La Chakhi Sodemeresh

[AwfullyAmateur]

A showcase of my first ever & also current main conlang (I only got into this October), Sodemeresh, spoken by the people of Soduar on the southernmost part of the continent Silandriel (the world is called Lyros). The Sodemeresh people are highly influential on neighboring countries via trade and naval dominance, and their language is the lingua franca of the region. It is also related to the word 'sodemire', which means 'to flow', and 'chakhi' (derived from 'chokha', mouth) which means 'language'. Sorry, don't exactly know how to explain this.

Vowels: The basic [a], [/i], [o̞], [/u], and [e]. Yeah, I know it's basic. But -io, -ia, -ie, and -iu are typically pronounced more as 'yo', 'ya', 'ye', and 'yu' in everyday speech (this usually doesn't happen in the more formal variant, Sodemeresh Kimaro, Imperial Sodemeresh). Diphthongs starting with -u often end up making a sort of [w] sound, despite the lack of a [w] monophthong ('way' would become 'uey', for example).

Consonants: [/b], [d] (both alveolor and dental, look at me talking/writing like I'm not using the IPA audio chart as a crutch), [f], [g] (always 'hard'), [h], [ħ], [d͡ʒ], [k], [k'] (adapted from a neighboring neighboring trade partner's language, which has [k!]), [l] (varies), [m], [n], [n̥], [p], [p̪], [ɽ], [ɾ], [s] (variable), [t], [t̪], [v], [ⱱ], [j], [z], [ʑ] (which I like to romanize as 'zh'), [ʃ], [θ], [tʃ], and almost certainly others I've forgotten to account for.

Phonotactics: Strictly speaking, there aren't any. I haven't actually written them down before (I know, I'm dumb). Mostly it's just that there cannot be any consonant cluster consisting of any more than three consonants ('str' is allowed, 'nshr' is not) in the onset, nucleus, or coda. Vowels can be in clusters of up to four, thus is rather uncommon.

Grammar: Sodemeresh marks for person, plurals, and gender. How original. However, they also have forms for both animate non-people and 'inanimate non-people'. To use non-people pronouns to describe people is incredibly insulting in Sodemeresh culture, since it's seen as very dehumanizing. In terms of syntax, adjectives (changed for noun agreement) come after nouns, it's primarily a prepositional language, and the primary word order is OSV (it was meant to be SOV originally, but I got mixed up and it just sort of wound up as OSV). In more complex sentences like 'she (S) thought (V) he (O) said (V)', you would end up with something like 'He (O) said (V) she (S) thought (V)'. Somewhat bizarre from my native English-speaking perspective, but c'est la vie.

Grammar (Gender): Sodemeresh has three genders: Feminine, Masculine, and Neutral/Neuter (that one's mainly for people). Plurals can also have a special mixed group pronoun. -a, -o, and -e are typical endings for words in those categories (feminine, masculine, neutral), respectively. But if add an -i- before the ending, it flips, so fano (paint) is masculine, but so is umasalia (candle). -ol (feminine) and -el (masculine) are also a set of endings which show the gender. Another interesting thing if you have a feminine word ending in -o, then the masculine equivalent (if applicable, which it usually is) becomes -i. Adjectives must agree in gender and number with their nouns.

Grammar (Pluralization): For nouns, -on (if it ends in a consonant) and -n (for a vowel ending) are masculine, -at (for a consonant ending) and -t (for a vowel ending), and 'ent' or 'nt' for neutral/mixed. Adjectives have a different rule; for the feminine, -ur and -r are typical, -ki and -i are masculine (if the word has a vowel ending and the vowel is i, then -ki is used), 'e' is the usual neutral ending.

Grammar (Adverbs): They don't exist. Just kidding; they do. As adjectives.


Grammar (Conjugation): Ah, conjugation, my love. The conjugation of a typical Sodemeresh verb (for example, 'fomaze', 'to walk') looks something like this:

To walk: Fomaze
[/I] walk: Fomazu
[You Singular] walk: Fomazes
[You Plural] walk: Fomazal
[He/she/it] walks: Fomazem
[They] walk: Fomazi
[It Inanimate] walks: Fomazil
[They Inanimate Plural] Walk: Fomazole
[We] walk: Fomazent

The conjugation for 'to be', however, is rather....unique:

To Be: Tande
[/I] Am- Tandu
[You] Are (Singular Informal)- Tal
[You] Are (Plural Informal)- Taldin
[You] Are (Singular Formal)- Talzand
[You] Are (Plural Formal)- Talzandun
[He/She/It] Is: Talzin
They] Are- Talzevu
[It, Inanimate] Is- Taldi
[They, Inanimate] Are- Talzedole
We] Are- Taldent

'To be' usually goes last in a sentence, when it isn't dropped altogether (as it commonly is in more informal speech). What about, say, the 3PL of a word like 'ebasevi' (to use), though? My solution is this: Ebasevi'i. A bit lazy perhaps, but it works well enough.


Tenses: Undoubtedly the least cookie-cutter part of this whole thing, is the tense system. It pretty much uses tense particles. Specifically, these:

Al- Past tense marker
Li- Present tense marker (this is usually considered the default tense and thus used less often)
Pe- Future tense marker

A tense marker goes directly after a verb, but unless the tense actually changes, there's no need to mark the other verbs. E.g: La lorosu soia taldi al, hursal fas voilta li (the sky was blue, but now it is purple). They can be strung together, too, relative to the speaker's current timeframe (e.g. I will have bathed = Sulidu peal. Or: I was going to dance = Amayadu alpe. Or: I was singing = Resparu ali)


Other: There's also two corresponding affixes, the prefix san- (a kind of 'generic intensifier' seen in words like 'sanbreya', city, which is made of 'breya', town, and the san- prefix) and the diminutive 'vel' (which conveys smallness or a lesser degree of something, e.g. 'breyvela', village. The -vel- infix always goes after the last consonant [y] in this case).

And now, several sample sentences to show you Sodemeresh in action:



Montir la androsia sukh eam chirsetat b’stashai al– My dogs didn’t follow me down the road.

Gatat bodama ilshim chirsetat amochu. – I prefer cats over dogs.

Esperanto taldastvelio michartil. – Esperanto looks ugly. (please don't @ me, just my subjective opinion)

La maikel zeja pizhukes pe? - Will you open the door?

Sodemeresh zejonuso linves? – Do you speak Sodemeresh?

Zejamata lent komunule lunkhi’i al, eam Karzalio. – The gods have blessed you, my Empress.

Komunule lunkhi’i! – Gods bless!

Vidas eam viragio zechale chirseta talzin. - Your dog is in my house.

Estreri Poflionso – Old Estreri (old version of one of Sodemeresh's sister languages)

Mihozhes! Kin medun tremintes?  - Stop! Who goes there?

Eam blajene b’kuada talzin. – My teacher isn’t gifted.

Sodemeresh Kirimo – Imperial Sodemeresh
Sodemeresh Kipro – Common Sodemeresh  

Ju lut hajolat azia tremintem pe kau lut sansulat stargriyem.
To (a place) the (FPL) fields (PL) he [will] go (3SG) pe (Future marker) and (no marker) the (FPL) crops (PL) harvest (3SG).
He will go to the fields and harvest the crops.

Logrela lan nolzun olag va kerio va tumio vo karsentros siyem al.
On top of the (MPL) grass (PL) to (NonPl) a (FS) girl a (FS) book a (MS) man gave (3SG) al (Past tense marker)
A man gave a girl a book on the grass [I took this example from David Peterson's page about Megdevi]

Zeja sani melsaftvela miyu’u tal – I think you’re very pretty.

La lorosu vailto taldi li azia azio montiyuem al linvem.
TheMSG sky purpleMSG isO3SG liPrTM (present tense marker) he she thought3SG alPTM (Past tense marker) said3SG
She thought he said the sky is purple.

Obviously, this is not nearly all of Sodemeresh (the lexicon is growing steadily), just the main parts of it. The skeleton, if you will. Helpful & constructive advice appreciated (this is my first real venture into conlanging). Also, sorry for any formatting issues.

[keenir]

edit: i added a . to your IPA of the b...that should help.

A showcase of my first ever & also current main conlang (I only got into this October), Sodemeresh, spoken by the people of Soduar on the southernmost part of the continent Silandriel (the world is called Lyros). The Sodemeresh people are highly influential on neighboring countries via trade and naval dominance, and their language is the lingua franca of the region. It is also related to the word 'sodemire', which means 'to flow', and 'chakhi' (derived from 'chokha', mouth) which means 'language'. Sorry, don't exactly know how to explain this.

You just explained it perfectly fine.

Consonants: [.b], [d] (both alveolor and dental, look at me talking/writing like I'm not using the IPA audio chart as a crutch),

Not sure what you mean by a crutch...not every conlanger has these sorts of words on the tips of their tongues - written on their notes, probably sure.

Phonotactics: Strictly speaking, there aren't any. I haven't actually written them down before (I know, I'm dumb).

You're not dumb; you're just beginning. Not everyone starts with a full list of their phonotactics.

Grammar: Sodemeresh marks for person, plurals, and gender. How original.

Somewhat bizarre from my native English-speaking perspective, but c'est la vie.

Not everything has to be radically different from what you grew up with. Even just one or two differences can result in something quite unlike what you previously thought would be too unoriginal.

Obviously, this is not nearly all of Sodemeresh (the lexicon is growing steadily), just the main parts of it. The skeleton, if you will. Helpful & constructive advice appreciated (this is my first real venture into conlanging). Also, sorry for any formatting issues.

This is quite a good start; please continue it.

[Travis B.]

I should note that to make text not display as BBCode tags, replace [ with [bk] and ] with [/bk].

[sasasha]

To be more explicit, when you use [ b ] (without the spaces), you're bolding all the following text; [ u ] does the same with underline. ([/ b ] and [/ u ], again without spaces, cancel these commands.)

If you don't want to use Travis' method, you can also click ‘Disable BBCode’ in the Options below the box you type the post in. This means you can type any strings of letters within square brackets that you like and there won't be any unintended effects. (However, you lose the ability to format text.)

Or just avoid using square brackets!

I like the look and sound of your language! I have a question: how do Sodemeresh verbs conjugate for the first person singular? Is it the form that appears right under the infinitive, e.g. ‘fomazu’? (I think you may have had an [ I ] written here, which, similar to the above, italicised the rest of the text.)

[AwfullyAmateur]

Yes, 'fomazu' is the first person singular. And hopefully the bolding/underlining/italicizing should be fixed now.

[Travis B.]

If you don't want to use Travis' method, you can also click ‘Disable BBCode’ in the Options below the box you type the post in. This means you can type any strings of letters within square brackets that you like and there won't be any unintended effects. (However, you lose the ability to format text.)

The problem with this, though, is that it isn't applied to quotations of your posts, so someone quoting your post will either have to click "Disable BBCode" themselves, or revise your post using [bk] and [/bk].

[AwfullyAmateur]

I'm pretty sure my lexicon is around 1k by now. Helped by the fact that I decided I was going to do 10 words a day in November (using a Verb Ajective Noun rotation bcs it's easy to remember) and actually succeeded, resulting in at least 300 new words since my last count, which was like 694.

[keenir]

I'm pretty sure my lexicon is around 1k by now. Helped by the fact that I decided I was going to do 10 words a day in November (using a Verb Ajective Noun rotation bcs it's easy to remember) and actually succeeded, resulting in at least 300 new words since my last count, which was like 694.

Cool; nice strategy. and congratulations on the 1k !

[AwfullyAmateur]

Thank you! I just finished the official count and I've apparently got 1,028 now (not counting the numbers).

[keenir]

Thank you! I just finished the official count and I've apparently got 1,028 now (not counting the numbers).

Count the numbers too - that way, you have more to be proud of, and you get a new number to name.

[AwfullyAmateur]

Counting both the numbers and the new words I just added today, it goes up to 1,104. I love lexicon-building.

[AwfullyAmateur]

As of December 7th of this year, Sodemeresh now has 1300 words.

[äreo]

As of December 7th of this year, Sodemeresh now has 1300 words.

Woohoo! I like your word for thunder from the other thread.