Questions and Negation

In fĺuðét questions and negations are shown with one suffix, and a couple of modifications of it. Below are the most irregular words and the most regular word.

fĺuðét	English
-ji/-ju (see table below for full explanation)	which
fĺji	what
jiboć	who
fŕji	when

Not all of the question words are listed above, this is because fĺuðét does not have special words for those, but instead uses “which”. “Which” can be attached to a number of different things to show different types of questions, and negations. The forms ji and ju ds not do all of the work though; they have two other forms used for negation shown in the table below.

	Statement	Question
Negated	-ðu	-ju
Affirmed	-Ø/-ði	-ji

The “statement” column is mostly for negation. The “question” column is used to ask questions. A question with -ju would be “is it not?” (There should be no expecting the affirmative that there is in English though), and a question with -ji is just “is it?”. ði and ðu can also be used as “yes” and “no” respectively. To make questions with “where?”, “how?” and “which cow?” one must use -ji and -ju and attach them to the noun that they are asking about, so “where?” would be ślot “place” + -ji or śloji; “how” can mean various different things, but for the “how” that means “by what means?” or “in what way?” one would use fĺtéþ “method” + -ji or fĺtéði; “which cow?” would be pédli “cow” + -ji or pédliji. Of course in any of these words -ji can be replaced with -ju to make it a negative question.

Another aspect of questions and negation is that multiple parts of speech can be questioned and negated simultaneously. So this also leads to the fact that if anything can be negated, then some things probably need to be negated. What I mean by this is if you’re trying to say “The cow did not want to eat the grass” where there is emphasis on the point that it’s the grass that the cow does not want to eat, then you would negate the “grass”, but you’re also saying that the cow didn’t want to do the verb (“eat” in this case) either, so you have to negate it too; it is essentially a double negative. A multi-question (if you will) is where you’re asking about two or more things at once. It’s like the English: “Who did what?”, except it is more widely accepted and used.

Almost any word can be negated, or asked about. For most things (i.e. nouns, adjectives, adverbs [other than tense]) the appropriate suffix is merely attached to the end of the subject in question (no pun intended), but for verbs the suffix is isolated and placed immediately after the tense marking.

           

            DUNTA

I have begun work on the “first language” of Dunta. I put “first language” in quotes, because the language probably has a couple hundred years worth of predecessors, but this is the first, fully fledged language with a complex grammar. It is almost entirely isolating, and most of the grammatical words are still used as a more concrete form elsewhere. A simple sentence can only be intransitive; to make it the equivalent of transitive sentence, one must add another clause with the same verb as the first clause in the passive voice with the object as the subject. So, to say “I eat the cow” one would have to say something like “I eat; the cow is eaten”. I made it this way, because it seems like the first language’s predecessors would not express anything, but simple intransitive sentences, and this would be the logical step towards transitivity. I think the passive voice in this language will be a simpler form than in English, but I have just started this language and have not worked everything out yet.

I would love any input on what you think a first (or almost first) language would look like in its phonology, its morphology, and I’m very curious what you think the word order should be (at this point I’ve decided SAOP [where A=Active of verb, and P=Passive of verb], but if you have a convincing argument otherwise I would love to hear it.

Koda

     Koda of course means person or human, but things have changed a lot from past posts and they are (and probably will be) continuing to do so; the most recent change to make Dunta a little more interesting is that "koda" does not mean "human" rather it is more of "person", or "sapient being that lives on planet Dunta." This is because the okoda are not human. The okoda are different. 

     LIMBS: They tend to have 6 limbs: two arms which are called "usuna" and two legs which are called "ukusi." On each hand and foot they have six digits which are called "itini"; the toes and fingers are not normally distinguished, but if necessary one can say "digit of hand" for finger: "tini sunosos" ("sunosa" is hand) or "digit of foot" for toe: "tini kusosos" ("kusosa" is foot). Both foot and hand use the infix "-os-" (definitely related to the genitive suffix) which comes right before the case ending. It is used to indicate that something  is a part of another thing; a hand is a part of an arm, and a foot is a part of a leg.

     SENSES: The okoda's sense of sight (donota (From the genitive of to see: dono, which is then from light: dona)) is not as powerful as the humans'; it can sense color and shape and distinguish between two objects, but it does not sense distance and depth very well since their eyes (etera* (plural: tetera)) are closer together than human's, but this is made up for with their sense of sound (negota (from genitive of to hear: nego)) which is very strong and can sense distance reasonably well of things that are not too far away. Their sense of touch (zemita (from genitive of to hurt: zemit))is the same as humans'. Their sense of smell (nasa (from to smell: naso which is from nas)) is pretty much just good vs. bad, ripe vs. rotten, et cetera, but their sense of taste (keyonaza (from speech of mouth: keyotata nazos)) on the other hand can tell all sorts of stuff; it makes things taste better or worse depending respectively whether the substance is needed or not needed, where the substance can be many things like nutrients, sugars, carbohydrates, et cetera.
    


Third sentence translation of "The Creation of Humans, Herbivores, and Carnivores":
Three - Moved   spirits themselves Dunta  to   light  by-means-of and      ate     they plants.
Min -  Zunatase oradani    ogor     Duntod zu donod       kit           ki   kulatase ogor   arari.


NEW WORDS:
zemit - V.T. to hurt/attack V.I. to be in pain/hurt
zemita - N. sense of touch
zuno - V. to do/move/work
dono - V. to see
donota - N. sight
tini - N. digit/finger/toe
suna - N. arm
nego - V. to hear
negota - N. sense of sound
naza - N. mouth

nas - Adj. disgusting/rotten/soft/-/ripe/delicious/tasty/-/unripe/hard/firm

naso - V. to smell

nasa - N. sense of smell
keonaza - N. sense of taste
kusi - N. leg
ki - Conj. and (goes between sentences)
kit - Post. by means of/by way of/via/by
etera - N. eye
-os- - Infix. used to indictate a part of something (put in word right before declension suffix)

zumotata kalos

     Zumotata kalos is the making of food which is used to refer to agriculture or growing food. Zumo is to build/make/create and as has been said before kala is food.
     The Okoda mainly originated in the rainforest and their agriculture reflects that. They used the anamini for the manual labor that they could not do themselves, but they did not fully domesticate the anamini as they would not survive without the nest and could not be domesticated in the nest. Because of this, the farming Okoda families generally build homes near anamini nests. When the anamini run out of food in the area they migrate to a new location and the family follows them; this makes for a very good shifting agriculture which is necessary in the rainforest.

     The Okoda do not domesticate animals for another reason too. By their religion the Okoda believe that they are not to eat diurnal (live by day) herbivores as was explained in the last post, and the domestication of carnivores is entirely inefficient, so the Okoda hunt for all of their meat which is always carnivores or nocturnal herbivores, and they hunt not only to feed themselves, but to protect the moon spirits.

     As the Okoda expanded they followed the anamini into the savannas. The Okoda were very dependent on the Okoda back in the forest for food at first, but began to switch roles with the anamini and followed their lead for food instead of feeding them as they had done before to keep them around longer.

     The Okoda were originally very self sufficient, but as they started expanding their was more need for varied types of work. The other types of work were originally controlled by the growing government. Farming families would trade food to the government who would then give part of that to the people who did the work the farmers wanted. The food the government kept would then be used to pay the other workers for work they did for each other or to support them when they had no work.

     I have done more work with my map and now you can see where the Okoda live and the two nations who share the continent with them.

 This map shows the territories as well as the rivers, the mountains, and the climate.

This map shows the territories along with the mountains and the rivers, but does not show the climate to make it easier to see the countries. The red country is the Ulan Potsa. (Sorry it's not very visible.)

This map shows winds in black and currents in orange (for warm) and white (for cold) and the rivers and mountains and also has the climates which are easier to see in this picture.

Second sentence translation of "The Creation of Humans, Herbivores, and Carnivores":
Two - Lived   also  beings   sun  and moon and lonely-moon on, but were  they spirits.
Zor - Dolatase riz  odolati* zanad ko serad  ko      ikuzad      te   ta teduse ogor odoni.

*The beings on Dunta most often have three sexes (including the Okoda). One of these three sexes is seen as the best and the spirits are believed to be this sex. The gender in language that is used to represent the sex is the -i declension. That is why the ending was switched from -a to -i (see below for the definition).

NEW WORDS:
zumo - V. to build/make/create
zana - N. sun
doni - N. spirit (from light: dona)
dona - N. light
dolata - N. being
ta - Conj. but
sera - N. moon
riz - Adv./Conj. also
gor - Pron. he/she/it/they (It can be a pronoun for anything. It represents the last used subject. It can be declined using gor as the nom/acc)
ikuza - N. lonely moon (from alone: iku)

Phonetic Thought:
     I'm probably not the first to think of this, but r and l are really very related to o (goat), u (rude), i (machine), e (grey). The thing that's special about these four letters is that they all have corresponding semi-vowels: o,u - w; i,e - y. They easiest way to find this relationship is to say the vowel and then a different one right after it (i.e. io, eo, ui, oi); the semi-vowel will magically appear in between. That's all well and good, but aren't r and l consonants? What could they have to do with those four vowels? r and l both represent two sounds: the r in run and the l in like, and the r in fur and the l in full. Any person who has tried to make a language with r and l and a very strict vowel system will probably have found a troubling time when figuring out what vowel to put in front of these two sounds as it always sounds so different. That's because it becomes a diphthong; r and l are vowels in fur and full. In run and like they are semi-vowels which can be found the same way as y and w (uri, uli).
     It seems interesting that languages would still think of r and l as pure consonants in writing even though it is fairly obvious that they are not.
     My knowledge of language is very limited by the romance languages; if anyone knows of a language, or has made a language that gives these two letters their full credit please tell me about it, I would love to know.

Sile

I realized after reviewing my post on food that I had mentioned a religious thing which I have not talked about yet. I do not know everything about the religion yet, but I can give an overview enough to explain my note at the end of the food post (FOOD POST).
     PRENOTE: The Okoda believe that special spirits live on the moon, on a second moon called the lonely moon, and on the sun. The spirits travel to Dunta in the form of light and "trade" with the plants. The spirits get energy from the plants and the plants get energy from the spirits.

The creation of humans, herbivores and carnivores

1. Only plants lived on Dunta before humans, herbivores and carnivores.
2. There also lived beings on the sun, moon and lonely moon, but they were light.
3. The spirits went to Dunta in the form of light and they ate the plants.
4. The spirits ate during half of the day and slept during the other half of the day which is when the lonely moon ate.
6. The sun spirits got hungrier and they ate more and so had more children-spirits.
7. The sun spirits said to the moon spirits: "Sleep while we eat and eat with the lonely moon for we need more to eat!"
8. The moon spirits obliged as they had much less power than the sun spirits.
9. Then the sun spirits had many more children and so they said to the moon spirits "Leave from here for we need to eat all of the day!"
10. But the moon spirits new the sun spirits had grown foolish so they worked against the sun spirits and made the herbivores to eat the plants in the time that the sun spirits eat the plants so the sun spirits became weak, and the moon spirits made the humans to govern the herbivores.
11. The sun spirits made the carnivores to eat the herbivores, but the sun spirits did not think that the carnivores needed a ruler, because the carnivores were smarter than the herbivores, but the carnivores became chaotic and ignored the commands of the sun spirits.
12. Therefore the lonely moon was no longer lonely; the humans became the guards of the moon spirits and the sun became brighter than the moon.

First sentence translation:

One -  Lived  plants only  Dunta on before lived humans and herbivores and carnivores.

Rom - Dolate  arari  isan  duntod te    lin   dolate  okoda  ko       isisa      ko     odoni.

Words to learn:

rari - N. plant

san - Adj. opposite-of-only (whatever that is)/-/only

te - Post. on

lin - Conj. before

ko - Conj. and (between nouns in a list)
sisa - N. herbivore
dani - N. carnivore
sile - N. duty of protecting the moon spirits from the sun spirits/religion
NOTE: animals are either herbivore or carnivore, there is no plain animal.

I hope this explains what I said in the food post.

Kala

     In this post I will talk about food. The Okoda grow three main crops, use a type of animal similar to ants, and hunt for carnivores.
  

—MINA

Growth: Mina grows from capsules full of seeds surrounded by a hard shell (called “nana”). It produces balls full of nutrients out of the top of it (called “sasu”) with sticky hairs attached to them. When the balls mature they release from the plant and float to another and stick onto hairs growing out of the side (called “sase”). The asase connected to the asasu grow to be the anana.

Use: The Okoda utilize both the anana and the asasu. The anana are dried until the shells crack. Then the seeds inside are crushed into a fine powder (often the shells are used to crush.) which is then mixed with sugar water and cooked in balls.  The asasu are soaked in sugar water and ferment. The juice that becomes of the water is drunk. And the remaining sludge on the bottom is often dried and used as seasoning.

—KADA

                Growth: Kada grows from fruit with a fleshy purple outside and a seed pod inside (called “nimi”). The fruit grows into a couple of kada plants that have leaves side chutes and a middle chute. The side chutes (called “natu”) have strings that grow from the heart of the plant that grow outwards and try to find another plant and touch the middle chute’s seeds, although often times the strings will break off and find the seeds that way which works too. The middle chute (called “nate”) contains a huge amount of purple seeds which when stuck to a natu

grow into inimi.

                Uses: The thing this plant is used most for is its sugar. The fruit it produces: the inimi are good for eating, but the anatu contain a great amount of sugar which is boiled out of them to make sugar water (called “tura”). Sometimes this is dried to make dry sugar, but more often it is left in the water. The less common use of the plant is using the strings of the anatu as fibers for making string and rope, but it is still done.

—SELA

                Growth: Esela grow from spores that land in the ground. The spores grow into tuber looking things (called “dena”) that send out feelers. If a feeler reaches air its top grows into a sela. The other feelers suck in water and nutrients into the dena. The dena then transfers the right amount of water and nutrients to each sela.

                Uses: The actual esela are very poisonous to the point of fatality, but the dena is not poisonous at all and is full of nutrients. The dena is dug out of the ground and cut from the esela. The esela’s skin is cut and its juices are squeezed out of it. The skin is then boiled and the resulting water is added to the initial juice. This juice is sometimes mixed with sugar water and mina flour to make a sauce for flavoring food. The juice is also cooked in with asasu bread.

—NAMINI

          The anamini are used more for power than for consumption, but there eggs are eaten quite frequently. The anamini are very strong and self-sufficient. They have concave backs which are used to carry things when scavenging. They are much like ants in that they live in nests in the ground and scavenge for food, but there are four different kinds of them. The digger (called “namini sazad”), the scout (called “namini torad”), the scavenger (called “namini ratad”), and the king (called “namini sizad”).

The diggers dig out the nest that the anamini live in. The diggers are all female and have string produced on their undersides. As they dig they leave the string behind. The king sends instructions via electric signals through these which the anamini pick up with their antennae.

The scouts are genderless as they produce a scent instead of string. (The string carries the eggs that the king fertilizes.) The scouts produce a scent that kings would normally produce to guide the anamini to a new nesting place, but instead of a new nesting place the scouts lead the scavengers to food sources that can be gathered and brought back to the nest. The scent that the scout leaves behinds tells the scavengers where the path is and how to get to the food.

The scavengers are also genderless. They do not produce anything special like the diggers and the scouts, but instead gather food and bring it back to the nest.

The king is the only male in the entire colony of anamini. He fertilizes the string that the diggers leave behind depending on what kind of namini the colony needs. He also gathers information from scavengers on changing environments and instructs any other scavengers on how to evade or overcome any new difficulties. To insure there is always a king the king always has two king eggs staggered so that they never hatch at the same time. If one hatches while the king is still alive he kills it and starts a new one. This process repeats until the king is not there to eat the new king. The first born king then starts a new king and the larger process repeats.

If there is no more food in the area then the anamini will leave to another place. Sometimes the anamini will be fed, but more often they are followed. Sometimes the anamini will go farther than they need to and so the king is held back which the anamini think means that is where he wants the nest so they build the nest and they stay there.

The anamini mostly eat dead animals so the carcasses of akasi (see below) are often fed to them.

—KASI

          The akasi are hunted and used for many things. They are mostly hunted by two people: one holds its arms behind it and the other uses a knife to kill it. The kasi is then brought back to the home where it is skinned; its bones are removed, and its flesh is cooked. Its hide is tanned and used to make clothing; its bones are used to make various tools and its flesh is eaten or salted.

                The akasi are also special for a sort of initiation where a child who has just finished his “learning” will go out to the woods and smear himself with fruit and sugar water to attract a kasi. When it comes he has to kill it on his own to prove his independence that he does not need to hunt in a pair.

                                                                                

                —Notes

          The Okoda hunt and eat many other animals, but they do not hunt herbivores that eat during the day due to the belief that they are diminishing the sun spirits power instead they hunt carnivores (as they eat the herbivores who are eating away at the sun spirits food) and nocturnal herbivores (because they would be eating away at the moon spirits food).

Dunta

     Well, in this post I will talk about Dunta and its other inhabitants. The Okoda share a continent with a whole other group of humans who call themselves the Pazha Shosat (PAH-zha SHOH-saht) meaning literally “the people” or “the place of people.” (For the time being I will use cardinal directions until I explain the Dunta way of navigation.) Just West of the Okoda live the Wamali Shes (Wah-MAH-lee SHES) by their own name meaning “the people.” Even further to the west live the Yan Hile (YAHN HEE-lah) whose name I’ve lost the definition for. And to the west of the Okoda live the Potsa (POHTS-ah) which in their tongue means “the life.”

     Each of these five main countries have their own religion and language all of which are very different. I have begun each of these languages, but have gone the farthest with Dega. Dega is the first conlang I have begun making (not including the code I made when I was young that I foolishly thought was a language and the bad interpretation of Latin that the Yon Hēlā’s language comes from), and is probably the least original, and every time I work on it seems more and more like another romance language. I will definitely continue Dega, but I think I may put more effort into one of the four other languages (I have given up on the language of Yan Hile, as it just looks like a bad interpretation of Latin, but there is another language that they use for religious purposes: “ghumlezh”) which I will probably work harder on later as Dega’s holes are filled up, but I don’t know which is worth more work. If you would care to give input I would gladly except it, I will describe the grammars and peculiarities of the other three languages down below.

     The Pazha Shosat are a tribal people speaking a language with only four verbs. They are simple, living in the woods they often frighten the more “civilized” Okoda.

     The Wamali Shes have a smooth language of many glides (r, l, y, w,), nasals (n, m) and fricatives (s, sh, þ) that widely contradicts their reputation of an angry warring people. I thought it would be interesting to have a people who were very aggressive to outsiders, but had a pretty tongue and were especially nice to their fellow Wamali Shes.

    The Yan Hile have a language based very much on Latin which has a large vocabulary, but has many large holes in the grammar and is not very interesting except for the alphabet. The Yan Hile have a very shamanic natural religion, which uses its own language and a pictographic code to represent the things needed for different rituals.

     The Potsa Úlan have a pictographic writing system for their language where each word has a god/dess (the gods/goddesses are neuter: neither masculine nor feminine) to represent the word.

Here is a map of the Dunta world:
The Okoda live on the mid-eastern region of the central "L" shaped continent.

Some words to learn:

Madi - North-Western eighth of the common Dunta world map

Kama - South-Western eighth of the common Dunta world map

Lazi - Central-North-Western eighth of the common Dunta world map

Mista - Central-South-Western eighth of the common Dunta world map

Rizi - Central-North-Eastern eighth of the common Dunta world map

Data - Central-South-Eastern eighth of the common Dunta world map

Gini - North-Eastern eighth of the common Dunta world map

Tora - South-Eastern eighth of the common Dunta world map

Sadra - here/where I am now/this current place

NOTE: the directions are used to describe where in the world something is then where in the eighth of the world and where in the eighth of the eighth of the world and so on.

 

The new languages:

Sazh - Pazha Shosat - A language with only four verbs that uses nouns to make others verbs It uses an alphabet that is always a cursive script one letter connecting to the next.

Chali Shes - Wamali Shes - A language with almost no second person and no plural except with articles.

Ghumlezh - Yan Hile - A language which uses vowel changes and tones in the middles of words for grammar and three consonants for roots of words to represent a verb, a couple nouns, an adjective and an adverb.

Úlan Sel - Úlan Potsa - A language which uses particles to conjugate verbs and decline nouns. The writing system is pictographic and very artful.

Tell me which one sounds the most interesting in the comments choose one of the new ones or if I should continue hard on Dega. I don’t know what to do so please tell me what you think. Thank you! 

(If you want more information about one of the languages feel free to ask me and I will probably answer.)

The World of Dunta

This blog is about a land called Okoda on the world of Dunta. It is mainly about the language, but due to the common tendency of a people living somewhere, worshiping something, and interacting with the world around them and talking about what they notice I will talk about the things that this people talks about.

     There are four other nations living on the world of Dunta, each with their own language, but I will only talk about them every once in a while and very briefly at that.

     For the sake of better understanding and lack of knowledge on how changes might affect the phonetics of their languages the people of Dunta are all humans.

     When I talk about Geography I will post a map of Dunta and talk more about the people there other than the Okoda.