Originally posted on Wordpress on 01 November 2021
Introduction
In the very first, 2014 version of The Book of Immortality, there were five languages, four of which descended from a single proto-language.
The four languages descended from the proto-language were separated into two families: dragon and tiger. The dragon languages were the language of patience (an ancient language, akin to Latin, which was used in the modern day for casting magic spells by dragons and elves) and the river tongue, which was the modern language spoken by the dragons (akin to the modern Romance languages). The tiger languages were the language of passion (again, an ancient language akin to Latin, used in the modern day for magic exclusively by the tigers) and the white language, the modern tiger language.
The fifth language was "Common", spoken by elves and humans. It was represented by English.
Once The Book of Immortality reached its current form, I revamped the dragon and tiger languages and also created a conlang for the humans and elves: meitsung soré. The dragon language is much more fleshed out and requires a blog post of its own, but the tiger language and meitsung soré are fairly basic naming languages.
Mayu Lháni
Mayu lháni literally means "tiger language". It always contained /ɬ/, but the uvular consonants were added in the final version of the conlang.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | (ɴ) | ||
| Stop | p b | t d | k g | q | |
| Fricative | s ɬ | x | (χ) | ||
| Approximant | r l | j | w |
The white language had /e/ and /o/ and no vowel length distinction. I decided that mayu lháni would have three vowels to distinguish it more from the other conlangs.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | u uː | |
| Ope | a aː |
Syllable structure is CVC. Mayu lháni is agglutinative, and word order is Verb-Subject-Object. Since I never actually fleshed out anything other than nouns, this doesn't matter much.
Nouns have four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative) and three numbers (singular, dual, plural).
| Case | Singular | Dual | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | - | -pe | -ma |
| Accusative | -ge | -pege | -mage |
| Genitive | -a | -pea | -má |
| Dative | -ih | -peih | -maih |
I also created some numbers:
| Numeral | Number |
|---|---|
| 1 | tús |
| 2 | pín |
| 3 | har |
| 4 | qina |
| 5 | nálhi |
| 6 | ísa |
| 7 | wara |
| 8 | lhuyu |
| 9 | táki |
| 10 | kata |
| 100 | talhi |
| 1000 | qin |
Meitsung soré
Meitsung soré means "splendid language". Since I knew from the beginning that all I needed was a naming language, all I created was the phonology and orthography. There's no actual grammar in this conlang.
I spent some time wondering if I wanted to have both /r/ and /l/. I ended up liking enough of the words with /r/ in them that I kept them both.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
| Stop | p | t | k | ||
| Fricative | s | ɕ | h | ||
| Affricate | t͡s | t͡ɕ | |||
| Approximant | ɹ~ɻ l | j | w |
Having both /e/ and /ɛ/ was also something I deliberated on for a while. But I didn't want to change the pronunciation of Lisel /lisɛl/ and I wanted /e/ in the language, so...I kept both.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | (ə) | o |
| Open-Mid | ɛ | ||
| Open | a |
Syllable structure is CVF, where C is any consonant, V is any vowel, and F is /ŋ/, /l/, /n/. I know it seems pretty random that /l/ is mixed in with the nasals, but again...it's because I wanted Lisel's name to work in the language. I'm not sure why I didn't allow the other approximants to be finals as well.