Nirrum speaks Fluent Manar
I, on the other hand, am not done inventing it
Language shapes our world in ways that we don't understand too well until we delve into its history, its context and the differences between two languages or dialects. When making my world, I had come up with many words that were just... made up. Made up places, made up names, and made up similar-sounding names to dodge potential copyright claims. If you look at my map on one of my older posts it still says Khaliras when it should say Kholira. As any creator, especially fans of webcomics go, if something goes on long enough, it changes drastically. What was once a copy-and-paste from the Night Angel's Trilogy's Khalidorians had morphed into the Rather distinct Kholirahi. The only Vestiges that remained were the root-themed skins, the fratricide, and the plot to take over the world by the godking. I was in an interesting position at this point. I had already refered to the people of Manaharamu as Manarahi, and now I have the Kholirahi. As any amateur etymologist would realize, these two word must be related. At least in my world, where they weren't before, they were now. Rahi, to me, clearly meant people. That was the beginning, other words and places contained the hints of a language, "Mana Ulla" meaning magic well gave me certainty as to what Manaharamu was. Mana was magic, or at least power.and energy The mountain itself, Mohara, gave me Hara as Mountain or hill. Mu then, must be town, city, or place. I had it. Manaharamu, the energy hill place. If you wanted to be dramatic, I guess you could call it the Magic Mountain Town.
So I had a few bases, and immediately I added a few more. I'm extremely simulationist, so I asked myself what were the first words uttered among the Manarahi? Their origins were universally extraplanar, having come here as a result of experimentation or Magic going wrong, Unable to escape the prison plane's magic when they got there. Most of them ended up being stuck underground in caverns purpose-built to contain the worst creatures. I got them to establish the most important things. Fire, Water, Giant,Sky, Rest. Pipir, Alag, Cuukiku (which gets funny later), Oowa and Pruwa. all of them onomatopoeic. The popping and hissing of fire, the gurgling of a subterranean river, the stomping of a terrifying giant, and the sound of a deeply relieved dragonborn when they find a cave to house their new, growing family. Racially, the Manarahi might be considered half elf, but in those lonely sparse caves, if it could breed, it did. It is not to be a surprised if one of their descendants is a sorcerer from a stranger bloodline. Utar, sarcasm, came next. I wanted something that had the drip of an english curse, the ability to say it with unfortunate passion. A moment later, I realized I should probaly round out the elemental trio with Brek for stone. Wind was not yet a big factor in the minds of the early manarahi. Time to get to work explaining those bases though. Kholirahi became Kholi and rahi, the something people. I made it a dual meaning. Poetry or injustice, poetic irony, cosmic irony. One of the beautiful parts about language, is that if someone asks how you tell which meaning of the word they're using, just say "Context." Now, Kholi is a decently long word, it's got a modestly complex Kh and pretty big vowel shift, it probably has etymology of its own. Kao, now meant thought and li came from leeg, and both meant "lies". Pileeg and Aleeg, Pili and Ali, burning lies (from pipir) and flowing lies (from alag). Both have their dangers after all. Pileeg, lies as we know them, take work to keep up and are liable to destroy everything you have worked for....buuut a well-maintained lie can keep everyone warm and be a useful tool. Stories, or aleeg, are great to pass the time, they tend to do their own thing and many can benefit, but there is danger in drowning in them. At this point, I look at two of my bases, Manar and Utar, both of these roots refer to speech, Ar, which became language.
Originally, Manar was spoken in a vague Eastern-European accent, butt as it developes and phonemes begin to coalesce out of its decently consistent etymology, it begins to take on a life of its own. I mention this now because at this point in the language, I settled on 'n, an, and ne as negative prefixes, which in the very first instance of their use, betray how much the manarahi care about certain forms of pronounciation. 'nli and anleeg both mean "truth", depending -I suppose- on how fast one is speaking, or how long wants to draw out a poem, or how quietly one wishes to mumble. Mumbling is important in a language, they've all developed their own ways to do it, and nearly half of the bullshit that happens to a language over time happens because of mumbling.
So I had a few bases, and immediately I added a few more. I'm extremely simulationist, so I asked myself what were the first words uttered among the Manarahi? Their origins were universally extraplanar, having come here as a result of experimentation or Magic going wrong, Unable to escape the prison plane's magic when they got there. Most of them ended up being stuck underground in caverns purpose-built to contain the worst creatures. I got them to establish the most important things. Fire, Water, Giant,Sky, Rest. Pipir, Alag, Cuukiku (which gets funny later), Oowa and Pruwa. all of them onomatopoeic. The popping and hissing of fire, the gurgling of a subterranean river, the stomping of a terrifying giant, and the sound of a deeply relieved dragonborn when they find a cave to house their new, growing family. Racially, the Manarahi might be considered half elf, but in those lonely sparse caves, if it could breed, it did. It is not to be a surprised if one of their descendants is a sorcerer from a stranger bloodline. Utar, sarcasm, came next. I wanted something that had the drip of an english curse, the ability to say it with unfortunate passion. A moment later, I realized I should probaly round out the elemental trio with Brek for stone. Wind was not yet a big factor in the minds of the early manarahi. Time to get to work explaining those bases though. Kholirahi became Kholi and rahi, the something people. I made it a dual meaning. Poetry or injustice, poetic irony, cosmic irony. One of the beautiful parts about language, is that if someone asks how you tell which meaning of the word they're using, just say "Context." Now, Kholi is a decently long word, it's got a modestly complex Kh and pretty big vowel shift, it probably has etymology of its own. Kao, now meant thought and li came from leeg, and both meant "lies". Pileeg and Aleeg, Pili and Ali, burning lies (from pipir) and flowing lies (from alag). Both have their dangers after all. Pileeg, lies as we know them, take work to keep up and are liable to destroy everything you have worked for....buuut a well-maintained lie can keep everyone warm and be a useful tool. Stories, or aleeg, are great to pass the time, they tend to do their own thing and many can benefit, but there is danger in drowning in them. At this point, I look at two of my bases, Manar and Utar, both of these roots refer to speech, Ar, which became language.
Originally, Manar was spoken in a vague Eastern-European accent, butt as it developes and phonemes begin to coalesce out of its decently consistent etymology, it begins to take on a life of its own. I mention this now because at this point in the language, I settled on 'n, an, and ne as negative prefixes, which in the very first instance of their use, betray how much the manarahi care about certain forms of pronounciation. 'nli and anleeg both mean "truth", depending -I suppose- on how fast one is speaking, or how long wants to draw out a poem, or how quietly one wishes to mumble. Mumbling is important in a language, they've all developed their own ways to do it, and nearly half of the bullshit that happens to a language over time happens because of mumbling.
The Conjugation was a fairly simple thing. The Manarahi self-identify as multiracial. Functionally they are predominantly elf and human, but the people's history is one of strong unity between any race that decided to play nice during their time underground. Because of this, not all of the Manarahi were sexually dimorphic, plenty of shardmind, warforged, dopplegangers and many things such as devils, dragons, and angels all found a reason to use the Manarahi to stay alive. As such, the conjugation contains no gendering, and indeed the words for "Male" and "female" are very much later additions to the language. I will use "ra" as the noun, meaning "thing" and used very much the same way as it is in english. Apostrophes indicate a glottal stop, like the T in batman
Ra'a -Me, I am
Ra'i - us, we are
Ra'u - You, you are
Ra'ta - Singular they, them, another
Ra'ti - Plural they, them, others
Nera - Not
These suffixes are universal, and combine nicely with a Peculiar but convenient trick in Manar. Verbing. Any noun can be appended with one of those suffixes and it becomes a verb that describes the most contextually relevant action associated with that noun. It works far better with esoteric nouns like "quiet", than it does with concrete nouns such as "goblin" but in some cases, we do the same in English. Try it with the word "Fish"
Noteworthily, there is no plural "you," as it is expressed in a bit of a longer format "Ra'u sho Ra'ti," "you and them" or in some cases, not at all
Another Suffix that matters is Tense. Manar has three Tenses, Past, present and future, and they are appended onto the verb to indicate its position relative to the context preceding the verb. The present and the infinitive are identical, as the idea of being one who does things belongs partially in the past, and there is another word devoted to that outside of the suffix. The two are as follows
-'lo in the past
-'ab in the future
Betlyss'u'lo, for example means "(darkgood) Good night - you -future" or "You (will) have a good night,"
This brings us to basic sentence structure. While Conjunctives work more or less the same way that they do in english, the sentence structure is drastically different. A sentence in Manar is organized from most passive and furthest abstracted to most active and concrete. Indirect object, Object Predicate-Subject followed by any description of the subject. This can be nested complexly with any subject becoming the object of another clause. So far it has been sufficient.
Pluralization has ended up being a very late addition to a language, and it was bizzare to deal with the idea of making more than one pig for example. I wanted a solution that would allow loanwords and weird sequences to be relatively easy to understand. By using Ra'ti (thing, multiple others, they) before a word, one will recognize it as referring to multiple distinct objects.This does run an interesting issue of multiple things that are the same thing doing things. Ra'ti can be replaced with any similar verbed noun. Pep'ti Lor. Hopping they Rabbit. Multiple rabbits are hopping.
That's all I'm going to cover for now, this blog post took too long to even get to this point and I apologize for the wait! I've been busy with a campaign of such a large scope that I haven't learned too much from it yet! I've got an idea for another post already so that might be coming up very soon!
English hiar'u, Manar hiar'u'lo, Petiar'a'ab Jatira Hiar'u'ab, Lirano'u dal'a Ra'ke. English you are reading, Manar you will read, Anything that you have read that I have written, a gift from you for me it is.
-Nirrum The Mad
These suffixes are universal, and combine nicely with a Peculiar but convenient trick in Manar. Verbing. Any noun can be appended with one of those suffixes and it becomes a verb that describes the most contextually relevant action associated with that noun. It works far better with esoteric nouns like "quiet", than it does with concrete nouns such as "goblin" but in some cases, we do the same in English. Try it with the word "Fish"
Noteworthily, there is no plural "you," as it is expressed in a bit of a longer format "Ra'u sho Ra'ti," "you and them" or in some cases, not at all
Another Suffix that matters is Tense. Manar has three Tenses, Past, present and future, and they are appended onto the verb to indicate its position relative to the context preceding the verb. The present and the infinitive are identical, as the idea of being one who does things belongs partially in the past, and there is another word devoted to that outside of the suffix. The two are as follows
-'lo in the past
-'ab in the future
Betlyss'u'lo, for example means "(darkgood) Good night - you -future" or "You (will) have a good night,"
This brings us to basic sentence structure. While Conjunctives work more or less the same way that they do in english, the sentence structure is drastically different. A sentence in Manar is organized from most passive and furthest abstracted to most active and concrete. Indirect object, Object Predicate-Subject followed by any description of the subject. This can be nested complexly with any subject becoming the object of another clause. So far it has been sufficient.
Pluralization has ended up being a very late addition to a language, and it was bizzare to deal with the idea of making more than one pig for example. I wanted a solution that would allow loanwords and weird sequences to be relatively easy to understand. By using Ra'ti (thing, multiple others, they) before a word, one will recognize it as referring to multiple distinct objects.This does run an interesting issue of multiple things that are the same thing doing things. Ra'ti can be replaced with any similar verbed noun. Pep'ti Lor. Hopping they Rabbit. Multiple rabbits are hopping.
That's all I'm going to cover for now, this blog post took too long to even get to this point and I apologize for the wait! I've been busy with a campaign of such a large scope that I haven't learned too much from it yet! I've got an idea for another post already so that might be coming up very soon!
English hiar'u, Manar hiar'u'lo, Petiar'a'ab Jatira Hiar'u'ab, Lirano'u dal'a Ra'ke. English you are reading, Manar you will read, Anything that you have read that I have written, a gift from you for me it is.
-Nirrum The Mad
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