conlanging continued - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

I just figured I'd post some more about my conlang (still unnamed, whoops.) I wanted to create it to be somewhat easy to remember, so I've based it around stem-words or concepts (these can be very general, ie the word for seat and chair is the same, coming under 'a thing to sit down on', or more specific than English - having words for two different kinds of light.)

This stem-word (the noun) can then be modified to become a verb, adjective or adverb. This basically means there is less for anyone to remember.

To become a verb - add a 'tense' prefix.
To become an adjective - add an 'ae' suffix.
To become an adverb - add an 'aí' suffix.

Example: melusine.
As a noun, melusine means happiness.

melusine : happiness (n) (meh-liu-seen)
(x)-melusine : smile (v)
melusinae : happy (adj) (meh-liu-see-NAH)
melusinaí : happily (adv) (meh-liu-see-nah-ee)


Information on the (x) for the verb later. Just going to explain the rules about adjectives/adverbs.

Note that normally ae / aí are simply added onto the end of a word. There are just a couple of exceptions. If the noun ends in a or e, then both ae / aí replace the a / e. If the noun ends in i or ai, then aí replaces that. No noun ends in ae.


Examples:
marin (the sea/ocean) -> marinae / marinaí  
         (ma-RIN)                         (ma-RI-NAY) / (ma-RI-NAH-ee)

scioa (knowledge/understanding) -> scioae / scioaí
         (skyo-ah)                                             (skyo-ay) / (skyo-ah-ee) .... and so on.


Now, a little about verbs.
You will notice that the verb for melusine was written (x)-melusine. This is because the prefix changes depending on the verb's tense. The prefix is actually the one irregular verb - to be.
Below is the conjugation for the verb, to be (or, to exist.)

li : present tense. (I) am, (you) are, (it) is.
lé : past tense. (I/it) was, (you) were.
lor : future tense. (I/you/it) will be.

These are the most basic! But there are others too... Note, these following 'tenses' can be further modified themselves by the past/future tenses. Not the present, it's assumed they're in the present.

kou : conditional tense. (I) can.
aou : perfect tense. (I) have been.
hou : 'desire' tense. (I) want.
sou : (I) should.
vou : (I) must (imperative, ruder than 'so').

These are most of them, but there are others also. I don't think they're so commonly used, though. Also note that these are 'to be' when used with VERBS only, not nouns or adjectives (there's a different set to maintain distinction between verbs and nouns.)

So, I will conjugate a verb in this way. I'll choose votchka, the verb to speak.

llui li-votchka - I speak / I am speaking.
llui lé-votchka - I spoke / I was speaking.
llui lor-votchka - I will speak / I will be speaking
llui kou-votchka - I can speak 
llui aou-votchka - I have been speaking.... and so on!

Extras. Basically to show how to modify the second lot of tenses.

llui aou'lé-votchka - I had been speaking.
llui kou'lor-votchka - I will be able to speak.

Pretty neat, right? At least, I like to think so.


Another important point about about 'to be' - it's also the only verb that can be used on its own without any sort of prefix. For example, to use with adjectives. As well as the ae suffix, you can tell it's not a verb because 'to be' changes :

mi : present tense (I am, you are)
meí : past tense (I was, you were)
meor : future tense (I will be)
aó : perfect tense (I have been)
kó : conditional (I can, I could)
só : I should, you should
vó : I must, you must
hó : I want, you want

It's also not written with a -, since it isn't absolutely necessary - although it would normally appear before an adjective it doesn't have to. For example, if someone asked you what you thought of something, you might just respond with "Pretty" if you were being lazy - or in this conlang, where you don't actually need to refer to the something again since it is clear what is being talked about.

xue mi melusinae - they are happy.
xue meí melusinae - they were happy... etc.

llui mi ó pantalion - I am a cat

One more note on sentence structure in general. If there's more than one noun in a sentence, the noun before the verb is the thing doing the action and the noun after the verb is having the action done to it. If there's just one noun, it doesn't matter which way you put it. An adjective follows the noun it refers to. An adverb follows directly after the verb it describes, and can be considered as part of the verb. 

And when it comes to adverbs... See, this sentence here:
xue lé-melusine melusinaí - they smiled happily....
Would not probably be used because, while it is grammatically correct, sounds a bit stupid!
Melusine and melusinaí come from the same concept stem. It is already presumed that when someone lé-melusine, they did it happily, since the word comes from the stem for happiness! You could say smiled widely, smiled slightly, or even smiled sadly. But not smiled happily! This is a huge pet peeve of mine when I'm reading/writing.

It's like someone saying 'running quickly.' Why!? It's such a waste of words. If you're running, I assume you're moving quickly without you needing to describe it further. Either use running on its own, or swap it for something like 'sprinting' if you really want to emphasise the point. Unless there's something unusual about the verb, that isn't already implied by the verb, and there isn't a better verb that will get the point across without a stupid -ly word, don't use one. It drives me bonkers. It's a one-way-street to over-description, which just distracts from the story/what you're actually trying to say. Come the glorious revolution, -ly words will be first on the block. I literally go back on my work and cut them out where I use them most of the time, I can't stand them. 90% of the time they get overused and the writer ends up sounding about thirteen. I went through that awful over-description phase - 'Look at me, I'm a writer and I know words and I'm going to use them to describe Literally Everything just in case my readers are too thick to imagine it for themselves!'
Never again. It's just not nice.

So, I deliberately made this conlang in a way that should stamp out some of these ridiculous over-descriptions. Thank you. You're welcome.


 

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some thoughts on youth & beauty, unnatural and natural

Could absolutely not help camwhoring the hell out of the blossom trees I saw today. 100% not sorry for such vanity. They were too pretty. Rejoice in the pretty!



Below is my current spring-theme manicure, unfortunately this is about a week old so is chipping in places now. Pastel lilac with a pastel yellow accent nail. Like crocuses, or something! It's survived pretty well, to be honest... still looks passable!



I was admiring the flowers practically all day, and thinking about things in general as I revised (more genetics, disgusting.) Basically, in my novel's world, such trees cannot easily exist. The sun is covered by smog, they would barely get enough sunlight (the air in my novel's world is understandably filthy, full of dirt particles as well as carbon monoxide and other harmful gases. There are lower oxygen levels and higher carbon dioxide levels. Technology taken and enhanced from today's world has provided 'air filters', structures able to function in a similar way to trees and essentially purify the air, but these are typically confined to richer areas and so poorer areas of the city have to breathe in the disgusting air anyway. Even with these, the air quality is poorer than it is now. The alternative to breathing it all in, as many people choose, is to wear gas masks outside. Houses and other buildings are generally equipped with air filters.)
In the wealthy district (the city is based off the British class system taken to extremes, giving us distinct upper class, middle class, working class and impoverished districts), there are trees - but they are fake, they are all projected holograms. They never fade and the blossoms never fall, they are always perfect and beautiful, but they aren't real. They're called holos in the language of the novel, because that's what they are - hollow, empty.

I can't help but find it a little sad.

Lilia, the main character, grows up in this district with all of these beautiful light shows. Even the sky for them is projected, the real sky is grey and dismal and without a sun. It's similar to the television screen in Beijing showing the sunrise, because otherwise no one can see it. In her district, everything is beautiful. And it is beautiful, I'll emphasise - objectively, it really is prettier than the real thing, and the holos are engineered to be prettier than what they are meant to represent. That's okay - it's one type of beauty.

Also in this district, many people have plastic surgery. They're all rich, so why not? They use serums to regenerate their skin, surgical fillers to keep their faces youthful, they can mould and reshape their bone structure and features to their heart's desire. Implant more hair follicles, gloss their hair, dye their eyes a new colour, polish their skin to make it dewy. Most people want to look like the models in advertisements - everyone wants to be 'perfect'. In this future, plastic surgery looks very natural, but there's still something uncanny about a face with any imperfections scrubbed away. What's more disturbing is that often it's teenagers doing this - Lilia's friend Mellina Lassoir being a prime example. While beautiful anyway, Mellina constantly strives to improve herself in her own (and her father's) eyes. Mellina even has surgery to cause the corners of her lips to turn permanently upwards, so she's always smiling - but it's a fake smile. This is made even more ironic by the fact that Mellina is actually desperately unhappy - but since she's one of the richest in the city and gets everything she wants, everyone assumes she is always happy. She doesn't actually understand that she's sad. The reason for her depression is that her father, while giving her all the material things she wants, has extremely high expectations for her and mostly ignores her. Mellina believes that by becoming perfect, he will show her some interest, but she always falls short. It's later revealed that actually nothing Mellina could do would make her father kind to her - but that's a plot point. ;v Basically, all the money in the world can't make you happy if you're lonely.

Mellina is probably objectively prettier than she was before surgery, despite it being just a little creepy since she looks practically airbrushed. But it's really just a different kind of beauty than she had before. Perfect and imperfect, 'real' and 'artificial' - neither necessarily has to be better or worse than the other, they're just different. I mean, I don't know many people who wouldn't want to get rid of their own imperfections. I don't have anything personally against plastic surgeries/photoshopping... as long as it's made obvious that this is indeed 'artificial' beauty, not 'real'. There's nothing wrong with it! As long as you don't claim it's real?

Mellina never claims it's real in the story, haha. She's proudly 'plastic', and regularly suggests surgeries/methods that other characters could use to improve their looks. She sees working on your looks as pretty much the same as practising to become better at playing the violin, or painting.

I have my flaws - I'm really rather vain, in fact terribly so, and spent far too long looking in the mirror. I know my flaws really, really well - both in looks and in talents/personality. But, I'm actually okay with them just now. I'd never do plastic surgery, at least not now - it's expensive/painful/I don't trust a surgeon not to wreck my face. I'm okay with being the regular blossom-tree, with the odd raggedy petal, the tree that eventually will lose all its flowers... well, I'm not okay with getting old. I really wish I didn't have to do it. I like being young and somewhat attractive ;v It's fun. But then, doesn't the world have a weird obsession with youth? We idolise it, and we all want it, and yet we turn around and shit on it for being 'naive' or 'idealistic' or 'delinquent' whenever we get the chance. Don't you think it's weird, when you think about it like that? I guess it's like Chuck Palahniuk says, in his novel Lullaby. Every generation wants to be the last.

We don't like younger generations, because they remind us of how old we're getting. We don't like them because they're still idealistic and naive enough to believe they can change the world, when we failed to do it ourselves. We don't like them because they see what we've done wrong as a people and point it out, so we write it off as idealism and general stupidity so we don't have to listen. Sure, young people can be stupid sometimes... but we get a bad rep, generally.

I hope I never turn into the kind of older person I just described.

This post has been stupidly meandering, and I'm not entirely sure if I came to a satisfying conclusion... but I got some thoughts out, at least. Otherwise, what's the point of this blog?

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punt punt punt the boat, aggressively down the stream

It's been a little while, but I had a super busy weekend! On Saturday, I met up with some of my university friends to go punting (despite living in Cambridge for most of my life, I am dreadful at punting and can barely maneuver the pole since it is so heavy.) My boyfriend also came, and then stayed over until yesterday! It was super fun.
For the punting, we split into a guy's punt and a girl's punt. Since two of us girls came from Cambridge and had punted before we were guessing that we'd win the race. We decided that it should be a race, since we are competitive and thought it'd be fun to beat them.
Unfortunately, it seems that guys are naturally gifted at punting... All of them were good at it, without even really trying! So unfair. We got to the half way point a long way behind them - they were already turning back. So we craftily stole David (the boyfriend, haha) and had him punt us back to the start.
He was not even particularly tired afterwards, although it is harder upstream and he did it the entire way.  When I tried to punt for about 10 minutes, the punt span around and didn't really go anywhere. We also crashed into just about every other punt on the river... super shaming. My only saving grace was that I didn't fall in or lose the pole like a tourist.

We've already planned the next excursion - some time this summer, we shall engage in pirate punting. Punt hopping, bridge hopping, copious amounts of rum and pirate costumes.

However, spring is most definitely here! The sun keeps coming out, and the trees are all blooming - one of the reasons I love where I live is because it's so green, with so many plants. I keep stopping to take cheeky photos of the blossom. I just wish there was more! Cherry, plum, apple, magnolia blossom trees. Crêpes from the crêpe stand in town, sitting on the greens. It's pretty nostalgic, really.

For now, it's time to revise. But I've had tons of good ideas for my novel - might post about some of them soon, or about my conlang. At the moment I'm also deciding on a name change for one of my principle characters - I just don't like the old name so much. It's tough to find a better one that fits, though.

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15 questions

I couldn't really think of another post for today, and I had some revision I very much needed to avoid. Thus, a rather stereotypical 'get to know me' post! It was going to be 50 questions... and then 20 questions... it finally tailed off at 15. Oh, well.


Who are you?
I'm Alice, nineteen, from Cambridge - the real Cambridge, not the American approximation. I'm British! For those who wonder, I was called Alice because my mum loves Alice in Wonderland, and had hardly heard of anyone called Alice that she knew. I guess she wanted me to have a less common name. Unfortunately this backfired, because there were three in one of my classes. Not so unique after all orz.
 
Why writing?
 I've wanted to be a writer for almost as long as I can remember, and always made up my own stories and worlds in my head as a child. When I was seven I read the first four Harry Potter books, and that sealed it. I wanted people to read the ideas I had in my head, and hopefully enjoy them. Thus, I began writing them down. Since that time, I've worked without stopping to improve.

Future ambitions?
High Overlord of Life, the Universe and Everything.
In all seriousness, I hope to one day become a published author. That's always been the dream - it's really the only thing I've ever wanted to be, and I want it more than anything.
Yet, I am doing a Biology degree... I could have done an English one, but here's a secret - I hated English A Level. I got full marks, but it was really rather boring. I didn't want to pay nine grand a year to be bored. I could have done a creative writing course, I suppose, but let's face it - I probably wouldn't be doing the writing I love to do, and I'd have someone else telling me what to do. With creative things, like art and writing, I really think you have to do most of the work yourself. You have to develop your style yourself, and from my experience none of my teachers have helped me much when it comes to writing creatively. They might have told me how to use punctuation and to indent paragraphs, but not much else. The rest of it came from reading out of school, and my own work writing my own stories in my spare time. I'm fascinated by Biology and inspired by it, but it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Where in the world would you most want to go?
I hope to travel the world some day, like my two uncles. I've never left Europe before, so there's a whole lot of world out there to see! Right now, there's several things I definitely want to see at some point. I want to go to Japan to see the cherry blossoms flowering, I want to go to Vietnam to try the food (my uncle says that out of all the places he travelled, Vietnamese food was the best by far) and I want to go to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef! I'd like to see the aurora borealis at some point, I want to travel to Russia for the ballet, and I want to revisit Paris and Budapest. Also, Santorini for its beauty! There are so many places I want to go!

Favourite cities?
Out of the places I've been, I love Budapest the most. My uncle's flat is there, so we stayed right near the Danube. The Szechenyi baths are amazing, the best baths I've ever visited. After Budapest comes Venice, and then Cambridge. What can I say, I'm biased? Paris is nice too, though.

Any sports?
I don't like team sports, and I don't really like to compete in sports. But I am a black belt in Shotokan Karate, and love to ice skate. I also cycle a lot (prerequisite for living in Cambridge) but that probably doesn't count. Either way, I exercise - I just don't really do sports.

Favourite words?
I have an awful lot of favourite words. I particularly like crystalline, luminesce, shenanigans, tatterdemalion, hobbledehoy, popinjay, flummery, abyssopelagic, xanthochroic, and quixotic.
 
Favourite book?
George Orwell's 1984. Easily. But I also love Flowers for Algernon, Brave New World, and the Harry Potter series.

Favourite bands?
Muse, easily. But I also love Nirvana, Florence & the Machine, Marina & the Diamonds, Karnivool, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, and Fall Out Boy. Mostly for their latest album.

Favourite song?
Super hard wtf! At the moment it's Sunburn, of course by Muse. But other favourites include Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends, Florence & the Machine's Cosmic Love, and pretty much anything else ever by Muse and Marina & the Diamonds.
"She burns like the sun, I can't look away, and she'll burn our horizons, make no mistake~"

Favourite tv programmes?
Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, Futurama, Sherlock, Doctor Who. Fresh Meat is also really rather good.

Religion?
Nope. I'm an atheist.
That doesn't mean I hate religion. I recognise the value of its good parts, and believe they should be preserved. I just don't believe in any sort of God, and the bad sides of religion disgust me. People who try and impose their religion on others in any way at all will always be dreadful excuses for humans.

Political stance?
I hate most of our politicians right now, and genuinely fear for my country. But I did this political compass test thing, though, and I shape up as a left-wing libertarian. Basically, I don't like when people try to take other's rights away, information and education should be free to everyone, censorship is the first step on the ladder to dictatorship, and while there's nothing wrong with working hard to earn more money and a better life there needs to be greater social mobility and everyone should get the same chances.
Also, they need to stop watching us. Did none of them read 1984? Or did they decide it was an instruction manual? Stop spying on everyone! I'm pretty sure every country in the world does it, it's just America and Britain were stupid enough to get caught.
Mind you, the amount of dodgy searches I've made in the name of writing (How long does cyanide take to kill someone? Where can you get shot and survive? How do you make a molotov cocktail?)... I'm probably on so many Government lists by now.

Best feature?
The thing I like best about myself is probably my imagination. And I like to think I'm pretty creative. I don't know, I'm not going to try and big myself up.

Personal flaws?
I'm very proud. And vain. Sometimes that turns into being arrogant, even if I don't mean it. There is nothing wrong with having pride in yourself or high expectations, but I have to be careful sometimes. And I can never meet my own expectations for myself.

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