Transemilia

[Emily]

i got a couple of calls for a separate post about transemilia when i posted about the telephone system, and while my first thought was that there wasn't enough to post, i eventually figured "why not"

ages ago i used to play nationstates.net a lot, first as a cartoon villain dictatorship and later as a sort of parody of hippie liberal paradise. when i got back into the game a few years back i decided i wanted to play as a country that more accurately represented my own politics, so the people's republic of transemilia was born. unlike the previous nations i had made in the game (for the liberal island paradise, i put some hawaiian-sounding gibberish as the motto and called it a day, and i just figured the dictatorship spoke german), i pretty quickly set about making a conlang for the nation, which i'll go into later. (with transemilia i got into raiding fascist regions with a group of other leftists, but eventually grew tired of the game and now i only really play it for pizza-related reasons)

in-world, the people's republic of transemilia (эiРеспубліка эiҒёлкмаюр Трансэмілдаюр /ɛirespu'blika ɛiʝolk'majur transɛ'mildajur/) is located in eastern europe, probably somewhere in the vicinity of hungary and romania although i deliberately haven't picked a place on the map for it (i do have maps but they don't show neighboring countries). the history basically parallels that of yugoslavia (minor kingdoms and principalities under austro-hungarian rule, uneasy kingdom after wwi, monarchy overthrown by homegrown communists and the red army in wwii) for most of it, except it misses the gorbachev-style liberal reforms of the 1980s and the western-backed color revolutions and bombing campaigns of the 90s (dont @ me). how did transemilia avoid these catastrophes (don't @ me) that overthrew every other socialist government in europe? it just did, that's how

i haven't done a whole heck of a lot of fleshing out the "world" of transemilia if i'm being perfectly honest, but in addition to the telephone system outlined above i did at various points decide on license plate formats, mailing address formats, and highway designations, because that's the kind of pointless fiddly detail my brain is drawn to for whatever diseased reason. i also drew a map by hand on paper, and then traced it on the computer in such a way to cover up the fact that i accidentally made the mountain range that bisects the country look like a vagina. oh also the name (which irl comes from the fact that when i transition i will use the name emily) is justified in-universe as referring to the fact that the country straddles a mountain range called the emilas, but it turns out that in the few place names that use the prefix "trans" it means "on the other side of xyz" rather than "across both sides of it". whoops!

[Emily]

the transemilian language (step one: phonology)

phonologically, my main inspirations for transemilian were the slavic languages. transemilian is characterized by alternations between palatal and non-palatal consonants, a relatively simple vowel system, and potentially complex syllable onsets but very simple codas. the phoneme inventory is:
/m n ɲ/
/p b t d c ɟ k g/
/ts dz tʃ dʒ/
/ɸ β s z ʃ ʒ ç ʝ x ɣ/
/r j l ʎ/

/a e ɛ i o u/
/ai au ei eu ɛi ɛu iu oi ou ui/

onsets can consist of: no consonant; any single consonant; fricative + any consonant; stop or affricate + nasal; stop + liquid; stop + stop; nasal + any consonant; liquid + /j/; (fricative or stop or nasal) + stop + liquid. (any obstruents within a given cluster must match in voicing.) codas, on the other hand, can only consist of: no consonant; a nasal; a liquid other than /j/. this means that a hypothetical word /dziçcʎa/ consists of the syllables /dzi/ and /çcʎa/; that is, both syllables are considered open. stress typically falls on the last syllable of the root, though a few native and many borrowed words stress other syllables instead, most commonly the penultimate

the big part of the slavic inspiration is obviously the palatal/nonpalatal alternation. The consonants /g ɣ k x l n/ alternate with /ɟ ʝ c ç ʎ ɲ/, both in spelling and in many inflections. a cluster with a palatal in it tends to have all palatals rather than just the one, although there are numerous exceptions to this as well. all of this makes it difficult for me to pronounce things in the language, which is what led me to move on to other languages like ka'ekala, ruritanian, and the language of the book. it's a frustrating balance to figure out: i don't want every conlang i make to just stay within the same basic sound systems i'm familiar with (english, german, and spanish), but then when i do something like this where i add a dimension and make it more interesting, it ends up being a fucking mouthful and i get irritated and stop using it

the vowels are a bit simpler; as seen above they consist of /a e ɛ i o u/. i don't remember at all what the idea behind this arrangement is; there are essentially four front vowels and two back vowels, which seems unbalanced; the distinction between /e/ and /ɛ/ seems to call for a similar distinction between /o/ and /ɔ/, but that doesn't appear. also, until literally this past week, the "main" dialect neutralized the distinction between diphthongs beginning with /e/ and diphthongs beginning with /ɛ/, pronouncing both as the latter; this was done because making the distinction between the two was a bit of a chore for me. when i was finishing up the vowel-based dialect differences in order to make that map, however, the absurdity of this neutralization became obvious and unjustifiable (i had taken careful pains to make sure the distinction was preserved in the spelling but not in speech?? ok,,,,) so i changed the "standard" dialect to be one that made the distinction. i think with the dialect differences i came up with most of them make more sense as coherent systems than the main one if i'm being perfectly honest, although even here there are some things that are difficult to justify—why would the ayênko dialect create a length distinction on exactly one vowel and none of the others?

other dialect differences that i plan (or have planned) include more or less neutralization of unstressed vowels (in the standard dialect vowels are reduced to either /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ if unstressed in a syllable that is not adjacent to a stressed syllable), /l/ becoming /w/ or /u/ in environments where standard transemilian has [ɫ], and different realizations of palatals. the latter isn't really implementable until i get a better handle on the historical sound changes that led to the current palatal situation, but all i've really gotten in trying to develop that is a few false starts. i haven't even begun to map out where these dialect areas would go geographically

the alphabet is cyrillic, with a number of characters taken from e.g. the south slavic languages to cover sounds not present in russian, such as /dz/ or a distinction between /g/ and /ɣ/. someone on the zbb pointed out to me that some of the characters i had chosen didn't seem realistic based on the timeframe, so i wrote in my notes that the current orthography was created in 1947 to replace a much less suitable russian-based system that had been decreed by the monarchy lol. i also never really liked the romanization i came up with, which uses a lot of h-digraphs, writes /ɛ e/ as <e ê>, and is based on the pronunciation rather than the cyrillic spelling, but having a bunch of diacritics i'd need to copy and paste would defeat the purpose of romanizing it in the first place, and i couldn't come up with anything better

more on the grammar later, because unlike most of the stuff in this post i actually kind of like a lot of the grammar lol. feel free to ask me any questions or w/e

[Ares Land]

i accidentally made the mountain range that bisects the country look like a vagina

You are not alone. I also tend to find a lot of Clitoris Valleys and Penis Peninsulas.

the name (which irl comes from the fact that when i transition i will use the name emily) is justified in-universe as referring to the fact that the country straddles a mountain range called the emilas, but it turns out that in the few place names that use the prefix "trans" it means "on the other side of xyz" rather than "across both sides of it". whoops!

That's not much of a big deal. There are lots of ways you could justify it (it's the name of a core province or something).

The language sounds nice so far (and what you say bothers you certainly doesn't strike me as particularly unrealistic). Is it based on a real life family or in way, or a priori?

[Emily]

The language sounds nice so far (and what you say bothers you certainly doesn't strike me as particularly unrealistic). Is it based on a real life family or in way, or a priori?

i can never remember which one is a priori and a posteriori. transemilian isn't derived from a different language, although it does include borrowings and internationalisms such as цігарэта /tsiga'rɛta/ "cigarette", фабріка /ɸa'brika/ "factory", фудбол /ɸu'dbol/ "soccer". when i'm not sure if a word should be native or a borrowing, i've set up a spreadsheet where i can input the glosses in other languages in the region (latvian, lithuanian; czech, slovak, polish; belarusian, russian, ukrainian; romanian; estonian, finnish, hungarian, northern sami—note that though the country's history is loosely based on yugoslavia i'm not really using south slavic as a model) and see how they do it. if they tend towards a borrowing (and especially if that tendency is true for both the indo-european and uralic models), i'll go with a borrowing, whereas if they do it differently i'll go with a native word (seeing how they borrow a word can be helpful as well). this helped me decide, for example, that "ham" was going to be a germanic borrowing, and that the borrowing would have a -u- rather than -i- vowel:

lat

lith

cz

slk

pol

bel

russ

uk

rom

est

fin

sami

hun

trans

šķiņķis

kum̃pis

šunka

šunka

szynka

vyandlina; shynka

okorok, vetchina

okorok; shynka

șuncă

sink

kinkku

n/a

sonka

shunka

(admittedly an -i- would have been justified too, but the -u-/-o- was surprising and distinctive enough to me that i went that direction instead.) it also helped me decide that the word for "typewriter" would be a compound "write-machine", as almost all of the model languages use this sort of construction for this word

[Emily]

the alphabet is а б в г ғ д е є ё ж з ѕ и і к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч џ ш щ ъ ь э ӭ ю я. as in slavic languages, palatalization of consonants (or in the case of transemilian full-on palatals) are indicated by corresponding sets of "hard" and "soft" vowels:

phoneme	a	e	ɛ	i	o	u
hard	а	е	э	і	о	у
soft	я	є	ӭ	и	ё	ю

the consonants can be broken into three groups: "hard" consonants (which have no palatal pronunciation and do not palatalize preceding consonants), "soft" consonants (which are palatal consonants that palatalize any preceding consonants), and "variable" consonants (which can have a "hard" or "soft" pronunciation depending on the following letters

the hard consonants are б в д з ѕ м п р с т ф ц /b β d z dz m p r s t ɸ ts/. the soft consonants are ж ч џ ш щ /ʒ tʃ dʒ ʃ ʃtʃ/. the variable consonants are:

consonant	г	ғ	к	х	л	н
hard pronunciation	g	ɣ	k	x	l	n
soft pronunciation	ɟ	ʝ	c	ç	ʎ	ɲ

so basically, a variable consonant is pronounced hard, unless:

1. followed by a soft vowel
2. followed by a soft consonant (ж ч џ ш щ)
3. followed by the soft sign ь
4. followed by a variable consonant that in turn is followed by one of the above; or by a variable consonant followed by a variable consonant followed by one of the above, etc.

a soft vowel at the beginning of a word, or following a hard consonant (or hard sign) or another vowel, is simply /j/ + the vowel

so to illustrate:

Code: Select all

/ka/	ка	/alka/	алка	/aʎka/	алька
/kja/	къя	/alkja/	алкъя	/aʎkja/	алькъя
/ca/	кя	/alca/	алъкя	/aʎca/	алкя
/cja/	кья	/alcja/	алъкья	/aʎcja/	алкья

[Emily]

where the phonology (and alphabet) are influenced by slavic, the grammar is mostly inspired by the uralic languages. basically the idea was i wanted it to sound european but not necessarily indo-european. it's strictly agglutinating, and the inflectional morphemes are exclusively suffixing

nouns are structured DETERMINER + ROOT + NUMBER + CASE. the determiner can be an article or a demonstrative, and is required for all nouns (even personal names) except when in the vocative. the article can be definite or indefinite; while there is only one definite article, there are two indefinites, one used for count nouns and the other for mass nouns (the latter can also be used on count nouns when using them as a generic: an apple can be read or green). the demonstratives have a three-way distinction: бро- indicates something in reach of the speaker, вда- indicates something in reach of the listener, and щен- indicates something not in reach of either. this distinction was borrowed from hawaiian (although i think it's fairly common worldwide), and i later reused it for ka'ekala, which uses hawaiian more explicitly as a model.

number is either singular (no suffix) or plural -цо. there is also what is probably best called a singulative suffix -зун, which is used when a noun that is normally a mass noun is instead used as a singular count noun (such as "bring me a coffee" or "brie is a soft cheese"). it can also attach to regular count nouns, in which case it just emphasizes singularity, basically equivalent to saying "a single apple" in english rather than "an apple" or "one apple"

transemilian also has a large number of cases, which it was fun to let myself go overboard with:

• nominative: zero suffix (vocative also has zero suffix, but additionally deletes the determiner prefix)
• accusative: -ве
• dative: -къӭл (can be rather broad in scope, and includes benefactives)
• genitive: -юр (softens preceding variable consonants; if indicating alienable possession, the genitive is preceded by the particle ғим: эімауто эіѕонюр "the woman's car" but эіцігарэта ғим эіѕонюр "the woman's cigarette")
• partitive: -здінь (indicates a part of a whole: a slice of cake, one of the boys; not used for more abstract meanings some languages' partitives are used for, although it is used for measurements such as калітэрцо шка інхюлздінь "two liters of water", and the distinction between partitive and genitive can be subtle: "one member of the group" would have "group" in the partitive, while "the leader of the group" would have "group" in the genitive)
• comitative: -кя (softens preceding variable consonants; indicates accompaniment, but with a focus on the non-comitative subject [or object, w/e]; "susan-NOM and karen-NOM killed the nazi-ACC" means they both did it, while "susan-NOM karen-COM killed the nazi-ACC" essentially means susan did the dirty work but karen helped)
• instrumental: -чу (softens preceding variable consonants; indicates "by means of": susan-NOM killed the nazi-ACC a knife-INST "susan killed the nazi with a knife"
• abessive: -хом (indicates "without", and is the negative form of both the comitative and the instrumental)
• locative: -ці (indicates where something is at, can be translated with different english prepositions depending on the noun; in my dictionary spreadsheet i have a column indicating what the "default" meaning of the locative is for any given noun: "the-house-LOC" without a preposition means "in the house" or "at the house", whereas to say "on [top of] the house" or "behind the house" you would need to use those respective prepositions)
• lative: -не (indicates the destination as opposed to a static location: "to the house" or "towards the house")
• ablative: -дэн (indicates the departure point: "from the house" or "out of the house" or "away from the house"; not used for any of the other stuff latin does with it)
• semblative: -мо (indicates "like X" or "in the manner of X"; currently the phrase "i speak spanish" is translated with a simple accusative "i speak the spanish [language]" but i am toying with the idea of changing it to a semblative construction, essentially "i speak like a spaniard")
• causative: -щэ (softens preceding variable consonants; indicates the cause of the action: i-NOM cried john-CAUS = john made me cry; john-NOM ran away shame-CAUS = john ran away in (from) shame; we-NOM read books-ACC candles-INST outage-CAUS = we read books by candlelight because of the power outage; the house-NOM burned down i-CAUS = i burned down the house)

units of time use the locative/lative/ablative: the locative means "at (6:00), on (Wednesday), in (1997)", the lative means "before" or "until", and the ablative means "after" or "since"

adjectives follow the noun and agree with its number and case, but do not take determiner prefixes (unless the noun is dropped and the adjective is being used in its place). the earliest versions of transemilian had gender as well but i scrapped it fairly early on as it was making words too long

[Emily]

transemilian is VSO. verbs conjugate for tense and aspect (and mood i guess), but not for person or number. the structure of a verb is maximally NEGATIVE + AUXILIARY + ROOT + SUBJECT MODIFIER + ASPECT + TENSE

the negative prefix is фі- and simply negates the verb (not, doesn't, don't, etc.). it always precedes the auxiliary if present

auxiliaries (or modals, i don't really know the difference tbh) attach to the verb as a prefix. arguably a verb with an auxiliary prefix is "really" just a compound verb, since most of the prefixes are the same or nearly the same as verbs with similar meanings, and other verbs can be called into service as ad hoc auxiliary prefixes as well (often but not always with humorous effect). some of the most common auxiliaries include каум- "want to", пяр- "can, be able to", жге- "should", вол- "try to", фтур- "know how to", etc.

subject modifiers (open to suggestions on a better term for this) are a nebulous class of suffixes with only two members, which cannot both be used on the same verb. the first is the reciprocal suffix -гур meaning, roughly, "each other", used whenever the meaning is present even if english wouldn't use it ("they are kissing"). the second is the distributive suffix -зін which indicates that the subjects are each carrying out the action individually rather than as a group ("they are driving home [separately in their own respective cars]"); the lack of this suffix does not, however, necessarily imply that the action isn't being performed individually

aspect suffixes come next, and of course indicate verb aspect. like the noun cases, this was something i had fun playing around with forming a larger set. the aspects are:

• perfective: -ӭ (softens preceding variable consonants; never used with present tense)
• progressive: zero suffix (indicates action in progress: i am running, she was reading, we will drive)
• habitual: -ір or -ир depending on preceding sound (indicates frequent, regular, or repetitive action: i go to school, he used to teach)
• inceptive: -сам (refers to the beginning of an action: she started to read the book, i'm beginning to understand)
• cessative: -о (refers to the end of a completed action: she finished reading the book; he drive-CESS to the store = he arrived (by car) at the store; not to be confused with the perfective)
• pausative: -коі (refers to an action that has been interrupted or stopped prematurely; either it means the action has been "put on hold", or that it stopped before it was finished)
• resumptive: -шу (-ъшу after preceding variable consonants; indicates the resumption of a paused action: "she went back to reading her book", "i will resume dancing")

there are three tenses, plus imperative mood which is treated like a tense. past tense uses the suffix -шэ and softens preceding variable consonants, present tense is indicated with zero suffix, future tense uses the suffix -ал, and imperative uses the suffix -ка. if the imperative is used with a second-person subject, the subject is usually deleted. it can also be used with a first- or third-person subject, which cannot be deleted. first-person singular imperative is roughly "let me" (not in the sense of "permit me", but more like "i don't know, let me go check and i'll call you back"), and can often be used as an emphatic declaration of intent ("i'm driving and that's that!"); second-first-person plural imperative is basically "let's"; and third-person imperative is basically "have so-and-so do such-and-such" and is also used for e.g. toasts and curses ("may he fall down a well")

[Emily]

miscellaneous stuff:

the word typically translated as "goodbye" темана is used whenever a conversation is ending, even when people aren't actually parting; two study partners sitting at a desk in a library who look up from their books and have a conversation would say темана when they stop talking and go back to reading, even while continuing to sit across from each other

personal pronouns (i guess this isn't miscellaneous but i forgot to put it in the post on nouns) have the root кра for first person, іл for second person, and цэу for third person; and take number and case suffixes like nouns (so кра is "i" but крацо is "we"). there's also a reflexive third-person pronoun нун that, looking at it now, is a bit too identical in use to german sich for my liking (right down to not making a number distinction ). the demonstrative pronouns make the same distinction as the demonstrative prefixes: бур for proximal, вел for medial, and стін for distal; unlike english they can be freely used to refer to people. "someone", "nowhere", "this/that/yonder thing", "everyone" are formed by attaching prefixes to interrogative pronouns. my notes for relative pronouns consist solely of the line "relative pronouns: ?????"

when working on place names, i came to the realization that many languages (certainly english) have different ways of forming them for different countries (or regions or cities). in some instances, the base form is the name of a given set of people (or the term for one individual among that people), and the place name is derived from that: pole -> poland, saxon -> saxony, arab -> arabia. in other instances, the base form seems to be the location, and the term for people is derived: africa -> african, china - > chinese, spain - > spaniard. we can make a third category of others where the derivation isn't immediately synchronically obvious, such as france/french, or where the terms may come from different roots such as dutch/netherlands, or nemets/germaniya (the russian words for german/germany). the third category i haven't dealt with in transemilian, but i set up rules and beginning lists for what belongs to which group. category 1 (base form is the name of the people) place names have variable place name suffixes, with the most common being -ія ("-ia") and -штэл ("country, land"); the places in this category tend to be "old world". in category 2 (base form is the name of the place), the names for people most commonly use the suffix -я (which is used in non-geographic terms to form names of people as well: ғгон "farm" -> ғгоня "farmer"), although if the place name itself ends in -ія then the person suffix is -да. adjective forms ("from [x place]") in category 2 places are almost always the same as the name for a person, while in category 1 places they are usually formed with the suffix -цар (a worn-down form of the genitive plural). only the name of the country itself is capitalized; adjectives and names of the peoples are written with lowercase, and if the name of the country is multiple words ("united kingdom") the derived form will be hyphenated. names of natural features (emila mountains, black sea, lake arrowhead) are grammatically nouns with modifying adjectives: эімАізімцо Эмілацо, эіНкал Слаун, эіҒэн Эрохэд

[Emily]

and lastly, some samples!

the first is a dialogue from an aborted teach-yourself course i was trying to write. in it, two acquaintances, maya and mefêya (mary and matthew) see each other in a grocery store. this was the dialogue in the first grammar lesson, and introduced: VSO word order, pronouns, articles, plural and accusative suffixes, vocative case, and forms of address. it also has an example of locative case, but this is not explained to the reader at this stage

Мая: Ғая!
Мэфея: Каянзенве ғлаве, дӭлка!
Мая: Шінве ліва іл?
Мэфея: Ліва кра каӭлканцове.
Мая: Здэл кра эібананцове. Тэі іл цэуцове?
Мэфея: Цу цэуцо щентурці.
Мая: Аха, тэі кра цэуцове.
Мэфея: Темана.
Мая: Темана.

glosses and translations below:

More: show

Ғая!
hello
Hello!

Каянзенве ғлаве, дӭлка!
INDEF-morning-ACC good-ACC comrade
Good morning, comrade!

Шінве ліва іл?
what-ACC buy you
What are you buying?

Ліва кра каӭлканцове.
buy I INDEF-apple-PL-ACC
I'm buying apples.

Здэл кра эібананцове. Тэі іл цэуцове?
look.for I DEF-banana-PL-ACC / see you it-PL-ACC
I'm looking for the bananas. Do you see them?

Цу цэуцо щентурці.
be it-PL yon-where-LOC
They are over there.

Аха, тэі кра цэуцове.
oh see I it-PL-ACC
Oh, I see them.

Темана.
goodbye
Goodbye.

the second is from a translation exercise i was giving myself. i had a page-a-day calendar for spanish vocabulary, which would give a new vocabulary word each day and then use it in a sentence; i translated these sentences into transemilian. i present them below as i have them, though i haven't looked through the grammar or pronunciation to see if they need changes to the current state of the language (so assume that they are written in western stitshu dialect rather than the standard eastern stitshu dialect). the calendar liked t have all the sentences in a given week be themed, and sometimes even tell a little story, and since i only kept up the translation exercise for a short time that's why so many of them are about sports

More: show

The fries are too salty. (Las patatas fritas están demasiado saladas.)
Цу эіфріцо [сол]зоуцове сім.
Цу эіздэхторцо фрілэцо [сол]зоуцове сім.
[tsɔ ɛizdɛ'xtortso 'ɸrilɛtso sol'zoutsoβe sim]
(the brackets around [сол] indicate that the form is tentative, as it is supposed to be a borrowing but i haven't figured out the historical sound changes yet)

What is your favorite sport? (¿Cuál es tu deporte favorito?)
Шін цу эідрем-спортаве ілюр?
[ʃin tsu ɛi'dremsportɔβe 'iʎur]
шін цу эі-дрем-спорта-ве іл-юр
what be the-love-sport-ACC you-GEN
What is your favorite sport?
("favorite" is indicated by prefixing the word "love" to the noun)

The most popular sport in the world is soccer. (El deporte más popular en todo el mundo es el fútbol.)
Цу эіспорта зілмашку эіздэці эіфудболве.
[tsɔ ɛi'sporta 'zilmaʃkɔ ɛi'zdɛtsi ɛiɸud'boɫβe]
цу эі-спорта зіл-ма-шку эі-здэ-ці эі-фудбол-ве.
is the-sport like-PASS.PART-SUPERL the-world-LOC the-soccer-ACC
The most-liked sport in the world is soccer.
(transemilian has a passive? apparently yes; i didn't see this when i was typing the writeup pages above, but it looks like there are active and passive participles, though there's no further indication of how passives can be constructed)

But you know that soccer is very different from football. (Pero sabes que el fútbol es muy diferente del fútbol americano.)
Скэ фтур іл мон цу эіфудбол цліхєве кэнь ӭі эіфудболве амерікаялэве.
[skɛ ɸtur 'il mon tsɔ ɛiɸud'boɫ tsli'çeβe kɛɲ jɛi ɛiɸud'boɫβe ɔmɛri'kajalɛβɛ]
скэ фтур іл мон цу эі-фудбол цліхє-ве кэнь ӭі эі-фудбол-ве амеріка-я-лэ-ве
but know you that be the-soccer different-ACC very than the-soccer-ACC America-an-FEM-ACC
But you know that football is very different from American football.
(what's this FEM? apparently my removal of grammatical gender from transemilian must have happened sometime after 8/26/15, the date of this calendar page!)

I like to watch tennis matches on TV. (Me gusta mirar partidos de tenis, en television.)
Здітэіир кра катэнісаруғъянцове эітелевізёрчу
[zdi'tɛijir 'kra katɛ'nisaru'ɣjantsoβɛ ɛitɛlɛβi'zjortʃu]
зді-тэі-ир кра ка-тэніса-руғъян-цо-ве эі-телевізгёр-чу
like-watch-HAB I a-tennis-game-PL-ACC the-television.set-INST
I like to watch tennis games on television.
(transemilian has different words for "television" depending on whether you're referring to the medium or the device; "on TV" is translated with the word for the device in the instrumental case)

I prefer to play basketball. (Prefiero jugar al baloncesto.)
Зӭлхьміир кра эізлэранболве
[zjɛʎ'çmijir kra ɛizlɛran'boɫβe]
зӭл-хьмі-ир кра эі-злэран-бол-ве
prefer-play-HAB I the-basket-[ball]-ACC
I prefer to play basketball.
(my guess is that the brackets around "[ball]" indicate that it's a bound morpheme that can be used to form sport names but cannot be used on its own to refer to a ball; the word doesn't appear in my dictionary spreadsheet as an independent morpheme)

Baseball is perhaps the most American of sports. (El béisbol es probablemente el deporte más americano.
Цу эібэізбол брэлноџу эімамерікаяшкуве эіспортацоздінь.
[tsu ɛibɛiz'boɫ bɾɛl'nodʒu ɛimɔmɛri'kajaʃkɔβɛ ɛi'sportatsɔzdɛɲ]
цу эі-бэізбол брэлно-џу эім-амеріка-я-шку-ве эі-спорта-цо-здінь
is the-baseball possible-ADV the-american-SUPERL-ACC the-sport-PL-PART
Baseball is possibly the most American of sports.
(we can see here that the superlative is typically used in conjunction with the partitive; also, the copula has a nominative and an accusative, rather than two nominatives as we see in german, latin, or formal english)

My brother is a baseball fan. (Mi hermano es muy aficionado al béisbol.)
Зіл эіџунсе краюр кэнь эібэізболве
[zil ɛidʒun'se 'krajur kɛɲ ɛibɛiz'boɫβe]
зіл эі-џюнсе кра-юр кэнь эі-бэізбол-ве
like the-brother 1ST-GEN very the-baseball-ACC
My brother likes baseball a lot.

[quinterbeck]

Don't have much to comment other than I like it!

[Emily]

Don't have much to comment other than I like it!

thank you!

in case someone might be interested, here are some transemilian flags:

More: show

the flag of transemilia, which consists of the state seal on a horizontal red-white-yellow tricolor


the state seal itself. the text says "workers of the world, unite!" and the dates refer to transemilia's independence from austria-hungary (1918) and the start of the people's republic (1946). this was edited from the seals of different historic socialist polities: the sun from the kirghiz ssr, the mountains from the transcaucasian sfsr, the trees from romania, and the wreath from bulgaria


black and white version of the seal (trickier to make than it looks!)


flag of the kingdom of transemilia (1918-1946). i don't remember where i hobbled together the seal elements from. the colors on the small shield bug me, they should be more muted


raiding on nationstates led me to develop a number of "nations" that were divisions of this or that branch of the transemilian military. after some thought, i decided that the military as a whole would be called the "transemilian revolutionary defense force", and consist of the army, the navy, and the air force. this is the flag of the trdf, with three stars indicating the three branches


flag of the transemilian air force


flag of the transemilian army


flag of the transemilian navy. no i don't know what a landlocked country is doing with a navy


the roundel for transemilian military planes. probably the yellow would be painted with a darker gold color for visibility

[Ares Land]

in case someone might be interested, here are some transemilian flags:

These are extremely nice!

[alynnidalar]

i had a page-a-day calendar for spanish vocabulary, which would give a new vocabulary word each day and then use it in a sentence; i translated these sentences into transemilian.

This is a neat idea. I like Lexember (creating a new word every day in December) but sometimes it's weirdly hard to come up with something new, so having a list you're following (or even if you just use it as inspiration) is nice.

In general I very much like to see languages in action, so I appreciate the example sentences!

[Travis B.]

flag of the transemilian navy. no i don't know what a landlocked country is doing with a navy

Don't forget the famous admiral without a navy...

[keenir]

flag of the transemilian navy. no i don't know what a landlocked country is doing with a navy

Don't forget the famous admiral without a navy...

doesn't Bolivia also have a Navy despite having lost their coasts to Peru? (or am i misremembering names again?)

[sasasha]

This is epic. Love it. I like that you've put thought into exactly how your 'goodbye' word works, and that it's got an unusual quirk of function just because; this kind of thing is making Transemilia feel very tangible / realistic / colourful.

[Travis B.]

flag of the transemilian navy. no i don't know what a landlocked country is doing with a navy

Don't forget the famous admiral without a navy...

doesn't Bolivia also have a Navy despite having lost their coasts to Peru? (or am i misremembering names again?)

Yes, Bolivia has a navy despite having been landlocked since the War of the Pacific, where they lost their coast to Chile.

[Civil War Bugle]

Do you have maps?

[Emily]

Do you have maps?

i sure do!

the aforementioned accidental vagina map:

More: show

it really was an accident, i'm just not very good at drawing! the lake doesn't have a name, but the city at the northwest end is the former capital of Zhdzhonhcim (Жџонким, /ʒdʒoɲ'cim/), formerly known in english as "Djonkum" and in german as "Stomberg"; this was the seat of the transemilian royal family until the overthrow of the monarchy in world war ii

the map of transemilia upon its independence in 1918:

More: show

the map of transemilia today:

More: show

most of the provinces and cities in transemilia had historical names in english and german that were different from the standard transliteration used today. the provinces are:

Transemilian	Transliteration	IPA	TradEng	TradGer
Цімкра	Tsimkra	/tsim'kra/	Sipkiria	Sinker
Эхюлда	Echulda	/ɛ'çulda/	Kyldir	Kolten
Щіво	Shtshivo	/ʃtʃi'βo/	Stivia	Stimmburg
Вулям	Vulham	/βu'ʎam/	Vulliam	Wullem
Зборгэн	Zborgen	/zbor'gɛn/	Sparginia	Spürgenland
Стічу	Stitshu	/sti'tʃu/	Stichia	Steckemark
Аєнко	Ayênko	/a'jenko/	n/a	n/a
Грэцэл	Gretsel	/grɛ'tsɛl/	Gretsel	Greitzel
Дріѕа	Dridza	/dri'dza/	n/a	n/a
Ғёлкмажді	Jholkmazhdi	/ʝol'kmaʒdi/	n/a	n/a

the provinces of ayênko, gretsel, and dridza, as well as the capital city of jholkmazhdi, were all created after the promulgation of the official romanizations listed above and thus don't have traditional names in english and german. however, the province of gretsel was named after a city within its borders, whose traditional name was Greitzel in german. jholkmazhdi is simply transemilian for "people's city", and is often referred to as the "capital district", and is labeled "C.D." on the maps above. i also have a list of major cities in each province and what their traditional english and german names were, but i haven't gotten around to placing them on the map yet (with the aforementioned exception of zhdzhonhcim) (jesus i really have to work out a better romanization scheme)