#gerudo conlang

[aikoiya]

Hi! So I am currently (on my authoring blog @looseleafteeaves) making a number of conlangs. I really love you gerudo conlang, though I haven't had the time to develop alot of focus to learning it yet, and I was wondering if I could reference your work as the gerudo part? My goal is to really focus on the other races, but one is for a trade tongue, that would pull from all of the languages, so it may rely on using some of your work? If you are uncomfortable, feel free to tell me no, and I will just tackle my own version later.

Thanks for your time!

Absolutely!! Enjoy! It's something that I've had fun with & have sorta been posting it with the intent of it also being used by other fans!

All I ask is a tag a/o a mention & you already mentioned referencing me, so please have fun!

I'm also a bit curious about your thoughts on all of it (or even just some of it). I'm very much an amateur, so I've sort of been worried about how it sounds.

I know that most who go into conlang often have all these charts with words in "genitive" & "nominative" form, so I don't really consider myself to be quite to that level. 😅

And, I especially encourage recommendations on how to improve!

Something else, I remembered that I've made a couple changes to it, but have yet to update the posts with those updates as of yet. So, it might be a good idea to check in every once in a while to see if there are any.

[thesacredtwink]

looking at how the word vasaaq gets used in BOTW, I think it could have two possible meanings. On the one hand it does seem to mean "welcome" but it also gets shouted as a way to grab attention. So this is my proposition:

Vasaaq, more recently (and probably with greater hylian interaction) has come to mean welcome, but looking at the similarities between vasaaq and sav'aaq, we see it as a root word. This has lead me to believe that its original meaning was "Morning/day" with "Sav" acting as a prefix, modifying the word to mean "good morning".

In the desert, where the nights are easier to cope with then the days, (its easier to add more layers of warm clothing then it is to cool off after all), Vasaaq became a shout of kinds to get peoples attention as a warning to the dangerous temps that were about to rise.

Over time, as the Gerudo grew more and more able to deal with all the extremes of the native climate, the warning shout became an informal greeting of sorts. Very similar to how we might shout 'Hey!" when we see someone.

[thesacredtwink]

If they don’t have an L sound what’s Twilights name? TWIIGHT??

"Yes this is our king, Twight" kdjakdjskdowo

So looks like I was mistaken, there IS an "l" sound in the Gerudo phonetic inventory. But it's not a common sound.

He probably tries to go by Link tbh, but the double consonant at the end of his name isn't something that you see in the Gerudo language. So for those who can't pronounce his name, they call him the Gerudo word for "Wolf"

[thesacredtwink]

Looking at Gerudo names (thanks @squid-ink-personal for your input on how to potentially tell the Gerudo names from the names introduced to the culture over time) but an interesting pattern has emerged. The gerudo don’t have an “L” sound

[thesacredtwink]

(More gerudo Conlang stuff because its all I can think about today)

Gerudo is a functionally pronoun-less language. In fact, the closest thing the Gerudo have to a pronoun is the word t'i (pronounced with the dental/alveolar ejective /t'/ .The result is an almost explosive t sound). Literally, t'i translates to person.

(if you want to apply a modern english pronoun equivalent, the closest would be the neo pronoun fae/faer)

When specificity is needed, the words voe and vai are applied before t'i, and are treated as a modifier for the word. Its worth noting that this is considered a formal way of speaking, and is not used often outside of formal affairs.

[thesacredtwink]

Gerudo conlang

So interestingly enough, by looking at the examples of written Gerudo that we have from the games (not counting botw, which although it has some beautiful examples, all directly translate to English) I have noticed that the Gerudo dont seem to have punctuation as we understand it.

While OoT helpfully gave us an alphabet (with letter translations) we have only a few pieces of "punctuation". Looking at where the "punctuation" falls inside words has led me to believe that the Gerudo language includes sound not included in the English phonetics (such as clicks)

[naboorus-roost]

The use of consonant clicks in the Gerudo language proves tricky for many non native speakers, usually being reduced to an "n" sound by those unable to replicate the slightly nasal (post)alveolar retroflex.

Represented in english writing by the symbol "!", the click has no grammatical importance other than as a part of the gerudo phonetic dictionary. While ! is commonly followed by a vowel, it is just as likely to be followed by another consonant as well, and can be found in any parts of a word (begining, middle and end).

On its own, ! is frequently used as an interjection similar to the way "ah ah!" is used in English. ! is also a sound frequently found in Gerudo interjections and admonishments. There is some questions as to wether the click as an interjection began as the sound alone then morphed into being used in words, or if Gerudo interjections gradually became reduced over time to the click sound.

When written in english, there has developed the grammatical rule to use "n" before the click, a convention created by non native speakers to try and find a way to transcribe the sound to the written word. It also reflects the non native speakers tendency to reduce ! to the "n" sound. In written Gerudo, no such additional letter is added. For example the Gerudo word At!a (an interjection that roughly translates to "hey", "stop that", "mind your manners", and "with fondness" depending on context, and sometimes all at once) would be written as Atn!a in english.

The actual phonetic value would be k! but because it's my made up language, I'm choosing how to represent it in writing slsnkzbe

[naboorus-roost]

Since Gerudo is most likely a genderless language with the rare exception of the words voe and vai, which are largely formal and don't get used all that much, it would make sense that vehvi means child, rather than daughter.