I haven't done much work on it for over a year now, but Celenesti came back on my radar twice this week. First another slakkon asked me about my own conlang experience, and then I committed to finishing my Xanadu story, and in the course of it had to come up with a line of Esti dialogue ( Read more... )

(pretend there's one of those Star Wars-style screen wipes here) I did a bit more work on Ryl today. For one, I decided that it should have a Subject-Object-Verb order, like German and Japanese. As opposed to English' Subject-Verb-Object. I may also include V2 verb syntax, like in German, but the jury's still out on that ( Read more... )

Reading through Appendix E of Return of the King is a humbling reminder of how much I've yet to learn about phonology, and what a pale shadow my own work is by comparison.

I made an executive decision this morning to change the name of my D&D-elven conlang from Hinanesti to Celenesti. This came about because the way I contrasted Hinanesti with Seldarinesti in the Epistle post felt wrong. Hinan just means "language", so ALL elven languages are cehinanesti, not just the modern Flanaess dialects. In the kind of meaning- ( Read more... )

This came about because I was wondering that myself. Why are they called "high" elves? They're not the big shots of elvendom in D&D's World of Greyhawk setting. If anyone is, it would be the Celendi, but they're called grey elves.

12 Fireseek, 6090 s.d ( Read more... )

I participated in a sadly short-lived play-by-post game of Age of Rebellion on RPG.net, where two of the PCs were Twi'leks. There was some brief discussion of Ryl (the Twi'lek language), which has been fleshed out a bit in various novels and other EU sources. But so far there's just some random words and a brief note that the written form is ( Read more... )

Just invented this on a whim when koopafanatic IM'd me a good morning.

eira (/ˈeɪrə/): adj(r). morning

eiren (/ˈeɪrɛn/): n. morning

eirenen (/ˈeɪrɛnɛn/): adj. morning
rai (/raɪ/): adv(t). morning

Eiren thar: good morning
Oni eirenen: morning meal
Cuësireira: morning person
Cesyira Ulathril, nïli levéd a rai: I prepared Explosive Runes this morning

For the last two nights I've actually dreamed in Esti. Which suggests I'm working way too hard on it.

On the plus side, I can literally remember the grammar in my sleep.
( Read more... )

So, another bit of random translation. Today, on a whim, I decided to come up with the Esti for the "I prepared explosive runes this morning" meme, which was born in the Order of the Stick webcomic and has since become something of a running gag in some quarters of D&D fandom. I've used it myselfFor the uninitiated, explosive runes is a classic D&D ( Read more... )

On reflection, I'm dissatisfied with my previous entry. Particularly the use of the male and female suffixes. Esenndi (elven) culture is pretty egalitarian where gender roles are concerned; there are some slight tendencies about who does what, but no firm rules. It's the Chaotic part of their alignment in action―everyone's free to pursue whatever ( Read more... )