Conlangers

maka

• (n.) crab
• (nm.) a boy’s given name

A male liki maka ie tinitié li ia.
“And a crab shall hold your sword.”

Notes: And a charming crab at that! Take a look at this picture of the interior of a typical medieval Japanese house at the Huntington:

What a helpful little crab! I think it is a sword-holder (why would the pincers be upturned thus?), and if so, well done! It’s the most unique sword-holder I’ve ever seen.

I’ve still got a lot more pictures from the Huntington; I’ll eventually get to them all.

Today’s iku is a pretty standard ikuiku, but the line in the middle there has two duties: (1) to fill up the space, and (2) to remind one of the glyph for ka, giving this iku a slight phonetic component. This was one of the first iku I designed for Kamakawi. It’s an old friend.

For more information about the name Maka, see its corresponding entry in the baby names section.

samōra

The third line of the LCC3 Relay Text:

ñi nāra lemōra ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;

lemōra is the 1st person possessed form of samōra, “one’s dreams”. The first clause, ñi nāra lemōra is incomplete, “All my dreams (become something).” The second clause, the refrain, is again “the wild waves move away”. Putting these two clauses together usually requires some sort of conjunction or relative pronoun or both. As it is poetry, the juxtaposition of these two clauses leads one to interpret this line as “All my dreams become the wild waves moving away”.

la liēn sū anālhāri anālri jahāwa ñi antāoni anhūwi rūjapēxa;
la jāo pa anhē ja ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;
ñi nāra lemōra ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;

I am at the edge of the stormy sea and the breaking waves move away
This is good, that the wild waves move away
All my dreams become the wild waves moving away

Tomorrow, we start line 4.

notu

• (v.) to hunt
• (n.) (a/the) hunt
• (adj.) hunting

A notu lea i ue…
“He’s hunting us…”

Notes: I just saw Predator for the first time. I have much to say. But that will have to wait for another time (and another venue)…

Speaking of hunting, there was a new Dothraki post on the Making Game of Thrones Blog on Friday. In this one, we encounter a Dothraki hunting party.

(Oh, and in my opinion, the Dothraki would’ve been decimated by the Predator. That thing is way, way too powerful. The only way it’s defeated in the movie is by basically letting itself be defeated.)

The iku for notu features the characteristic triangle of no, along with the box from tu inside the triangle. In order to recognize it as tu, though, the two little bubble lines come out on the right and left sides of the triangle. Good fun!

nāra

The third line of the LCC3 Relay Text:

ñi nāra lemōra ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;

nāra is a modifier meaning “all” that generally comes after the noun it modifies. Here it comes before it, likely because of something having to do with meter. Poetry, remember. lemōra will be discussed tomorrow.

la liēn sū anālhāri anālri jahāwa ñi antāoni anhūwi rūjapēxa;
la jāo pa anhē ja ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;

I am at the edge of the stormy sea and the breaking waves move away
This is good, that the wild waves move away

antāλa

The second line of the LCC3 Relay Text:

la jāo pa anhē ja ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;

There’s only one unfamiliar word, here, and that is antāλi, a stative noun modifying antāoni in the changing refrain. antāλa means “having the qualities of chaos” so “chaotic, wild, unordered”. The first clause, la jāo pa anhē means “this has goodness”. It is followed by the relative pronoun ja, and then the refrain. So, “This is good, that the wild waves move away”.

la liēn sū anālhāri anālri jahāwa ñi antāoni anhūwi rūjapēxa;
la jāo pa anhē ja ñi antāoni antāλi rūjapēxa;

I am at the edge of the stormy sea and the breaking waves move away
This is good, that the wild waves move away

Tomorrow the third line.

lawake

• (n.) bruise
• (v.) to be bruised
• (adj.) bruised
• (v.) to be banged up, to be beat up, to look beat up
• (adj.) beat up, roughed up

Ka eteateamu o’e, io a lawake ei.
“The swelling’s gone down, but now I’m bruised.”

Notes: Know ye that the following picture is not for the faint of heart! And yet, I don’t have “cut” technology with WordPress, so here it is!

Man, that’s ugly! So, yes, the ankle sprain was high, but that line you see there near my heel is approximately where I planted when I was cutting. So that dark, black-purplish line is where I pushed off of when I made my move towards the basket.

The word for “bruise” is derived from the word for “black”, lake. A bruise, then, is kind of a “bad blackness” (seems about right to me). It uses the old “negative” w infix which is no longer as productive as it once was.

The English word “bruise” is apparently related to the old PIE word for “crushing” or “pounding”. In Dothraki, I actually derived it from the word for “black”, just like Kamakawi (but forgot I did so until I checked it right now). This reminds me that looking at a conlanger’s work can tell you quite a bit about the conlanger, much the way looking at a writer’s body of work tells you a lot about the writer. One day maybe someone will be interested in conlangs the way people are interested in works of fiction. In my lifetime, probably not, but perhaps someday.

Example: Xe’ena hixev’het’ny akem naxah se.
I need 6 bottles of caffeinated stuff,

Yeah, I am distracted with the torch and life, Expect a real post soon.