The Mere Mortal's Guide to Liiiθiil

[Moose-tache]

The Mere Mortal's Guide to Liiiθiil
A Codex of Immense Import
by Aalenlil
Lord High Knower of Things

Liiiθiil is the language of the Celestial Elect, the highest born of all humanoids. The humans of Blogdorg ignorantly refer to us as “elves.”

The letters of Liiiθiil have, over many centuries, settled upon the perfect combination of sounds to convey true meaning, as opposed to the bumbling noises produced by human tongues. As another concession to the limited wits of human readers, I have decided to use the Interkingdom Phonetic Alphabet to represent the sounds of Liiiθiil. No doubt training a human to comprehend the written language would require another codex entirely. The Ten Perfect Trees and Six Perfect Winds, or consonants and vowels as you know them, are listed below. Note that the Six Perfect Winds can be short, long, or overlong. The letter T is pronounced as in human tongues, but better.

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    Ten Perfect Trees            Six Perfect Winds
        p      t                 i               u
        ϕ    θ, s                  e     ǝi    o
        m      n                          a
        ʋ    l, j

Most words in Liiiθiil are either Things Which Are, or Events Which Do. Things Which Are are not separated into primitive categories like “male” and “female.” Instead each Thing Which Is belongs to one of four categories: ilʋaaa, laan, arboreal, and other (animals, humans, small plants, dwarves and other inanimates, etc.). I will not attempt to explain the difference between ilʋaaa and laan here; it would take a lifetime of study to understand. For now just remember that it is very elegant and accurately reflects how Things Which Are actually behave.

The main consequence of these four categories is that each one has its own definite article (we have no need for an indefinite article, obviously, and it's rude of you to even ask), and that Events Which Do agree with the category of their participants. Things Which Are, as well as articles and adjectives, are unchanged in the plural. Articles precede their Things Which Are, while adjectives and relative clauses, the latter marked with taa, follow.

I won't waste my time explaining Liiiθiil adjectives to you here. If you haven't mastered it by now, you never will.

Below is a list of Liiiθiil articles. Try to keep up.
ilʋaaa - naa
laan - ilii
arboreal - θaaa
other - an

Events Which Do are the heart of any sentence. Every Event Which Does has a thematic prefix which indicates both the agent and the patient. Below are all the combinations of categories and their prefixes. Agents are along the top, and patients are along the lefthand side.

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                      ilʋaaa       laan      arboreal       other
ilʋaaa                 taaa         li         pa             ii
laan                   naa          taaa       ʋooo           ϕu
arboreal               pa           ʋooo       a              a
other                  ii           ϕu         a              a

Everything that is also was, and also shall be. As a result, Events Which Do in Liiiθiil do not inflect for tense or aspect. In fact, no expression of time is possible in Liiiθiil by any means, since everything is timeless and perfect forever. To understand the Celestial Elect's understanding of time, picture an arrow frozen in flight. Now picture a much, much, nicer one, pregnant with the ancient wisdom of the gods, with more feathers. Why would such a lovely arrow need to be anywhere else? Wherever the arrow is, the place where the arrow shall be will just have to get its head straight and hustle over to where the arrow is hovering currently, and make no more fuss about it.

Some human “scholars” have characterized this lack of tense marking as “gnomic language.” This is a misconception. The gnomes are far less refined.

Now you are ready to experience Liiiθiil in all its glory. For starters, here is the parable of the Human and the Dragon.

Toolan taa eee θaal ajaaa ii asapee ooomi pa?
human which what number be_necessary in_order_to kill dragon interrogative
What number of humans is necessary to kill a dragon?

Toolan luɸee ajaaa.
human ten be_necessry
Ten humans are necessary.

Toolan aatin ajaaa ii aʋeltuu an θaaa.
human one be_necessary in_order_to hold the sword
One human is needed to hold the sword.

Aa, toolan unuu ajaaa ii aiʋaal ɸiɸipii an ooomi.
also, human nine be_necessary in_order_to move alternate.adv the dragon
And nine humans are needed to move the dragon back and forth.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

You have truly honoured this mere mortal with your words, oh Lord High Knower of Things. My only regret is that this human tongue would burn in holy fire were it to attempt to speak but a syllable of this language.

[Sevly]

haha, this was a great post to log back in and stumble upon, love the tone, i’m aghast in all the right ways

[Moose-tache]

Thanks for the responses. One of my dreams is writing a grammar of a fictional Bantu language from the perspective of a stuffy American missionary, and I'm always thinking of ways to make the idea better. But now I know at least among this crowd there's no interest in this sort of thing, based on the lack of reaction. I guess it'll stay just a personal hobby for now.

[Xwtek]

Please keep down your smug, please. Also, your language is much more boring than you're thought.

[Pedant]

Thanks for the responses. One of my dreams is writing a grammar of a fictional Bantu language from the perspective of a stuffy American missionary, and I'm always thinking of ways to make the idea better. But now I know at least among this crowd there's no interest in this sort of thing, based on the lack of reaction. I guess it'll stay just a personal hobby for now.

Hey, you did at least get some reaction from it. I've seen any number of language pages with barely any comments from other posters at all. But if it's practice you're looking for, then here's as good a place as any. And one thing that I might recommend, one conlanger with world-building in mind to another, is to try to inject a little more personality into the script, and try to be a little more structured in the explanation. You jump from a short introduction to phonology to noun classes to syntax all in one go; each of these could reasonably be a page of their own, and with far more room for side-jokes and cultural commentary. Just a thought.
One thing that's a little confusing: are the speakers elves or humans? Only they say humans refer to them as elves, and that they are of a different race, but then they use "humans" and "humanoids" throughout when you'd think another term would be in place.
Also, one Bantu-language-maker to another, I think we very definitely need to see more African languages on this site. The reactions from my own Bantu language thread seemed rather positive, if that's any encouragement.

[Knit Tie]

I'm really loving how tongue-in-cheek this is, so far! Also, no velars seems to be a very unique thing to put into a phonology.

[Druidpeter]

Ah. Now I remember! This language sounds kind of similar, or rather, it reminds me of the language that was created in "Quest for Fire". Do you know about that one? In any case, I like what you've come up with so far, Moose-Tache, and I actually would be very much interested to see your grammar expanded. This sounds like a fun language to speak, hehe! :D

[WeepingElf]

Please keep down your smug, please. Also, your language is much more boring than you're thought.

Well, that is an in character text - the way a Celestial Elect would speak of his own language. And of course, this language tries to out-Quenya Quenya by drawing on every cliché associated with "Elvish languages" (and not actually being in Tolkien's languages)