“language” seemed a more idiomatic translation for the context.

Yup, the words for “language” and “voice” are distinguished only by gender: suha for “language”, suhe for “voice”. The suh- root is a doublet of the sul- root, as well as the sur- root which I’m pretty sure you’ve only seen in Prasura — I think the proto-form is *siru (“tongue”).

I could have saved myself a lot of nexting if I’d typed the apostrophe after “su”, since “su’a” is almost at the end of my notes file.

Sometimes I wonder if I chose a good spelling for the contractions. Su’e, su’a (/swe, swa/) are just contractions of so e, so a, but I’m guessing you already figured that out.

I didn’t know what to do about the “'k” but it didn’t seem like it could fundamentally alter “I could talk to you entirely in this language”.

Yeah, -'k is just a highly contracted form of kay. Incidentally, it’s normally pronounced [k̚], being one of two clitics with no audible release. I was mostly avoiding using colloquial forms like -'k here since all my translations are in a formal register, so being too colloquial would’ve just been hopelessly confusing. But I thought it was a little clunky to write kay čay here, so I decided to use -'k čay instead. I guess I could’ve also just dropped the interrogative particle entirely since it wouldn’t have really changed the meaning much anyways, but eh.

even if before the “fa” seemed like a more natural location for anything like that.

I wonder why you think that.

" (s.t́i)" at the end looks like it should be “lol”. There’s the verbal ending, so “laughs”.

Yes, from a slang word meaning “to laugh intensely” (used here about as hyperbolically as LOL itself), but the word that’s abbreviated here literally means “to cast a fishing line”. This is because in the native alphabet, the letter H as in “hahaha” has a vaguely fish-hook shape. You might be able to tell I was inspired by www/草.

But “mruňet́i” could swing the meaning. I assumed it’s some kind of head-based, knowing verb from “ruň”. “mr” is in “yaMra” (“the Secret”) and “mrezi” (“answers”). All thinking is inherently secret so didn’t seem to need specifying—except thinking to oneself is an expression. It could be a responsive/reactive kind of thinking, in answer to an encountered situation. But that felt like a stretch.

So for the -ruňet́ verbs, something maybe worth highlighting is that the first letter oftentimes comes from a preposition. Truňet́, to ruňe; kruňet́, ko ruňe; and finally mruňet́, me ruňe.

I remembered seeing “not yet” in a gloss so copied it directly and hoped the negation would carry across to the “could”, in recognition if not in formal grammar.

So this is a point where the language is sort of changing mid-quiz (sorry, alas), because there are actually two particles both spelled la in writing but distinguished by pitch accent in speech. Now because I’m bad at pitch accent — uh, I mean, because the pitch accent system is collapsing among younger L1 Manjatian speakers — and because it’s also just kind of confusing to have two function words spelled identically, the one la particle is shifting into always being a long, emphatic lá, and the same thing may or may not happen to some other pitch-accent function word pairs, of which there are at least three more.

But even without shifting the one particle to always having a long vowel, the two la particles are, at least in theory, also distinguished by word order. Which is to say that la nay and nay la (or nay lá as the case may be) is the difference between “not anymore” and “not yet”, but even if it was technically the wrong particle I still knew what you meant from context.

Needs crop up as nouns a few times but I thought it could become a verb.

Nožet́ is not in my dictionary, but I thought it was interesting to see that you had that idea. For both your uses of this word I would’ve just said some variant of nože as a noun.

For “years of study” I thought “learning” could stand in place. And I decided to follow the form of “two weeks’ notice” on the basis that learning was the core concept, and the time period was the modifier.

I see, very interesting. Because I saw kruňećke and I thought you were trying to do the habitual aspect, except I didn’t know where you would’ve learned that from since I haven’t used the habitual aspect in any translations yet.

When I use active participles as nouns, I use them basically as agentives, as in kliňket́iis-waiting-on → kliňkećkea-waitress in ROḰAV SVITA. So I’d sooner use kruňećke as another word for “student” than as a word for “studying” or “learning”, although the actual word for “studying” I should mention is just one letter off.

Although “entirely” is too much for me, “sometimes” is fine.

Alright so ani was supposed to mean “only”, then, like I thought. I found it interesting that you used the feminine plural form and didn’t put it as a modifier after dohe, so it feels a bit disjointed.

I was curious how “job” crept into the meaning of “dohe”, but concluded that it was a contraction that was culturally understood, because your conlang seems quite well developed.

Y-yeah, let’s say that, sure. :skinner-thumbs-up:

Were you able to follow what I wrote clearly? Or was it clear that I needed years because it was so bad? Were you unsure what “dohe” meant literally? Or was how I was using it weird?

I could understand what you were trying to say, but it was also pretty bad (well, very good for what you have to work with, but you know what I mean).

I was wondering what you meant by dohe since it was already a word and it didn’t seem like you were using it with its actual meaning.

I had no way to say “glosses”.

Yeah, me neither. Give me a moment and I’ll come up with something.

I thought maybe I could make a clumsy “reading-explanation”, but then I remembered “curtains” from its similarity to “sailing” and also 字幕 as a curtain of characters. Although I noted that “letter” has more than one meaning in English, I decided that a “letter curtain” is only really useful when it has a whole message on it, so I’m actually using that meaning for “bra” even if the Japanese inspiration suggests otherwise.

Interesting, and you just unlocked something for me, because I’d honestly forgotten where I got the word zdet́ for “to sail” from and was wondering about it. Indeed it is related to the zd in xizdey. I probably would’ve been able to remember that if I’d just looked at the entry immediately above zdet́, but I didn’t, so.

But yeah, without the 字幕 gloss I would’ve been completely at a loss for what xideyv bra was supposed to mean.

I’d already said “I need”, so for variety I wanted “is needed”, and tried to make that. The “–i” seemed necessary for “xizdey”.

So you do understand that there is some form of agreement, but you don’t yet understand how it works completely.

Constructing “vaxejoret́e” as a compound seemed like a better match for “to misread” than translating “to read mistakenly” would. And it’s variety again.

I hadn’t actually come up with an equivalent to mis- as in misread yet, but I liked your idea of using vax- for that here, so I added that to the dictionary. I also added vaj́oret́ for “to misread” because I feel like that rolls off the tongue a little better than vaxejoret́, but in any case you have contributed a word.

Although I wouldn’t be surprised if you tell me that “s” becomes “x”, or even that there’s another word entirely for “repeat”.

Nope, moḱsulet́ is indeed the word for “to repeat oneself” or “to rephrase”.

— “Moževye su’e sulet́iv deňski na yasuhavfa’k” čay yemruňet́i, he u he (s.t́i)

— Nay moževe lá! Žariv kruňećte : noži va fe lá, ye ňa. Na šo tavfat́ot́ yeydivfi dum dohev ane, mís.

— Yesint́iv hazoski fe. No “dohe” ňa?

— Dohe… Nó, he u he, pesuli : noži, o yevaj́oret́i suli, o… yemoḱsulet́i, fe he.

This of course has some “flourishes” to make it sound more conversational and convey a tone of maybe being a little unsure. I could also correct “Yemorǒyve jorećke ňa yežent́e” at a later point but I kinda have to get going.

From this Tumblr post which gets frequently reposted on various social media platforms:

I can provide a transcript if you need it later.