Verdurian

Verdurian (soa Sfahe, "the Speech") is a constructed language created by Mark Rosenfelder, first published in 1995 and hosted on Zompist.com. It is spoken in the fictional nation of Verduria on the planet Almea. As the most-developed and best-known of Almea's languages, Verdurian is a member of the Cadhinorian branch of the Eastern language family, bearing typological similarities to Indo-European languages on Earth. Derived from the ancient language Cadhinor, it serves as the official language of Verduria, the most economically advanced state on Almea, and several neighboring countries.

In recognition of its detailed and intricate design, Verdurian received a Smiley Award from David J. Peterson in 2020.

External history

Rosenfelder has been involved in constructed languages (conlangs) from an early age. His interest became more serious during his college years at Northwestern University, where he lived next to a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master named Chris Vargas. During this time, Rosenfelder contributed to the game by creating a detailed map of the surrounding wilderness and supplying unique in-world terms and languages for the game. All the players in Vargas and Rosenfelder's Dungeons & Dragons group were given Verdurian names.

The language borrows words and grammar from various languages of Europe, but has been described as not resembling any one language. Many of the words were inspired directly by French or Russian. Others, such as "elir" for life, were a priori coinages by Rosenfelder. There are also words based on political humor, e.g. 'fanaticism' is sunmünmún and 'terror' is arhafát. Some early vocabulary is shown below:

• druk "friend" (cf. Russian друг [dɾuk])
• dormir "sleep" (cf. Spanish dormir)
• filio "son" (cf. Latin fīlius)
• amor "love" (cf. Spanish amor)
• dobre "good" (cf. Russian добро [dɔbɾə])
• brak "arm" (cf. Latin brachium [brakium])

Some words in Verdurian, such as filio, were eventually replaced, but many remain, as shown in the Verdurian dictionary. Mark Rosenfelder also worked backwards to create plausible etymologies for similarities between Verdurian and natural languages. For example, the word dobre is retained in the language. Its etymology suggests it derived from the older domeres, which meant "fine" or "handsome" in the past. This progression is linguistically plausible, involving the loss of an unstressed vowel (domeres > *domres), a nasal to stop change before r (domres > *dobres), and the final loss of *s, possibly transitioning through h (dobres > *dobre).

Rosenfelder continued to develop the Verdurian language and other languages of his constructed world throughout his college years. By the end of his time at university, he had accumulated extensive documentation and artifacts related to Verdurian and the D&D world. After the group disbanded, Rosenfelder continued to expand on his creations for the next 36 years.

Fictional history

In Rosenfelder's Almean universe, Verdurian is spoken by about 55 million people in the kingdom of Verduria, as well as nations nearby in Almea's Cadhinorian plain.

Verdurian is a member of the Eastern language phylum. This derives from a proto-language called proto-Eastern, spoken by invaders of the Cadhinorian and Xurnese plains, about 4,000 years before the present time in Rosenfelder's universe. Some of the Eastern invaders were Cuzeian, while others were Cadhinorian. Cadhinorians picked up civilization from Cuzeians (who left behind such works as the Count of Years, showing the clear influence of Tolkien). The Cadhinorians spoke a classical language called Cadhinorian (its relationship to Verdurian is analogous to that of Latin to Spanish). After the fall of the Cadhinorian Empire, Cadhinorian developed into several daughter languages, among them Old Verdurian, which evolved later into Modern Verdurian.

The fictional country of Verduria has an embassy in Linköping, Sweden.

Phonology and grammar

Verdurian's phonology has eight vowels and twenty-one consonants. Among the most exotic of its sounds is the voiced uvular fricative (ʁ), which is transcribed as an R with a háček over it (Ř, ř). Verdurian also has its own alphabet.

Verdurian grammar is structured as an SVO, lightly-inflected, head-initial language, and accusative morphosyntactic alignment. It features two genders (masculine and feminine), four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive), two numbers (singular and plural) and four tenses (present, past, past anterior and future), in addition to conditional and imperative voices.

Alphabet and Fonts

The Verdurian alphabet is used to write several languages of the Cadhinorian Plain on the world of Almea, most notably Verdurian, but also (with some supplemental characters) Caizu, Kebreni, Ismaîn, Sarroc, and Flaidish. It derives from the ancient Cadhinorian alphabet (equivalent to the Verdurian capital letters), and this in turn derives from the alphabet of Cuzei. The Verdurian alphabet may be used to write both ancient languages, Cadhinor and Cuêzi.

Verdurian is currently included in the unofficial ConScript Unicode Registry (CSUR), which assigns code points in the Private Use Area. Verdurian code points are mapped to the range U+E200 to U+E26F.

The eight “Aux” variant fonts of Kurinto (Kurinto Text Aux, Book Aux, Sans Aux, etc.) support the Verdurian alphabet.

Verdurian in popular culture

Out of all the languages of Almea, Verdurian is not only the best-developed but the most popular. Rosenfelder has translated texts from other languages into Verdurian and also published short stories and a newspaper in the language. He has also started a Verdurian course due to the requests of Verdurian aficionados.

Verdurian makes an appearance in the novel Gaits of Heaven, one of Susan Conant's "Dog Lover's Mysteries". The character Johanna does linguistic research with a feminist bent on grammatical gender "in Hebrew, Verdurian and various other languages in which verbs as well as nouns are masculine, feminine, or, in some instances, neuter".

Samples of the language

Proše mižu: --Žaneno, tan satenam mážula er gorat, kiei finta attróue so syel er tan lažecom brac, pro dy řo ažlädam fne soa pera almea Ekaiei. – From the story of the Tower of Babel.

Translation: Then they said: "Come, let us build a town and a tower, whose top will reach the heavens; and let us get ourselves glory, so that we are not scattered across all the earth."

So cuon er so ailuro eu druki. Cuon ride še slušir misotém ailurei. So ailuro e arašó rizuec.

Translation: The dog and the cat are friends. The dog laughs at the cat's jokes. The cat is quite amusing.