more conlangery

[pauraque_bk]

I've done a couple of Amíu icons, for idlerat and lolaraincoat, and now I've done another for someone else on my flist. She knows who she is. :)



meej nnruily jingRééaú
"Had we but world..."

This was tremendously fun to work out. If anybody else wants an icon, or would just like to see how something would be said/written, let me know; I'd be happy to oblige.

Here's the breakdown (remember, we're reading right to left and top to bottom):



meej

Quite simply, "desire". This goes with the expressive mood marker in the verb that follows.

The symbol is composed of a phonetic, meer (a kind of fish), and a determinative, "nose", which signifies that it's an emotional state.



nnruily

The verb!

nn- Plural actor (like a subject). Marked "second person" (though in this case it refers to the speaker), so we know an important noun must still be coming, for which "first person" is reserved.

ru "have" (non-deliberate)

-i No target (like an indirect object). This is a zero graph in the written form: The fact that there is no symbol written at this point indicates "i".

-ly Expressive mood. This tells us that the speaker isn't asserting a fact, but rather telling us how he feels about a concept. We've already seen the emotion that goes with this -- "desire".

All the written elements of this verb are abstract ideograms. They aren't pictures of anything.



jingRééaú

jingRéé, as both a spoken and a written word, is a combination of "earth" and "sea" -- that is, "world".

-aú indicates "first person", so we know "world" isn't the actor (subject) of "have". We also know "have" doesn't have a target (indirect object), so "world" must be the direct object.

This particular first person form also indicates the present tense.

So:

meej    nn . ru . i . ly    jingRéé . aú

desire    2p . have . 0 . EXPRESSIVE    world . 1(PRESENT)

"Had we but world..."

And for those of you who wondered what the script would look like if you wrote it quickly:



Ah, it occurs to me I should say something about pronunciation, too. For a loose approximation, you can say "main ruh-ih-luh ying-ray-ah-oo".

For you linguistic types, you may be interested to know that the underlined vowels are low-pitched, /y/ is a high central vowel, /j/ is a palatal approximant, the accented vowels are tense, and the capitalized consonants are retroflex.

Retroflexes are a lot of fun, actually. To say /R/, point your tongue at the roof of your mouth and try to say American /r/.