Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

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Serena
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Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Serena »

Ti keléi, samir!
I have been looking forward to set up some lessons for my own conlang, Gadyl, and I finally managed to develop two completely developed lessons, and I thought I could share.


Note: I highly recommend reading this lesson in pdf. The quality of the original document is much better than the plain text of the forum. However, for those who will read on their phones, I will copy the full text in the post.

Gadyl lessons
First level (Low beginner), Lesson 1.01

NOTE: In this guide, I am assuming that every reader already knows how to read and write the Hebrew alphabet, including a basic knowledge on how matres lectionis work.
If you don’t, you can still go further; in this lesson, I will be providing some introduction about the pronunciation of the letters, but I would sincerely recommend practicing Hebrew somewhere else, in a more detailed tutorial.

Gadyl (hagdillir, הגדיליר) is an inflectional language spoken by Keyali people, an ethnic group of approximately two millions and a half people in the Gaian plain.
It is written by native speakers using the Anollim script (hagdillir anol, הגדיליר אנל), but among scholars, the Hebrew alphabet (rarely the Greek) is mostly used to write and describe it.


Reading and writing
(Phonology, orthography and Romanization)

Gadyl has 17 consonantal sounds and 7 vowels. Since the Anollim script is not encoded in any Unicode charset, in this course we will be using a version of the Hebrew alphabet (due to their similarities, this will be proven to be useful).

Image

A couple of rules:
  1. Some consonants show a different form if they appear at the end of the word, for example <ן> instead of <נ>, <ך> instead of <כ> and <ם> instead of <מ>.
  2. Each consonant is romanized according to the value in the table.
  3. The vowels are <a> /a/, <e> /e/, <i> /i/, <o> /o/, <u> /u/, <ey> /eɪ/ and <ay> /ɛɨ/.
  4. Some consonants, such as <b>, <p> and <t> show a weak/strong duality which will be represented in the Latin text.
  5. The consonant <sh> often mutates to <z>. Since this change is quite sporadic and irregular, we will be specifying each time it occurs.
  6. Semi-consonants, in some patterns, mutate from their consonant form to their respective vowel (<y> -> <i>; <w> -> <o/u>; <h> -> <a/e>).
  7. As a cluster, <הל> is pronounced /fl/ and <הר> is pronounced /χʀ/.


Pattern schemata notation – Sometimes Gadyl shows such a morphological variety in the conjugation of verbs that I have to make a table with all the possible patterns.
To generalize this tables, I developed a notation that helps me to describe how vowels are applied to the key of the root to make it a meaningful word.
Each consonant of a triconsonantal root is called a key.

  1. Each “X” stands for a general consonant of the abjad (a key); similarly, a “Y” stands for its weak counterpart (<v> for <b>, <f> for <p> and <th> for <t>).
  2. The consonants of a root are numbered. The number is added to the “X” in subscript.
  3. Any lowercase text is plain romanized content and it indicates the pronunciation.
  4. Stress normally falls on the last vowel; Otherwise, the stress vowel will be signalled by a macron.


This is an example of patterns applied to the – fictional – root B-N-Sh:


Image

Getting started with grammar
(Nouns, prepositions, verb to be and genitive construction)

Nouns – The easiest part of Gadyl are native nouns (sometimes called “pure nouns”, as they are not derived from any verbal root).
Native nouns in Gadyl have no gender, and they mostly do not need to be suffixed for number, even if some reminiscence of the old plural is still present in the language.
Pure nouns generally consist of two, rarely three, consonants. Let’s learn some:


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You should always keep in mind that words in Gadyl have a really broad meaning, and one should be careful when putting them in a context.
For example, “sam” means “friend”, but it has a really general meaning: it indicates someone that you walk your path of life with, whether it is an actual friend, a lover, a family member, your teacher or pretty much anyone that you can clearly recognize as a human.
You wouldn’t ever tell anyone that they are not a sam, because that would be extremely offensive and dehumanizing; that’s the kind of phrase that can be told to a rapist, a mass murderer of kids or an unwanted dictator.

Pronouns – Pronouns in Gadyl behave mostly like in English: they do inflect for case even if regular nouns don’t in the language; However, the case system is different.
Gadyl has three (direct, dative and locative), and it doesn’t have possessives (the verb “to have” doesn’t exist at all, for various reason that I will be covering further).
Unlike English, pronouns don’t have number.
The first person is “מה, me” (I/me/we/us), “מי, mey” (to me, us) and “מת, mat” (in me, us).
The second person pronoun can be translated as “דה, de” (you), “דס, das” (to you) or “דבי, divi” (in you). The dative case, sometimes, may be translated as “דע, de’” for archaic reasons.
The third person pronoun, which is somehow irregular, is “זי, zi” (She, her, he, him, it, they, them), “סן, sen” (To her, him, it, them), “כרי, kiri” (In her, him, it, them).
“kiri” and “divi” are pronounced with the stress on the first syllable.
The interrogative pronoun is “תי, ti”. For any case but the direct it requires prepositions, so we will have for example “נתי, neti” instead of a separate locative form.
The relative pronoun is “ל, ley”. Similarly to the interrogative, it requires prepositions but this time it requires one even for the direct form, in which case it becomes “של, sheley”.


Image

Now, there’s a couple of rules to remember about third person pronouns.
In Gadyl, unlike some language, there are no honorific pronouns and we can therefore use these forms without any exception, speaking to anyone.
However, one should always remember not to use third person pronouns when speaking about someone who’s not witnessing the conversation.
For example, if you want to introduce Hana to your friends, you could say “zi sam” (She’s a friend), but if she’s not there, you have to say “Hana sam” (Hana is a friend).

Prepositions – In Gadyl, we have a short number of prepositions to express the logical role of the word in the sentence, and postposition to better define it.
For example, the preposition “ne” (נ) means “in”, “on” or “at”, and it is used invariably to specify location, time, category or role. However, if we want to translate a more specific concept, for example, the English preposition “beneath”, we will need the postposition “arat” (ארת).
After a preposition, pure nouns undergo an internal vowel change. ‘e’ becomes ‘a’, ‘ey’ becomes ‘ay’ and vice versa; “dar”, for example, becomes “der” and “ben” becomes “ban”.
Later in the lessons, we will see more in depth where postpositions are applied, including the proper usage of negative nouns and verbs.

To be – Now that we have learnt our first preposition and some nouns to play with, we can start making meaningful sentences.
Gadyl has no verb “to be” for the present tense, so we can already say:


Image

A couple of notes about pronunciation and orthography.
1 – As we can see, the preposition “ne” becomes “ney” in the sentences we provided.
One should always remember that vowels change very often (and sometimes irregularly) in Gadyl: meaning is always conveyed by the consonant.
In this case, this was a simple way to link the preposition with an object starting with another vowel, to make the sound pleasant.
“In the sun”, for example, would just be translated as “ne layum”.
2 – The subject and the object of the verb “to be” should be pronounced as a single word, with the first consonant of the second word doubled.
Generally, everything that is not separated by a verb or a genitive behaves like a single word.
For instance, “Hana sam” sounds like “Hanassam”, and “ney anol arat” should be pronounced like “neyanollarat”, both with the stress on the last ‘a’.
3 – Prepositions are orthographically connected to the object, postpositions are not.
Genitive construction – Possessions and logical correlations, in Gadyl, are expressed by juxtaposing the possessed object after the possessor.
Just like prepositional objects, genitives often change their first vowel; this does not apply to nouns beginning with ‘א’ or ‘ה’ (“Anol”, for example, does not change).


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Serena
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Serena »

Some useful vocabulary:

Image

Excercise 1
Translate the following sentences

  1. Where is the village of the moon?
  2. She is (my) friend Dana (דנה).
  3. Under the moon of the sky, there is a gift.
  4. Samir (סמיר) is a teacher who is a citizen of Athens (התן).
  5. נאדל ארת דר הנה נל סרים. Ne adal arat der Hana neley Serim.
  6. אדל לי מדי מדי לי אנל. Anol ley medi, madi ley Anol.
  7. תי שן נדר. Ti shan ne dar.
  8. זי סם מי. Zi sam mey.


Spoiler:
  1. נתי דר אדל. Neti dar adal.
  2. זי סם דנה. Zi sam Dana.
  3. נאדל ארת אנל נל לי. Ney adal arat anol nele ley.
  4. סמיר שן של סמדר התן. Samir shan sheley samder Hathin.
  5. Under the moon of the village, there is Serim.
  6. The sky is a gift of nature, Nature is a gift of the sky.
  7. Who is a teacher in the village?.
  8. She is my friend.
Excercise 2
Apply the following schemata to the root N.M.P
  1. X1eX2aY3.
  2. X1eiY3.
  3. iX1X2aY3ir.
  4. X2aX3ti
  5. X1iX2iX3
Spoiler:
  1. Nemaf.
  2. Neif.
  3. Inmafir.
  4. Mapti.
  5. Nimip.
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Ahzoh
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Ahzoh »

I have been wondering what happened to this language...
Image Śād Warḫallun (Vrkhazhian) [ WIKI | CWS ]
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gestaltist
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by gestaltist »

I like this language. Keep the info coming.
Serena wrote: For example, if you want to introduce Hana to your friends, you could say “zi sam” (She’s a friend), but if she’s not there, you have to say “Hana sam” (Hana is a friend).
This sounds odd and tedious. So if you have a conversation about someone who is not there, you have to address them by their name every time? I have the inkling that people would quickly devise a shortcut for this, unless there are no names in Gadyl with more that two syllables.
Serena
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Serena »

gestaltist wrote:This sounds odd and tedious. So if you have a conversation about someone who is not there, you have to address them by their name every time? I have the inkling that people would quickly devise a shortcut for this, unless there are no names in Gadyl with more that two syllables.
It's actually quite common in a lot of natlangs. Some languages don't even have pronouns, and it makes a lot of sense to address people by their name or by a title, talking in the third person even to the listener.

As for Gadyl, there are lots of religious taboo that you have to keep your eyes on while speaking. Even the smallest sign of de-humanization is considered a great lack of respect. Pronouns are to be used really carefully.

I don't think that pronouncing a extra syllables is such a big problem, anyway. Keyali names usually have four syllables, but you usually adress people by their shortened name. For instance, Hanazelai can be addressed as "Hana" and Kinaizalir could be just "Zalir". Whether the initial two syllables or the finals should be used depends on the meaning. For example "Hanazelai" is a full sentence meaning "A flower is hope" and therefore the subject of the sentence is used as the shortened name, while "Kinaizalir" means "Shining stars" and so the head noun can be used as shortname.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Lambuzhao »

Serena,

mū tā šalī gadlōs (gadlĕs/gadlĕr)?
MW TH XLY GDL.S // GDL.R ?

Does this mean "What do you want to say?"

Which is the right form to use: gadlōs/gadlĕs/gadlĕr ???
* I found examples of these in your posted utterances
I do not exactly get definite/indefinite infinitives. Plz explain.
How would you say "What do you want us to talk about?"
Would you use vā / vă ?
Would you use a word for 'about' in the sentence?
Do you have a word for 'discuss'?
Is this even Gadlīl?
[o.O]
Serena
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Serena »

Lambuzhao wrote: Is this even Gadlīl?
[o.O]
That used to be Gadyl. However, at some point I decided to start it from scratch, and that bit became outdated. The only information about up-to-date Gadyl that can be found on this forum are in this thread.

If you are really curious about it, it was
Tā šalīta gadlĕs mū?
You want-(you to) say what

If you want to say "What do you mean?" in updated Gadyl, it will be more like:
Dē zeléi(de) ledilir amoi?
דה זלי לדילר אמי

As you can notice, the syntax is almost left untouched.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Lambuzhao »

No, I really wanted to know how to say "what do you want us to talk about?"
Serena
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Re: Speak Gadyl - דוילע הגדיליר - Doiallá hagdillir

Post by Serena »

Lambuzhao wrote:No, I really wanted to know how to say "what do you want us to talk about?"
It heavily depends on the context. The most natural and informal way to say it is:

-----------------
Doiallá (mē) meti?
(We) Speak-[volitive] about.what?
What shall we speak about?
-----------------
Doiallá (mē) amoi?
(We) Speak-[volitive] what?
What shall we discuss?
-----------------

However, if I am a priestess and you happen to be an attractive tree nymph and you are willing to sell me your virginity to ascend the sky and join God, you could pick a formal expression such as:
-----------------
Keléi ti gadilim?
Is_good which word-[honorific]
What words are appropriate?
-----------------
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