Goedish - Nouns

From "Ej studans par Gotisk! - A Comprehensive Guide to the Goedish Language, First Edition, Chapter 2: Nouns"

Goedish nouns are an entirely different matter. Over ninety percent of them are derived from counterpart verbs, or verbs that end up sharing the same root. An example is the archetypal word “drad”, derived from “dran”. Understanding the chapter on Verbs will help prepare one for the concepts that make up the derivations of them – a suitably large amount of the lexicon. With only so many roots to take from, as the list of original Germanic verbs is relatively small, there are various styles of deriving nouns from a single root that imply different aspects, and create a new word altogether. There are four standard types of verb-derived nouns, and unlike the suffix of the Goedish verb, the suffix of the noun is changed in accordance with plurality and subject-object orientation.

As is detailed in the first chapter, verbs make the backbone of the Goedish language. This applies both literally and etymologically. This first group of nouns and indeed the entire initial lexicon of nouns in Goedish are in fact verbs that have been given forms as nouns. This means that for each verb, there is a corresponding noun – and then three additional ones that give a noun-form in a different sense. Each of these four endings makes the verb a noun in a different aspect, but the endings usually denote the same treatment for each verb. For example, the implications of the second ending, “eo”, are the same for all verbs that it is applied to.

The First Declension : “Ad”

“Ad” is a cognate with the Latin ending “us” and the proto-Germanic ending “az”. Therefore it follows similar rules, yet it changes only with respect to number and role as a subject or object. It is curious to note that while Greek, Latin, and the Slavic languages have preserved this practice, the rest of the Germanic languages have nearly lost it altogether, instead opting to preserve the practice of verb conjugation which Goedish lacks from the source.

With these two binary values, a total of four possible endings results from the first declension “ad”. These are Nominative Singular, Nominative Plural, Accusative Singular, and Accusative Plural. The Dative and Genetive cases, nor any others, are not marked by a declensional suffix. They are rather marked by certain practices: for the Dative, it is dependent on the inclusion of prepositions the likes of which will be gone over later. For the Genetive case, the possessing word is rendered in the Accusative Plural case and follows the noun that it is possessing. This being said, the plurality of the possessor cannot be expressed while the Genetive case is in effect.

The following is a chart for the declension of “drad”, which will be used as an example:

Tree – “drad”	Singular	Plural
Nominative	drad	draid
Accusative	dradi	draidi

This chart shows the way in which this kind of noun declines, as well as introduces the first discrepancy between typography and phonetics. It is an important note for pronouncing Goedish, that whenever the letter “d” at the end of a noun becomes bordered on either side by an “i”, it slips from its “d” sound to that of the sound “th”, as in the English word “the”. This is one of the few Germanic languages to retain the fricative “th” sound.

As the chart shows, the word “drad” starts at its simplest form with the form “drad” and ends at its most complex form, “draidi”. In between are two possibilities. The first, of the Nominative Plural case, functions as a simple Ablaut and alteration of the noun’s inner vowel sound, so that the middle “a” suddenly becomes “ai”. This feature is familiar for speakers of Germanic languages. The second, the simple fixation of an “i” to the end of the noun, is also familiar in the same way, being a simple alteration of the ending in the accusative. A combination, changing “ad” to “aidi”, graces the Accusative Plural case.

We have already seen the word “drad”. As will be quoted in our section on Noun Transitivity, “Words ending in ‘ad’ are often those things which are either acted upon in the event of the verb or enact the verb [upon] themselves…” They describe whatever object most often experiences that verb. For the Goedish sense of thinking this was “tree”, for the concept “to hold”. In this way the class of words ending in “ad” is the closest to those of the verb-counterparts. 

Two other forms exist, however, for the nouns ending in “ad”. These have nothing to do with accusativity or plurality, and nor do they mark them. The first is relatively simple, and it is the shift of “ad” to “ai”. It is the Connective form, as seen in the first chapter’s discussion of compound nouns, and it performs exactly what is implied. Any word that takes the Connective form can thus be attached to the beginning of another noun to make a compound word, but it may only take this form if it is attached in such a way. “Drai” as a stand-alone word does not make sense. As the last note about this form, it is important to reflect on the fact that the fixation of a word to another does not have the same implications as when compounds ending in a verb are made. For example, “draibrad” would not be the exact noun-counterpart of “draibran”. For two nouns joined together, the way that the noun at the front alters the one at the back is in relation to what its original verb means – “dran” – and not “drad”, even though it uses the connective form of “drad”.

The second additional form is the curiosity called the “Nominal Case”, but not because of anything nominative or subject-marking. It is unique among languages, comparable only to the vocative case, which it nevertheless differs from dramatically. This form creates a name out of the noun, a proper name such as can be used to name a figure, being, or a simple archetypal actor. The result is best thought of as a title. It can only be done with the class of words ending in “ad”, and is carried out by first bringing the word into its Accusative Plural form, ending in “aidi”. Then, as will be discussed in the section over adjectives, a sound is inserted in the form of a letter before the middle vowel of the noun. It is an “i”. The resulting name will describe a being that performs the action in question, deriving from the original verb rather than its concrete noun-counterpart ending in “ad”. It therefore makes another return to its root and manifests again as an actor or agent. Therefore, “drad” would become “Driaidi”, meaning “one who endures”. The practice of making or using these names is very limited.

Lastly, there is an ending for this class of word that denotes a range of degrees or the quality of the word in question. “Ad” becomes “aiad”.

The Second Declension: “Eo”

“Eo” is thought to be a cognate of the Latin feminine ending “a” and the German feminine ending “a”. However, its meaning – as is thought to be in the proto-Indo-European language as well – does not signify anything pertaining to biological sex. What it denotes, from its originating verb, is a thing that is involved in the process of carrying out the action, but is not necessarily the affector or the affected. It is simply a catalyst, or an object somehow removed from its verb-counterpart by a few degrees of meaning and is meant to denote something that relates to it. For example, the word ending in “eo” for the verb “tran”, which means “to turn”, is “treo”, meaning “track”. This word specifically implies a closed track, or a path that is circular, because that is what results from the typically continuous action of “tran” (the nature of “tran” will be extrapolated upon later, shedding much light on its continuous nature).

The nature of this ending may seem idiosyncratic at times, but they can all be traced back to their parent verb in some fashion or other. To illustrate, the “eo” form of the verb “dran”, “dreo”, has the meaning of “door”. At first there seems little resemblance between a tree, “drad”, and a door, “dreo”, other than that they both might be made of wood. However, being noun-forms of the same verb, they do share a feature. “Dreo” is what occurs, or what exists, when “dran” is continually performed – but it is not the actor nor the acted upon. It is simply an object which typifies a usage of “dran”, to hold fast, and the Goedish people most readily assessed this as a door. A door is a thing which lets things in and does not permit others, and in this function as a dynamic barrier, guarding whatever is at the other side, its function is very prevalent for something that is “holding fast” or “supporting”. A gate supports or holds fast in the face of what is going against it, yet it lets in that which can help it or which should enter. It is therefore a very important tool for whatever is holding fast. Further etymology for “dreo” can be traced back to a supposed relationship of trees acting as doorways, either as in the hollow of a tree or in the space between two trees in the pagan practices of the ancient Goedish, but this cannot be clearly documented.

To sum this up, “eo” is what results when the action is undertaken, but most often as a function, and whatever object provides that function, rather than what the physical product of the verb is.

The ending “eo” also changes in accordance to plurality and accusativity. These binary values create a total of four endings, which are illustrated in the table below, the declension of the word “dreo”:

Door  – “dreo”	Singular	Plural
Nominative	drea	dreia
Accusative	dreo	drei

As the chart shows, the Nominative Singular form is not “dreo”, but “drea”. The reason that words ending in “eo” are listed as such, instead of being listed as words ending in “ea”, is because this class of noun most often tends to not be in the Nominative case, due to its nature, and is mostly seen as an accusative object either with a direct or indirect relationship. They are often not the actors. One can readily see that the declension of “eo” makes changes much more radically than that of “ad”.

As before, the Dative case is marked by the inclusion of a preposition, without any additional changes to the actual word. The Genitive however is always marked with the Nominative Plural case, and also does not allow the expression of plurality while it is in effect. As with “ad”, it follows the possessed thing whenever in the Genitive case.

The Connective form of words ending in “eo” is actually no different than “eo” – these words can simply be added how they are to another, albeit carrying a specific spectrum of meaning. These words can also connect to others with the ending “ea”, and this is only if the described base-word of the compound is being described as affected by the connected word, which is most often not the case. When it is connected with the ending “eo”, it usually means, in the case of verbs, “to perform said verb in the way that would be done to the connecting word”, rather than the other way around, when “ea” is used. “Dreodan” means literally “to do as one would to a door”, and thus means either “to open the door”, “to close the door” or “to open or close” something in the general sense. “Dreadan”, on the other hand, would mean “to do as a door does”, which could mean a range of things, most of which happen to be expressed already by other words.

The Third Declension: “i”

This rarely seen ending is etymologically similar to the ending “a”, but it denotes an instance of an uncountable thing. That mostly means something for which a plural form is irrelevant, such as snow and rain, and therefore the word denotes a continuous amount. “Vi”, for example, means water. “Sti” means grain. It has little to no declension at all, existing only in a Connective form. When it is fixed to a word, its ending changes from “i” to “y”, which is the Greek Y or Upsilon which is pronounced as the umlaut-ed “u” in the German word for bureau. Even with this being said, there are a few singular words that fall under this category that deserve attention.

This is because those words do not follow the standard – and very simple – rules for the ending “i”, and that is because they retain the remnants of the former style of declension that has since disappeared. The two words particularly in question are “liht”, “miht”, and “naht”, which mean “light”, “power” and “night”.  These follow an old system of declension and relate to “i” only in the fact that their Connective forms also end with “y”.

The following table gives the declension for the word “naht”:

                        Singular                       Plural

Nominative     nyt                   nahti

Accusative      naht                 nahti

The sequence “aht” is also seen as “iht”.

The Fourth Declension: “av” and other miscellaneous letters

Words that end in “av” are denoted as a kind of vessel for whatever is taking place, or the physical part of the subject that most readily performs what the subject is said to tend to perform. For example, what is said to tend to perform “stan” the most is a “stad”, which is a word meaning “point” and “city” and possibly several other things that stand anchored in one place. The part of a single object that tends to perform it, however, which itself does this performing is “stav”, meaning “staff”, “stem” or “pole” depending on its application. It can also mean the trunk of a tree. This is because it is the trunk that performs most of the standing, while the tree performs this act mostly by its possession of the trunk. It is therefore a lesser version of the ending “ad” and denotes a lesser, more instrumental and actual application of the action, which may or may not belong to the “ad” form itself.

In terms of declension, this ending follows the exact same rules as the ending “ad”, except that the “d” has been replaced with “v”. This is only true, however, for those words that end in “av” that are derived from parent verbs like the rest of the previously described noun-types – and there are some that do not. These also end in the vowel “a” and then a consonant, but it is not “v”. This special sub-class of nouns fall under this section but do not behave in the way that the “ad” and “av” endings do. Instead they only take two forms, what would be approximated to the Nominative Singular and Accusative Plural seen in the table of the declension of “drad”. Without the option of distinguishing between Nominative and Accusative cases, these special words are actually remnants from the older proto-Germanic lexicon that never received proper sound-shifts to accommodate for the Goedish style of language. Or, more likely, they simply never changed. They therefore became declined under these two modes, which are very simple.

The ancient word “ak” means “oak” in Goedish, and is one of these miscellaneous-letter words. Below is a table with the declension of “ak”:

Oak – “ak”	Singular	Plural
Nominative  or Accusative	ak	aiki

Formerly there was a practice of rendering the Nominative Plural as “aik”, as well as with other words of this class, but such a practice has not persisted into the current century. It survives in only older writings.

The Connective form of the word ending in “av” remains “av” through and through. For other words under this category, they also remain the same.

Having gone over the four familiar endings derived from verbs, it would do good to review what vocabulary has been introduced. With their English translations, they are:

tran – to turn

treo – track

dreo – door

dreodan – to open the door

vi – water

sti – grain

liht – light

miht – might

naht – night

stad – city

stav – staff

ak – oak

As you may have already become aware of, the glosses of these words represent only a specific application of the word. You will no doubt learn of the various glosses that can be achieved via context, such as “point” instead of “city” from the word “stad”, as you find more examples.

Words without Standard Etymological Shifts

These words mostly persist with their old forms, like “ak”, and have not adapted at all to the system of declension. They therefore remain without declension, and can only be pluralized by adding an “i” to the end. These include such familiar words as “mother”, “father”, “sister”, and “brother, which are “moer”, “foer”, “soer”, and “broer”.

Further words without declension

A smaller amount of Goedish nouns, as well as verbs, come not from proto-Germanic linguistic roots but from onomatopoeia instead. This practice developed within the past thousand years to account for several words missing in the Goedish language – perhaps deleted as a result of a forced assimilation of the local Baltic people, or perhaps for more ineffable reasons. Chief among the examples is the word “kakan”, which means “to cook”, and is thought to come from the onomatopoeia of sizzling, “crackling” food when it is being cooked rather than the standard Germanic cognate for “cook”. There is a theory that perhaps these words were deleted and then rediscovered when making contact with other Germanic languages, and were appropriated under the guise and explanation of a solidarity-preserving onomatopoeic base. There are several words like this. Some hold much precidence, such as “kikan” which means “to peek”, or “to take a look at”, familiar in the German cognates “kieken” and “gucken”, but which is explained as coming from the clucking of a chicken or bird as it peeks at something from around the corner. Many of these words come from animal noises. “Moan” means to moan, and it comes from the sound of a cow mooing – this is one of the more plausible onomatopoeic relationships. The fact that the spelling deviates by not containing the single vowel “a”, or by the fact that the letter preceding the apparent base do not follow a Connective form, betray them as onomatopoeic sounds. The Goedish people never really had much of a chance to advance their form of nationalism, since the smothering of the Russians, Germans and even Latvians during the world wars and the past two centuries, but they have still maintained that these terms come from within their language alone, and that they were not stolen from their sister languages.

The last group of words is borrowed directly from Latin or Greek. “Avto” is car, “Disadparum” is disappearance, and it would not be rare to see a familiar Latin word or two in a text. Some of these words follow a simple system of declension while others do not follow any at all.

The next chapter will deal with parts of speech, including further descriptive classes such as pronouns, prepositions, and adjectives. 

Previous Chapters:

Chapter 1: Verbs

Goedish - Verbs

From "Ej studans par Godisk! – A Comprehensive Guide to the Goedish Language, Chapter 1: Verbs"

Goedish is the language of a half-thousand people on the coast of Estonia and Latvia, taking from the settlement of Germanic tribes centuries ago. It survives in only a few numbered villages, and is a unique case of a Germanic language whose sister and brother branches have all died off, leaving it as the sole surviving member of a distant Germanic language branch. In its totality, it mostly draws from Proto-Germanic in vocabulary, morphology and syntax – less of it comes from Latin, mostly from modern times, yet preserves a Germanic morphology when adopting these words. It has morphed considerably from its usage by a hybridized Germano-Baltic people, who have kept the language ever since its introduction. Being the only member of its branch, it has unique features which set it apart, yet undeniably trace back to a direct Proto-Germanic origin. Non-Germanic features are thought to be due to either elements of Baltic or Finno-Ugric influence.

Verbs

Goedish verbs come in a uniform style; they all end in “an”, which with variations in accent can become –en or even –in, which is a cognate with the German infinitive ending –en and the Latin ending –um. Even so, this helps to organize Goedish verbs by their direct link to proto-Germanic – for example, the cognate for the verb “to do” comes in many forms in the various Germanic languages, and not all of them are immediately recognizeable. Goedish preserves the easiness of this task in simply pairing the sound with its customary verb ending, “an”, in order to produce “dan”. We therefore know that “dan” means to do, and from there on out a relatively simple system of recognizing Germanic roots takes effect.

What is different about Goedish verbs, however, from the rest of its fraternal and sororitarian counterparts is the fact that it, contrary to them, does not exhibit an explicit system of conjugation. That is, the “an” ending does not change to another ending depending on tense, person, et cetera. Person is not marked in verbs, and is denoted solely through the presence of the subject. This means that the ending “an” is universal for all subjects, regardless of person. There are other features, though, which help the reader and speaker to denote meanings such as tense, and they are all exceedingly strange.

The first is not so unfamiliar, being a cognate of the German verbal prefix “ge” and the old English “a”. However, unlike in German there is otherwise no other change in the verb when it is given the tense of a past event – the prefix “e” is simply added to the verb, bringing it into the past tense. Therefore “dan” becomes “edan”. However, in the course of the languages history the exact relationship of the “e” prefix became estranged, and sometimes manuscripts mark this prefix rather at the end of the subject, connected, instead of at the beginning of the verb, connected. Taking into account that the first-person pronoun is “ej”, and our previous mention of “dan”, the clause meaning “I do”, which would be “Ej dan”, would therefore appear not as “Ej edan” but as “Eje dan” whenever the verb is meant to be in the past tense. This would not be any truly different if the subject is always before the verb – therefore proving only to be a variation in spelling – but the fact that subjects and verbs in Germanic languages can take a whole other realm of placement and replacement throughout a clause mean that “e” has already been seen to be, on a whole, a suffix for the subject, rather than a prefix for the verb. Whenever the subject is placed before the verb, there has been a recent resurgence in spelling “e” in connection to the beginning to the verb, instead of the subject, but further developments are very sparse.

The second marker of tense, which is that of the present, also takes the form of the letter “e”. But this is a suffix for the verb, and, contrary to other Germanic languages, the “an” ending remains unchanged. Instead the “e” is affixed to the end, so that “I will do” would be rendered as “Ej dane”. No one knows where this practice originates from, but it was originally hypothesized that it was a remnant of a dative marker affixed to a verb, similar to the English word “to”, as in, “I am going to do” or “I am to do”.

There are further conjugations of the Goedish verb, however. The speculative “would have” takes the form of a double-inclusion, using the past-tense and future-tense markers simultaneously in a fashion that would render “I would have done” as “Eje dane”.

The last feature of the Goedish verb here is that of the gerund case, also called the Continuous mood for other languages. In German this is the shift of “en” to “end”; in English this is the affixation of “ing”. For Goedish, an “s” is affixed to the end of a verb, turning a verb like the archetypal “dan” into “dans”.  Therefore sentences like “I am doing” or “I was doing” would be rendered as “Ej dans” or “Eje dans”.

Passive Mood

The Passive mood is the other side of the Goedish verb. These are simpler. For Goedish, the “an” ending actually does make a change – but it is a simple omission of the “n”. Therefore a verb like “dan” becomes “da”, and “I am done” or “I have been done” would be rendered as “Ej da” or “Eje da”. Note well that “I am done” does not have the same meaning of a statement of completing something as it does in English – it means simply that one has been “done” by something, with further meaning left to the enrichment of the context.

There is a gerund or continous form of the Goedish verb, and this is the ending “ni”. Therefore “I am being done” would be rendered as “Ej dani”, and “I was being done” would be rendered as “Eje dani”. Sufficing to say, there is no future tense available for verbs in the Passive mood.

Conditional, “If”

The last mood of the Goedish verb is a very rare one – the Conditional mood. It runs along the lines of what the English phrase “If one were to”, rendered in Goedish. It is achieved by replacing the suffix “an” with “as”, and has no Continuous version. Therefore, “If I were to do” would be rendered as “Ej das”. It has one other form, for the Past tense, rendering “If I had done” as “Eje das”.

Ej studan - I study
Ej studans - I am studying
Eje studans - I was studying
Eje studan par Godisk - I have studied for Goedish or I studied Goedish
Eje studans par Godisk - I was studying Goedish or I've been studying for Goedish

Goedish verbs themselves come mostly directly from proto-Germanic, and as such their forms retain a pure linguistic relationship. It is the style of Goedish to omit the cognate vowels present in so many Germanic verb forms. For example, in the English word “bear” we have preserved the middle vowels between the “b” and “r”. However, in Goedish the word is more likely to have its midle vowel omitted, its two consonants joined together, and the declensional suffix, such as “ad”, be given presidence. Therefore, a word like “bear” would go from the previous form “beran” to just “bran”.

Negation

Lastly, before we take a break, one must know how to negate the Goedish verb. The Imperative mood comes strictly through mentioning the verb in its normal state – “dan!” for the verb “dan” and so forth – but negation occures through the affixation of the suffix “it”, after whatever temporal tense has been applied. For example, “I do not do” would be rendered as “Ej danit”, “I did not do” would be “Eje danit”, and “I will not do” would be rendered as “Ej daneit”. The last three vowels of “daneit” are pronounced as the “ay” in the English word “day”, therefore as one sound.

Below is a table to help practice. What does each of these mean?

Ej dan

Eje dan

Ej dane

Eje dane

Ej dans

Eje dans

Ej da

Eje da

Ej dani

Eje dani

Elementary verbs: dan – to do, bran – to have, studan – to study (yes, this is a loanword from Latin!)

These are only the basics of Goedish verbs. Starting with these roots, it is possible to construct an even more extensive vocabulary, primarily with the two prefixes “be” and “ge”, and then by the affixation of secondary words to alter the main verb’s meaning. The most common form of this practice is the adjoining of a secondary verb to the beginning of the verb “dan”, which means “to do”. For the purposes of explaining this instance in particular, we will introduce another verb: “dran”. This verb, like most Goedish verbs, has a rich etymological history and carries with it an extensive set of meanings. An elementary gloss would render it in English as “to hold”, but in the sense of an object holding under pressure, or a sign-post holding up over time. Its English cognates are “drag”, “draw”, and “durate”, the latter of which sheds greater light on its meaning. What typifies the action of this verb is to “hold fast”, in a sense to “support”, either itself or whatever it is supporting; it implies that the subject drags itself through time, and in the sense of its German cognate “ertragen”, also to take, as in to take abuse, a situation, or a test of endurance. From this we derive all of its further implications – it is used when speaking of oneself doing service or being employed, in something or another.  

The practice of affixing a secondary verb to the verb “dan” is shown in this classic example. When we affix to it the verb “dran”, which now takes its “connective” form, the result is “draidan”. The Connective form, as we will discuss in the second chapter, is the form with which a word can be affixed to another, in order to form a compound word.

The result of this affixation involves a meaning which has gone through several layers of alteration. The first meaning, glossed as “to hold” or “to hold fast”, means just precisely that. However, the meaning of “draidan” is, literally, “to do as an object typifying the action ‘dan’ would do”. This is a little confusing at first. After all, would not an object that performs “draidan” do exactly what an object that performs “dan” does? No. This is because, truth be told, what is being affixed to “dan” is not the actual verb “dran”, but its noun counterpart, “drad”. “Drad” is what typifies the action of “dran”, which in Goedish is a tree. The meaning of “draidan” picks up specifically how a tree would perform the action “dran”, which brings further specificity in meaning. The way in which a tree “endures” is very specific compared to other meanings what we can ascribe to “dran”, which gives “draidan” its specific meaning. “Draidan” therefore means to “endure”, “withstand”, “take”, “last”, “durate”, and lastly to “be strong” or “be hard”. One may “dran”, but one may not always “draidan”. They hold different implications. The true wonder of Goedish verbs is that they are often defined by context and the way in which they are used, which this extensive guide will no doubt clarify.

We have mentioned one other way of constructing new verbs, and this is through the affixation of “ge” and “be”. The first of the two, “ge”, has a cognate in German as the prefix “ge”, as well as the English word “again” and “against”. We have once before explained one of the cognates of “ge” as the Past tense marker in Goedish; but is serves another role, and this affixation helps to produce a whole new word altogether. It gives the meaning equivalent to both “again”, a collective suffix denoting either many times or a sum of a great number of instances, and “against”, which has both meanings of “to return” or “repeat” as well as “against” physically or mentally.  For example, the resulting form “gedan” means, in English, “to react”. This comes from the implication of doing something in return for another action having been done, or enacting a contrasting action, either in opposition to the other action or as a simple result, typified by its status as an action which “repeats” as being the second or reacting action, or “goes against” by being produced secondarily, in contrast. By extension, this particulary word also means “to function”, as in to function within a system, which is typified by how it acts in accordance with the things around it.

Our second prefix, “be”, it’s a merged cognate of both prefixes “be” and “for” in English. Etymologically it comes from the Goedish word “par”, meaning “for”. This prefix denotes the subject’s action of setting the object into a particular path of action, which is to enact the original verb, or to simply denote that the subject is making that verb be done, regardless of whether the subject is actually performing the verb or not. To use our previous example, the resulting word “bedan” means “to cause”, literally meaning “to make something do” or “to make something be done”. It also means “to affect”, especially when another verb is lacking in the clause. The meanings are often simultaneous.

Lastly, we will note some of the specific usages of verbs that are achieved through the Passive mood. For example, the elusive word “bran” does not only mean “to bear”, but also all of the other implications that Germanic languages give to their cognates of “to bear” – to be born, to conceive, to give birth to. This word is used to denote the subject having given birth to someone. In the Passive mood, it means to have been born. Therefore, “I was born” would be rendered in Goedish as “Eje bra”. Unlike in English, Goedish does not use the verb “to be” to facilitate the Passive mood.

This goes to great lengths in writing. Other words whose usages are notable are “gran” and “stan”, meaning in English “to grow” and “to stand”. The Passive mood of “gran” means something similar, but it is strictly intransitive, meaning either “for the subject itself to grow” or “for the subject to be grown by someone or something”, unlike “gran”, which means either “for the subject itself to grow” or “for the subject to grow something”. The Passive mood only makes that certain sense of the word, for the subject itself to grow, to be more clearly expressed.

For a word like “stan”, there are many other implications. The word itself is very rich with connotations, most of which are alotted separate words in other languages. English as “sit”, “stand”, “set”, “stay”, and “stall” as cognates, whereas Goedish has only “stan”. Further differentiation depends on its context. The Passive form of the word, which is “sta”, can mean either for the subject itself to sit, as is also denoted in “stan”, but can also mean to be seated or placed somewhere. It thus denotes less of a volitional or purposeful movement.

In order to review what we have learnt before the chapter-end, we will list here all Goedish words that have been introduced thus far:

dan – to do

Ej – I (singular first-person pronoun)

studan – to study (a borrowing from Latin)

bran – to have

dran – to hold

draidan – to endure

drad – tree

gedan – to react

bedan – to affect

gran – to grow

stan – to stand

As you may know, in addition to the further meanings that some of these words have, their Passive mood versions also supply several other words, for example, that of “stan” can mean to be placed or seated somewhere, which is not included nor is it directly inferrable from this list, as a “Passive” version of “to stand”.

The next section is over nouns. This includes their declension and their very special relationships with verbs.

More Thedish Constructs 2: the Forest

There are so many words that have been forgotten from the English language, which has taken away much of the diversity with which expression can be made. One example is the loss of terminology in regards to the subject of "forest". We have one other word that directly relates to it, a "wood" or "the woods", which means an area of land with trees which may or may not be part of a larger congregation termed a "forest". Wood, of course, comes from the Germanic root meaning the same thing.

"Forest" was first attested in English in the late 1200's, from the Norman word meaning the same thing. This in turn came from Vulgar Latin foresta, meaning the outer part of a woodland preserved for game and royal hunting. The Middle English term frith had the same meaning, implying a sparser kind of woodland. It still has this meaning in English today. It comes from the proto-Into-European word meaning a pinewood, perkos, or coniferous fir-tree woodland, which still carries this meaning in the Old High German term forst. Frith is therefore an available term to describe this kind of woodland that has since not been used much in English. Frith also appears in English as a word descending from the proto-Germanic frithu, seen in modern German as Frieden, which has the meaning of peace or security. It is postulated that the late Latin term foresta also comes from this Germanic root, meaning that "frith" itself would be the more correct term for a woodland than "forest".

The second term displaced by the modern general term forest is the word relating to the modern Germanic Wald. This ancient term denoted an area covered with woods. It denoted a preserved forest, the forest as a wild place, seen in Middle English as wald, and later as weald in modern English which still means the same thing. Weald also had an Anglian variant as wald; this shows that the term retained its primary meaning as a separate term from wold. Wold originally had the same meaning and was a synonym for both weald and the unchanged Anglian wald, but grew to mean an unforested, open rolling country around the time of 1200, as Etymonline says due to a "Scandinavian influence, or a testimony to the historical deforestation of Britain". In modern English it exclusively denotes hilly tracts of land, and its usage for the obsolete sense cannot contest with this modern contradictory one. Even if one goes to great lengths to use "wold" in the context of a forest, there will always exist that ambiguity because of the polarity of the old and new meanings, and the new meaning will always hold precedence of the old if it denotes such a specifically opposite thing. This is something that I dislike, and I truly wish that "wold" could be returned to its previous meaning, being my favored of the possible three words. The other terms are weald and wald, the latter remaining from Middle English and Anglian, and the former still being attested in Modern English. All modern dictionaries such as Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster list weald to mean a heavily forested area, wild or uncultivated.

As a side note, the modern Scots term "wald" means the same as wold, that is, a moor or open country. Therefore calling a forest a wald may confuse the reader with the Scots term. There is an area in England called "the Weald", pronounced as "willd", which is a once heavily wooded region in Sussex. The areas that have been deforested, as well as the formerly forested areas of England, have given rise to the usage of wold to mean an open country, which weald has also been used as in rare instances. Weald is attested with the pronunciation of "wield", though its use in Sussex as "willd" may also be suitable. English still has weald and wald at its disposal as terms still meaning "forest".

The third term displaced by forest is the word "shaw", coming from Middle English scough, probably pronounced the same way. It is a dated term in Modern English reduced to the meaning of a strip of woodland usually five to fifteen meters in width, but poetically I suggest that it could be used to mean a forest. It is a small wood or a grove. It is also attested as meaning thicket, but the usual absence of undergrowth in a grove and the dense growth of plant life in a thicket, which may or may not be trees as opposed to shrubs or bushes, makes the analogy between a usual shaw and a thicket unlikely. Shaws may be used as coppices or thickets however. Mainly the nature of a shaw is in its size. My suggestion of its usage as forest comes from its analogy with the Norwegian word skogen, which is the general term for forest.

Shaws should not be confused with hedges, otherwise known as haws or hedgerows, which are smaller, usually artificially composed of a single row of trees or shrubs in order to mark a boundary on the land. This is a thicket of bushes, sometimes trees, which can also be used for decoration in a garden or in the infamous hedge-mazes. This is a cognate with the German term Hain, which means a grove, and therefore has a different meaning, but is also cognate with the German terms Hag and Hecke, which do mean exactly a haw.

In conclusion, there are three perfectly fine words for describing woodland that have seen a great absence in modern literature, mostly because of ignorance concerning these words. Friths are lightly forested areas, usually of pinetrees, or otherwise the area of the wood that isn't deep. Frith was also a verb meaning to protect, in its association with security, and therefore could be seen as a protected area. It is a light forest, sometimes a wood at the edge of a larger forest. A forest itself is a weald, usually wild or uncultivated, and deeper than the familiar frith. We may also call a weald a wald if situation permits. A shaw is a lesser stretch of forest, generally a small area of woods, which may be grove-like or thicket-like in nature. All three of these terms are attested in Modern English, yet are much unseen. 

06 August 2013 Edit: As a side note, I suggest that the Middle English term scough be brought back into usage, denoting the same thing as the modern Norwegian skogen, and pronounces as "skoe". The plural could be either scoughs or scoughen.

Burzum - Sol Austan, Mani Vestan

Band: Burzum

Album: Sol Austan, Mani Vestan

Genre: Ambient

Country: Norway

Year: 2013

Link 

What can I say about this? I've listened to it twice now without thinking much, without relating what I was hearing to any mundane image, to anything about "Burzum" as we know it, not "expecting to listen to the latest Burzum album". I waited a while to listen to it, especially since I didn't want to create any expectations related to the first albums (in the true Black Metal vein) while listening to it. Sufficing to say, it is based on Vikernes' most current beliefs, having long surpassed the heavy and belligerent sound of adolescence visible in his early works. To quote an old and misused phrase, "it's not better or worse, it's really just different".

On this one in particular Vikernes' techno influence is visible, especially in the spacy synthesized melodic sound drifting above the bass and strings, and the whistle of the wind. It is icy, cold, smooth, melancholic, retrospective to the individual. It is looking down from a high summit. Or perhaps from the internment of a dead underworld, the memories of the mundane past or the world just distant and maybe faded.

My first mundane thought during the session was that it would make nice lounge music, or that it would be good for a calming day when the skies are much like the tones in the background of the album's coverart. The ditching of any previous "Burzumic" logo is a statement of the simplicity of the album, in which one should focus more on the inner, the tranquil, and not the angst-driven feelings of Aske, Filosofem, etc. Some tracks might remind one of "space music" - I have seen Tangerine Dream mentioned in the YT's comment section for the album. I would agree. The melodies fit very well in their simplistic suit.

Compared to Daudi Baldrs and Hlidskjalf, well, it should not be compared to them in the first place. It certainly has not the Zelda-esque rhymes of these two previous releases, nor the quite "romantic", idealized fairy-tale notion of chivalric Medieval gist. This album stretches far beyond that, and therefore resonates, in my opinion, more deeply because it transcends all time, therefore being closer to the modern listener. Like Beethoven's melodies, these tracks are not really confined to a time or style, but are simply "there". They exist. They are the expressions of a soul unburdened with anything in the modern world, and which outlive all trivialities. 

All of the titles are composed in old Norse, of course in the context of the ancient Nordic and proto-Nordic religion. The tracks offer enough variation to be distinct in sound and mood, but are uniform enough to flow from one song to the next without much interruption (but for a few transitions). Together they definitely convey a "unified field" which encompasses all of the emotions it weaves forth. 

One should be warned that this is not a metal album, nor is it Daudi Baldrs or Hlidskjalf. There are no metal riffs, or heaviness in the "metal" sense. There has been much conflict in the throngs of enthusiasts for Burzum, mostly torn over the "new" direction that Vikernes is taking. I personally do not see it as a "new" direction, only that he continues to make music that corresponds with his different sources of inspiration, and not to continually clone or magically "produce" the Burzum of 1994. The "black metal" of Vikernes, what has been known to the world under its debut title of BURZUM, has actually made all of the albums that encompass it. If you like the "old" Burzum, this is why the songs Dunkelheit and Lost Wisdom exist, they are the expressions of this music. That being said, the 2013 release cannot be said to be "Burzum" as those enthusiasts of Filosofem or Aske believe in. I sympathize with Vikernes for wanting to be "free" of the past Burzum image, even going so far as to wanting to change the musical project's name, because these periods in the music are vastly different entities. One would almost want to keep "Burzum" a purely black metal and early ambient band for posterity, while giving these recent releases under a different production name.

One thing that I realize while listening to this, especially in the latter part of the album, is especially how beautiful it is. It is serene. One can fall asleep listening to this, as was originally intended at the start of "Burzum", but this time in a totally pacific and exploratory path distinct from the brooding confrontation with the modern world, or with dangers and trials or the danger of life on earth. It is quite aethereal. The instruments almost evoke a Renaissance holisticity, if not elevated by the electronic spells. Nothing is overdone. Simplicity is key.

I feel that the music is almost a statement of how the subject matter of the cover art should be viewed, when one looks at it. Not with the thunderous or boisterous nature of Det Som En Gang Var, but with a calm retrospectiveness from a summit. From Hlidskjalf, truly.

8.0 for Ambient very simple, acoustic, lightly electronic