Hinanesti: Verbiage Pt. 2 (And Some Miscellaneous Other Stuff)

[marianlh]

First, I updated the sources, since #4 was getting a little crowded:

1. "An Elven Lexicon", Dragon Magazine #279
2. "By Any Other Name: Elves", Dragon Magazine #251 (also reproduced in Races of the Wild)
3. I made it up
4. other D&D canon
5. "Leaf & Thorn: The Secret Life of Elves", Dragon Magazine #279
6. Races of the Wild (it has more than just the name generator)
7. "Dragontongue: A Draconic Language Primer", Dragon Magazine #284
8. Cormanthyr, Empire of Elves, Elves of Evermeet, & other Forgotten Realms material
9. "By Any Other Name: The Drow", Dragon Magazine #267

Why (7): Although elves don't like to admit it, Draconic is the oldest mortal language in Oerth. In my personal headcanon, it's also the language that the verbal components (incantations) of arcane spells are spoken in, and the language of arcane scholarship. I imagine that, back in antiquity, some Draconic vocabulary got borrowed into Esti, much like you can find Latin and Greek roots in English.

In a similar fashion, from (9) I might "back-date" drow words to the original elvish words they're descended from.



Next, some random new vocabulary:

• cuësir (koo-AY-sir): person, related to/evolved from the same root as esir1
• ceuësir (KEH-oo-AY-sir): people, plural form of cuësir, backformed from tel'Quessir, Faerun elvish for "the People". Hypothesis: ceu- in Oerth hinenesti becomes qu- in Faerun hinanesti.

These came up after someone at RPG.net referred me to the FR sourcebook Cormanthyr, Empire of Elves. I was already familiar with the term tel'Quessir and didn't plan to use it for my Greyhawk-biased elven language, because it doesn't fit in with the "not elven supremacist dickbags" vibe of 3E elves. But that doesn't mean I can't raid it for vocabulary. As I think I've mentioned before, my assumption is that the different D&D worlds each have their own dialect of elven, but they're all descended from a common source. Presumably the language of the Seldarine.

• silaniad3: v-to wander (archaic)
• silaíd3: v-to wander (modern)
• siel3: v-to turn (modern)
• cear: n-night (archaic, from Draconic thurkear7)
• vë-3: present progressive verb prefix, "(verb)ing"
• cear-vësilaniad: night-wandering (archaic)
• tel'Cearëslani: the Reverie (modern)

In Chapter Two of Where the Tree Fails, that D&D portal fantasy I've alluded to before, the subject of the Reverie comes up. It's long been a part of D&D lore that elves don't sleep, but enter a sort of trance instead, but as far as I've been able to find out no one's ever coined an elven name for it. So I did. I started by looking up the etymology of the English word reverie, which in turn led me to explore the etymology of to wander and then to turn. Then I came up with my own similar etymology for the esti words, with the modern term for the Reverie descending from an archaic compound noun meaning "night wandering". The idea is that elves wander through their minds or their memories during the night.

This also gave me some new verbs. Which reminds me: verbs! Here are all the verbs I have so far, either from existing sources, verbing of existing nouns or other adapted sources, or just plain made up:

• yl3: to be
• tenyal: to clothe, to dress, verbed from tenya1 (clothing)
• enwil3: to dwell
• melèd3: to eat
• fanil6: to fail
• piral3: to forgive
• yewl1: to give
• shan1: to go
• ahal3: to greet
• orisal6: to grow
• fenyal1: to heal
• thoron: to know, verbed from thro-2 (lore, sage)
• ażal3: to live
• annad: to make, verbed from -an2 (maker)
• evar1: to rest
• hinual1: to speak
• shered: to steal, verbed from leshere1 (thief)
• nëanas1: to stop
• suas3: to take, modified from teshuel1
• thrail3: to trance, to enter the Reverie, from Draconic thurkear7 (night)
• siel3: to turn
• sehan1: to travel
• deynal3: to use
• silaíd3: to wander
• galas1: to whisper

One thing I have yet to do is go through (2) and verb a bunch of the nouns and adjectives there. I've come up with a couple on an as-needed basis, but I'll get a lot more if I do it systematically.