I love Clanmew. It's one of my favourite things ever (again: big fan of BetterBones), I've always wanted to try my hand at conlangs. What better way to start off than creating a dialect for an already existing conlang? Credits to @/bonefall for the Base Clanmew. The Cloudclan Clanmew is actually pretty important because I need to work some things out with it to come up with some things with the Featherseekers (one of the three groups in CCEU).
I'm not sure what I'll call it, so I've been calling it Cloudclan's Clanmew in my head, but I might change it to something more along the lines of Cloudmew, Feathermew, or Islandmew. Cloudmew being from Cloudclan and the -mew. Feathermew being from the Featherseekers and -mew. Annnd Islandmew being from the fact they live on an Island...and -mew. More about the island thing later, I'm still figuring out how it fits into everything. (Edit: as of August 2nd, 2024, the official name for it is Islandmew.)
I'm not too sure how to go about with conlangs or dialects, but for now, I've chosen two cats with names that have words that aren't in the Base Clanmew lexicon and tried to translate their names to Clanmew...and thus having to create a new word or two in the process.
First up we have...
Spiderlilystar! (Reyskepaishai)
Okay, so Spiderlilystar doesn't exactly have a design? I haven't thought too much about her, she's more a nebulous being to me. She'll get more love later due to her having overthrown Saturnstar during Saturnstar's reign (been trying to come up with a new name for Saturnstar, it's just a placeholder). But, anyways. Spiderlillies aren't in Base Clanmew, but they're in the CCEU Clanmew.
The word I chose for spiderlily is skepai. Ske being the word for "spider" (cobspiders, specifically, as in spiders that make cobwebs. The most generic term for spider in Clanmew), + pai being petal. It's because the spiderlily flower looks sorta of like spider legs curling up when they die to me, so like, what if the cats called them the equivalent of spider petal? The original word would've been something more along the lines of spider petal flower, or spider petal plant, but plant/flower part got omitted overtime due to wordiness.
The word used in Spiderlillystars name specifically is reyskepai. So, when spiderlillies in her name are very specifically red spiderlillies. Red like blood. The cats actually have three words for spiderlily here---skepai, generic for all spiderlillies, regardless of colour; reyskepai, red spiderlillies; and oskskepai, white spiderlillies. They see both red and white spiderlillies, so it felt like it makes sense that they would have words for both colours.
So, anyways, Spiderlilystar's name in Cloudclan's Clanmew would be Reyskepaishai. Reyskepai being "spiderlily (red)", and shai being "star".
Second we have...
Beatleeyes! (Skssspir)
Beatleeyes...I actually tend to just call him Kabutomushi, as in Beatle. As in the Japanese Rhinoceros Beatle. Most of the stories actually focus on him during his apprenticeship, when he's Beatlepaw, but I decided to go with his warrior name.
I looked everywhere in the Clanmew lexicon for a word for beatle--- kbkbkb, as in buzzed, as in for the flight of buzzing insects such as beetles, flies, bees, but not beatle itself. So, I did some more thinking---so much thinking that translating Beatleeyes name actually ended up with a whole new tradition in Cloudclan.
When Cloudclan talks about beatles, they're most often referring to the beatles they use in Beatlefighting. The specific beatles are Japanese Rhinoceros Beatles.
They're honestly really cool. I love these things.
Beatlekit was named Beatlekit by Fernstorm because of his ferocious nature. I looked up some sounds beatles make---they make this weird hissing sound when disturbed. I tried sounding it out, and came up with sksss. They actually use this word so much for beatles that it's an overarching term---it refers to all beatles, not just the beatles they use for Beatlefighting. I actually considered having the word for beatle be based off the sound they make when fighting, but then I decided to go with the other sound instead.
Thus: the first part of his name, sksss.
The suffix, eyes, isn't exactly referring to his actual eyes? Spiderlilystar gave him the suffix eyes for his good eyesight. So, instead of being literal and going with the actual word for eye (ipa), I chose pir for sight. So: Sksspir. His name can be translated as either Beatlesight or Beatleeyes. I prefer Beatleeyes.
Anyways, that wraps up the names thing. I hope it makes sense? These were really fun to do and come up with, really!
