Gnomish: nugə (noo-tsheh)

Absolutely no idea what I am doing. But decided this was the best place to post my world building and con langing hobby. It's "Gnomish" set in a distant post apocalyptic sword and sorcery world.

[gnomishlinguist]

Been away a bit and have done little. But I did settle on having the Gnomish for gnome be gə (tsheh) which means the language gets a name nugə (noo-tsheh). I might change the orthography but am also settling on a syllabary and tweeking pronunciation rules.

The post for today is wə (weh) which means water but completely unrelated is also used as an intensifier particle (for which I have not set the grammar rules but I inherented it from the old system which is good and mysterious (I know it ultimately is taken from Japanese)). Most of the words are pretty standard but wəwə has since changed meaning since I decided drink deserved it's own thing. wəzi (weh-tsee) is the real winner of a pretty word. It means song or music but the literal structure is "water in the woods".

Maybe I will post more or maybe not!

[gnomishlinguist]

I know there is like no followers but I will suspend disbelief to write, sorry for the break in posting, burn out, depression, a work shooting threat and local political assassination all took their tole on me. Anyways, zi (tsee) is life, nature, and the wilderness/the wilds. The symbol is based off a tree, zilo (tsee'-loh) but it has other associations as well. I have changed "twinkle" to meaning the flickering of the soul flame which sets some ground to provide animacy to nature in the cultural workings. Song and singing are also nice where wi (wee) means to narrate and wə (weh) means water. I imagine gnomes have raindrums and sōzu if not for any other reason than that water is connected to the idea of music and and narratives.

[gnomishlinguist]

zə (tseh) give, get, a gift, a package. zə is symbolized by a basket zəlo (tsehˈ-low). I was trying to remember why I included this one so early and I think it's because I needed to use wizə (weeˈ-tzeh) for something and then forgot to map it out on the bottom I guess. It is a pretty core word to languages though so glad it's there. zəzə (tsehˈ-tseh) 'to get' has the classic reduplicative root vowel formation. To give is then formed as zəhi (tsehˈ-ee) getting at the idea that giving is good. tə-zəzə (deh-tsehˈ-tseh) also shows a prefix functioning. Big get means share. ti- (dee-) has a similar function as well as a couple other words.

[gnomishlinguist]

tu (doo and too in non initial positions) it means do. It is also a particle that marks questions, hopefully more on that function later. It is also a prefix to mark the doer of an action. So tu-gaga (doo-chaˈ-cha) is a weaver. I might change how the whole question aspect works from what is pictured here but for now, it's fine. I also want to touch up the characters real bad and have them evolve from a little picture to a woven symbol down to a more simplified symbol.

[gnomishlinguist]

ga (tshah) starts getting into the expanded sounds I brought to gnomish and how I wanted them to be easy to type on a keyboard and the language to be easily searchable (why I use h when half the time it isn't pronounced and originally was never pronounced). We also get back into a bit of fleshing out the culture for the gnomes. I like the word gazi (tshahˈ-tsee) for spider. It's a fun little easy word. Nature's weaver. I think this would lend itself fairly naturally to a myth about spiders for the gnomes. There is also a long word here that doesn't have the usual secondary stress indicator of a dash. I'm still working out exactly how I want all this to sound. gakəzolə (tshahˈ-keh-tsoh-leh) the little run on sound is kind of nice but I will hear it in a longer sentence before I decide. gakəzolə is a communal hall in a gnomish village where the belts woven at the end of a gnomes life are kept. They keep the personal records of a gnome. I just really like the idea of "Now is the time to tell their story" as a reaction to loss, so I worked it into gnomish. I think this also means that either linen and flax would be important to gnomes or woolen animals in which cases they would not like moths and maybe have an affinity for cedar. I don't know. It could be both. I am thinking about sitting down to write a bit soon so maybe I will link someplace to read little gnomish stories.

[gnomishlinguist]

wi (wee) to tell, to report, a story. So here is a page where I start build a little bit of the world and their culture. I have an idea for a story but we will see if I ever get around to writing anything. The symbol for the word is a village historian reading an archive. I imagine the gnomes value weaving and developed their writing system from patterns woven into belts. I keep showing beardy boys but I will work in more diversity when I feel I can draw it well enough (the beard covers the detail). There is a lot of little words here that I am excited to flesh out more at a later point in this project. I am very happy with ziwilə (tseeˈ-wee-leh) which is an inherited word that meant twinkle and now is the place of the life story, or the soul. I also like the word wəwizi (wehˈ-wee-tsee) that carried over from the previous language and meant rain, so I mirrored that with lewi (layˈ-wee) to mean the crackle of fire. Above that you can see wile (weeˈ-lay) which is the story fire and is a part of the midwinter festivals that I, again, hopefully get around to writing about the gnomes. I also love the distinctions of fact versus fiction, history versus excuse. It's a fun little snippet.

[gnomishlinguist]

we (way), thinking, mind. I don't have anywhere near enough of these to last the year of this book so I will eventually start fleshing out cultural ideas. I don't think there is too much going on here other than I misspelled pawe (bah-way) as bywe because I copied it from an old book. niwe (nee-way) is now but literally is sweetness of the mind because, I get to invent reasons, a mind that is neither hung up on the past, nor anxious about the future is in the sweetness of the now. And I think this more poetic take reveals how I plan to get enough out of a language with only 84 total building blocks and 7000 normal words. We will also eventually have to deal with homophones. We also have kutə-welo (goo'-teh-wayˌ-low), sleepy mountain as boring/boredom. I took that from source material so I am not sure if that us going to be a type of uninteresting mountain or if I might right a little story to have an explanation of it as a specific/mythic mountain.

[gnomishlinguist]

Gay, which is kinda how this one is pronounced in the initial position. ke means body, self, same, one. There are a lot of words but also this page shows a little explanation of how to use gnomish building blocks. Category of things followed by specification. So kuke (goo'-kay) is rocks or hard things and the specification is bodies. Thus bones. Whereas, kezi (gay'-tzee) is bodies, specification trees. Thus, tree trunk. This is of course just a general guideline and I break it all the time for reasons such as a whim. Notice, make (mah-kay) is one and not a math related part of the body like a hand.

[gnomishlinguist]

Little gnomish phonetics. I will occasionally be posting the grammar side of stuff that I put into my little free notebook from Hobonichi. There are some markings of new sounds and old letters. This is has many friends in the book. I will give you a hint. When you turn 33 you will know.... Enough Ibn Ezra. It is actually because Gnomish is evolved from Furbish. Which is why I still don't have a name for Gnomish in Gnomish, because Furbies don't have a word in their own language to refer to themselves. Also a lot of these newer letters will not be seen until I get out of words that are from Furbish.

[gnomishlinguist]

ma, which despite the picture doesn't mean hand. It means to count or number and also math, analysis etc. It's used as a prefix to make a word a number, or at least that's why I brought it into the language. So ke means body or same, so ma-ke (mah-kay) means one. na means other and thus ma-na means two. If I get around to a word for hand that might be the word for five unless I pull an Elf Quest and make my humanoid non-humans four fingered. A dumb issue that arises in this language that can be fun in its own way is how these building blocks make words similar. mahi (mah-ee) is the count that is good, thus accurate. mapu (mah-poo) is the count that is bad, thus a lie. Also sounds like my poo. Fascinating decisions I set to ink before realizing. I don't know if it has come up yet, but reduplication makes a simple verb with many of these building blocks. So mama means to count.

[gnomishlinguist]

Next up is nə -- down, low, under and many of the opposites of what hu meant, like junior, younger, past, beginning. I think it's a mountain metaphor. But I don't know I evolved this all from a state of nature. I have taken what is crude, brutish, and short and turned it into a civilized aspect. Do I hate the little drawing of a hut? Yes. Deeply. I will likely ignore that I ever made it. Also I don't know what symbol I want for this one. Also also, I should make a little graph for pronouns and familial terms for gnomeses.

[gnomishlinguist]

Wow, another day, a little more of my brain dribbled out of my brain at work. But there is always hobby, the sweet little treat that I use to try to convince my soul to remain married to my body. On the pronunciation stuff the initial h is h. So hu is who. And he is she.... wait what language am I talking about? Gnomish. Got it. hu is an important idea. Very important. One of those little words that ends up getting used for a lot of stuff. You can even see in the little word map that it gets put into honorifics and familial terms. Maybe if I don't die at work I will make a nice little chart of that.

[gnomishlinguist]

Here is the first page of the hobonichi, which I am definitely up to date on. So some quick notes about gnomish is that i hate capitalism and thus we only use lower case letters to hunble the scribe. The next thing to note is that le is pronounced like lay but a bit shorter. Or not I don't care. I hate when fantasy gets so into unpronounceable names that you just gloss over them in your head. The vowels are i (ee), e (ay), a (ah), o (oh), u (oo), and ə (the symbol that breaks my tumblr app and looks funny). The consonants shown are mostly just like English with the exceptions that z is pronounced ts and medial h is pronounced like a diëresis. So that all said lezi (lay'-tsee) wildfire and lehe (lay'-ay) invitation. Oh also I am against assigning genders so there is no gender in the language. I also believe in a classless society so words kinda get to work as verbs, nouns, adjectives etc according to their own aspirations. The other fun thing about this is it makes a little world and culture through the drawings.

[gnomishlinguist]

So here's the map I am working with right now. I haven't fleshed it out much nor have I named it. I have a name for the mountains and forests that the gnomes (also don't have a name for them yet) live in, helo-melə, as well as a name for a kind of mythical island that is a sunny paradise, helo-wə. I am still thinking about where to put all of that and other features but it's nice to look at. Drew this based off of scratches on my phone case, the secret way to do world building.

[gnomishlinguist]

I bought a hobonichi techo with the intention of writing a page a day to flesh out the language and culture ideas. I have definitely kept up with it and am not months behind. Going to post my working pages here. Slowly. And with commentary. Hopefully this keeps me motivated. Or I can become another mysterious dead project on the internet. And that's exciting too. I wish that aesthetic notions were enough to keep me motivated to do hobbies. oh well....