Conculture - 1

A conlang is shaped by its conculture, if it has one (and mine does).

Obviously, this language is intended to be spoken by Elves, so Elven culture dictates many patterns and specifications of the language. My Elven conculture is for a D&D-based world (5th Edition, specifically), though certain aspects vary from standard D&D Lore. First, I'll talk about Elves as a whole, then get into the sub-types and cultural differences.

Elves live about 700 years, but in terms of cultural and linguistic development, their growth matches Humans' on a generational basis. That is, the Elven Language changes the same amount in 700 years that English does in about 80 years. I tend to round this, and do the time conversion so that Elves develop at 1/10th the rate of Humans (with the exception of physical and mental maturation until the age of ~25, which occurs at the same rate as Humans).

Elves are descended from the anana'i ("people of the sun"), the first non-plant living things on the planet. They were created by Gwaena (Elessic: gweyna), goddess of the sun, who made them to explore and enjoy the world and all the things in it. The anana'i became the ancestors of the Surface Elves (High, Wood, and Eladrin, but not Drow) and all Good Fey.

The Drow are descended from another race, made by Andolin (Elessic: andolɪn), goddess of the moon, and sister to Gwaena. They do not speak Elessic.

Elves worship Gwaena and Andolin as a sort of dual-goddess. Gwaena is Chaotic Good, and Andolin is Lawful Good. Wood and High Elves tend towards Neutral Good (rather than Chaotic Good as in standard D&D Lore).

High Elves (alodavra, "Bright Elves") and Wood Elves (kyardavra, "Earth Elves") speak separate dialects, with High Elvish being the prestige.

In terms of culture, High Elves have historically favored ambition and intelligence, with the greater part of their "modern" culture being defined by a long period of imperialism and colonialism, which ended with the catastrophic destruction of their society several thousand years ago. This imperialism was carried out by the High Elves exclusively.

After the destruction of the imperialistic society, the remnants fled east and landed on Strigana, the continent on which my stories are based. These Elves retained many of the same values of their ancestors and so tend to be less compassionate and more prideful.

A group of these High Elves saw the downfall of their culture as punishment from the gods, and spread eastward across Strigana, looking to live more peaceful lives in tune with the other races (which their culture previously looked down upon). These "Eastern High Elves" mostly settled in Selanor, a forested region inhabited by Wood Elves, and home to the First Tree, which was planted by the goddesses themselves. They formed integrated societies with the Wood Elves, and speak the language which I am describing on this blog.

So basically, there are three groups of Elves: the "Western High Elves" which still hold imperialistic values, tend to be haughty, favor intellectualism, and often look down on other cultures; the "Eastern High Elves" who have embraced other ways of thought, and live peacefully amongst the Wood Elves; and the "Wood Elves", who have always done their own thing, and favor practicality and coexistence.

Western High Elves and Eastern High Elves speak essentially the same language, though Eastern High Elves are far more likely to avoid certain problematic habits and forms.

IN CONCLUSION:

Elessic (as described here) is a language heavily shaped by imperialism and ethnocentrism, but it is moving away from these old-fashioned ideals and is becoming a more open and accepting, focusing on the peaceful sharing of ideas, rather than building ideological walls.

Special Suffixes - 1

There are certain groups of words in Elessic that possess special suffixes which function only with them to change the meaning in a specific way.

So far, there are two such groups, with a third one planned (though I intend to use this mechanic sparingly).

Senses:
For the different senses, adding an -n forms the organ which senses the sensation (making this -nd forms the verb of "to detect something using the sense," but this isn't really irregular).

(remember, all these verbs are transitive)

ai - Sight
ain - Eye
aind - to See

wa - Hearing
wan - Ear
wand - to Hear

gai - Olfaction
gain - Nose
gaind - to Smell

sey - [Physical] Feeling
seyn - Skin
seynd - to Feel [Physically]

ho - Intuition
hon - Intuition (but the other kind)
hond - to Feel [via Intuition]

bwe - Taste
bwen - Tongue
bwend - to Taste

I may add a modification for "to use sense with intent" for "to look," "to listen," "to feel [actively]" et cetera. Possibly, this could be a particle with wider use for other verbs.

Directions:
The cardinal directions are very important in Elessic, as High Elves (whose language I am describing, primarily) do not use Relative Directions (left, right) as their primary method of describing direction, but rather rely on the cardinal directions. This is dumb and impractical, so Wood Elves don't do it.
-a forms regions based on the directions (-st forms included because some are a little different)

eld - East
elda - The East
elst - Eastward

sed - South
seda - The South
sest - Southward

wai - West
waia - The West
waist - Westward

nai - North
naia - The North
naist - Northward

This post got half-written and then I got distracted with other things and now I have no momentum so enjoy.

Adjectives - 1

(some details are still up in the air, but this is what I'm going with right now)

Finally, the much-talked about Adjectives that I've been avoiding because it's complicated.

Elessic Adjectives (like many things in the language) are more specific than in English. Elessic has three categories of Adjectives: Trait Adjectives, Relational Adjectives, and Descriptors.

Trait Adjectives

Trait Adjectives describe a Trait possessed by the Noun, such as its height, density, or even altitude. These are formed by combining an Abstract Noun with a "Trait Possession" Suffix. These Abstract Nouns are the kind of things you would think of in English as Nouns formed out of Adjectives, like "heaviness" and "hardness." You know, the kinds of Nouns that only really serve as a way of speaking about Adjectives as Nouns. In Elessic, rather than these defaulting to Adjectives and then being used as Nouns, they begin their lives as Adjectives.

Trait Possession Suffixes

In English, we say "Hard" and we say "Soft," even though these two words describe the same thing, i.e. how hard something is. We also tend to use such things as the "positive" of something by default. That is, you say "How tall are they?" when "tall" automatically implies above average height.

In Elessic, when you want to describe something's height, you use the word hi ("height"), and then pick a suffix that indicates how much or little of the attribute the Noun has.

-la - indicates middling or average possession of a trait. (hila = "average height")

-mi - indicates above average possession of a trait. (himi = "tall")

-da - indicates far above average possession of a trait. (hida = "very tall")

-mu - indicates excessive possession of a trait. (himu = "too tall")

-ti - indicates below average possession of a trait. (hiti = "short") 

-fa - indicates far below average possession of a trait (hifa = "very short")

-tu - indicates insufficient possession of a trait (hitu = "too short")

Therefore, you can say say dadal sa hida, "that person is very tall." Or, if a little kid wanted to ride a roller coaster, one might say nai, vo sa hitu, "no, you're too short" (or, nai, avu sa hitu if you wanted to soften the blow). Other Trait Nouns include ser ("lightness/darkness of color"), bai (weight), mɪl (age), and such.

Trait Nouns also can take Comparative Suffixes and Superlative Suffixes.

-on - indicates "more" (like "-er")

-oþ - indicates "most" (like "-est")

-in - indicates "less" (English doesn't have a suffix that is the opposite of "-er")

-iþ - indicates "least" (like the opposite of "-est")

Relational Adjectives

These, I'll get into more at a later time, but for now I'll describe them as "Adjectives formed from Concrete Nouns." Take the phrase "Dog Collar." "Dog" is a Noun, but in English, we just slap it down in front of "Collar" and it becomes an Adjective. In Elessic, syntax doesn't change a word's Class, so you have to use a Suffix. These "Relational Suffixes" indicate how the Noun they modify is related to the Noun the newly-made Adjective modifies. So when saying "Dog Collar" you'd take the word for "Dog," add the suffix that indicates that the Adjective shows who/what uses the Noun, and then put "Collar" after it. So it would be "Dog-[user suffix] Collar."

Descriptors

Descriptors are a small class of adjectives which hold so much meaning, that they need no Suffixes to modify them (or else they are niche Adjectives which don't need Suffixes to indicate their degrees of intensity). A few examples are elæd ("old and abandoned, out of use"), ku ("dark-haired"), ket ("correct"), and nar ("incorrect").
These can take Trait Possession Suffixes in some cases, but don't have to.

History - 2

Much of my late 1st Phase work on Elessic was influenced by Latin. In high school, I bought a Latin textbook and started reading through it, and doing some online Latin courses. I hadn't had enough actual language instruction to understand what Cases were at this time (I took Spanish in school, not German) and declensions bewildered me.

However, I liked the sound of Latin, and so a lot my early verbs ended with "-it," which (if I remember correctly) is a common Third Person Singular verb ending in the present tense. This has since been removed, as my verbs now follow a more strict pattern based on Transitivity.

Despite my interest in Latin, German, and Esperanto, my recent addition of cases to Elessic doesn't come from where one might expect. The Accusative was not the first case I added, rather, the Dative 1 was, which was inspired by the use very convenient use of Adverbs to indicate direction in Esperanto.

In learning Esperanto, I wondered why the article "la" didn't match case or number with its Noun, since most other things do. German does this (though, its genders muddy things), and also has a convenient way of including "the" in with its prepositions, with things like "zu" ("to") becoming "zum" ("to the/a"). I tried to come up with an easy way of replicating this through suffixes that attached to prepositions, but anything that added a syllable defeated the purpose of the whole thing.

Eventually, I came up with what I have now: a method by which articles can express Case, which has the added benefit of giving me an out whenever a noun doesn't sound good with certain case markers. Furthermore, the articles remove the need for some of the more common prepositions ("to," "at," "towards"), which helps streamline things.

I still don't know exactly how I intend to handle verbs that have their meanings changed by prepositions, since it interacts with cases oddly. Esperanto has a mix of using prepositions after the verbs and using them as prefixes for the verb, which changes their meanings ("ĉerpi el" means "to draw out [as from a well]" and "elĉerpi" means "to completely use up," with "el-" capable of being used elsewhere for the same meaning), but every time I use a "kun-" verb and follow it up with "kun," it feels redundant.

It may be that I come up with standardized meanings for prepositions-as-prefixes, but this is something that will require a lot of working out.

Articles - 1

Articles! I almost forgot to do one on these suckers.

Mostly, they're like English, but with a few extras (which I'll cover in a bit).

The first variation from English Articles is that Elessic Articles can be left off, if you want and it won't cause confusion. The second variation is that Elessic Articles match the Case and Plurality of their Noun.

Here's a pair of tables:

So, some explanation might be needed.

First, let's cover the Negative Article. In English, its often taught to children that there are two Articles: Definite (The) and Indefinite (A/An). In fact, there's a third: the Negative Article. This features much more prominently in German (where it is a preferred form over most negative sentences, and has a unique representation as kein/keine), but English has one, too, we just don't make a big deal of it. The Negative Article is "no" as in "I have no pets," or "not a" as in "he has not a care in the world."

There's also the Zero Article, which in English is represented by not using an Article. Simply put, a Zero Article is an Article that doesn't do what Articles do (which is define the specificity of a Noun). So why have a Zero Article if it doesn't do anything? Well, in Elessic, you don't have to use an Article, so the Zero Article is used in places where you normally wouldn't use one, but might also just be leaving out the Article. It basically says "I'm not being lazy, this really doesn't need an Article." It's a rare thing to use, but can be important for disambiguation.

Obviously, there's a lot of articles, but you mostly just use two, and they all pluralize like Nouns and use the standard case endings.

Correlatives & Category Nouns - 1

(updated 17.03.25 to reflect changes to "that" correlatives)

Correlatives are an important feature in any language, but they have extra weight in Elessic.

Elessic Correlatives are conceptualized differently than in English. Each is two syllables, being formed of a Determiner Prefix (which is a Bound Morpheme) and a Category Noun.

For example:

kedal (who) is formed of ke- ("which" prefix) and dal (a free morpheme meaning "person")
kemen is "where" (men meaning "place")
kedos is "what" (dos meaning "object")

Other Determiner Prefixes include

vri- (every/all)
ki- (what)
þi- (this)
te- (that)
gir- (any)
id- (some)

Except that the second Morpheme is free rather than bound, this is not all that different from how it works in Esperanto. However, unlike Esperanto, the Determiner Prefixes can attach directly to any Noun.

In Esperanto, one would say:
tiu stelo (that star)
In Elessic, you can simply say:
tesela (that star)

Because the object being referred to ("star") is directly present, there is not need to also list its Category.

"Category" is exactly what it sounds like. Elessic has numerous nouns to refer to things by their general description. For example:

dal (though translated as "person") refers to "animate humanoids"
dos is for objects (non-living things)
bed is for animals (animate, non-intelligent beings)
tem is for "Intelligent Non-Humanoids"
vey is for fey creatures
tol is for ideas/abstract nouns

Some categories are much more broad or esoteric:

dain is for "outsiders" (any living thing not native to the Material Plane)
ram is for deities
zaf is for "any non-real thing"
tag is for "any real thing"
set is for anything, real or imaginary, that has ever been or will ever be

Obviously, most things fall into multiple categories. Generally, you choose whichever is the most specific to whatever you're talking about.

Category Nouns are interchangeable to change the meaning of any word they form a part of.

Etymology - 1

All words have origins, but some moreso than others.

In "History - 1" I discussed how some old words grew into new ones (such as "rilo" into la), but here (and in future installments) I will talk about where the words actually come from.

Elessic is designed as a predecessor (but not direct ancestor) of Easterling (the fantastical language which is presented as English). In some few cases, I have decided that Easterling derived a word or phrase from (at least in part) from Elessic. This mainly occurs when I find the English form to be the most fitting or attractive (it also occurs with some other languages as the source, too).

For example, geyt is a cognate to "gate," and means "gate." Less directly, kisa, means "kiss" (kisand being the Verb), which is derived from the Japanese "kisu," which comes from the English "kiss." ar means "magic" and comes from "arcana,"

Other sources are more roundabout or symbolic.

 ĉel (the philosophical concept of "Good") comes from Chell, the protagonist of the Portal series. See, there's no direct meaning of symbolism there, just a source for the sounds I used.

 ĉelwen ("Turtle") is derived from  ĉel + wen ("Lord/Lady, Noble"). This auspicious meaning and their association with good luck in Elven culture is derived from the use of the Turtle as a protective symbol in some of Stephen King's books.

 enor ("Raven") comes from "Lenore," whom Poe references in The Raven.

 Here's a suuuper weird one: war ("Wolf") comes from a wolf-like monster I designed in my early writings called a "warick." This came from Warrick Brown, the character on CSI, which I watched a lot in early high school.

 kwenya ("Song") comes from Quenya, Tolkien's primary Elvish language.

 dava ("Elf") came about very deliberately as I was trying to pick the form for such a very important word. I was researching Elves in other cultures to find inspiration, but came up sort of empty. I decided to branch out into other folkloric and mythological topics, and came across the Sanskrit word "deva," which I found I rather liked. Further, a Deva is a creature that is more than human, but less than a god (though, I daresay that might not be the case in all religions which recognize them). I went with dava, which I found more attractive.

Later, it came about that dava could be seen as the Actor Form of a verb, and I made this verb, dand mean "to exist." In-world etymologically, I think that long ago, a group of powerful Elven philosophers discussed the idea of solipsism, and when trying to answer the question "What can we say truly exists?" they could only answer "Ourselves." Therefore, an Elf is one who exists.

 I will definitely be doing more of these in the future.

History - 1

This is exciting, as I've never actually sat down and written out the history and process that Elessic has gone through.

Due to motor-skill issues, I got a laptop when I was a freshman in High School, which facilitated my entry into writing. At 14, I began writing a series which I would later refer to as The East, which featured the earliest form of Elessic (The East is on an indefinite hiatus for numerous reasons). Fortunately, because I hoard files, I still have some my earliest documents on the language.

Its early form was a word-replacement system, wherein I did little more than swap English words for made-up ones with little regard to phonology or grammar. This was before I had any exposure to the study of Linguistics. My philosophy in this period was to simply think up a word and then that was the word I'd use, without caring how much I actually liked the sound (or how efficient it was).

I named this language "Ralef," even though I didn't care for the name.

Elessic grew out of Ralef in many ways, although they look very different now. In 2010, I discovered Esperanto and immediately put my conlang project on hold while I studied an actual conlang.

Ralef had a developed glossary, due to the ease at which I created words. Many words were two-or-more syllables in length, which was made worse by the fact that all suffixes and verb-endings were at least one syllable in length.

Nouns pluralized with "-los" (which remained Elessic's pluralization system for a long time)
I have a record of "-ir" forming past-tense verbs, but I have no memory of this. What I do remember is "-el" being used for past-tense and "-et" being used for future-tense. This is directly related to Elessic's current endings for Transitive Verbs.

Pronouns had inflected forms, as in English, but oddly, the third-person plural was irregular. Two Pronouns that carried on in some fashion were "rilo" ("I") and "mehen" ("She"). In Elessic's second phase (after my exposure to Esperanto) I began shortening and increasing efficiency wherever I could. "Rilo" became "lo," which eventually became "la" for me liking how it sounded, and because I see it as the most basic sound combination in the language, with "l" and "a" being (possibly) the two most common sounds. "Mehen" became "mehn," then "men," but was batted around until I settled on the current "mey."

There are few words which I've always viewed as being some of the core blocks of the language. "Mehen" and "rilo" were some of these, but another was "boru," which served as the "to be" verb. This got fiddled with, but eventually was dropped altogether.

The name "Elessic" came towards the beginning of the language's second phase, which began sometime in college. It was thought up on a whim and meant to illustrate more of the sound I was looking for in the language. Still, I quickly decided that it wouldn't be the autonym, partially because "-ic" is an English morpheme. I then came up with elestɪl, but I knew that would never serve, either. After I came up with the dava ("Elf"), davrasi fell into place as a nice-sounding and logical autonym.

Verbs - 1

Elessic verbs are marked as either being transitive or intransitive. In ditransitivity or something seems worthy of being marked, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Verbs do not change form for person, only tense and transitivity.

The "to be" Verb is sa, and it holds the distinction of not holding a standard ending. Despite this, it is conjugated as an Intransitive Verb, adding the proper endings.

Most Verbs begin their lives as Nouns.
A Noun may be turned into a Verb by adding a Verb ending.

Transitive Verbs bear the -nd ending, and Intransitive Verbs bear the -nt ending. Verbs are Transitive by default, unless no Transitive form can be reasonably deduced. For such Verbs, replacing the Transitive ending with the Intransitive one forms a "passive verb," which is used to form the Passive voice. For example:

paz means "fire," pazand means "to burn."
pazant means "to be burned."
la pazand means "I burn"
la pazant means "I am burned [by something]"

(there is no distinction, at this time, between Infinitive forms and the Simple Present)

Verbs performed by plural subjects take -s at the end of their forms.

be pazands means "We burn"
be pazants means "We are burned [by something]"

In passive phrases, the Actor is preceded by the particle vu.

la pazant vu rey means "I am burned by him."

Note that la is not in the Accusative Case, as Elessic Grammar considers it to be the subject of the sentence, performing the action of being burned.

A Present Tense Verb is always considered to be Progressive, unless preceded by the Particle ɪf, which "loosens" a Verb's Tense. ɪf forms the difference between "I am running" and "I run [in general/often]" in the Present Tense, "I ran" and "I used to run" in the Past Tense, and "I am going to run" and "I will run [sometime]" in the Future Tense. In each of these examples, the second sentence uses ɪf.

For non-Present Tense Verbs, progressiveness is indicated using the particle af.

Agent Nouns are formed using the suffixes -va (Persons), -di (Nonpersons). I'll do Passive Agent Suffixes later. These suffixes attach directly to the Root, and may or may not include the Vowel that precedes the Verb Ending (depending on how it sounds)

Here's a chart of verb endings and some examples:

Pronouns - 1

Elessic has Pronouns! Novel, isn't it?

Most need no explanation, but a few do.

Instead of having a simple "we," Elessic divides this pronoun into "inclusive" and "exclusive," depending on whether or not the person being spoken to is part of the "we."

There are three second person pronouns, but rather than being separated by formality, they are used to distinguish tone. The "Admonishing 'You'" is used for scolding or "calling someone out" while the "Supportive 'You'" is used for comforting and caring for someone. All three of the Second Person Pronouns have plural forms.

The third person pronouns have distinctions between neuter animate and neuter inanimate (the plural form of the neuter animate is commonly used for "they").

The pronouns all pluralize like nouns, isn't that convenient?

The main difficulty with pronouns is in the Genitive. Genitive Pronouns display the number and case of their possession(s). This leads to a huge number of possible Pronouns, though they all follow patterns:

Click to Embiggen