Syllabic Consonants and the Schwa

One last thing I guess I forgot to discuss is Syllabic Consonants.

I say Syllabic Consonant, but really I sort of mean "Consonants preceded by a schwa" (/ə/). I can't really tell the difference

In Latin script, Syllabic Consonants are distinguished by being upper case, as in lRim ("trees").

Syllabic Consonants are rarely morphemic; instead, they are a transformation of a regular Consonant caused by difficulty in pronunciation. For example: lim means "Tree" and (following normal pluralization rules) "lrim" should mean "trees." However, Elessic doesn't like having to pronounce word-initial〈lr〉, so the "r" is made syllabic. Therefore, the plural of lim is lRim.

"R" is the most common, since its use in pluralization causes it to wind up in hard-to-pronounce places.

Elessic also doesn't like "l[consonant]l." Most often, this is solved by making the second "l" syllabic. An example of this is in the word stalkLar ("death knight," a type of monster). stal means "death" and klar means "knight," but "stalklar" is difficult/unpleasant to pronounce.

Adjectives - 2

Adjectives are super important in Elessic, because Elves like to be descriptive and specific. This post will have a lot to do with Relational Adjectives, but there's something else I want to address alongside that:

In English, you can say "That smells good," or "I smell that." It's the same verb with two functions.

In Esperanto, you can say "Tiu odoras bone," or "Mi flaras tion." Different verbs for the two.

Elessic lacks "to be" verbs beyond sa (don't hold me to that), instead using sa and an Adjective. So, rather than saying "That smells good," you say, "That is good-smelling" which is awkward in English, but Elessic forms it in a more streamlined way.

tedos sa giner.

te- (that)
-dos (thing)
sa (is)
gin- (good [quality])
-er ([forms smells-like adjectives])

So, the "sensory" suffixes are as follows:

-ai - looks-like
-bwe - tastes-like
-er - smells-like
-ho - feels-like (intuition)
-sey - feels-like (physically)
-wa - sounds-like

Look familiar? No? Oh, I just realized I haven't released the post about special suffixes. Hold on.

Okay, that's out now. This is an example of Relational Adjectives, where a suffix is employed to indicate how the Noun that is used to form the Adjective describes the Noun being described.

Orthography - 1

This will just be an overview post; Later, I'll make more in-depth posts about the individual writing systems.

Elessic has four native writing systems, but (unlike Japanese), it uses only one at a time, and two of them are rarely used at all.

kyarɪþ

Kyarith ("Earth Script") is a rune-like alphabet favored by the Wood Elves for the ease with which it can be carved into hard materials. High Elves dislike for aesthetic reasons. I have this one planned out, but I don't ever do anything with it.

gwɪlɪþ

Gwilith ("Cloud Script") is an abugida favored by the High Elves for its beauty and efficiency. It is the main writing system that I focus on, and I've spent quite a bit of time refining it, including adding ligatures. Each glyph is composed of individual pieces which indicate the Place, Manner, and Voice of the sound its represents. I'll definitely do a tutorial on how to write in it... some day.

pazɪþ

Pazith ("Fire Script") is an abugida visibly similar to Gwilith, but more streamlined and with less variety of shape. It's used as short-hand, and in practicing magic. I planned this out on a napkin once, but didn't care enough to hang on to it. Mechanically, it's identical to Gwlitith, just with the "pieces" replaced with more efficient (if less immediately legible).

delɪþ

Delith ("Water Script") is still almost entirely unplanned as of yet. All I know is it will be inefficient, written vertically (as opposed to LTR like the rest of the systems), and used primarily in art for its beauty.

The Syllabic Spacer

This is something I hadn't gotten around to, yet, mostly because it doesn't come up all that often.

When I went through the language's Phonology, at the bottom was a glyph, ', which I defined as the "Syllabic Spacer."

' comes up only very rarely, and I at one point tried to remove it from the language, but eventually I decided to keep it around.

' indicates that the two adjacent sounds are part of separate syllables. For example, the "people group/race" suffix, a'i is two syllables ("ah.ee"). Another example is sa'in (a word for "Moon"), which is pronounced as two syllables, unlike sain. So far, most instances of ' occur between a and i, but some prefixes, such as e' (forms imperative verbs), use it to add a layer of separation between themselves and the word they modify.

' has a unique representation in non-Latin Elessic representations, which I'll get to when I do orthography (eventually).

Questions - 1

This one's pretty short, I guess, but oh well.

Elessic forms questions using Interrogative Particles, like the Esperanto "ĉu," or the Japanese "ka."

Like "ĉu," Elessic Interrogative Particles go at the beginning of the sentence and need no alteration to syntax.

Elessic has three Interrogative Particles:

dast - Forms a question with no special indication of an expected answer, or a non-yes/no.
dɪst - Forms a question that the speaker thinks (or hopes) will be answered with "No."
dust - Forms a question that the speaker thinks (or hopes) will be answered with "Yes."

The variation is inspired by something I read about forming questions in Latin.

One can think of the differences as this:

"Are you mad?"
"You're not mad, are you?"
"You're mad, aren't you?"

Subtle, but important. This also helps disambiguate the old terror of language-learning, negatively-formed questions. Rather than tangling with negatives to indicate a desired or expected response, it's all reduced to the neutral form ("Are you mad?"), with the other flavorings being implied, but not grammatically altering.

The particles are probably related to the archaic English "dost," as in "dost thou?" But they also are descended from bisyllabic forms which I shortened because I decided I didn't need two syllables to ask a question.

As for words like "whether," I'll get to those later.

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.