Your favourite word in your Conlang?

[Pirka]

Oh man. By far the Hezek Erbol word for "death": mir.
I like it not because it sounds nice, but because it has such a deeper meaning that tells a story about the Hezek.
So basically, talking about death is taboo in Hezek society, therefore many euphemisms are employed to convey the same meaning. The verb mira, "to die", is sabodna fozafelt, "to go to the happy lands". Death is stated as sabodna, a verbal noun meaning "the going".
So what's so special about mir? Well, the fact that it means either "peace" or "world" in Russian. So you can think of it as me jabbing the Hezek taboo - since their word for death accidentally positively conveys the release from all things worldly - and questioning it.

...Okay, yeah. It made sense in my head.

[SydneyFreedberg]

The language I'm constructing (for a fictional setting I'm working on with my wife) is nowhere near ready to roll out, but I couldn't help unlurking for this topic.

We already have our favorite word, or rather pair of words: tsevayr (tʰsɛvaɪr , I think; my IPA is shaky) and shaktine (ʃæktin). They're usually translated as "strong" and "weak" respectively, but they have an enormous range of connotations that says something about the culture using the language. Depending on the context, tsevayr can reasonably be translated as any of the following: forceful, active, manly, normative, regular, aristocratic, instructing, or leading; shaktine, conversely, can mean yielding, passive, womanish, non-standard, irregular, plebian, receiving instruction, or following.

You may have guessed that this is not a great society in which to be a female student from a modest social background. Being a male teacher from a noble family is awesome.

This dichotomy applies all over the place. In the society's traditional grammar, unvoiced sounds are considered tsevayr and voiced sounds are considered shaktine, and plosives are stronger than fricatives. The nominative, genitive, ablative, and instrumental are "strong" cases; the accusative, anti-gentive, dative, and locative are "weak." Pronouns are strong, adjectives are weak. (Some of these distinctions represent fairly arbitrary attempts by classical grammarians to shoehorn linguistic features into these categories).

Surprisingly, though, strong and weak are not genders because the language lost gender altogether about eight hundred years before the grammar was fully formalized: Too many loanwords that didn't "sound right" for their gender caused the system to break down, although that initial "t" in tsevayr is the residue of a now-defunct gender marking system that was indicated by a stop (rather than a fricative) at the start of masculine word.

Ironically, the one thing tsevayr and shaktine CANNOT be used for is to describe merely physical strength or weakness. There's an entirely different pair of words for that (TBD). The implication is always of moral strength or weakness.


P.S.: Bonus points to the first person who guesses the real-world words (one English, one Hindi) that the two terms are based on.

edited for bloody stupid typos

[Blaidd Drwg]

My favourite word from Irduron would be either <celmyniach> /'kɛl.myn.jɑχ/ "narrowmindedness" or <denenymfared> /'de:.nən.,ʏm.fa:.rəd/ "migration"

[tev]

I also like in Vanya "efalya"[/efalja/], which means "music" and "feeling"

[pmitxki]

My favorite is probably Muexedze [mwə`ʃ​ɛdzɘ], which means "today."

[Omzinesý]

Sematically I like Omsin word terli which is effective form of the word ter that means human, person (that is human). And i is a generic article. So it literally means 'in people's opinion'. Its meaning is after all something like 'according to general human moral or conventions'.

[aereastra]

My fave word at the moment seems to be Asfineă, /æsfɪnɛɔ/ which is a female name for the sunset.
It can be conjugated into various meanings -

Asfinai /æsfɪnɑɪ/ - sunset.
Asfinicà /æsfɪnɪkə/ - Western horizon (place where the sun sets)
Asfinere /æsfɪnɛɾɛ/ - to depart from, descend behind, descend
Asfinetiène /æsfɪnɛt͜sənɛ/ - descension, departation
Asfinetis /æsfɪnɛt͜sɪs/ - descending, descended, departed
Asfinae /æsfɪnɛː/ - a person who departs from, descends, a coward.

[Micamo]

Here's something silly:

In Acoi, the word for "speak" is chomu. The word for "truth" is paono.

The word for "telling the truth" ucie. Now here's the interesting part: The antonym of ucie, "lie", is paocho! Literally "truth-tell."

[esperance]

I feel like these words are onomatopoeic. Maybe only to me.

mefta for "head"
nagruk for "tuber"
mozhnur for "ashes"

Stress falls on the first syllable, vowels are as in Spanish, unstressed vowels are clipped, consonants predictable, rolled r, but that m is labiodental.