We realized earlier today that Fay, Tempest, Negarahn, and Djao'Kain don't really have an accurate term for their gender. Finding an accurate term has proven difficult. The only really accurate human term we've found so far is "hermaphrodite," but that's a word the intersex community doesn't like people using.

Of course, the conversation on gender goes a little weird at times. Recently, one of us was like "Okay so what would the AKB of Traipah call their gender?" Fay was like "They wouldn't. They only have the one sex." But then Tempest countered with "Yeah but once they met the humans, they might come up with a term for it, it would be their version of "cisgender." And they have something like intersex as well, so gender terms for them might come in handy. So what would the AKB call their majority gender?"

Fay thought a moment, then said, "Well gender would be a new concept for them. So they'd probably use some variation on the English word 'gender.' Considering most AKB are just the one sex, I think they'd call it AhKHoi'djender (ah-ḥoy ʒen-der."

Derived, of course, from the Ah'Koi of "Ah'Koi Bahnis" and the word "gender."

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I realized today that my constructed language Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog didn't have a word for "cute." As I was trying to decide what word to pick for that role, I realized that the word "cute" is itself cute. Cute, pronounced kyoot, is a cute word. So the TPNN equivalent should be cute, too. This is what I came up with:

Cute = nyao'ni'mi

Pronunciation guide: "nyao" rhymes with "cow," and the i's in ni and mi say the E name, so nyao'ni'mi rhymes with "cow see me." "Nyao" was also inspired by "nyan" of "nyan-cat."

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So earlier today my mind got caught up on an interesting puzzle: how to translate the phrase "Black lives matter" into Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog. Came across some cultural complications in the translation, one of which I haven't talked about here.

First, and this is the new bit, but the Ah'Koi Bahnis don't use their word for "matter" the same way as we do. To their more literal point of view, a dead body and a live one have just as much matter in them, and therefore using their word for matter would make the phrase incomprehensible to them. Life is ephemeral, thus it cannot have mass/matter. And they’d probably also be like “what is this black life of which you speak? Life is an abstract concept, and has no color.” So instead of their word for matter, we could use " mah'glohf " because it means "value" in the sense of a treasure. Or really ramp up things and go with " mah'glohrr'if ,"¹ which means "priceless treasure." It's safe to say that the AKB would agree that life is a priceless treasure. The AKB are very big on the right to bodily autonomy; any violation of bodily autonomy sends AKB into a frenzied anger, and murder is the ultimate violation of bodily autonomy.

Second, Ah'Koi Bahnis come in a vast array of colors that humans don't (practically any color or color combo you can think of), so if you tried calling a black person their word for the color black ("mor'shek'iss") - or our word "black", if they knew English but lacked the cultural context - they would assume you meant someone whose skin was coal black or darker, and would not include people with brown skin in that. But you couldn't really call human black people brown, either, because to the AKB, most humans are some shade or other of either brown or red, so it would be too broad a word. (They even consider the average Caucasian skin tone to be various shades of brown or red.) You could make a translation to "Da-Nykahr seh da-bahn guu'tik² jokiidj Ah'frih'kah³ ulg mah'glohf," which means "Lives of brown persons from Africa have value," but that's kind of unwieldy.

Then I realized, in the future in which the stories take place, the AKB will have become familiar with the human concept of race (even if they think it's a bit silly to base race off something like skin color), and probably have a word for human black people. I don't know how often they'd use it, but if the distinctions between races were important enough to enough humans, probably often enough for it to be well known. For that, I came up with "Ah'frih'guu'tik," meaning "Brown people of Africa. "Da-Nykahr seh Ah'frii'guu'tik ulg mah'glohf" is shorter and sounds better, doesn't it?

However, I think the spirit of the "Black lives matter" phrase would lend it best to the following translation: "ny'Ah'frih'guu'tik bain mah'glohrr'if." Translation back into English: "[Lives of black people] [are] priceless treasure." And also interesting is that in TPNN, the expression can be either singular or plural. You could specify plural by adding a "da-" prefix to "ny'Ah'frih'guu'tik," but it's not necessary.

And if someone came back with "ALL lives are priceless treasure," they'd likely respond, "I'm glad you agree with me." Can you imagine how flustered that would make the racists? Though the AKB might also have to respond with "You say all lives are priceless treasure, and that is good if you truly do believe it. But you need also to realize that a great many of your people do not treasure the lives of black people, a fact that is self-evident from the horrendous ways in which they are treated every day. Ways that differ greatly from how 'white' people are treated."

LOL, while writing that, I figured out what the AKB would call white people: Yew'rahp'dwah'yoot. Which means "Pink people of Europe." Though the word for "pink" in TPNN literally translates to "small-red," so you could also translate that as "Small-red people of Europe."⁴ Which, while funny, is a confusing translation.

Sure, AKB speakers could easily say "Yew-rupp" and could likely say "Yer-up" without much difficulty, but a lot of AKB language is about what sounds good, and I personally think Yew'rahp sounds better then Yew-rup or Yer-up. Especially since those two don't really mesh with the pronunciation of "dwah'yoot" when I say it. Trying to say "Yer'up'dwah'yoot" feels/sounds like switching from one language to another mid-word.


1 = mah'glohrr'if is not an easy word to say, though. The double R ("rr") is a roll of the tongue like in Spanish, or like that old Rrruffles have rrrripples thing.

2 = guu'tik is pronounced goo'tik.

3 = TPNN has an AA as in Africa phoneme in it, but as I can't think of any words with that phoneme, I've long since come to the conclusion that English words with that sound would be mis-pronounced as AH in a TPNN accent. Hence "Ah'frih'kah." (Reminder: apostrophes in Latin spellings of these TPNN words just separate syllables.) I will note, too, that some TPNN sounds tend to shift pronunciation slightly, so you're just as likely to hear a TPNN speaker say "Ah'frii'kah," pronounced "Ah'free'kah." It's like the R/L thing in Japanese.

4 = And extremely pale people of European descent might be called "Yew'rahp'yoo'tii'koo," meaning "White-red people of Europe," if not for the fact that Yew'rahp'dwah'yoot already includes them. Useful distinction, though; I'll keep it. And I'm sure the AKB would want a word for gingers, too, so I give you "Nng'gyuh'yew'rahp" for white gingers and "Nng'gyuh'guu'tik" for all other gingers. Nng'gyuh means "spotted" as in "has spots." So the names respectively mean "Spotted people of Europe" and "Spotted brown people." Or you could specify black people with "Nng'gyuhf'rih'kah." I have no better idea how to spell out the pronunciation of Nng'gyuh than to say it would be spelled, in TPNN's written syllabary, as the character for the letter N with a mark on it that means "draw out this sound for a second," then "gyuh." The reason for the discrepancy in the structure of the words for gingers is because they sound better that way, and since it doesn't violate any rules of the language, why not switch it around?

This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1325649.html
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Ages and eons ago, I asked people offhandedly if someone knew the character for the voiceless velar frictive (throat clearing sound found in Scottish and Arabic and Hebrew), and someone pointed out it's X. Well I hated that option, because it's so vague. So I found an alternative: ḥ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B8%A4 )

Not only is it more obvious that it's not an ordinary letter, it has the added benefit of resembling what I was already using (bold/cap. H or HK), and looks better than using the X.

This is good, because ḥ is a common sound in Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog. In fact, a fair number of ordinary H sounds in TPNN can be replaced with ḥ. Like Shao'Kehn can also be pronounced Shao'Ḥen. Also, an alternative to Grah'Bahn (Deity of Life) is Ḥrah'Bahn.

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Sahnailah [sawn ail ah] = A word for "beautiful" that only applies to people with lots of fat. The word is said with reverence bordering on worship, as it usually applies to deities like Duenicohn or Morshenda, but can apply to mortals as well.

Ziishraal [zeesh rahl] = Abnormally thin, gaunt and starved in appearance.

Ziishraalailah [zeesh rahl ail ah] = Zishraal, but possessing terrible beauty. (Terrible in the "intimidating/scary" sense.) Unlikely to be applicable to mortals.

Vah'zyahl-maak [vah zyahl mock] = The state of having multiple minds in a single body. From "vahzii" meaning "many" and "ahl" meaning "one."

Vah'zyahl-bahn [vah zyahl bon] = An individual body possessing multiple minds.

Urah'HKah [u: rɒ xɒ] = The dominant sex for Ah'Koi Bahnis, which is "true hermaphrodite" in English.

Drexyah [dreks yah] = The state of having incomplete, unusually-formed, and/or missing reproductive tissues; similar to "intersex" in English, except that AKB, as true hermaphrodites, would be drexyah for other reasons, for example someone born without a grah'bihn (equivalent to a penis). [One of my stories contains a passing reference to one such person, who is the romantic partner of one of the foreground characters.] It is generally considered mildly unfortunate, but if it isn't posing a threat to the person's health, then any cosmetic surgery is left to them to decide for themselves later in life, as it is considered a grievous crime to violate the bodily autonomy of anyone for any reason other than saving their life. (And even then as well, if they gave clear instructions to the contrary.)

~

It is also a grievous crime to deny somebody necessary medical attention for any reason other than their own wishes, or to unduly punish them for needing those services by - for example - charging absurdly high prices for it (they would take one look at the USA's "health care" system and declare us all unrepentant savages). Traipahni people are big on bodily autonomy - it's your body, as such it is sacred, someone defying your will about your body is sacrilege. But you can |do what you want to/have done what you want to| with your own body and it's nobody's business but yours.

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Sometimes, the combination of using TPNN for prayers with the fact that there's a LOT of gaping holes in TPNN's vocabulary, makes for some very interesting work-arounds. In a prayer I just did, I made the TPNN term " woi'jiijii-kursh," which basically translates to "re-healthful." (Woi- prefix = "full of-", jiijii = from jiijiinahr, meaning "health," and the "-kursh" suffix means "again.") So it literally means "full of health again," but one rule I've recently come up with for TPNN is that compound words like that are generally read backwards (IE, kursh jiijii woi in this case), which means "re-healthful" is a better translation. (Well, not literally read backwards. Constructed backwards? Yeah, constructed backwards. Like, if you did it in English with that rule, instead of "re-healthful," you'd have "fullhealth-re."

Plus, I kinda like "re-healthful" as an English neologism. :-)

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Sometimes getting stuck in the Cracked vortex can be useful; after reading something on one Cracked.com article, I remembered how I used to have a formal "you" and an informal "you" in TPNN. The word "koh" used to be the formal "you," "kru" being the informal, but I was using "koh" so much in my spiritual use of TPNN that "kru" kind of fell by the wayside.

Anyway, I just came up with a whole different system:

Koh: formal, divine. (Deities, spirits)

Kyoo ("Q"): Formal, mortal (highest; clergy, teachers, leaders)

Kwoh ("quo"): Formal, mortal (parents, other elders, including older sibs)

Kweh: Formal, mixed audience

Gweh: Informal, mixed audience

Koo: Informal, friends

Kyi (rhymes with "eye"): Informal, lovers

Kyow: Informal, family

HKweh (HK = throat-clearing sound): Use of this basically means "I hate you so much, if you died today I would celebrate." Not to be used unless you REALLY mean it.


In cases where more than one can apply, like a nest-mate¹ who is older (older sibling, for instance), the more important relationship takes precedent; which can vary by mood. So if your nest-mate uses "kyi," all is well; if they use "kwoh," however, either they've fallen out of love with you, or you've done something to piss them off and you're sleeping in the doghouse. (Or the relationship change is new, and they're still getting used to it, etc.)

I may add similar things for other words like "they," but right now I'm trying to escape the Cracked vortex to go to bed.

1 = On Traipah, it takes several dozen generations of inbreeding for it to begin having any noticeable negative effects on offspring. Thus, there are no social taboos against family members being in romantic relationships with one another, so long as everyone involved is consenting. I haven't decided yet if the term "nest mates" only applies to immediate family members in such a relationship, or if it extends to extended family. The only such relationship in anything I've written yet is between two siblings.

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Just spent several hours coming up with yet another Traipahni syllabary. Why? To simplify things, of course. First, the characters are more unique, making it harder to confuse them, which should make it easier to read. The characters are also simpler whenever possible, making them easier to write. And I've introduced a syllable seperator character (what the apostrophe does when I write it in Roman alphabet, for instance pah'fah'shen'tah) that eliminates the need for characters like AHL, OOR, EER, and so on. So there are only 46 characters in this version, including punctuation marks. Whereas Ahndahn's Alphabet has like 56 or so, and Dven'Bahnis has at least twice that many. Also consolodated the hard H, hard K, and hard G into one character, as they all sound identical (like clearing your throat).

Oh, and I came up with a cursive version too. Actually I did that one first, to give me ideas for the non-cursive version. Since some of the characters in the non-cursive version are easy to write, but impossible in the cursive version, some sounds have entirely different characters between the two versions. My favorite part is that, in both AA and DB syllabaries, the characters for H, J, L, and M are the same character just turned at different angles, which was always confusing. But in this new syllabary, I was very careful about rejecting characters that are too similar to one another. Which involved using some of the cursive characters in the non-cursive version (or non-cursive versions of the cursive characters).

I hereby dub this new syllabary Glik'Mwihl, which means Simple Word.

I have yet to enter Glik'Mwihl into a computer. I shall do that later.

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I could really beat my younger self up right now, or at least give her a wedgie. Why? Well I found some old sacred writings... written entirely in Traipahni characters. This is a major headache because 1. Traipahni "alphabets" are actually syllabaries, so words are spelled as they sound; since it's mostly English, context is often necessary to full decipher it. 2. There are multiple characters for the same sounds, since past-me used multiple syllabaries, so even identical words are not necessarily spelled the same. 3. There isn't any standardized spelling of things even within single syllabaries. 4. I can barely read this stuff to begin with. 5. There is a LOT of it to decipher, and it is slow going. 6. It isn't even written entirely in a single language!!! It's mostly English, but then it will switch every now and then to TPNN words, which - despite having invented it - I am not as good at reading it as I used to be. 7. It's handwritten. I can tell I was trying to write legibly, but hand cramping must have been making that difficult. 8. Some of these characters look like others to begin with, and written illegibly they're even harder to decipher. (EH and EHN in one syllabary look virtually identical, for instance.) 8. It is entirely too easy to write T when one is intending to write S in one of these syllabaries. 9. Some of the TPNN words sound alike, a problem I had not been aware of before. I thought this one word was "yinbahn" which would be "light person," then checked "yihnbahn" (same pronunciation), and was reminded it means "friend." (An accidental similarity.)

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In my constructed language Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog, they have one pronoun, djai ( ʒeɪ ) and its posessive form djair ( ʒeəʳ ). But pronouns can get confusing even for humans, so I came up with an idea that is apparently called obviative pronouns. It's a series of suffixes to denote different people in the convo.

-ardj ( ɑ:rʒ ) = a second person in the convo
-airsh ( eəʳʃ ) = a third person
-arḥ ( ɑ:rḥ ) = a fourth person
-yurth ( yɜ:ʳð ) = a fith person

Beyond that, you'd be getting into "silly" territory.

Whichever suffix you use is assigned to a certain person, and should remain assigned to that person if reasonable. This assignation applies to the posessive form as well.

Anyway, let's see how that looks.

Without obviative pronouns:

I saw djai take djair arm and guide djai to djair pencil.

Confusing, eh? Lots of meanings. Let's see them with obviative pronouns:

I saw djai take djair-ardj arm and guide djai-ardj to djair-ardj pencil.
(I saw [person 1] take [person 2's] arm and guide [person 2] to [person 2's] pencil.)

Or maybe the situation is even more complex:

I saw djai take djair-ardj arm and guide djai-ardj to djair-airsh pencil.
(I saw [person 1] take [person 2's] arm and guide [person 2] to [person 3's] pencil.)

Or another sentence: I saw djai and djai and djai talking with djai and djai, about sada ("their" always plural in TPNN) earlier conversation about djair pencil.

With o-pronouns:

I saw djai and djai-ardj and djai-airsh talking with djai-arḥ and djai-yurth, about sada ("their" always plural in TPNN) earlier conversation about djair-arḥ pencil.

(I saw [person 1] and [person 2] and [person 3] talking with [person 4] and [person 5] about their earlier conversation about [person 4's] pencil.)

And so on and so forth.

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