#grammar.

[shroomishroomcatte]

I like to scare people by using full stops. This is the internet, yet I still insist on proper grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation. -🐺🖤✒️ PlayerAvarice/P.A. (He/it/void)

[star-crossed-libby]

Chat, I got a 68% on my midterm...

[the-flensburg-files-smith]

Less is More. But is Most the Least?

Photo by Asad Photo Maldives on Pexels.com

Most of us probably know the functions of comparative and superlative adjectives in English. Especially with the use of more and most as they generally support adjectives with three or more syllables plus other adjectives with endings of -ed (passive), -ful, -ive and a few other exceptions.

But there are some who don’t know about how more and most…

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[the-flensburg-files-smith]

The Many Forms of Why in German

The Many Forms of Why in German

Flensburg’s skyline at night- it is just as active as its looks. Photo taken in April, 2011

In English, we have several ways to ask questions, among them the Seven Golden Ws, consisting of Who, What, When, Where, Why, How (and its many forms) and Which. Each one has a different meaning in context.

In German, we have not only the Seven Golden Ws for asking questions: Wer, Was, Wann, Wo, Warum, Wie…

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[amenbreaks]

good I'm demorphing into a tumblrite faster than I expected. At least I don't go into all caps mid sentence

[tedaere]

[ alright does high hylian have any titles or suffixes for different social status? Like father/priest, doctor, sir, etc. How does language tend to change between social classes? Do they have any semantic differences between spoken and written? Such as how you aren't supposed to write contractions in English papers? ]

It has honorific articles. Ms./Mrs., Mr./Master, and Mx. are aur, eur, and ar respectively. Priests and other religious figures get tanthu. Knights are neuter tari, masculine tarau, feminine tau. Esquires, lords, and ladies are baelor, baela, and baelen. Doctors are laen. Royalty are neuter drae, masculine dran, feminine drau. They’re all used about the same way they’re used in English. So, for example, Master Link would be either Ar Link or Eur Link, depending on the level of formality, and Queen Zelda would be Drau Zelda.

There are definitely differences in writing, depending on the location. Sometimes ae is written as æ. Though it’s generally pronounced the same way, d’s might be written as þ’s. Ordon specifically has an entirely different dialect, and a lot of the words are written completely differently and pronounced entirely differently. 

There are actually different tiers of formality in High Hylian, and using one that’s too casual can be a huge offense. I wrote a post about it here! It’s really long and complicated, but to put it shortly, there are five different tiers of increasing formality, and as formality increases, contractions become less and less acceptable, articles aren’t dropped as often, and nouns are gendered for poetic emphasis.

[tedaere]

On the use of the prefix sve-

Simply put, sve- is the negation prefix, comperable to English not or un-. It can negate verbs and adjectives, most typically. For example, to say I do not run, one would simply say svegaernost. Sve + root gaern + first person singular conjugation -ost. For adjectives, you could say I am sad, ost sorgelt. But you could also say I am unhappy, ost sveblyth. In High Hylian, however, the two sentences have extremely different connotations.

There is a literary and poetic technique in High Hylian called ost jarn svost, implicit opposition (literally “I am what I am not”). This technique is used to describe emotions that have no word, that linger between the definitions of others and that could only be defined as opposite to something else – hence the name. These emotions are, therefore, implied to be opposite to something else and not synonyms to the commonly accepted opposites of emotions – so sad and unhappy, sorgelt and sveblyth, are two extremely different emotions. This type of writing would mostly be used in very humanist sort of writings, works that tried to describe the human experience more fully than in the past. Historically, this sort of writingended the literary movement of rayorndu, wyritn fraforlin (Divine Voice, Earthly Words), which concerned itself with describing the divine creation of the world, and instead moved writing towards a more humanistic view.