Praeta development

[Erik Mortis]

Wait. 2 genders. I thought we planned to have 3 so we could have a neutral gender. Or was that just for the pronouns.

[con quesa]

Wait. 2 genders. I thought we planned to have 3 so we could have a neutral gender. Or was that just for the pronouns.

I have found what I think is a more interesting way of being able to refer to people in the 3rd person without needing to specify their gender. Rooted in a process happening in contemporary English (which, recall, is a Germanic language ).

[Erik Mortis]

ummm... 'Ya'll'?

[CJ Miller]

That isn't 3rd, it's 2nd plural.

[Erik Mortis]

I blame the fever...

[Malliki Tosha]

I bet it's 'they'/'them'/'their'.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

A similar idea. If I'm understanding the notes correctly, though, it's more like a 'they'/'them'/'their' that's separate from the usual one.

Incidentally, con quesa, thanks for the continuing work. And if I could plead for a pet feature, would there be any possibility of having a vocative case in the language? Even if just as an optional use?

[con quesa]

A similar idea. If I'm understanding the notes correctly, though, it's more like a 'they'/'them'/'their' that's separate from the usual one.

Incidentally, con quesa, thanks for the continuing work. And if I could plead for a pet feature, would there be any possibility of having a vocative case in the language? Even if just as an optional use?

A (marginal, often identical in form to the nominative) vocative case has been added. I dig marginal vocatives, I think, because Latin has them (and the form of the Præta vocative has been, erm, "inspired" by Latin's).

As for the 3rd person pronoun, the idea is that there are 3 gendered pronouns, þo, þun and sxå, which agree with their antecedent noun in gender (in the way that in, say, German, you use er to mean "it" when the antecedent is der Hund, sie to mean "it" when their antecedent is die Sonne, and es to mean "it" when the antecedent is das Boot. Of course in English, lacking grammatical gender, we are free to use "it" to refer to any noun). There is also a fourth pronoun, sen, which is used for refering to human antecedents, without making any assumption as to their (actual, not grammatical) gender. Historically, this pronoun comes from a plural pronoun meaning "they", which is why it takes plural agreement on the verb, but in the modern language it is distinct from the actual 3rd person plural (which also takes plural agreement on the verb, but it's senk instead of sen). In fact, the reason the 3rd person plural ends in -k is because the plural-marking -k was added to the original 3rd person plural pronoun to make it distinct from the neutral 3rd person singular. It's analogous to a future version of English making they the default neutral 3rd person singular for humans and innovating theys for actual plural usage.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

Many thanks for the vocative case, and for the explanation.

Also, out of curiosity; I was looking at the example phrase læjö byraza til si sxikxi. I have seen the article listed elsewhere as se and the word for "city" as sikx; do the alternate forms in the phrase represent features not yet revealed in the scratchpad? (i.e. variations in the article to agree with noun gender, lenition of the noun's initial consonant by the article?)

[con quesa]

Many thanks for the vocative case, and for the explanation.

Also, out of curiosity; I was looking at the example phrase læjö byraza til si sxikxi. I have seen the article listed elsewhere as se and the word for "city" as sikx; do the alternate forms in the phrase represent features not yet revealed in the scratchpad? (i.e. variations in the article to agree with noun gender, lenition of the noun's initial consonant by the article?)

That was a mistake on my part, but now that you mention it I rather like the idea of initial consonant lenition caused by the article (that's a very Celtic feature, and pretty much every Celtic language was replaced by a Germanic one, so we might imagine that sort of lenition as a substrate influence on Germanic-inspired Præta). Si is what I imagine the neuter prepositional form of the definite article might be, given that I'm keeping Nick's se for the general idea of the definite article, but I haven't made the paradigm yet and I might change it.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

I will continue to watch with interest.

[con quesa]

I would like to assure everyone that I am not dead, and that I am still working on Præta. I'm working on the verb morphology now, which always tends to be the most complicated part of languages I create (what can I say? I like verbs ) Anyway once I figure out how verbs ought to work I can start translating longer sentences, which is how you figure out what parts of the grammar still need to be translated. I'm just about to put something up on my scratch page now on (just simple past tense) verbs, though.

[Kaiser B'caw I]

I think I'm destined to be the official nitpicker, for which I apologize...

Concerning yatu: just wanted to confirm that the word is beginning with a vowel cluster there, and isn't a misspelling of jatu?

[con quesa]

I think I'm destined to be the official nitpicker, for which I apologize...

Concerning yatu: just wanted to confirm that the word is beginning with a vowel cluster there, and isn't a misspelling of jatu?

Nitpicking is good, that's how mistakes get fixed. Like my mistake of writing <y> when I really
meant <j>, and which as now been corrected on the wiki

[con quesa]

The past tense of simple verbs is finalized, so now there is nothing stopping anyone from creating complete Præta sentences (as long as they are in the past tense). Like,

Torkun æj til sxi Suli - I turned towards the ocean.

or

Dångut sym Rædæ - We burned down some houses.

As an aside, I've started to capitalize the first letters of all nouns, becuase German does that, and also because personally think it looks cool. If people are opposed to that, let them speak up, but like I said I do think it looks cool

Next step will be the auxiliary verbs, so all the other tenses can be formed. But first, definite articles, because those are lacking and they are kind of important for forming sentences.

[con quesa]

I have been away from this project for quite a while, for which I apologize. Anyway, now posted on the wiki is information about forming the present tense, using the three object-person-marking auxiliary verbs. So now people can form sentences like:

"I am walking away from the house"
za æj hjalpti að se ræði

or "I am chasing you!"

kuz æj cæzöti (desæn)

or "You are chasing me"

gy desæ cæzöti (hån)

[Ari Rahikkala]

Still watching with interest

[Jonas]

A little question: what would be the translation of 'parliament' in this language?

[con quesa]

A little question: what would be the translation of 'parliament' in this language?

"Landsraad" apparantly comes from Dune, and Frank Herbert apparantly got it in turn from an old Scandanavian expression meaning "landed council". So I coined the compound word waçhörsy from waçet, "land" + hörsy, "council", to mean about the same thing. It is a feminine -y class noun.

[Demon of Fides]

Dune FTW. I still think the Kaiser should be the Padisha Kaiser...

[Kaiser Ometeotl I]

I'm still not sure what Padisha is supposed to mean.

[Demon of Fides]

It doesn't mean anything, it's just like Shai'hulud. Frank and only Frank knows/cares (yes, I'm aware that Shai'hulud translated to God)

[Shyriath]

*Leaps in for linguistic correction!* Ta-da!

Frank Herbert made up a number of the more unusual words he used, but by no means all. Many of them were real words, taken from Arabic or from other languages.

Padishah, in particular, is a form of a Persian word meaning literally "master-king" (maybe "greatest among kings" would be a more poetic way of putting it), and was a title denoting a claim to highest prestige among monarchs... something vaguely equivalent to the Western notion of an emperor being higher than mere kings, to the extent that the terms padishah and emperor were often equated with each other.