Bactarahad

jaa      age
maa    power
nacta  night
practa  protection
raa     kingdom

raya  king
rasha sultan
raha  kingly

araa  aras
asna tears

-n     accusative
-had possessive
-tsi   locational
-i     verb

The Sounds of Saturn

Mysterious. Billions of miles from the sun, the ringed planet emits electromagnetic frequencies which, if attuned to audio speakers, produce an eerie sound. If one removes the static, even further, what you are left with is a strange series of unearthly noises. Some have likened this to "alien language", though no one knows exactly what these recordings are. They were taken by the Cassini space probe.

The vacuum of space, although a virtual void, is filled with electromagnetic frequencies which emanate from all heavenly bodies and in many different forms. In our own solar system, a thin gas medium existent between most of the planets and their moons allows further recording of sounds in the planets' ionospheres, and even the sounds of the rushing winds on the planets themselves, such as those of Neptune. Electromagnetic radiation from these bodies also lends a variety of strange and curiously audible sounds... everything from the planet's moons to the planet's rings ring with some kind of cosmic song, and that is not all - stars too produce this alien music, even all the way in the furthest reaches of known space, their cosmic song rings across eternity...

Saturn's Rings:

Uranus' Rings:

The Black Speech (First Article)

Everyone who's had contact with Tolkein's Black Speech (and are not Elvish fans) have tried their hand at providing a reconstruction of the ancient tongue. Only the ring inscription and some place-names are left to use as examples of Black Speech. Some include the one that was posted on the LandofShadow website... there was also the slightly expanded version used in the movie. I, however, chose a different approach; I used a reverse-engineering process to derive words in Black Speech as if it were a lost, Indo-European language. This inspiration came from the black metal musician and paganist writer Varg Vikernes of Norway, who claimed that Tolkein had used Old Norse and the Indo-European language of the ancient Viking Berserkers to create what was called the Black Speech of Mordor, offering up evidence such as the Viking-like nature of the Orcs and that the word "Orc" itself was derived from an old Norse word.

What I got was the following: a short compendium of roots I derived from Proto-Indo-European, specifically the Germanic division as Vikernes had said, and applied the sound change rules that had occured between the samples of Black Speech and the original P.I.E. roots.

Malburz (Black Speech)

-at   towards or at, cognate to Latin ad, it is used to mark the infinitive of verbs as well as the adessive case for nouns and verbs.
   e.g. ulukat - at all of them/towards all of them/to all of them

-um   -ness or -ment, expresses the quality or state of said word.
  e.g. durbum - ruling, rulership, kingdom, reign
         gimbum - the finding, the search
         ashum - one-ness, unity
         ukum - totality, total-ness, all-ness, everything, whole

Lexicon:

agh       and (conjunction) (Scandinavian og, och)
ash       one (counter number) (Germanic ans -> as -> ash)
azg       ash, man, a human (Norse root askr)
bazg     cover, fortifications
bizg     fish (P.I.E. root pisk)
bol       wicked, wretched (adjective) (Norse root byl)
burz     dark (adjective)
darz     dumb (adjective)
duzg    sunset (P.I.E. root dhuus, English dusk)
ghash   fire
ghurz   earth, ground, soil (Scandinavian jord)
gul       spirit, wraith
hagh    folk, race, breed, class, group
hugh    thought, idea
hur      army
lug       tower
mal      speech, language, word
mirz     water
mun     memory
nar       corpse
nazg    ring, circle, cycle
rum     room, space, layer, place
sind     elves
sot      hundred (counter number)
surz    sharp (adjective)
thazg  objective, mission, order
thrazg trash, fodder
ugh      I, me (pronoun) (P.I.E. root egh)
uk        all (counter number)
ul         him/them (accusitive)

bukat      to awaken
bimbat    to wait, to wait within
brakat     to break, end
durbat     to rule
gimmat   to entice or captivate
gimbat    to find
grakat     to crack, split open
kimpat    to lurk, to lurk within
krimpat   to bind
simpat     to sleep, to sleep within
sughat     to say or speak
surzat      to sharpen, develop or improve
thrakat     to bring (Latin equivalent tracto)
thrazgat   to struggle, endure or persist
uzgat       to use, employ

Gurzum   the ground
Hughsurz   a clever thought
Lugburz    the Dark Tower
Malburz    the Dark Speech
Narsurz    a fresh corpse
Nazgul     Ring-Wraith
Surzrom   the Armory (lit. the room of sharpening)
Thazgrom  the headquarters
Uzgum      the use, usefullness

Examples:

Simpul
They sleep

Kimpul hughrom-ishi
They lurk in the realm of thought

Ghurzum-ishi gimbut nazguk
They will find all of the rings in the ground

Sot duzgburzunt ugh brakuluk Durbumburzat
Under a hundred black sunsets, I break them all for the Dark Kingdom

This of course, is incomplete. These are only the notes I took on my phone... there is a more complete version somewhere on my computer that I can't seem to locate :( Anyways, that is my shot at the dark language of Mordor.

Happy Birthday HPL

In light of recent events (id est the birthday of the revolutionary author H.P. Lovecraft), I've been sifting through the old books of his in my library, and today I came across the little black Del Ray edition of "At the Mountains of Madness", which was actually the first story I ever read of his and made a big impression on me. The edition I have is from the '60's, and belonged to my father many years ago. That was when I was first introduced to the entity of Cthulhu, and soon after I'd read The Call of Cthulhu, in which Mr. Lovecraft mentions the ancient and cryptic language which Cthulhu's cult speaks, including an excerpt from the language:

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."


In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming. I don't know if Mr. Lovecraft simply made this up, if he actually devised a language behind this or if it was in fact transmitted to him through a dream, which perhaps he came to know enough of to parse or translate the phrase into English. In any case, there have been many attempts to interpret and create a constructed language based on this sample and various others throughout his writings, so-called "R'lyehian".

In typical Lovecraftian fashion, the language is given no normalcy in features that are usually present in human languages; as such, it is very alien and comes off as something very strange and foreign. An example of the aforementioned sample being parsed comes from the Yog-Sothoth forums online.


For example, they translate the last word fhtagn as sleep, and it is commonly accepted that the verb-final position corresponds to the clause's central verb. The R'lyeh wgah'nagle is interpreted as in his house at R'lyeh. An example of more atomic parsing is interpreting, for instance, the agl of wgah'nagl as a locative suffix that denotes the place of R'lyeh, such as the English preposition in, while wgah'n is the verb to reside or wait. Of course, this is all conjecture; the radical assessment of these sparse fragments are necessary for those who want to form an entire conlang after it. Perhaps those whose dreams take them distant places won't need to search that far at all...


One can devise one's own interpretation of the phrase, as I personally believe Mr. Lovecraft would have wanted his readers to :)

So, Happy Birthday Mr. Lovecraft. You are probably dreaming somewhere, existing in the far dream worlds beyond the threshold of our world. Much like in The Silver Key, you saw your fate coming, and you left this world voluntarily for the ones beyond...

Happy Dreaming.

 Howard Phillips Lovecraft, born 20 August, 1890. † 15 March, 1937.

Lamian Cases

The case system for Lamian, my conlang, is standard throughout the entire language; they act more as a suffix would than a true declension, even though they carry the full implications of case markings.

Example: Lamas - Light

Nominative    Lamas     pl. Lamia
Accusative     Lamam   pl. Lamia
Genitive         Lamai     pl. Lamiai
Locative         Lame      pl. Lamie
Vocative         Lam       pl. Lamai

Locative case is used to express the location of the event taking place. For example, lore is the locative form of lor, which means shade or shadow, thus meaning "in the shade".

The vocative is not only the case one would use if addressing the object, but in some cases of genitive as well. For example, the vocative form of the word is added after the object, such as "Yaras Lor", meaning "Land of Shadow". It's usually for either place names or names of great importance, unlike the usual genitive case which can just casually describe any given noun, such as "Yaras Lorai", which would mean "a land of shadow".

Waning of the Stars

Gamageat Galith - The Waning of the Stars

::
lore emlai eleaste
gerenai miras more
yolie more epadeas
::

galith ostai dumie
gelemodith gamageas
morai mith yabie
elai aithia yey gathin
per mui alue
galai nal degin

Embers of light in the depths,
Cold worlds expending heat -
Fields of stone floating in void,
Aetheral souls dancing now,
But not for eternity
Do soft embers burn.

Typography

An understanding of typography is important for reading the old texts, just as much as one of language is for reading things older than one’s native tongue. With an understanding of typography, all languages become clearer and legible; any time period can be deciphered by the inquisitive eye. Perhaps the most confusing, and intricate, typographical periods in European history was that of the Carolingian script and others during the Medieval Age. What gives it its unique breathe of intricate detail was the unlimited multitude of ligatures and symbols used to represent certain consonant clusters, words and phrases, that are almost lost today. Typography was a matter that required an unlimited ability to innovate, as well as use the greatest creative faculties of man, for serious works that would come to define European literature. Alone we see the works of the monks who invented pagan scripts for their bibles; grand effigies of baroque Gothic texts whose towering, monolithic letters were but indecipherable works of mysticism to laymen. Historical typography is also the progenitor of our alphabet today; a legacy which should be understood proper.

We see that the general shrinkage in unique typographical characters has come when mass education and literacy is made a mandate, and thus the official and common alphabet is reduced to a minimum of workable characters, and when block-based printing and typing takes over writing. The general lettering of a language shifts from the multitude of diverse characters of the small caste of monks and record keepers to the few and limited characters used by the masses; the force which is the greatest representative of a language shifts from the few writers to the masses.

This has taken much of the diversity and art, as well as fun, out of writing. It is a tradition which, if is to survive, must be studied in its past examples; this too leads to the greater path of understanding the old texts. That is our main objective: fluid literacy in antiquated texts so as not to inhibit understanding from the simple ignorance of letters. Therefore we present to the dear reader a brief treatise of the historical letters of English that are no longer used in the modern era, but that share a legacy that relates to other sister languages as well.

One of the first thing that confuses the novice when reading old texts is the seemingly awkward placement of J’s and I’s, as well as U’s and V’s. It should be noted that the Latin alphabet, which existed long before English was put into writing, had only one character to represent I and J and only one character to represent U and V; the I and J, U and V were simply variations of each other usually written one way or another by the writer’s personal handwriting. One can easily see how J is an elongated I with a descending curl, just as U can be seen merely as a curved V. In the original Latin languages, these different forms had no difference between each other in pronunciation: I had one sound and V had one sound. It was only when the Latin alphabet was applied to other languages did those applicants use the different forms of the same letter to signify different sounds that did not exist in Latin.

This is precisely the reason why the “W” is called the double-u. Composed of two non-curved U’s, it represented the sound of U when used as a consonant, that is, paired with a vowel. A well known example is Shakespeare’s manuscripts, in which words like “what” and “welcome” can be seen spelled as “vvhat” and “vvelcome”. It proved to be a useful character and soon the two U’s merged together to create an entirely new letter that is featured today in the alphabet of English and other languages. 

Left: Some internet humor.

Wynn is the “w” letter, used before the “v” was doubled. It looks somewhat like a P. It can be distinguished from the P in that the arc that comes down is not angular, such as in the P, which goes straight and perpendicular to the main staff of the letter. Wynn, on the other hand, goes down in a curve that flows into the staff.

The S was one of the many characters which had many forms and only settled to a single one when the printing press was invented. The most common forms of the S were the current one and the “long s” which looks like a lower case F (f) but without the line running through its middle. The Long S can still be seen in the German character ß (called the Eszett) as a combination (a ligature) of the Long S and the regular S we see today. 

Þ, þ

Thorn is a letter that represented the sound "th" on the word Thorn, thunder and thankful. It came directly from the rune that meant the same thing; it looks somewhat like a P except that the loop is in the center of the staff, not the top. 

Ð, ð

It's counterpart is Eth, the stroked D, which represented the sound "th" in the words the, Heather, and there. It is a D with a bar running through it's middle, and in its lower case form the top part of the D is curved to the left. Both the Thorn and the Eth are still used in Scandinavian languages like Icelandic and Faroese.

So whenever you’re looking at a foreign script and you see a strange symbol, think about what it might represent or if it’s a ligature!