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Post by polar principle on Dec 28, 2018 19:46:47 GMT -5
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Auslimkin wakwai tanas ta sarcaipagkin* kloshus.
* Literally copied the Lezhi wisdom formation as best as possible, also tried knowledge + experience but there's no word for experience so I gave up.
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Bizz
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Post by Bizz on Dec 28, 2018 22:57:00 GMT -5
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Kun tespu* tem lesas, kun nausol lestanas, kun lisspas gumutes*. * plant + point = seed * passive "to please" = experience pleasure or enjoy Ah good. Both have been added to the dictionary (when it updates) Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.Waktanas du hiswak na du wesfaicwot* uba ditkin beni. * * soil + brushing + tool; then maybe hoe = soil + hitting + tool = 'wespomwot' * unsure how to distinguish between "dead bones" and "bones of the dead"... i think i'm going to go with 'ditya beni' and 'ditkin beni' respectively
Ah, cool combinations. I'll definitely be adding them.
For hoe I would have went with wesgepwot (soil cut tool) but wespomwot definitely works too.
Funny how I forgot the word dead. But yeah it would be simply ditya. Therefore
dead bones = ditya beni,
bones of the dead = beni di dit(death)/ditkin(deathness)/ditsani(dead people) depending on what "the dead" means. Ditkin beni is also fine as it just means Beni di ditkin. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.Auslimkin wakwai tanas ta sarcempagkin* kloshus. * Literally copied the Lezhi wisdom formation as best as possible, also tried knowledge + experience but there's no word for experience so I gave up. Eventually, the word experience will be in the language and when it does i'll definitely add that. For now though, Rokkissit (The grouping of knowledges, the group vaguely refers to experience over time) could work. Or perhaps just simply cemsit (shorter version of Rokkisit)? cemmet (smart might)? Kisska allows for many more possible word variations than ever before. As long as it cleanly expresses what you mean, it really should just be fine. However, directness is a fundamental thing to go after first.
Heck even mind+smart+working/function+ness also vaguely works. It just has a different emphasis on certain things.
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Post by polar principle on Dec 29, 2018 2:01:03 GMT -5
for the 'cem' root, intelligence fits for wisdom, but we could just use 'sarki' for that, and smartness brings to the table cleverness/craftiness through use of tricks, or something flashy, which turns me off.
rokkissit is not bad but seems more like "curriculum", or maybe "well-rounded".
i like "power", but it almost seems unrelated to the meaning and reminds me of fierceness, if we're going with physical metaphors it seems "weight" ('mait') would be better suited. can we do 'sarmait'?
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Post by polar principle on Dec 29, 2018 2:54:15 GMT -5
'caisol' = memory
'caitemsol' = experience
'temsol' = age (?)
'temsolya' = old (?)
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
Sardemait* sea demonya, gecen temsolya funim* luppates* won neki.
* wisdom and prudence are closely related, but continuing the physical metaphor it's sarmait vs sardemait i suppose. * "miss", though i'm unsure if the unmarried aspect is actually translated. * courting is in the pre-marital stages, so "being flirted with by".
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
U wasan wisas gia ne tuna, cusmaigas siukkukin*.
* siukkukin = pestilence, as opposed to siukkin = illness
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Post by polar principle on Dec 30, 2018 21:06:11 GMT -5
i'll also quickly mention that there are no words for sadness or sorrow, desperation, etc. we do have mental depression, so I can extrapolate tifmut = sadness; but of course, this is metaphorical and you said you wanted to avoid this with kisska, but i'm unsure to what extent, as i do see metaphors being used at times, and i think that metaphors are surprisingly useful in an oligomorphemic language such as this one -- especially as we don't have roots for certain domains, and within these domains, i expect that shades of nuance will be necessary, more-so than is offered by a literal interpretation of the morphemes.
(or, we could of course just keep doing what we're doing, which is that within the definition of the morpheme itself, we incorporate every domain, which is functionally the same. and also of course as my familiarity with the language increases, i'll be able to judge better.)
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Bizz
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Post by Bizz on Dec 30, 2018 22:52:25 GMT -5
I should mention that the conversion process from Lezhi to Kisska isn't the easiest one as that's why there's still various patches of meaning missing. Not to mention it's an on-off thing. This is why I predicted that once we hit 7000, then there's a chance we'll be at Lezhi's level. However, I feel like that 7000 number has gone up a bit. My point is, you may have to wait.
I should have at some point began to explain the design goals and philosophy of Kisska. Kisska does allow metaphorical speech but generally directness is the first thing to go to. However, directness doesn't work well with abstract stuff so I would actually prefer metaphorical in that instance.
The base word is generally created when I feel that the word possesses a certain concept that should be regarded in its own distinct realm as opposed to being described in a vague way. Now, one could point out that wait Bizz, so you consider something like Ras (means grass) distinct but not Saubtes (means ivy, literally hang+plant)? What gives?
Well, this is where the second vector for base word creation comes in. While Kisska does not have a specific limit, it does have what I like to call a "soft limit". Basically I still sort of want to follow the goal of word-optimization to cut out a bit of redundancy but also attempt to preserve a great deal of expression. In other words, if it seems safe to just reuse current words without things either getting too vague or too long, then go for it.
And then base words are also made because some combinations get too long. For the record, I usually look at multiple languages to see how long a word is in general as well as consider frequency of use and how the phonology will affect the flow of speech. Spanish/Japanese is basically what I am aiming for when it comes to general word length.
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Bizz
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Post by Bizz on Dec 30, 2018 23:00:40 GMT -5
Oh yeah, I should also mention that I'm setting up another conlang called "Kale" (Pronounced Kah-leh) It's basically a combination and a celebration of Kisska, Abigeno, Lespi/Lezhi, and Ebileno/Ebiku in one language. It aims to not be attached to base words and allows for very open word creation and draws all of its vocab from the stated languages (and even some removed/archaic words from the languages). It will have an especially indulgent deviation system.
And yes, cases will return, along with some new features such as using the passive as a way of being polite and using a present conjugation of verbs on a noun to form agent nouns with an object. For example:(it/that)scratches+sky > skyscraper. (it/that)eats+cookies > cookie eater.
Okay, it's more of an idea but I have started working on it a bit so it may become real.
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Post by polar principle on Dec 31, 2018 2:13:29 GMT -5
Sounds interesting and a useful feature there. My favorite feature in all those languages so far I think have been the 'Bo' and 'Zo' prefixes in Lezhi. They were just so cute and so flexible, and I do like the active/passive verb conjugations also, but those prefixes could be understood in so many different situations like participles, even reflexive verbs. Also one of my favorite words in Lezhi/Lespi was 'Geze' for presence, it's so elegant and stuck with me so long since it describes the meaning so perfectly.
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Post by polar principle on Dec 31, 2018 2:21:57 GMT -5
And, of course, the Fleki portals. That almost goes without mentioning though.
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Bizz
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Post by Bizz on Jan 6, 2019 5:53:18 GMT -5
Some Reasons as to the Design of Kisska:
Some years ago, I had a desire to create a language where I could learn it very quickly without as much effort as say a normal language like English would. Thus, any experienced conlanger would expect one to do some of the most common tropes. Use as little words as possible, possibly to the point of base words, be perfectly consistent grammatically, and employ oligosythesis and be efficient with the usage of words.
However, years had passed and while the original goal has changed significantly, I still have that desire to create a language vaguely based off of some of these principles. The main end goal of Kisska is to create a language whose words are typically strongly transparent with its thematic categories. What does this mean? In plainer terms, it means that if a word expresses such a concept, one should expect it to contain a word that directly relates to that concept. For example:
see seek sight show vision look observe stare gaze watch
You'll notice that all of these words have to do with "sight" or "seeing". And yet, various words are distinctly different in some way. Imagine if some who spoke a language isolate, someone who barely knows much about Indo-European derived words. More specifically the Greek/Romance/Germanic branch. These words would not be intuitive at all. Even within English, there are many Latin/Greek words whose meaning is at first inaccessible if you do not understand what the roots mean first and its etymology. Seriously, try asking the average person what the "ob" in observe means. They won't know.
Kisska attempts to strip away as much as of that etymological/historical dependency as much as it can and relies off of the pure meaning of its base words to directly convey the meaning. As a result, all nuances of the original words most likely have to be remade and clearly explained in some way. Kisska also likes to use "what you see is what you get" policy. This is why you'll notice many Kisska words are very blunt and rough in nature. Kisska wants to explain you the concept in frank terms.
Kisska's main goal that permeates and governs a lot of the decision making and word deviation is the concept of "predictability". Consider these two English words I just made up:
Foxknot Decideable
You'll notice that the second one is immediately understandable over the first one. The point is that if you make a word in Kisska, it should generally be self-evident in meaning. To do this, Kisska will attempt to create many patterns almost or as consistent as the -able suffix. This is what I believe truly makes a language easier to learn. It's not the amount of words that makes something easy to learn, it's the way how the language organizes its semantic depth. The higher the depth, the more concepts and phenomenon you must be aware of. However, this can be offset if you can easily predict how you would express something.
HOWEVER
I do realize that no language could survive and live this way. It is simply unnatural and too limiting which why I totally will allow anyone to be as indirect and metaphorical as they please. Why do I allow this so easily? Because the way how Kisska is designed, you can't really mess up too hard. When you have a bunch of words that have a narrow set of meanings/usages, it forces you to be correct naturally since the words that make up a word is plainly transparent and is on display for everyone to see.
This transparency ironically in turn allows one to be even more indirect and metaphorical actually. How? Because it makes it even more evident that you're going against the concept of directness. I can see exactly what you are doing because of context.
But despite this, Kisska will always have those strong, blunt, and direct words at its base which are completely un-ignorable. Thus the language will naturally guide your path and will produce fairly predictable patterns due to this principal. This is in heavy contrast with Lezhi word deviation because deviations don't have many different possible interpretations to its meaning since the base words themselves have already fairly specific meanings.
And why? Why do all of this? Because if you recall, I became concerned with "semantic loss" when making Lezhi and the "unorganized mess" that it was. Kisska aims to take those meanings from Lezhi and chop them up many times and reorganize them afterwards and more consistent fashion and makes many base words to prevent having to rely off of really vague metaphorical language to re-express a concept with much shorter length. Humans naturally want to say things very shortly when they can so I doubt anyone would have wanted to say tsusudöyodösuma (7 syllables btw) to say "veal". Even if the concept is self explanatory (tsusu means child, döyodö means cattle/bovine, and suma means meat.) it's too long to express which pretty much what sparked Kisska in the first place.
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Post by polar principle on Jan 6, 2019 12:13:09 GMT -5
That makes sense. I think human minds have a tendency to abstract things, in part due to laziness -- for example, it's very easy to say "cake" and regard it as a single unit rather than considering how it was made, because this act of consideration is very stressful and taxing, especially when done repeatedly. In this way words are like programs that the mind uses to automate the invocations of bundles of concepts and feelings that would otherwise be awfully complicated, which maybe they still are, but there is the illusion that they are not.
Translation:
Das has tikwis. Mi caias sanse sari has tanbic cakosa*1 saki, sinya fe netunwis*2 -- in sakku,*3 deya nefanya*4 tala "kog" na bisas sutu wen ainumya ca na ne bincaias wawai sutu malet, fedas din bincaiatun tun seas deya metsaimya ta sar*5, rokaya watem kontunes*6. In din wai slai suaseas yoncefsuki*7 sar wotas ta siftuncina*8 gefaca di saksit di caisaki na muti das kua*9 inhiksakku*10 sea dawasya delitnef*11, das kiya*12 isu konsea, gia sea*13 lecyenseku*14 das isu ne sea.
*1 cakosa = to abstract or to consider as a unit, compare tankosa *2 ne + tun + wis *3 dropped dummy "it" *4 nefanya is under the 'nef' morpheme heading for some reason, but i'm assuming ne + fan + ya *5 metsaimya = stressful, tiresome; sarmetsaimya = taxing, draining; i said "ta sar" to avoid redundancy *6 kontuna = to do repeatedly, to do many times *7 let's go with yoncefsuk = program *8 to automate *9 i'm using kua as a lezhi loanword for subjunctive marking *10 inhiksakku = otherwise ("in other situation/case") *11 delitnef = complicated *12 'ke' in lezhi has become 'ki' in kisska and lost much meaning, i will go with kiya = "maybe" *13 using as "exists" *14 lecyenseku = illusion
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Bizz
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Post by Bizz on Jan 6, 2019 14:19:39 GMT -5
That makes sense. I think human minds have a tendency to abstract things, in part due to laziness -- for example, it's very easy to say "cake" and regard it as a single unit rather than considering how it was made, because this act of consideration is very stressful and taxing, especially when done repeatedly. In this way words are like programs that the mind uses to automate the invocations of bundles of concepts and feelings that would otherwise be awfully complicated, which maybe they still are, but there is the illusion that they are not. Translation: Das has tikwis. Mi caias sanse sari has tanbic cakosa*1 saki, sinya fe netunwis*2 -- in sakku,*3 deya nefanya*4 tala "kog" na bisas sutu wen ainumya ca na ne bincaias wawai sutu malet, fedas din bincaiatun tun seas deya metsaimya ta sar*5, rokaya watem kontunes*6. In din wai slai suaseas yoncefsuki*7 sar wotas ta siftuncina*8 gefaca di saksit di caisaki na muti das kua*9 inhiksakku*10 sea dawasya delitnef*11, das kiya*12 isu konsea, gia sea*13 lecyenseku*14 das isu ne sea. *1 cakosa = to abstract or to consider as a unit, compare tankosa *2 ne + tun + wis *3 dropped dummy "it" *4 nefanya is under the 'nef' morpheme heading for some reason, but i'm assuming ne + fan + ya *5 metsaimya = stressful, tiresome; sarmetsaimya = taxing, draining; i said "ta sar" to avoid redundancy *6 kontuna = to do repeatedly, to do many times *7 let's go with yoncefsuk = program *8 to automate *9 i'm using kua as a lezhi loanword for subjunctive marking *10 inhiksakku = otherwise ("in other situation/case") *11 delitnef = complicated *12 'ke' in lezhi has become 'ki' in kisska and lost much meaning, i will go with kiya = "maybe" *13 using as "exists" *14 lecyenseku = illusion
Ah darn, I eventually have to make "logic" concepts. I do like how you used tikwis for "sense" though. Still, I think a more direct way at expressing that would be nice. At some point, I was also going to mention that "have" phrases are definitely still a thing you can use. I forgot what languages you know about but I think you're aware of Spanish's "tengo hambre" (to have hunger) thing.
I like the cakosa word you made. It really makes use of a word that was only intended for denoting formal units of SI. I really should consider using it more abstractly ahaha. If I were to attempt this however, I would have said fensarya(from the mind-ish, abstract) + kosa(to cause, to make) but this a fairly neater solution, at least in the context of this passage.
Nice that you bring up dummy it. Yeah, Kisska allows you to "pro-drop" In other words, if you do not feel that the subject pronoun is important to state due to context or for some other reason, then you do not have to state it.
Yes you are correct to assume that was ne+fan+ya. Due to Kisska's phonotactics, you will run into words that will look like other words which is fairly unfortunate. Sometimes for some words, you will see me put a dash or apostrophe in between to clear that up. If you see that, do not actually type the dash or apostrophe unless necessary. There actually is a way for me to fix this issue but it comes at a cost of making the orthography look pretty ugly as I would prefer just using the aforementioned method. At the very least, the writing system I made for Kisska avoids this problem.
Also good that you brought up another important topic "redundancy". You'll notice if you talk about a specific field in Kisska, you'll end up saying a few base words very often and even some related expressions will cause this. If this happens, feel free to cut down the word using context. For example:
Mi waktanas wak. (I drive a car.)
Since it is apparent that we already know what kind of "directing" you are doing, which is specifically "vehicle-directing/driving", it's not necessary to state it.
Mi tanas wak.
This essentially means the same thing. I find this design quirk clever because it still makes perfect sense even when shortened and one does not have to get bogged down by some of Kisska's higher syllable words because there will be cases where you may never actually need to say the whole word. A holy unison of context and convenient lexicality.
Yon(event)+cef (sequence)+suk(sugar) = program. Is this intended? I'll assume you meant yon+cef+sak instead.
Otherwise, cool work. I'll be adding some of these and updating the dictionary fairly soon.
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Bizz
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Post by Bizz on Jan 6, 2019 14:19:58 GMT -5
Yon (event) -> Cad (event)
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Post by polar principle on Jan 6, 2019 22:58:13 GMT -5
yeah, english and russian are my fluent ones, spanish i know all the basics and have a fair proficiency -- i was walking through an abandoned building the other day, and found a spanish translation of the Zohar laying around, which sort of intrigued me since it was so random; i remember going through some of it, i noted down --
- something about a communication network between angels and humans - "feminine fire" -- metaphorical alchemy nuances - the human is a stage for idols to play on
it's a surprisingly easy language to just figure out "on the fly", the worst part is probably the conjugations, but it's easier than russian declensions anyway. so, this helped me brush up on my spanish a bit, as well as gleaming some information.
sugar reminds me of "syntactic sugar", ahah, but yes I meant sak. what's good is, i was hoping that words like "program" wouldn't have to mention computers in them and the like if the context was there, so that's good with the redundancy.
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Post by polar principle on Jan 6, 2019 23:22:58 GMT -5
i see you added 'sarmait', yeah that is really obvious it's a metaphor, the worst is just when it's ambiguous whether it's metaphorical or literal.
we get these relative words which are nice meaning-shades, take advantage of the nuance if you like:
cakosa = to abstract, to symbolize, to consider as a unit, black-box abstraction fensaryakosa = to abstract, to ideate, to consider in the mind, to visualize
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