The turn of the year seemed an appropriate time to retrun to this long-neglected blog. This year, for the first time, I participated in the Conlang Card Exchange, in which conlangers send holiday cards in their languages and their scripts to other conlangers. I received five addresses: three were in the US, but the fourth and fifth were in China ( Read more... )

Current Martian Year: 2220 A.D.

Diligent readers may recall that it is rude, ungrammatical, and even immoral to use the Instrumental Case -ki with animate nouns. If one should suffer the misfortune of needing an animate instrumental, such as a ditransitive causative construction in the imperfective mood, one must resort to circumlocutions such as ( Read more... )

A new case was recently authorized in Siye: the Causative Case, the nominal counterpart of the causative clause-final suffix -ya. The new case suffix, like many other new case suffixes in the expanding case system of Siye, uses the Genitive Case suffix -ne- as a base; thus the new case suffix is -neya. It is not sensitive to animacy distinctions. ( Read more... )

It's been more than a score of years since I posted here. Much has changed on the Red Planet in that time, marriages, births, and deaths, but the language has remained (almost) constant ( Read more... )

Siye verb roots, when combined with the directional and converbal suffixes, and the detransitivizing reflexive prefix, are remarkably flexible; from the root /su/tu/ 'to move', we derive ( Read more... )

Koha is a language spoken in the Pacific Ocean of the Eislehrenwelt within the Polycosm. Koha is a trade language derived from German (its name is short for Ki Koha Paka, the German Language). There are two genders in Koha, masculine and feminine. The definite articles are ka and ki; the indefinite articles are a and ana.

ka haka             the ( Read more... )

Some suffixes that come last on the verb are not strictly verbal suffixes, but rather clause-final suffix. Since the position of these suffixes is strictly at the end of a clause, a switch from SOV to OVS word order results in these suffixes changing into noun suffixes. Examples follliow.
tupiya nenelo yikopumasum, i yalo yilipusumnamasu. If the ( Read more... )

The indefinite pronoun and pronominal prefix in Siye is mu(-). The free and fixed forms demonstrate behaviors that are worth examination.

The free form mu is a pronoun, and therefore uses the nominative and accusative cases rather than the ergative and absolutive. The accusative form, however, unlike those of le, pe, i, and e, is identical to the ( Read more... )

Found upon clearing my phone ( Read more... )

[The Starling's Song was the text used for the First Conlang Relay. Since I am participating in Conlang Relay 20, I composed this as practice.]

The Starling's Song
Lo tupi lumkememena nuke tutulo esipuma.
Saki pomi pemmekem esupunumakem, tupi miya kam inelo etukipusumma.
Samni nelo ekimpukimakem, tupi koya lumkelosu numulo enupusuma.
Palaya imaka ( Read more... )