conlang blog to share the languages of my classical cliché fantasy pen and paper world. starting with classical elvish (shembaba) and mountain dwarvish (batz ga rumm) – others may follow one day.
This is a conlang blog to showcase my languages that I am creating for my friend group's Pen and Paper world. So far I've started sharing infos about two of them: one of them is Shembāba, Classical Elvish, which is spoken as a Lingua Franca amongst the Elves. The other is Batz ga Rumm, the language of the Mountain Dwarves. I haven't posted an awful lot yet but I'll start linking some of the stuff I wrote about here.
Shembaba:
Phonology
Classifiers: counting, quantifiers, demonstratives, list of classifiers
Relative Clause clitic -(p)pe
Lexember 2024
Batz ga Rumm
Phonology
Lexember 2025
Expect sporadic updates on grammar and light world building. Hope you enjoy!
So I was thinking about the word "restroom," and how it sounds like it should mean the same thing as "bedroom," but, uh, doesn't. Since people don't like talking about poop, there's a lot of words for that room, and very few of them actually describe what one does there.
Then I spent several hours poking around Wiktionary to compare how different languages euphemise it. This got long.
Some languages do have words that refer to it directly, with terms like Asturian mexaderu, "urination place," or Navajo chąąʼ báhooghan, "house for feces." Sometimes terms like these are considered vulgar, more like English shitter, but others seem to be completely acceptable.
One common strategy is to refer to washing or cleaning, like English washroom or Arabic مرحاض (mirḥāḍ), "cleaning-tool." Some include specific types of washing such as taking a bath, like English bathroom or Indonesian kamar mandi "bathing room" - however, a lot of these words are used specifically for rooms with a bathtub and/or shower, not for public restrooms. Japanese 手洗い (tearai) and Persian دَسْتْشویی (dastšuyi) both mean "handwashing," and Kazakh дәретхана (däretxana) means "establishment for Islamic ritual washing."
Similarly, some words refer to the cleanliness of the room itself, like Vietnamese nhà vệ sinh, "sanitation house," or Urdu صحت خانہ (sihat xāna), "health place." My favorite of these is Spanish and Tagalog inodoro, "odorless," because yeah I sure hope it is!
Some, like Cornish attesva "comfortable place," Japanese 便所 (benjo) "place of ease," and Burmese အိမ်သာ (imsa) "pleasant house" seem to come from the fact that visiting it makes one less uncomfortable - indeed, in Philippine English, the term comfort room is common. This is probably where restroom fits, along with Arabic مستراح (mustarāḥ), "relaxing place."
Similarly, it can be referred to by the fact that going there is sometimes necessary. Serbo-Croatian nužnik means "needed place," Latin necessarium means "necessary place," Tajik ҳоҷатхона (hojatxona) means "need house," and the necessary is occasionally used in English.
Another activity that gets referred to as a substitute is getting dressed, which is where we get English toilet. Armenian զուգարան (zugaran) means "decorating place," Ukrainian вбиральня (vbyrálʹnja) means "dressing place," and Korean 화장실 (hwajangsil) means "makeup room."
A strategy that seems to be common in Southeast Asia is to call it the "water room," like Lao ຫ້ອງນ້ຳ (hǭng nam) or Malay bilik air. Wiktionary proposes that some of these may be calques of English water closet, but there's enough that it seems more likely to me that they calqued it from each other.
Some other references to activities in the room that seem worth mentioning include Bengali পায়খানা (paẏkhana), "footrest site," Saanich EMETÁU¸TW̱, "sitting house," and Georgian საპირფარეშო (saṗirparešo), "place where servants are found."
Another way to describe it is as a place that one goes away to or excuses oneself to, like Finnish käymälä, "a place one visits," Spanish excusado, "excused," or Polish wychodek, "little exit," which seems slightly more common in Europe, but there's also the Alaskan language Lower Tanana, with yo'ena' ninotr'ededekde, "where we go back out beyond."
Similarly, it's also referred to by its location outside or behind a house, like Tagalog palikuran "going to the back," Latin forica "outside," Ancient Greek ἀφεδρών (aphedrṓn), "away seat," and Korean 뒷간 (dwitgan), "back room." I learned a new English word from this one - reredorter, a latrine behind a medieval monastery or convent, literally "rear of the dormitory." Outhouse is also similar, and while it refers to a specific type of restroom, I can easily imagine it broadening.
Spanish común, "common, shared" might be related to the description of it being outside, or perhaps to public restrooms; Wiktionary simply presents it without explanation. Interesting to compare to English privy and Brazilian Portuguese privada "private," which focus on the exact opposite property.
Another physical property that's often use as a descriptor is its size. Welsh tŷ bach means "small house," informal French petit coin means "little corner," Indonesian kamar kecil means "small room," and Tok Pisin smolhaus and liklik haus both mean "little house."
Of course, one other strategy is loanwords. English influence around the world has resulted in variations on toilet and water closet or WC being very common. Arabic خلاء (ḵalāʔ) "empty, void" has spread a bit as well. Russian нужник (núžnik), "needed place" and Classical Persian حاجتخانه (hājatxāna) "need house" are surprisingly parallel, with similar meanings and some spread as a loanword, but neither is really used in the language they originally came from.
Loans of water closet often get clipped down, resulting in things like French waters and German Klosett, which have definitely caused some confusing situations! Another one that's definitely confused people is Thai ส้วม (sûuam), which as a result of clipping and/or lots of avoidance literally just means "room," and the cognates in its sister languages still mean "room" or "bedroom."
Finally, a few weird ones.
English ladies' room and men's room are a relatively uncommon strategy, but Finnish has naistenhuone and miestenhuone, with the exact same meanings.
The exact etymology of Estonian peldik is unknown, but there's a theory that it's related to Germanic spelt and means "spelt barn," because they were sometimes used as restrooms (this seems like a stretch to me).
Azerbaijani ayaqyolu apparently means "leg path." No other explanation is given on Wiktionary.
Persian تشناب (tašnāb) appears to mean "thirsty water."
Polish łazienka means "little bathhouse."
Vietnamese cầu means "bridge," and Malay jamban may be a contraction of jambatan, also meaning "bridge." This is thought to be because latrines were built over water, similar to bridges.
Finally, my favorite: Thai สุขา (sù-kǎa), a clipping of สุขาภิบาล (sù-kǎa-pí-baan), "health administration," the name of a government agency from the early 20th century that was in charge of sanitation.
Summary of path verbs in Yuk Tepat. Because Yuk Tepat is a path-conflating verb-framing language & the typology of motion events is one of the features I like, though less famous than typological categories like word order or morphosyntactic alignment. (Though it may be a stretch to call "be located" a path verb, since there is no motion, although it shares properties with the other verbs.)
You know what's a sound change I really hate? [k] > [tʃ]. I love palatalisation but this one just doesn't make sense to me. Whenever I'm tempted to use it I cringe away in revulsion.
This is the stone most associated with magic, be it keichs or épsitz (dwarvish or non-dwarvish magic). This stone stands for mystery, for unbridled laughter and fun as well as chaos. It comes from the root *tumlohnalaos which is another forget-me-not formation, consisting of Kevats tum 'all', lohna 'time' and laos 'laughter, joy'. Literally I'd translate this gem as 'everglee' or 'everjoy'.
Dwarves born under the amethyst are often sent to klahíktz, Dwarvish magicians, to learn their trade. They are also often seen as too unreliable to be helping out with the business of regular, good people that don't have anything to do with magic, so it's best to keep them among themselves and other than with tiger's eyes they aren't said to profit from a strict hand but rather that they'll turn their masters insane if they try to. Nevertheless, while Dwarvish magic users are usually kept among themselves in their own communities they are strictly watched by the government to make sure they don't break into the territory of épsitz, taboo non-dwarvish magic.
This concludes Lexember 2025! Wow, that went over quickly. I started this uncertain of whether I'd find enough fun words to showcase this month but now that we're at the end of it I find myself lamenting not having been able to include a dozen others. Alas, next Lexember perhaps. Until then I wanna write at least a small handful of posts to expand upon Shembaba and Batz ga Rumm. I also have half a mind to showcase their writing systems but I'd still have to think of a neat way how to go about that....
Thanks to everyone who took the time to read a boring ol' conlanger's ramblings, may your 2026 be full of unapologetic nerdiness!
Coming from the roots *lao for laughing and glee and *li for carrying this was laojulinas in Kevats which is perhaps best translated as 'pocket friend'. It consists of laojus 'friend' (modern lous) and lina the passivisation of lilok 'to carry'.
Topazes are traditionally seen as symbolising good intentions, friendliness and generosity, and guest presents usually are adorned with them. Dwarves born under the topaz are seen as hopeful and optimistic, sometimes to the point of naivité.
Taibajíkts, 'the wish granters', an organisation of contract killers, has claimed this gem for themselves, as well though, to frame their services as an act of justice and mercy. They ask a high price in return for absolute professionality and discretion. In fact, the average Dwarf likely thinks of them as a myth to scare kids into obedience but they indeed have been behind several shifts in power in the history of the Mountain Dwarves. Their members do their best to blend into society and often don't even know each other to secure absolute secrecy. A clear way to recognise them, however, are their weapons which feature handles made of topaz. These are the only weapons they are allowed to use for killing as the topaz absolves them of the sin making the act of killing an act of impersonalised kindness.
Today's word has the roots *tali and *pila. *tali you already know from some of the other gems as being the root for pretty stones. *pila is associated with alternation and layers, so the meanign is something like 'layered stone'.
I've picked this as one of the 8 important gems for the Dwarves because it's one of my friends' favourite gem, and I'm glad she made me aware of it. Their stripes and streaks are visually striking and I find them quite soothing to look at. To the Dwarves this stone symbolises moodiness, though, and eternal discontent. Dwarves born under the tiger's eye are seen as doomed to live a restless live always striving for something they can't quite grasp. For that reason they are desired workers as they are seen as resourceful and energetic and simply in need of someone to direct them to a real purpose. At the same time they are mistrusted, however, as they are wont to change their mind quickly and turn on their masters, so it is advised to rule them with a strict hand.
I hope you don't take all this rambling about my made up gem horoscopes too generally, btw. It is true that traditional Mountain Dwarf culture in this world is rather distrustful and fairly strictly hierarchical but you still have to understand that this is a diverse group of people. While many Dwarves are conservative and most at least to some degree superstitious, there are plenty of rule breakers – which is part of the reason why the Dwarvish diaspora is so big and many Dwarves choose to leave their home towns in the mountains to live more liberally in mixed settlements.
No tool may work the diamond but the tool that holds the diamond itself in its tip. No gem may influence the diamond but the diamond in its purest form itself. No Dwarf born under the diamond may be tarnished by sin but through the temptation of another diamond-born.
Thus reads the scripture of the Dwarven mystic Lotep who travelled the eight ancestral pits and claims to have seen the ancient city of Mercrantz with her own eyes.
Dwarves whose birthstone is the diamond are held in high regards. They're seen as pure and uncorruptable and are expected to give their whole up for the greater good of society. They are also kept separate from other diamond-born Dwarves as to keep them safe from harming each other. Diamonds are never to be leaders but ever the second-in-command as the perfect tool to enact the good intentions of an indubitably benevolent ruler.
The word itself comes from the older *megloklohlas which consists of meglok 'to break' and lohla 'pickaxe, shovel, digging tool', because once your best digging tool meets a diamond, it'll break.
I'm once again a day late oopsie! Yesterday's word comes from the Kevats nurkakela which consists of nurka(lok) which means 'to calm sb./sth. down' and -kela which is a nominalising affix creating instrument/tool nouns. So it sort of means 'this'll calm you' (writing this out got me 'Porcelana' by Rosalía stuck in my head - algo pa que tu te relajes anyone?). And, indeed, the Mountain Dwarves associate this gem with calmess, coolness and unbotheredness. If this is your birthstone, they say, then no insult can throw you. And if you are an easily offended person then someone might tell you:
Heb f'nurkelón.
take.IMP INDEF=sapphire-OBJ
Take a sapphire.
This is a (depending on the context somewhat dickish) way to tell someone 'don't take it so harshly, it was meant as a joke'.
I'm honestly not sure how much I like this word. Chances are you've noticed yourself that it looks/sounds a lot like 'chrystal' and when I created this word that was the intention, tbh. I've mentioned before that I aimed for a uncanny valley effect with my Dwarvish and Elvish languages when I first set out to create them and kristáis is one of those instances where I think I took it too far. I don't regret it so much that I'd take it back (after all I could just change it if I wanted to) because in a way I like that it reminds me of the early days of me creating a Dwarvish language.
Kristáis comes from the root *kristali which has *kris which is associated with hotness and magma and *tali referring to pretty (but not necessarily useless!) stones (which you may remember from lostáis a few days ago). In Kevats it was kristalis which in Middle Mountain Dwarvish comes out as kristáls and ultimately gives us Batz ga Rumm kristáis, a 'magma gem' so to speak, referring to it's burning hot colour.
To the Mountain Dwarf this gem symbolises Passion, Excitement and Eagerness. It's the sexiest of all gems and therefore often adorns sexy outfits and toys. People whose birthstone is the ruby are seen as very forward and leaning towards impulsivity which is why they are often paired with emeralds or sapphires by matchmakers to even them out.
Today's gem comes from the Kevats dukonatons which is what I like calling a forget-me-not word where the word for something consists of a whole phrase. In this case, it is the phrase duk on aton which means something like 'think of yourself' or 'look inside you' or 'reflect upon yourself'.
Emeralds to the Mountain Dwarves are associated with pensivity, patience but also detachedness. Overly impulsive people are often advised to have an emerald in their pockets whereas overthinkers are told to stay away from them if possible.
The onyx is one of the 8 big gems of Mountain Dwarvish culture – they have a lot of beliefs, superstitions and opinions surrounding each of them, and they use them for horoscopes, divination and even as sort of flavour giving emojis (I call them gemojis) in their writing (but this will have to be another post on another day).
The onyx is associated with fear, honesty and seriousness. People whose birth stone is the onyx are seen as somber and tacit and they are thought to make good leaders. Onyxes often ornate the uniforms of members of the bureaucratic caste and are used as decorations for stately ceremonies and funerals to underline their seriousness. While this may sound rather dismal, a lot of Mountain Dwarves find these attributes highly desirable – so much so that many Dwarves born under the onyx will not. shut. up. about. it. There is even a term for this kind of person: lostáis mérhekik is a 'fragile onyx', someone whose ego is way too concerned with the fact their birthstone is an onyx.
Btw, this word has a cognate in Shembaba! You may remember it from last year's Lexember's loroptale. It was loaned from the Old Mountain Dwarvish *lozobtali which turned into Kevats lozoptalis which turned into Middle Mountain Dwarvish losptáls which finally became Batz ga Rumm lostáis. *lozobtali can be separated into *loz-ob which consists of *loz 'light' and *-ob 'empty', so meaning dark, and *tali which is a word for a stone that's pretty but otherwise useless – in other words a gem. So an onyx is a lightless gem.
This brings me to the topic of geology. I'm very much aware that the mineral onyx comes in a lot more shades than the simple black shape we usually envision. And the same goes for all other gems that we usually only associate with one colour (emerald green, ruby red, etc.) but because I don't feel like doing a deep dive into the specifics of all of this and the Dwarves live in a fantasy world that doesn't necessarily work the same way our world works I've decided to just do the good ol' one-gem-for-each-colour thing that fantasy settings and videogames especially like to do. So, I hope you won't be offended that the following gem posts will follow the same simplification!
Mirroring yesterday's poison, today we're talking about a cure. It's built up pretty much the same way: root + causative + 'a piece of'-nominaliser. The root is *nuz having to do with peace and rest, whence we also get núzik 'to nap', núskik 'to recover', tumnúz 'peace', núskaik 'to heal', núskaiks '(medical) healer' and also nurn 'oasis', borrowed from Desert Dwarvish where the [z] got rhotacised in a voiced environment – its direct cognate would be nuzán 'bed', both ultimately coming from Proto Surface Dwarvish *nuzana.
If you're sick like me at the moment, may your recovery swift, and if you're healthy, may you stay so <3
I got sick so this is why I'm posting day 22 one day late. On the plus side, this inspired me to come up with a new root *gjok which is associated with sickness. From it we get gjókik 'to be sick, to ail' and gjokts 'sickness, illness, ailment. If we causativise it, though, we get gjókaik 'to poison' and from it gjókarhmz 'poison', because the point of a poison is to make someone sick (or worse).
In Kevats, an older stage of the language, the word still looked like gjokaghems and consisted of the root *gjok, the causative affix -(e)ka and the nominaliser -gem which is sorta best understood as deriving words meaning 'a piece of', so in this case 'a piece of sick maker', a poison.
Finding this word just very fun and funny because it looks like the name Franz. It comes from the root *fur which has to do with dust, powder and fine particles, whence we also get the Kevats word furs, 'dust, fine sand'. Pluralising it gives us furanas, which is the direct ancester of Batz ga Rumm franz, so a desert, etymologically, is 'the dusts' to the Mountain Dwarves – cause there's not much there besides just that, dust. From *fur we also get fúrkik 'to disappear, to leave', fúrkaik 'to destroy', fúrik 'to distribute', kéfras 'sand' and furtz 'nothing'.
Grhan, grhanón, grhanánn, grhanánn [gʁan] (n.) | bar, tavern
Having just come from my ex-aunt's husband's birthday party where they had served some steaming mulled wine while we were sitting around a small fire, it seems appropriate to share a drinking related word today. This word comes from the root *gug which is associated with drinking. From it we also get gúgik 'to drink', gúrhis 'drunkard' and gurhmz 'drink'. To get from *gug to grhan we add the passive affix -(a)na, getting Kevats gughana 'it is drunk, there is drinking'. In Middle Mountain Dwarvish we lose the final vowel and the velar fricative becomes uvular and we get gurhán. In Batz ga Rumm the unstressed, pretonic vowel gets deleted as it is a weak position and grhan emerges.
Another day, another class and today it is the thief! Its root is *zur which is associated with need and obligation. Making it a verb and adding the causative marker -(e)ka- to it gives us Kevats zurkalok 'to make somebody need something'. Adding the nominalising -s makes it an agent noun: someone who makes other people need something, aka a thief.
The root *zur also gives us zurz 'need, necessity' and zúrik 'to need' but also zurks 'punishment' and zúrkuik 'to punish' which gives us the proverb:
Zurkáiktz zurihékn zurkúnn.
thief-PL-NOM need-3PL.NPST punishment-PL-OBJ
Thieves need to be punished. (lit. 'Thieves need punishments.')
This is meant as 'a society needs strict rules to function'. Boy, would I be annoyed if I was a Dwarf and heard that from a Dwarf cop!
