Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Thropoi

Thropoi is the (temporary?) name for my new 'artlang' (artistic language). It is derived from the first word that sprang to mind when coming up with this lang, which was "thropos". It means 'bull', though I'm not quite sure what effects that has on the meaning of 'Thropoi'.

Anyhow, let's look at a couple of sentences I assembled:
Anthonos sín darëthi prádo. Tas mano vesem mannin akot shánide. Tasta të tamen të rapu etet nají Frankarërne, jatem ain rutarevt.
It's supposed to mean the following:
Anthony is my friend. He has a great house near the sea. His mother and father went to France, but have not returned.
 Let's disect that, shall we?

  • Anthonos - "Anthony" [name, masc. nom. sg., o-base] from Anthonos
  • sín - "is" [verb, 3rd sg. act., present simple, indi.] from sín
  • darëthi - "my" [pronoun, general possessive sg., consonant-base] from dar
  • prádo - "friend" [n., general predicative sg., o-base] from prádo
  • tas - "he" [pn., masc. nom. sg., a-base] from tas
  • mano - "have" [v., 3rd sg. act., present simple, indi.] from mano
  • vesem - "house" [n., neuter acc. sg., c.-base] from ves
  • mannin - "big" [adjective, neut. acc. sg., o-base] from manno
  • akot - "near" [preposition]
  • shánide - "sea" [n., neut. locative sg., o-base] from sháno
  • tasta - "his" [pn., masc. poss. sg., a-base] from tas
  • të - "and" [conjunction] (always appears in pairs or groups)
  • tamen - "mother" [n., fem. nom. sg., e-base] from tamen
  • të - "and" [conjunction]
  • rapu - "father" [n., masc. nom. sg, u-base] from rapu
  • etet - "went" [v., 3rd pl. monovalent, past simple, indi.] from eta
  • nají - "to" [preposition]
  • Frankarërne - "France" [nm., neut. lative sg., c.-base] from Frankar
  • jatem - "but" [conjunction]
  • ain - "not" [adverb]
  • rutarevt - "have returned" [v., 3rd pl. mon., present perfect] from rutaro
Phew, that's quite a list.

As you might have noticed, Thropoi has a lot of different conjugations: there are 4 genders, 13 cases, 4 numbers and 5 bases (leaving you with 1040 noun-conjugations), 3 tenses, 3 aspects, 4 voices, 8 persons and 8 moods (resulting in 2304 verb-conjugations, although some are impossible).

This is of course on purpose. The aim of this particular lang is purely art; I want to have a language that one can only interpret and produce with a dictionary at hand. Where my other langs are often quite simple, this is a language that is ridiculously complex, just for the sake of it.

2 comments:

  1. This looks really cool. Do you have a phonology you wouldn't mind typing up into a post? I like the look of it.
    Do you just make the words up from your head, or do you modify them from a natlang?
    I'd drive myself crazy with such a complex language =) I have a hard enough time with basic noun declensions- none of my conlangs have gender or even mark nouns for plural.

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  2. Yeah, I'll post a phonology right away.

    This is a completely a priori lang. All of my conlangs are, although Lurioneski shares some basic Greek words.

    And yeah, it is kinda insane. I haven't filled in most of it, to be honest. I've done maybe 10% of the nouns, and 5% of the verbs.

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