Twin Aster

[Halian]

I've been made aware of an app called "Fantasy Calendar" that allows date conversion.

Definitely signing up for this. OwO

[Raholeun]

Hi Man in Space, mister Pogostick,

Only yesterday did I start reading this thread. The megalopolis space theme had put me off initially, as such a setting is far removed from my own conworlding habits, but nevertheless I read the entire thread and ended up loving it.

First of all, it is very ambitious. Working on an entire planet, with a dozen language families, some with multiple described daughter languages spanning long periods of time, with conscript and all. This sounds very imposing, but since the information is fed bit-by-bit it does not feel overwhelming to the reader. The snippets are diverse, as a list of diachronic sound changes is followed up by a post that contains ethnographic details, which is followed with a description of metathesis, etc.

Also, it is clear that Twin Aster is a work in progress, and through two plus years of posting in this thread some revisions have been made to the languages. That is some transparent conlanging that I intuitively shied away from, but it works and why should the "author" be infallible, never revise or name mistakes? Here and there references to wikipedia are made, which makes the process very relatable and in some unobtrusive way even annotates the text.

Some have commented already on the languages, to which I only want to add that some vocabulary items stood out to me, as it never occurred to me to make entries for them myself and they illustrate the language:

maré 'gegenschein' → mbaɹi̯a[
móm ikłe hága deuterium (lit. 'a mother twice over')
hamaha reversed/mirror image (pabappa, per this post)

Additionally there was one about impromptu solutions that proved irretrievable when scouring the thread

The reason why I am trying to make explicit what worked, is that I have been searching for a way to present my languages and their speakers. A link to a prolix grammar in pdf form does not seem to invite response nor interaction. Posting stuff here and there on this board would help. If I do so in the future, it would be in the spirit of this thread.

[bradrn]

Hi Man in Space, mister Pogostick …

Was this post generated by GPT, by any chance? Maybe it’s just me, but this seems quite different to your usual writing style.

[Raholeun]

Hi Man in Space, mister Pogostick …

Was this post generated by GPT, by any chance? Maybe it’s just me, but this seems quite different to your usual writing style.

Do I have a usual writing style? If so, you would probably recognize it by the number of spelling errors and solecisms!

[bradrn]

Do I have a usual writing style?

Well, come to think about it, I’m not quite sure! Hence my asking the question. GPT-created texts seem to have been popping up everywhere recently, so I’m a bit on edge with regards to this sort of thing.

(Also, this board being what it is, posts starting with salutations are enough to make me wonder, especially when they list the same person twice with odd capitalisation…)

[Man in Space]

I just did a bunch of sound changes on a document for the language of the Tlar Kyana, so I might as well talk about Si̋sôk Tlar Kyanà.

The consonants are more or less the same across the major dialects:

/m n ɲ ŋ/ m n ny ng
/p b t d tʲ dʲ kʲ gʲ k g/ p b t d ty dy ky gy k g
/ts dz tʃ dʒ/ ts ds tsy dsy
/ɸ s ʃ h/ f s sy h
/l ~ ɹ/ l ~ r (realized without lateralization in the coda)

The vowels are a spicy meatball. To a first approximation, a reasonable inventory is the following, though this is reduced to varying degrees in the dialects:

/a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ a ae e ı ao o u
/ai̯ oi̯/ ay uy
/i̯ u̯/ i u (I'm debating whether or not to ditch the dot over a non-nucleic /i/…any opinions?)

Nasalization is marked with an n following the vowel (m before labials).

There is also tone; in the abstract there are eight of them, though the dialects usually make do with fewer. These are divisible into two registers of four tonemes each:

A a ae e ı ao o u
A2 à àe è ì ào ò ù
B1 ǎ ǎe ě ǐ ǎo ǒ ǔ
B2 â âe ê î âo ô û
C1 á áe é í áo ó ú
C2 a̋ a̋e e̋ i̋ a̋o ő ű (that composes right in other places)
D1 ȧ ȧe ė i ȧo ȯ u̇
D2 ă ăe ĕ ĭ ăo ŏ ŭ

Incidentally, this all means that tia 'skull', tya 'houseplant', and tyia 'vagrant, street urchin' are all contrastive, at least on the deepest level: /ti̯a/ vs. /tʲa/ vs. /tʲi̯a/.

The three main dialects are:

Mŭy Bǎhon
/moi̯^D1 ba^B1on^A1/
[mu᷄i̯ ba᷄ōn]

A1 → mid
A2 → low trailing
B1 → high rising
B2 → low dropping (glottalized unless _S)
C1 → dipping
C2 → high rising (glottalized)
D1 → high rising
D2 → low dropping (glottalized unless _S)

oi̯ ai̯ → ui̯ a
ŋ → n / #_
mɲ ɸʃ βʒ → mj ɸj βj
b d dʲ gʲ → β z ʒ ɣ / #_V[+ high] (includes diphthongs and triphthongs)
tʲ dʲ → tʃ dʒ
ũ ĩ → õ ẽ

Ngùynâ
/ŋoi̯^A2na^B2/
/ŋǎi̯nà/

A1 → mid
A2 → low trailing
B1 → low (dipping unless _S)
B2 → low (dipping unless _S)
C1 → mid rising
C2 → high rising (glottalized)
D1 → low (dipping unless _S)
D2 → low (dipping unless _S)

N → ŋ / _%
V[- high] → Ø / V[- high]_
oi̯ → ai̯
kʲ gʲ → tʃ dʒ
õ ẽ → ɔ̃ ɛ̃

Nûykyúyhȧr
/noi̯^B2kʲu^C1hal^D1/
[női̯ˀkʲu᷄ha̋ɹ]

A1 → mid level
A2 → low falling
B1 → low rising (glottalized)
B2 → high-mid (glottal stop)
C1 → high rising
C2 → high-mid
D1 → high-mid
D2 → high-mid

S → F / _(C)%
tl → dl (female speech)
ai̯ → oi̯
õ {ɔ̃,ɛ̃} ẽ → ũ ã ĩ
ʃ ʒ → x ɣ

Your personal pronouns:

1SG hayf
1DU.INCL syŭ
1DU.EXCL fò
1PL.INCL kyé
1PL.EXCL fű

2SG.F ngla̋yn
2SG.M kluìs
2DL.F bêf
2DL.M kestǔ
2PL.F ae
2PL.M klűn

3SG.F bsyày
3SG.M kle
3DL.F sǎyn
3DL.M tsyòng
3PL.F fsyef
3PL.M sye̋

[Man in Space]

CT has a denominalizer î that turns nouns into adjectives:

maran 'man'
î maran 'male'

ter 'woman'
î ter 'female'

tori 'fish'
î tori 'piscine'

sl 'air'
î sl 'aerial'

sihtí 'death'
î sihtí 'mortal'

ilgaáĝ n ohri

/likháĝ

PL/habitat

n

GEN

/tori

PL/fish

'habitats of fish'

ilgaáĝ î tori

/likháĝ

PL/habitat

î

ADJ

tori

fish

'piscine habitats'

This is one way of creating compounds: łiü î kemár 'capstan' (lit. 'shoulder wheel').

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That's pretty cool.

[Man in Space]

That's pretty cool.

Thank you!

The Tlar Kyanà came into being following a destructive war between the Tim Ar and the Jädewan.

The Jädewan lived south of the Messerini line, so were a matriarchy-oriented culture. This naturally brought them into conflict with the Tim Ar. This ultimately brought them into the War of Ten Years

Nemałám ü n Arig îsm Hór

nemałám

wartime

ü

DEF

n

GEN

arig

ten

îsn

MW

hór

year

'the War of Ten Years'

The War of Ten Years is basically a longer WWII/what we might have gotten if the Cold War turned hot. It was a long, bloody, and costly war with liberal use of nuclear weaponry. In the end, the Tim Ar won the day and the Jädewan were defeated. The latter's state collapsed; out of the remnants the Tlar Kyanà emerged as the frontrunners. To this day there are wastes that even the Tim Ar wash their hands of, domains that are the home of the unlucky, the uninhibited, the unscrupulous, and the unfettered.

---

While a cash economy is strong amongst the Tim Ar for Reasons, this runs into some problems. You see, in the Empire, both the fruits of the imperial mint and the cash of the Täptäg are, at least in theory, acceptable tender for all debts public and private. You can blame the unique circumstances under which they absorbed the Täptäg; the Principality is technically a condominium (though the Tim Ar will be the first to tell you the buck stops with them; they only let the prince of the Täptäg call himself a "prince" and not a full sovereign), so had its own monetary standards prior to joining the Empire.

Unfortunately, the currency conversions are a mess. Here's the native Tim Ar denomination system.

1 kahma = ~ $0.10 USD
1 heron = 5 agama ~ $0.50 USD / can of pop from a Marc's vending machine (Marc's is a local retailer up here with dirt-cheap vending machine prices)
1 iéhmúr = 3 ehron ~ $1.25 USD / candy bar
1 raus = 2 iéhmúr ar ~ $2.75 USD / bag of chips
1 ruhóí = 3 arus ~ $8.00 USD / single meal (the word ruhóí originally meant 'meal')
1 raus láus = 3 urhóí ~ $24.00 USD / day's worth of food

And here's what the Täptäg (provisionally) use:

1 jeh bhur = 2 avodho = 6 nejn = 24 doc mhoc = 72 säja (singulars only for now, sorry)

These were borrowed into CT as íehmur, tokmók, nehn, áuóro, and sáia.

1 : 3 : 9 : 18 : 54 (: 270)
1 : 2 : 6 : 24 : 72

The least common multiple of 54 and 72 is 216; therefore, the imperial mint sets the exchange rate formally at 4 arus láus : 3 jeh bhunu. That is to say, 216 ehron = 216 säjan (i.e., the heron and the säja are pegged together). This causes no shortage of headaches for money-counters and the like.

It's incredibly common to use credisticks (iurîs (sg. ïrîs) î simní), where you put a key-like rod into a slot and computers will do all the fancy math for you. You're out of luck if you're one of the lower castes, however. (Strangely enough, they will be given to untouchables due to the nature of this caste's employment. Someone's got to do the dirty work and someone's got to pay for it.)

[Man in Space]

Sols Osve has nine declension classes for nouns: Masculine (ending in -o, -eus, -i, and -x), feminine (ending in -a or -C), and neuter (ending in -e, -Rs¹, or -en). This is, quite honestly, ridiculous, so I decided to rip Latin off even more than I already was and made two classes of adjectives, thematic and athematic. The former end in a vowel (-a, -o, or -e) and the latter end in either -Rs or -x. Thematic adjectives change the ending depending on the declension class of the noun, athematic adjectives do not. (For instance, see the name of the language itself. The word sols 'language' is an Rs-stem, so is neuter; the adjective osva is thematic, so the adjective ending here is -e: i Sols Osve 'the old tongue'.)

[1] There are other consonants that can stand in the second position but it's a limited set and the abbreviation I initially used was "-Rs", so I'm chalking it up to in-universe convention.

[Man in Space]

Hi Man in Space, mister Pogostick,

It is to my debit that I neglected to respond to your very kind post. Thank you for saying these things.

Only yesterday did I start reading this thread. The megalopolis space theme had put me off initially, as such a setting is far removed from my own conworlding habits, but nevertheless I read the entire thread and ended up loving it.

I'm happy to read this.

First of all, it is very ambitious. Working on an entire planet, with a dozen language families, some with multiple described daughter languages spanning long periods of time, with conscript and all. This sounds very imposing, but since the information is fed bit-by-bit it does not feel overwhelming to the reader. The snippets are diverse, as a list of diachronic sound changes is followed up by a post that contains ethnographic details, which is followed with a description of metathesis, etc.

Also, it is clear that Twin Aster is a work in progress, and through two plus years of posting in this thread some revisions have been made to the languages. That is some transparent conlanging that I intuitively shied away from, but it works and why should the "author" be infallible, never revise or name mistakes? Here and there references to wikipedia are made, which makes the process very relatable and in some unobtrusive way even annotates the text.

I'd never thought about some of the points you bring up that way. Thank you. That kind of gives me some new insights on things related to the project…

Some have commented already on the languages, to which I only want to add that some vocabulary items stood out to me, as it never occurred to me to make entries for them myself and they illustrate the language:

maré 'gegenschein' → mbaɹi̯a[
móm ikłe hága deuterium (lit. 'a mother twice over')
hamaha reversed/mirror image (pabappa, per this post)

I do enjoy the good justifiable quirky lexical item, and I'm a fan of creative etymologies (it's part of the reason I adore Arabic so much and also have a soft spot for Turkish). Plus, I wring full enjoyment out of having the privilege to pepper and salt my languages with Easter eggs.

Additionally there was one about impromptu solutions that proved irretrievable when scouring the thread

Do you have any more details about the post or context? It might be backed up on the old board. I can try to find it there.

The reason why I am trying to make explicit what worked, is that I have been searching for a way to present my languages and their speakers. A link to a prolix grammar in pdf form does not seem to invite response nor interaction. Posting stuff here and there on this board would help. If I do so in the future, it would be in the spirit of this thread.

Once again, thank you for your kind words, and I'm glad I could have a positive effect. I am sorry a response took this long in coming.

[Man in Space]

Some Tim Ar nomenclature:

- Chemical elements (and a number of substances) are frequently named using the formula móm n X 'mother of X'. A few examples:
-- móm n ahagün helium ('mother of suns')
-- móm n raáḫ U-235 ('mother of division (=fission)')
- When specified for isotope, helium is hö 'brother':
-- hö n dún helium-3 ('brother of one', i.e. two protons, one neutron)
- There are other strategies for naming elements and chemical compounds, such as:
-- Substantives (ëslug 'hardy' > tungsten; kahál 'steel' < tiên kahál 'strong (worked) iron')
-- Descriptive phrases (lugna sígna 'yellow metal' > uranium)
-- Borrowings (tiên 'worked iron' < Mute Caber 'metal')
-- Names from antiquity (ḫömło mercury, ĝaĝ (elemental) iron, łóhkór sulfur)
- Standard and heavy water are kélen hún 'darkwater' and kélen suú 'truewater' because of their coloration—standard water has a slight bluish hue, whereas water made with deuterium is clear.
- The word hún 'dark color, cool color; black, dark grey, blue, indigo, violet' often is used in a meaning 'nuclear': agamári hún nuclear weapons ('blue weapons') because of Cherenkov radiation.
- The thrust/exhaust of a rocket is referred to as its "voice" (saman).

[Man in Space]

Cross-posting this, with minor updates, from the Number etymologies thread, because I could not easily retrieve it and thought I had it in here but didn't:

====

Proto-Beheic only had atomic numerals up to three:
*tion 'one'
*t̪aga 'two'
*idʲieʔʁo 'three'

On the way to Classical Ĝate n Tim Ar, these became:
dún 'one' < PB *tion
hága 'two' < PB *t̪aga
isë 'three' < PB *idʲieʔʁo 'three'

But CT developed ways to count higher:
höhsë 'four' < PB *twɛ-idʲieʔʁo 'brother-three'
dúnki 'five' < PB *tion-giʔ 'one hand'
kihê 'six' < PB *giʔ-ʁiʔo 'hand-thumb'
kórö 'seven' < PB *kawɹɔ 'face' + the *e-infix (the idea being the face has seven openings—two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, one mouth)
rarê 'eight' < PB *rar-ʁeʔo 'without-thumb' (i.e. two hands' worth of digits minus the thumbs)
êgê 'nine' < PB *ʔeʁol-ʁeʔo 'with-thumb' (i.e. eight, but with one of the thumbs)
arik 'ten' < PB *aɹ-giʔ 'hands' (this is a fossilized older plural reanalyzed as a singular…in CT plurals ended up forming due to metathesis caused by the original pluralizing particle *aɹ slamming onto the noun after becoming a function word and losing stress)

For the teen numbers, CT used constructions derived from the term nég 'son' (< PTO *neheʁʔ); the forms look somewhat irregular due to varying degrees of analogy and three-consonant clusters ruining everything:
nédún 'eleven'
néhága 'twelve'
néhsë 'thirteen'
néhöhsë 'fourteen'
nédúnki 'fifteen'
négihê 'sixteen'
nékórö 'seventeen'
nérarê 'eighteen'
négê 'nineteen'
néarig 'twenty'

There were actually two words developed for twenty: néarig 'son of ten' and höarig 'brother of ten'. Which term won out in a specific locale varies; the descendant languages usually use terms derived from one or the other, but not both.

The numbers from thirty to eighty are pretty transparent, for the most part, though cluster resolution and analogy made them look slightly different than expected:
arihkisë 'thirty'
arihköhsë 'forty'
arihkúnki 'fifty'
arihkihê 'sixty'
arihkórö 'seventy'
aritsarê 'eighty' (*-hkr- > *-hts- > *-ts- is actually a regular change here)
ténḫo nihít 'ninety' (lit. 'short hundred', 'weak hundred', 'pitiful hundred')

One hundred is ténḫo (not sure of the etymology of this one yet, but the word is there). One hundred ten is ténḫo kahál 'strong hundred'.

[Man in Space]

Fractions take the form [numerator] n [denominator], i.e. it's a regular genitive construction: dún n dúnki 'one of five' = 'one-fifth'. You might not expect that 'ninetieth' and 'one hundred tenth' are irregular: dún n arihkêgê 'one-ninetieth', dún n ténḫo arig 'one-one-hundred-tenth'. Improper fractions are permissible and, when unqualified by a governing whole number, not considered "improper": ki m hága 'five halves'.

The decimal point is késög, an inposition meaning 'after, post-, once s.th. has ended'. It can be used to separate a fractional as well. This is a formal mathematical convention, though; in common speech, people usually use łá instead. Łá is a very important word to know in mathematics: Originally a nominal conjunction—it meant 'and' between nouns, and still does—it basically serves as a 'this number/quantity/part of this equation is over' marker. You can't have two numbers in a mathematical expression next to each other without some sort of intervening word if you don't want them being read as a number (like how one might dictate the number one million, two hundred seventy-two thousand, three hundred sixty-eight as "1-2-7-2-3-6-8" for brevity); when there's no other word to disambiguate, you default to łá. (You can partially credit this rule to CT's VOS sentence structure.)

As you get into more complex mathematics, you'll run into doí (pl. odí) a lot. Literally it means 'quantity'. It often is used to bookend complex expressions to which other operators can be applied. For instance, doí hága łá x lé, doí łá isë ïrëĝ '(x + 2) cubed'. Note that the first doí doesn't take a łá, although the second one does require one.

Instead of saying áge 'is' or using a similar term, the contronym kaá is used. It means both 'build, make' and 'collapse, fall apart'. For operations that increase value, the former meaning is relevant; for those that decrease it, the latter is.

Negative numbers are X ág: höhsë ág 'negative four, minus four'. If you have to use késög (or łá colloquially), it comes before the ág: dún késög ág dún m höhsë 'one and one-quarter'.

--------------------------------

Your simple A-B-C formula is kaá C łá A łá B X, where X is an inposition. Some mathematical terms/operators in CT:

- To add, the inposition is lé 'on, on top of, atop, alighted on, over'.
- To subtract, it's ê 'off, up, into itself'.
- Multiplication is handled with ĝöl 'because of, due to'.
- Division uses mió 'with, by means of, using, via'.
- Raising to a power is handled with ïrëĝ 'again'.
- Taking a root is expressed with séḫ 'for the cause of, for the sake of, for'.

A couple examples of this in action:

- Kaá hága łá dún łá hága lé '1 + 2 = 3'
- Kaá dún łá isë łá hága ê '3 - 2 = 1'
- Kaá rarê łá höhsë łá hága ĝöl '2 * 4 = 8'
- Kaá höhsë łá rarê łá hága mió '8 / 2 = 4'
- Kaá rarê łá hága łá isë ïrëĝ '2 ^ 3 = 8'
- Kaá hága łá rarê łá isë séḫ '8 ^ 1/3 = 2'

Because CT absolutely loves zero-deriving everything from everything else, these can be used as nouns or postpositions in their own right: X łá dún lé 'X + 1', hága łá lé ĝöl 'two times the sum'.

--------------------------------

Something really stupid:

Kaá arig łá doí hága késög dún n ténḫo łá höhsë késög dún dún ê doí X łá hága ê, doí łá hága ïrëĝ, doí łá isë séḫ
'The quantity (2 1/100 - 4.11 + (X-2)^2), the cube root of the quantity equals ten'

[masako]

Fair warning, probably gonna steal this for Kala.

[Man in Space]

Fair warning, probably gonna steal this for Kala.

That's quite the compliment! Feel free.

[Man in Space]

Let's tackle one of the things I'm worst at…calculus.

Out the gate, there's two things to know:

- In mathematicians' circles, CT really likes innovating terms as opposed to borrowing them. The occasional calque is tolerated.
- The Tim Ar have some…rather creative nomenclatural metaphors, and some are essentially random thanks to the hieroglyphic writing system.

What we call "variables" and a "constants" the Tim Ar called igús hóntá (sg. kîs hóntá) 'countenances, (facial) expressions' and irúdkar (sg. tîdkar) 'skulls'. Exponents and powers are iurëĝ ar (sg. ïrëĝ, cf. my earlier remarks on simple operations); similarly, roots are ésa (sg. [/b]séḫ[/b]).

katło 'idiot'

The derivative is called the hadál ḫaług 'mountain man, mountaineer'; to take the derivative of an expression is to ḫaług 'climb' it. The integral is edaoł 'cargo, a consignment' (this is, senso strictu, a plural noun but in mathematics jargon it is often reänalyzed as a singular); you don't "integrate" an expression, you ëdkana 'audit, inventory' it instead. The partial derivative is a dïg 'billy goat' and the partial integral ratsó 'scum' (though the verbs haług and ëdkana are still used). A second, third, &c. whatever derivative/integral is that X ikłe 'X times over': hadál haług hága ikłe 'second derivative'. (Technically, the bare term is X dún ikłe 'X once (over)', but the dún ikłe need not be used unless there's some compelling reason to do so.) An integral is either úh kírar 'demarcated, bound, set' (definite) or méri 'pristine, natural, untouched' (indefinite).

The Tim Ar were given to using τ (tau) instead of π (pi); τ was called the nug 'volcano'. e (Euler's number) was referred to as the sádikha 'whirlpool, vortex'. To say that a number is a multiple of i, the square root of -1, you say it is tm, an adstantive that roughly means 'mis-, incorrectly, wrong(ly)': kórö tm '7i'. Zero was dêreg 'gap, disconnect', from the glyph used to write it—the idea was to show an area bounded on two sides with nothing in the middle (this was used from the earliest days of proto-writing).

A circle's diameter is its rádag 'arm'; its radius is its lüelri 'forearm'. Its circumference is its táḫkitłi 'footprint' (actually this is just used for 'perimeter' generally). Area is dołar 'premises, estate'.

---

doí nug ła lüelri ĝöl hága ïrëĝ, doí ła hága mió

doí

quantity

nug

volcano

ła

and

lüelri

forearm

ĝöl

because

hága

two

ïrëĝ

again

doí

quantity

ła

and

hága

two

mió

via

"πr²"

Let's break this down:

- First, we have a doí. Great, we have a quantity that's getting set off.
- The quantity starts with a number; here, it's τ.
- New word: ła. OK, this is positive, real τ.
- lüelri ĝöl hága ïrëĝ. This deserves special mention; see below. For now, know that this is "times r squared".
- doí again, followed by a ła as you'd expect since this is now being introduced as a quantity in its own right.
- hága mió 'divided by two' or 'over two', to get rid of the surplus π since I won't eat it myself.

Basically, "the quantity τ times r squared, the quantity divided by two". τr²/2. Which is πr².

CT features inpositions as its default adpositions. The way these work is that they always come immediately after the target noun. Suppose I'd said above nug ła lüelri ĝöl hága ïrëĝ hága mió. This would be read "τ times r to the power of (two divided by two)". That's partially what doi is supposed to rectify; in the example above, we set off the numerator from the denominator with it. Put another way:

doí

BEGIN A

nug

τ

ła

Ø

lüelri

r

ĝöl

×

hága

2

ïrëĝ

^

doí

END A

ła

Ø

hága

2

mió

÷

So I've come back to that phrase, lüelri ĝöl hága ïrëĝ. r × 2 ^ . The perils of nested referents and CT's constituent order.

CT is a VOS language with modifiers following the modified. If I were to have just said nug ła lüelri ĝöl, that would have been parsed as "τ × r", this phrase lüelri ĝöl modifying nug (τ). But there's more to this side of the equation: It isn't simply multiplying by the radius, but by the radius' square. So we have to further modify lüelri…except the space immediately thereafter is taken up by the head of its phrase. So basically you get this sort of leapfrogging chain of heads and referents, which is why the doí system was developed. I'll have to draft up an NFL-style diagram of the issue.

[bradrn]

What we call "variables" and a "constants" the Tim Ar called igús hóntá (sg. kîs hóntá) 'countenances, (facial) expressions' and irúdkar (sg. tîdkar) 'skulls'. Exponents and powers are iurëĝ ar (sg. ïrëĝ, cf. my earlier remarks on simple operations); similarly, roots are ésa (sg. [/b]séḫ[/b]).

The derivative is called the hadál ḫaług 'mountain man, mountaineer'; to take the derivative of an expression is to ḫaług 'climb' it. The integral is edaoł 'cargo, a consignment' (this is, senso strictu, a plural noun but in mathematics jargon it is often reänalyzed as a singular); you don't "integrate" an expression, you ëdkana 'audit, inventory' it instead. The partial derivative is a dïg 'billy goat' and the partial integral ratsó 'scum' (though the verbs haług and ëdkana are still used).

I’d be quite curious to know if any of these terms have any kind of sensible etymology — or do they all fall in the ‘essentially random’ category?

[masako]

sensible etymology

What's this mean? Who gets to arbitrate this?

[keenir]

sensible etymology

What's this mean? Who gets to arbitrate this?

My bet is the arbitrator(sp) is the only possible person: the conlanger, as thats who created the conlang, and thus has the final say on matters.