Hvednakpa

[Eivuhekoi]

Table of Contents

• Hvednakpa (this post)
  Time in Hvednakpa
• Plans for Avát

Mist-Ashen is language that I have been making for my personal world-building project A Shattered World, or as it's name was originally in the now defunct conlang of mine "Avát" Asénuve Nakapa. Mist-Ashen has come to be as I felt that Avát, which previously was the main conlang of the project, was poorly design in such a way that it held back the entire project. Given that Avát was the first mostly working conlang that I made it was to be expected, and the fact that Avát was my first conlang was another reason that I wanted to remove it from the project, as I have naturally gotten somewhat better at this whole conlanging thing over the past four years that I have worked on A Shattered World

Phonology
Phonologically Mist-Ashen is nothing special, as I wanted it to be mostly pronounceable by me. However, some differences been made from my native language as I felt that Avát was too close to it.

Consonants

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             Bilabial  Labiodental  Alveolar    Palatal  Velar  Glottal
Plosive      p                      t, d                 k, g
Nasal        m                      n           ɲ        ŋ
Lateral                            
Fricative                           s, z                        h                
Approximant  w         ʋ            l           j

Vowels
Mist-Ashen has a fairly standard five vowel system, with the only major difference from the standard being that all vowels can appear as long vowels. In addition, Mist-Ashen also contains a few diphthongs.

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VOWELS  Front  Back
Close   i, iː  u, uː
Mid     e, eː  o, oː
Open           ɑ, ɑː
----------------------------------------
DIPHTHONGS  [CHANGED SO TBD]

Phonotactics
The phonotactics of Mist-Ashen aren't all that complicated, as I felt that I could better focus on naturalism if the phonotactis were simple for me to understand. As this is my first proper attempt at trying to be as naturalistic as possible, this was important.

The syllable structure of Mist-Ashen is (C)(L)V(C(C)/L).

• The on-set can feature any consonant, expect for an approximant or nasal if the following (L) is present.
• The L can be any approximant or nasal. However, a given syllable can only contain one of these. For example, a syllable cannot include both w and m, or l and n, etc. The only exception to this being the geminated consonants on syllable boundaries, as those are treated as being in separate syllables.
• The V can be any vowel or diphthong.
• The coda can either be a single consonant, ts, dz, tɬ or any L-phoneme (mentioned before), assuming no other L-phonemes are already in the syllable.

Syntax

Word order
The base word order of Mist-Ashen is OSV. I chose this order since, at least as far as I know, it is the rarest word order among all known languages. Mist-Ashen also employs a variety of other word orders for other situations, as the parts of speech are largely dependent on them. The second most common word order is seen the interrogative, or question, sentences: VSO. This order I have, rather self-evidently, decided to call "the reversed word order". However, despite being most commonly seen in question-sentences, it does occasionally also appear in sentences with subordinate clauses (more on this a bit later). Subordinate clauses always take the order SOV, with the exception of interrogative clauses which take the word order of a question, VSO.

Subordinate clauses and main clauses
The order of subordinate clauses and main clauses depends on the type of subordinate clause in question. Interrogative clauses always come after the main clause.

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Example 1
Adz títe   elpa     kela kaspa.
1SG to.see to.stand 2SG place
"I see, where you stand"

Relative clauses come either right after the word they are relative to or after the sentence, if it applies to the whole sentence.

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Example 2
Kaspa ikhai kaspa ngets ikhai utemhin.
place to.be place 3SG   to.be be.named
"The place of living is called a 'living place'"

[Grammar, ortography, syntax and morphology to be done, it is very late so will not do them today.]

Example Text
About the primordial period of the world

Tú kamnai ikhai ngelle ol nakpa higen kle. Seh zegui ol ked. Atlpeipei ol pjúlele seh, tú ngellele, selpa, ngelle ol zegui ol. Ikhai mah ked, eli kle, selpa.

IPA: ['tuː kɑm.'nɑi ik.'hɑi 'ŋelːe 'ol 'nɑk.pɑ 'hi.gen 'kle ze.'gui 'ol 'ked ɑt͜ɬ.'pei.ˌpei 'ol 'pʲuː.le.le 'seh 'tuː 'ŋelːe.le 'sel.pɑ 'ŋelːe 'ol ze.'gui 'ol ik.'hɑi 'mɑh 'ked 'e.li 'kle 'sel.pɑ]

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Tú       kamnai ikhai    ngelle ol  nakpa higen      kle
to.begin time   to.exist thing  two world to.possess one

Seh zegui ol  ked
ash hand  two magic

Atlpei-pei   ol  pjúle   -le    seh tú       ngelle-le    selpa
hill  -REDUP two flatland-REDUP ash to.begin thing -REDUP to.make

ngelle ol  zegui ol
thing  two hand  two

Ikhai    mah ked   eli          kle selpa.
to.exist 2PL magic be.important one to.make

In the beginning of time, the world only had two things. Ash and Magic. Ash, the beginning of all, made the hills and flatlands, and other things too. Magic, the most powerful of all, made them live.

[Eivuhekoi]

Another example sentence
This was taken from 5moyd (Just used 5 minutes of your day) number 2047

[Mother to children]: You cannot go yet, you are still little children. You are not capable of tangling with an ogre.
[Children to mother]: Ah, but we will go anyway. We do not want to refrain from going.

Kamnai mele mah fadz, (mah) femgaga. Kjuts eli mah elge selpa, (mah) higen fadz.
Ah, zes mele. Mele fadz zes higen woléf fadz.

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Kamnai mele      mah fadz         mah femga   -ga
time   to.travel 2PL be.invisible 2PL be.small-REDUP

Kjuts  eli    mah elge      selpa   mah higen      fadz
person be.big 2PL pulverize to.make 2PL to.possess be.invisible

Ah, zes mele
ah  1PL to.travel

Mele      fadz         zes higen      woléf   fadz
to.travel be.invisible 1PL to.possess to.come be.invisible

The time to travel is not yours, you are still being small. To cause a big person to not exists, is not something you have.
Ah, we will travel. To not travel is something we will not have.

[Creyeditor]

I like the gaps in your phoneme inventory. No /f/ (amd you still have the labiodental approximant) and no /x/. Also, you rarely see a conlang without /b/. As for the vowels, /au/ (and /ou/, /eu/) are also interesting gaps.

[Eivuhekoi]

I like the gaps in your phoneme inventory. No /f/ (amd you still have the labiodental approximant) and no /x/. Also, you rarely see a conlang without /b/. As for the vowels, /au/ (and /ou/, /eu/) are also interesting gaps.

The missing /f/ was a mistake that I have forgotten to correct. However, as it is a phoneme that is in literally just one word currently femga, and said word doesn't resemble any other word, I may probably actually remove it, and replace it with the labiodental approximant to get vemga.

[Eivuhekoi]

So as I said I started making Mist-Ashen in-order to make a better conlang to replace Avát, however this isn't entirely true, as Avát will still be part of the world-building project. However, instead of its previous form as the proto-lang for all languages in said project, that role is now served by Mist-Ashen. Avát is now just the language of a race called "wanderers", who were indirectly descendants of a race called "Ashfolk". I have not mentioned them in the original message, mostly as in this topic I only want to write about the languages of the project, and not the general world-building, unless it is directly relational to the language in a way that merits explanation. Thus for the world-building itself, I would recommend you visit the dedicated topic.

Despite the term Avát technically being incorrect, as it just meant "language" in the original conlang made for the wanderers, I will most likely keep using the term when explaining stuff until I make a name for the language in the new conlang. This is mainly since writing "Avát" is much quicker than "wanderish language" or "language of the wanderers". In addition, no proper work has been put into this new Avát yet, as I still feel that Mist-Ashen isn't developed enough for me to create its daughter languages. The point of this post is to just showcase my plans of how Avát will attempt to be like.

Phonemes of Avát
I'm am something of a finnic-fiend. Not because my native language is Finnish, omg native language reveal but because I originally got into linguistics via an interest in the dialects of Finnish. Now that interest has evolved into an interest in all things Finnic. As such, to remake Avát in a way that I will love I will make it's consonant, and vowel, inventories in the "style" of Finnic. However, just copying Finnish's consonant inventory would be boring, since in terms of Finnic, Finnish tends to be like plain white bread. As in, all the interesting phonemes are in other Finnic languages. However I would still want the consonants to be mostly pronounceable by me. And what better language to choose for this than Livonian!!!

So the goal of sound changes are to get the Mist-Ashen consonant inventory to a one that similar to the Livionian inventory [shown below]

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             Labial  Dental  Palatal  Velar  Glottal
Nasal        m       n       ɲ        ŋ*
Plosive      p, b    t, d    c, ɟ     k, g  (h)
Fricative   (f), v   s, z    ʃ, ʒ
Trill                r       rʲ
Approximant          l       j, ʎ

*/ŋ/ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/
/f/ and /h/ are in parenthesis as they are only found in loanwords, and thus I will not be including them in Avát.

The only problem with these is that I am not entire sure what sound changes I should make to turn the Mist-Ashen consonant inventory into that, but hopefully I will figure something out.

On the vowel-front, I plan to take inspiration from another Finnic language, Votic. I'm choosing Votic specifically, since out of the Southern Finnic languages, it is the only one that has kept vowel harmony (to my knowledge). So, the vowel inventory will be reminiscent of the one shown below

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       Front       Central  Back
Close  i iː, y yː (ɨ ɨː)    u uː
Mid    e eː, ø øː  ɤ ɤː     o oː
Open   æ æː                 ɑ ɑː
-------------------------------------
Harmony
Front:   y, e, ø, æ
Neutral: i
Back:    u, ɤ, o, ɑ

Phonemes inside parenthesis are once again only found in loan words, and thus I will not be including them in Avát

Same issues with not knowing how to evolve them apply to these vowels as well.

Phonotactics of Avát
On the phonetics front, Avát is nothing complicated. The syllable structure will be that of Proto-Finnic, at least as close as reconstructions are:

(C)V(C), in which

• Any consonant can begin a syllable.
• The nucleus can either be a long vowel, short vowel, or a diphthong (I am not sure if I will take diphthongs from Votic, or evolve my own.
• Any consonant can end a syllable, expect in the case of word final syllables in which only the following consonants are permitted in the coda: (n, t, d, s, z, r, (rʲ) and l. rʲ only appears in these cases as an allophone to r when the next word begins with either a palatal or a front vowel. This is at least the plan.

[Eivuhekoi]

Some things are easier to evolve in my opinion. For example I plan to deaffricate /ts/ into either /s/ or /ʃ/ and /dz/ into either /z/ or /ʒ/. Probably by making it so that in stressed syllables they become /s/ and /z/ and in unstressed syllables /ʃ/ and /ʒ/.

[Eivuhekoi]

Change of plans, didn't like how it was so I'm going to make it something else instead. I just don't really like voiced consonants.

[Eivuhekoi]

Okay, so I came up with a plan. I went first through the Proto-Finnic sound changes (from Proto-Uralic), and then implimented most of the Samic sound changes. Even though this feels like a lot of sound changes, and it is, I think that having it be this way can be more lore-friendly, per say. Since in the lore, Avát came about due to influence from a being of non-nakapa origin.

[Eivuhekoi]

So, false alarm to both those plans, turns out that just copying sound-changes from a lang I like doens't neccesarily result in a lang I like. Instead I shall now first make the phonotactics and inventory and then go from there!

[Eivuhekoi]

Okay, so. In the end I have ended up with the following consonant inventory:

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             Labial  Alveolar  Palatal  Velar  Glottal
Plosive      p       t                  k      
Nasal        m       n         ɲ        ŋ      
Fricative    f       s                         h
Approximant  ʋ       l         j               

I ended up with this inventory by just removing all the sounds I didn't like that much....in hind-sight this has resulted in an inventory almost identical to that of the original Avát expect with the addition of /ɲ/ and /ŋ/, which I have chosen to keep since I like them. Also the word-initial /ŋ/ found in some Sámi-languages is in my opinion a cool feature to have.

However, it's in the vowels where this new version of Avát takes its largest deviation from the original:

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	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː
Mid	e eː	o oː
Open	æ æː	ɑ ɑː

On the surface this looks almost identical to the vowels that the original Avát had, which featured a standard five vowel system of /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ and /ɑ/ (along with their long variants and diphthongs ending with -/i/). However, the real difference comes in that this new Avát features two-way vowel harmony, Height and frontness.

Height-harmony
I'll start by explaining the height harmony, as it is the more "simple" of the two simutanious systems. Basically, the vowels of Avát are divided into three groups:

• High-vowels (i, iː, u, uː)
• Low-vowels (æ, æː, ɑ, ɑː)
• Neutral-vowels (e, eː, o, oː)

/ɯ/, /ɯː/ and /ɒ/, /ɒː/ (which would be low and high counter parts to /u/ and /ɑ/ respectively) are missing due to mergers with /u/ and /ɑ/.
The height of a word is determined by the first non-neutral vowel of the word and spreads from left to right, with /e/ and /o/ acting as transparent vowels with no effect on the height. However, this does not mean that they are without any role.

Frontness-harmony
Frontness-harmony in Avát is less simple than the height harmony, as it is primarily triggered by the neutral vowels /e/ and /o/, meaning that the first /e/ or /o/ triggers either frontness harmony (/e/) or backness harmony (/o/) after it from left to right, without having an effect on the vowels before it. This means that all of the following words are possible within the vowel harmony of Avát:

• ɑl.pe.læ
• æl.po.lɑ
• ol.pu.lu
• el.pi.li
• el.pe.læ
• ol.pɑ.lo
• etc, etc

If a word contains only height-neutral vowels, it will act as if it has high harmony, due to /o/ and /e/ being closer to the high-vowels, in vowel space, than to their low counter-parts. If a word contains only height-harmony vowels, frontness-harmony will remain neutral, and thus if an variants with /o/ and /e/, both will be considered acceptable. However, in the meanings of words themselves only height matters, as such while frontness harmony does exist it only serves an allophonic-role.

[Eivuhekoi]

Brief note regarding name change
If you already haven't noticed, then I would like to tell you that Mist-Ashen has received a new temporary name, or perhaps a permanent one. This new name being Hvednakpa, which simply means Mist-Ashen in the conlang itself.

The translation itself
I chose to translate this particular pice of text as the Hobbit is one of my favourite books, and a solid contender for my current favourite book of all time. The book, and Middle-Earth as a whole, serve as huge sources of inspiration for me. I am keenly aware that I am most likely not alone this, as Tolkien was rather influential at least when it comes to the fantasy genre

Kamkamtai, selknes nakpa Hopit ikhai. Puineh faz, knéžen faz, kedfegen faz elpa šíšíhí nges higen. Zegui ol faz, nges nakpagen elpa ked faz nges higen elpa kaselpa faz nges higen. Selknes Hopit nges, nges kennu.

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kamkamtai selknes nakpa  Hopit  ikhai
long.ago  hole    ground Hobbit live

puineh  faz, knéžen    faz, kedfegen faz elpa ší~ šíhí nges higen.
be.vile not  be.broken not  be.wet   not or   PLU~worm 3SG  possess

zegui_ol faz, nges nakpagen    elpa ked   faz nges higen   elpa kas  -elpa faz nges higen.
and      not  3SG  ground.like or   magic no  3SG  possess or   place-wait no  3SG  possess 

selknes Hopit  nges, nges kennu.
hole    Hobbit 3SG   3SG  be.good

Long ago, A Hobbit resided in a ground-hole. Not a vile, not a broken, not a watery or worm-filled hole, and not dusty, barren or with no place to wait. It was a Hobbit-hole, and it was good.

Explanation
I may have bit a larger portion than I can chew....As you can see a few things have been changed, which is once again due to the fact that the speakers of Hvednakpa lack concepts such a food or water. As such "watery" is instead translated as "liquid magic like", as the closest thing to water that the Ashfolk had was rivers made of magic. And since they didn't have food, instead "magic" is used. This is due to magic being what made the Ashfolk live, which is sorta similar to how food makes humans, and hobbits, not die.

[Eivuhekoi]

This is about the system for talking about the past specifically, for the currently theoretic system of talking about the future, see this post

Big revelation!
I was watching a nativlang video because I've only recently remembered how much I like that channel for getting, like, linguistic "fun facts". Anyway, I rewatched an older video on Yucatec Mayan, and I think it helped me crack one of the bigger problems that I've had with Hvednakpa. That being How to talk about time, with no words about time?.

The video was about how speakers of Yucatec Maya could talk about time, without using tenses or words like "before" or "after". Turns out, they utilize aspects and moods to talk about time. For example, using the perfective aspect for setting a general "frame of reference" via finished actions, and then using imperfectives along with context. That is, if I understood the video correctly.

This made me realize something that has sorta been a bigger uncertainty for me with Hvednakpa, that being how it could refer to past events without featuring a tense system of any kind in it's current state. My initial plan was to evolve some tense-system, but after watching that video I realized something. Sure Hvednakpa may lack a tense system.....but it does have "ipol".

"ipol" is a verb in Hvednakpa meaning "to end, finish" and I reckon that when used in an adverbial role, it can be used to form a perfective aspect. This perfective aspect can then be used in a similar way to talk about the past, in a semi-similar way to that of Yucatec Mayan. For example:

Az mele ipol

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az  mele   ipol
1SG travel end

I finish travel => I traveled.

Kasikhai kela selpa ipol

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kasikhai kela selpa ipol
house    2SG  make  end

You finish make the house => You built the house

This could potentially even be combined with the already existing reduplicated forms, that are used to form on-going actions, in order to create a meaning of an action that was on-going in the past, but has since stopped.

Az memele ipol

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az  me~  mele   ipol
1SG PROG~travel end

I finish traveling => I was traveling

Kasikhai kela selselpa ipol

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kasikhai kela sel~ selpa ipol
house    2SG  PROG~make  end

You finish making the house => You were building the house

[lurker]

This is a much more clever way to go about it that I did with Commonthroat, where I just use time adverbs for tense and serial verbs like "start", "stop" etc for aspect.

How would you talk about future events? Perhaps a verb meaning to want or to intend.

[Eivuhekoi]

How would you talk about future events? Perhaps a verb meaning to want or to intend.

Here is an illustrated version of talking about time in Hvednakpa!
Currently Hvednakpa has no method for talking about the future that would be different from those of my native language, or Japanese for another example. This means that to talk about the future you need but two things: The present tense and context. Now, Hvednakpa lacks a present tense, but with the perfective system I described in my previous post, this can now be substituted with the imperfective aspect, or the "unmodified form" of a verb. For example, the sentence Az mele can either mean "I travel" or "I will travel".

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az  mele
1SG travel

There however does exist a way to specifically put focus on that an action is happening right now, through the same "reduplication for on-going" actions system I described before. So the sentence Az memele will specifically mean that I am traveling right now, however it also implies that the action is going to "leak over" in to the future.

Hitting 142 kilometers per hour
I have come up with a another theoretical system to specifically describe future events. Since I am now on something of an "aspect-spree" I have also decided to post-pone a potential development of a tense system when it comes to this future-system. However unfortunately due to a lack of linguistic knowledge, I am not entire sure what this would be called. The Natlang video I mentioned in the last post would lead me to wanting to call it an "irrealis mood", but from that same video that same term seems to be more of an "umbrella term" for various different aspects/moods and therefor I am not entire sure if just calling this one system "the irrealis mood" would be proper.

Anyway, this like how the perfective aspect is formed via the verb "ipol" acting in an adverbial form to modify another verb to add a meaning of a completed action, this new potential "action that will happen in the future" would be formed with the sort of "counter-verb" to ipol. That being tú (meaning "to begin, start"). For example:

Az mele tú

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az  mele   tú
1SG travel start

I start travel => I will travel

Kasikhai kela selpa tú

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kasikhai kela selpa tú
house    2SG  make  start

You start make the house => You will build the house

Also even more exitingly for me, if I am to add this system, it would once more give me two more ways of talking about time, since this can naturally be combined with reduplication to form on-going future actions that are fully contained in the future. This gives a solid three-way semi-unconnected system of time for on-going actions: on-going (started and ended in the past) -- on-going (started now, still happening) -- on-going (starts in the future, ends in the future). To repeat the examples of my previous post:

Az memele tú

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az  me~  mele   tú
1SG PROG~travel start

I start travelling => I will be travelling

Kasikhai kela selselpa tú

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kasikhai kela sel~ selpa tú
house    2SG  PROG~make  start

You start making the house => You will be building the house

If you are wondering why I am using such unsure manner of speech, I am still rather anxious of my conlanging being "unrealistic" despite it, like, not really needing to be the case since this language is spoken by living ash so the language itself isn't the most unrealistic thing.

---

Also, sorry for writing so such long posts or if my writing sounds overly formal or clunky. When I start explaining stuff I am interested in I very easily fall into this "lecture register". Additionally, our education system enforces a formal tone in all essay, or long writings, so when my writing becomes longer than an average text message, it tends to lean towards a highly formal manner of speech.

[Eivuhekoi]

I would attempt to include, like, a picture of how this time thing would word. Inspired by a picture from the Nativlang video, but I don't know how to add pictures from my computer into posts. The image tag-thing seems to want a url, or other link, for the image.

[lurker]

I would attempt to include, like, a picture of how this time thing would word. Inspired by a picture from the Nativlang video, but I don't know how to add pictures from my computer into posts. The image tag-thing seems to want a url, or other link, for the image.

You'll need to use a 3rd party image hosting service like Imgur. That's what I use. They even provide a BBCode snippet to copy and paste into your post.

[Keenir]

Back before my scanner went offline, I would scan a page or a passage, copy&paste it to Discord, then open that image on a page of its own (which is easier than i just described), copy that website address, and post it here [img.]http: example[/img.] minus the periods

[Eivuhekoi]

idk if that works, but it should be like a thing showing how one talks about time in Hvednakpa.

[Eivuhekoi]

idk if that works, but it should be like a thing showing how one talks about time in Hvednakpa.

K, didn't work.....

[Arayaz]

idk if that works, but it should be like a thing showing how one talks about time in Hvednakpa.

K, didn't work.....

It worked, I think. There's an image there; I (and I assume you) just can't see it because of some other problem. Images on the board never display for me, for example. I'm not sure why. But don't trust me, I'm not a veteran of the board.