It's cool that the citation form of the verb is the past. That reminds me of Salish, which I've been staring at recently.
What's the relationship between dratak "drank" and dratok "took"? Dratok looks like a derivative of dratak. It looks like dratak is irregular, but dratok has been regularized: where the future of dratak seems to break down as "dra-ess" (ROOT-ess), the future of dratok seems to break down as "dratak-ess" (STEM-ess). Maybe the way you nominalize a verb is to change its second vowel (with a stress shift?), so 'dratak (stress on the first syllable) became dra'tok ("a drink"). That was then turned into a new verb 'dratok (with the stress back on the first syllable but the second vowel left as O to dissimilate it from the verb "drank"), meaning "had a drink, took medicine."
Great stuff :) Btw I have stopped working on the Fringe Speak language many years ago since I decided my time won't be enough to do that and write the books themselves. Though I have been using what I already created to write certain important stuff, like for example, bits and pieces of the Taz'aran lingo since they, being pitiful cardboard cutouts, did not need any culture, language, nor anything else of import to flesh them out :P
very good as always, well written and researched. Packed with a lot of actual help on creating a new language. I like the way you explain the power of a language as well. Thank you for sharing
It's my first try at creating a language so my plan was just to keep it simple for now. It might be messy in places but I change and develop new rules as the language expands. Thank you for your suggestion, I'll look at that irregularity
It's cool that the citation form of the verb is the past. That reminds me of Salish, which I've been staring at recently.
What's the relationship between dratak "drank" and dratok "took"? Dratok looks like a derivative of dratak. It looks like dratak is irregular, but dratok has been regularized: where the future of dratak seems to break down as "dra-ess" (ROOT-ess), the future of dratok seems to break down as "dratak-ess" (STEM-ess). Maybe the way you nominalize a verb is to change its second vowel (with a stress shift?), so 'dratak (stress on the first syllable) became dra'tok ("a drink"). That was then turned into a new verb 'dratok (with the stress back on the first syllable but the second vowel left as O to dissimilate it from the verb "drank"), meaning "had a drink, took medicine."
Thus the paradigms:
TO DRINK
Dra-tak: past (citation)
Dra-et: present
Dra-ess: future
TO TAKE
Dratok(-tak): past (citation)
Dratak-et: present
Dratak-ess: future
Is that what you were thinking?
This is one of my fictional race posts I promised you, the Taz'aran glossary entry.
https://theblackknight.substack.com/p/tazarans
Great stuff :) Btw I have stopped working on the Fringe Speak language many years ago since I decided my time won't be enough to do that and write the books themselves. Though I have been using what I already created to write certain important stuff, like for example, bits and pieces of the Taz'aran lingo since they, being pitiful cardboard cutouts, did not need any culture, language, nor anything else of import to flesh them out :P
Taz’e Nekh’da!
I miss Worf
I miss him too.
Now that you have done languages, now you can do "curse words and swears". ;-)
Haha hard to do a whole Folklore Friday on swears.
very good as always, well written and researched. Packed with a lot of actual help on creating a new language. I like the way you explain the power of a language as well. Thank you for sharing
I'm glad you liked it
It's my first try at creating a language so my plan was just to keep it simple for now. It might be messy in places but I change and develop new rules as the language expands. Thank you for your suggestion, I'll look at that irregularity