent for adopting other races as Mandalorians (e.g. the Mandallian giants), but I think that before the Neo-Crusaders, it was probably rather marginal. It didn’t cause significant changes in the culture, and they were probably assimilated slowly and in small numbers, and so learned the language more or less perfectly. It isn’t until the Neo-Crusaders that assimilating other races becomes widespread (otherwise it wouldn’t be a revelation). And the more the Taung conquer, the more peoples they assimilate and the less they have the time and resources to teach them the language and their ways as they themselves become diluted among the ranks.

Also, let’s be real: while Mandalore the Ultimate is said to have decreed that the recruits be treated equally among the clans, many of those recruits were probably not there voluntarily, but rather given the choice of being conquered/slaughtered or joining up. I’m sure many people saw joining as an opportunity to move up in life (better to be a Mandalorian warrior than a poor Rimmer), but many we’re probably shanghaied into service and some were little better than slaves.

And so the Mandalorian armies swell, and conquer, and conquer, reaching as far as Coruscant itself. They seem unstoppable until the Republic employs the desperate doomsday weapon on Malachor VI, which cripples the Mandalorian army and leadership. In the aftermath, the Mandalorians probably can’t hold on to their entire newly conquered Empire, so many areas are retaken by the Republic or otherwise secede. Without those resources and the continuous conquest they can’t pay their armies, so now there are lots of disaffected and unemployed soldiers, who turn mercenaries.

And these aren’t your honourable mercenaries ala Jaster Mereel yet. Rather, they are displaced and disaffected people who have no other trades or possibilities to ply them in the war-torn galaxy. So they take any jobs and if there are no jobs, do a bit of plundering on the side. This diaspora and disarray lasts for the next 300 years or so. It takes several centuries and galactic wars of cultural change, before Mandalorians have grappled with the after-effects of the Mandalorian wars, turned from worshiping the old gods into believing primarily in the Manda, turned their focus from conquest into thriving in adversity, and developed the philosophical tradition of military ethics that eventually produces Jaster Mereel and his likes.

All of this to say: when we’re thinking about the etymologies of Modern Mando’a words, we should be thinking of these first few generations of non-Taung Mandalorians. But when we’re thinking of the definitions of the words as they’re used today, we should think of the cultural change that came afterwards. So for example: verd was probably originally a mercenary, but over time came to mean a soldier. Verdin was originally “loot, plunder” or one’s share of it that whoever was in charge of the payroll doled out after a campaign (based on one’s role, performance, etc). In time, it became to mean other kinds of rewards and fruits of one’s labour.

#mando’a #mandoa #mando'a #mando’a language #mandalorian culture #meta: mandalorians #mandalorians #star wars #mando’a extended dictionary #mando’a words #ranah talks mando’a #mando’a etymology #mandalorian history

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interretialia · 2 years

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Formatio Verborum Latinorum / Formation of Latin Words

ἡ Μεγαλανία -ας / Megalania -ae f. “Megalania” [μέγας “great” + ἀλαίνειν “to roam” + -ία feminine agent noun suffix] [μεγαλο- + ἀλαιν- + -ια-] stems [μεγαλο- + ἀλαινια-] stem and new stem [μεγαλο- + ἀλανια-] ι disappears (cf. μανία from μαίνειν) [μεγα- + ἀλανια-] shortened version of μεγαλο- [μεγ- + ἀλανια-] α disappears before ἀ [Μεγαλανια-] new stem [Μεγαλανία] nominative singular [Megalania] Μεγαλανία Latinized

(Fons Imaginis.)

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takatisettling · 3 months

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mischief (n.)

c. 1300, "evil condition, misfortune; hardship, need, want; wickedness, wrongdoing, evil," from Old French meschief "misfortune, harm, trouble; annoyance, vexation" (12c., Modern French méchef), verbal noun from meschever "come or bring to grief, be unfortunate" (opposite of achieve), from mes-"badly" (see mis- (2)) + chever "happen, come to a head," from Vulgar Latin *capare "head," from Latin caput "head" (from PIE root *kaput- "head"). Meaning "harm or evil considered as the work of some agent or due to some cause" is from late 15c. Sense of "playful malice" is recorded by 1784. The meaning has softened with time; in Middle English to be full of mischief was to be miserable; to make mischief was "to result in misery." Mischief Night in 19c. England was the eve of May Day and of Nov. 5, both major holidays, and perhaps the original point was pilfering for the next day's celebration and bonfire; but in Yorkshire, Scotland, and Ireland the night was Halloween. The useful Middle English verb mischieve (early 14c.), used by Skelton and Gavin Douglas, has, for some reason, fallen from currency.

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catboy-outputs · 3 months

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N°0001 - ang

as a partially Filipino (Philippines Number One) catboy who has so foolishly allowed his brain to become colonized by the very language he writes in right now, i have always Struggled somewhat with Tagalog, and/or its "standardized register" known as Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, surely the least confusing language(s) name(s) in the universe

my Strugglings with the language have very slowly become less Struggly over time (i can write extremely basic essays in it) — but they have done so Too very slowly because Even Now i can barely speak, write or listen in the language, and it is such a shame because Tagalog is (by my own subjective opinions) so such an interesting language (paradoxically, all languages are equally interesting)

there is a Word in the Tagalog language: "ang"

popular knowledge likes to translate this word into English as the definite article "the", which is kind of correct but not entirely accurate, because "ang" isn't used in the same broad contexts as the English "the"

so the English definite article "the", right

you (often) use it whenever a noun phrase refers to “a unique, familiar, specific referent” (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), like this:

The block of cheese you left on a table (referring to a specific thing—the block of cheese—previously mentioned in conversation)

The biological urge to sleep (referring to a single general concept? maybe)

The shoe (referring to the singular and definite species of physical objects commonly known as "shoes")

there are not many strict limitations on what noun phrases you can use "the" on, such limitations being the presence of Genitive pronouns, like "his" and "their" (people don't say "the her table" unless it's funny), and sometimes but not always personal names

the Grammaticality of "the" on a noun phrase is independent of the noun phrase's role in the sentence, so you can say things like:

"The man who brought the bag filled with the books gave it to the teacher who was the only person in the room"

The man who ... (subject)

the bag filled with the books (direct object + adjectival/prepositional phrase)

the teacher who was ... (indirect object)

the only person in the room (relative clause + prepositional phrase)

this does not hold true for Tagalog's "ang" because Tagalog and English are Somewhat different languages

you know how English has a "passive voice" that's used sometimes right, whenever the speaker is talking about Something that an Occurrence happens to, so they'd have to mention that Something in the role of a direct object, but they want to keep the Something in the prominent role of the grammatical Subject

the purpose of the passive voice is basically to take a sentence with a subject and an object, and demote the subject to the Less Prominent status of an optional Oblique argument (which is neither a subject nor a direct object) to replace it with the direct object, which becomes the new subject, like so:

Active voice: The cat have broken the plate. Passive voice: The plate has been broken [by the cat].

with the passive voice the subject is made less prominent and the object more prominent

this sort of thing is far more prominent in Tagalog, where there are like four or five Grammatical Voices (also known as "Focus" and by several other terms) for the verbs, marked directly on the verb using various affixes; the Object Focus, Tagalog's equivalent of the passive voice, is used much more frequently than its English counterpart, for the same purpose of keeping a prominent topic of conversation as the grammatical subject

like this:

Agent focus (≅ Active voice) : Sumirà ang pusà ng pinggán. Object focus (≅ Passive voice) : Sinirà ang pinggán ng pusà.

pusa = "cat" pinggan = "plate" sira = "to break"

notice the words "ang" and "ng" (pronounced "nang"), used in both sentences

these two are Case Markers, having the same function as the case particles of Japanese, the noun endings of Latin and Russian, and the subject-verb-object word order of English; they differentiate the subject (action doer) from the direct object (action done-towards entity)

despite being prominent in Old English and related languages like German, cases are only marginally a thing in Modern English; they are retained in many pronouns, which have a few cases remaining; English has the Subjective ("I" "we" "she"), the Objective ("me" "us" "her") and the Possessive ("my" "our" "her[s]")

Tagalog has three cases:

the Direct (marked by "ang")

the Indirect (marked by "ng")

the Oblique (marked by the particle "sa")

returning to the example sentences; transitive Tagalog sentences with a subject and an object have the subject in the Direct Case and the object in the Indirect Case

Sumirà ang pusà ng pinggán. Here ang is attached to pusa because pusa is the subject of the verb sumira ("broke", Agent focus)

Sinirà ang pinggán ng pusà. Here ng is attached to pinggan because pinggan is the subject of sinira ("was broken", Object focus)

This is the purpose of the Tagalog word "ang" — it is the Direct Case marker, used to indicate the grammatical subject of a sentence

"ang" can be considered roughly analogous to English "the" because the Tagalog verb focus system has a purpose roughly analogous to the concept of Definiteness, which is the purpose of "the"

Definiteness indicates that a noun phrase refers to something specific that is previously known in a narrative or conversation, differentiating it form Indefinite noun phrases which are not previously known or unspecific and could be anything (Definite "The cat" vs. Indefinite "A cat")

the Tagalog system of verb focus has the purpose of keeping an important topic of the narrative/conversation in the prominent grammatical role of Subject, differentiating it from other noun phrases that may be less specific, less definite or otherwise not as prominent

"ang pusa" can be translated as "the cat" because a sentence like "Sumira ang pusa ng pinggan" usually refers to some specific or previously known cat breaking some plate

but "ang" isn't a one-to-one analogue of "the" because "ang" has an additional responsibility that "the" doesn't have, namely to mark the one and only grammatical subject of a sentence; so in a sentence where "A does something to B", the Tagalog speaker must choose either A or B as the more prominent verb argument to use as the subject, selecting the appropriate Focus for the verb as necessary

"pusa" more prominent: "Sumira ang pusa ng pinggan" "pinggan" more prominent: "Sinira ang pinggan ng pusa"

and the thing is that both "pusa" and "pinggan" may or may not be a Definite noun phrase; however since Subject Marker is the main job of "ang", only one of the two nouns can attain the role of Subject and acquire the "ang"; you can't put it on both

The plate was broken by the cat — Acceptable *Sinira ang pinggan ang pusa — Ungrammatical (only one noun phrase can be the subject, so only the subject can take "ang", even if both are Definite nouns)

so yeah

English "the" is the definite article for definite noun phrases in any grammatical role Tagalog "ang" is the subject marker, and the subject in Tagalog is usually the most prominent noun throughout the conversation; and definite nouns are more likely to be made the subject than the object in Tagalog.

fucking heck this is way too long and rambly, my next post will be much shorter i swear

#gnaeus augustulus #linguistics #poorly explained #much longer than it should be #tagalog

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