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Laceyiam: Difference between revisions
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== Vocabulary == | == Vocabulary == | ||
=== Word formation, word origins and etymological classification === | |||
The vocabulary of Laceyiam is continuously growing with the need to coin new words for anything new that gets discovered on Calémere. New words are today mostly formed by compounding - which is a very common way of forming words, especially nouns - by either Laceyiami roots or Ancient Lelīmuyāńi ones (counting as the latter those who have not already been borrowed into Laceyiam). Other active word-formation processes include word derivation through bound morphemes and, although dwarfed in use by the other two processes, acronyms. | |||
As there's barely anything left to discover geographically on Calémere, borrowings into Laceyiam are nowadays rare, and they're mostly used in order to describe cultural aspects from other lands, or sports and activities that gain followers in Laltīmāhia - though note that the Chlegdarim society's relative isolation and its own role as a leading cultural nation, at least for the Eastern Bloc of Calémere, makes this a not-so-common concept. Anyway (as also explained throughout the ''History ''section), historically Laceyiam has borrowed many words and roots, that enriched the vocabulary from the original Proto-Cis-Tahianshima stock of words. The general classification of Laceyiami roots classifies them as such: | |||
* Level 0 - words that can be traced all the way back to ''Proto-Cis-Tahianshima'', and as such have full or partial cognates in at least one other Cis-Tahianshima language. PCT was probably spoken as late as 3600 years ago, three full centuries before the start of the First Era (3281 years ago) of the Chlegdarim calendar (which was however adopted from the Ancient Lelīmuyāńi civilization). Level 0 roots amount to about 32-33% of Laceyiami vocabulary. | |||
* Level P (this classification follows the Chlegdarim alphabetical order) - these are pre-classical words from a number of origins: Proto-Mǎng Tì and Old Hjøtūchilāmi are the only languages that can be identified as sources for at least some words; they also include all other words from the Nanaklāri substrate, and, most probably, other unattested languages from Tāhiańśīma and the Eastern Islands, as well as possible PCT words that can't be reconstructed as such due to lack of cognates in other languages. Timing for these borrowings is from the end of the common PCT era (about 3600 years ago) up to the late First Era (which ended in 1E 1109, that is 2172 years ago). We lack dates for where the Chlegdarims exactly where during most of these period - Ancient Lelīmuyāńi texts which first mention the Chlegdarims in southern Leitāvaja are dated around 1E 850. Level P roots form a substantial part of the Laceyiam vocabulary - some estimates consider them as being as much as 26% of the vocabulary. | |||
* Level PH1 - Classical Age words borrowed from Ancient Lelīmuyāńi, in particular those borrowed from the late First Era until the mid-Second Era (around 4E 600), the commonly accepted date for the extinction of the Ancient Lelīmuyāńi language - around that time, the areas of modern central and southern Leitāvaja, as well as most of Hjøtūchilām and parts of the lower Tāllahāria basin, were already developing the first daughter languages of Laceyiam itself. Level PH1 roots amount between 12% and 14% of Laceyiami vocabulary - possibly the highest percentage from a single language except PCT. | |||
* Level PH2 - Classical Age words not from Ancient Lelīmuyāńi: these relate to the earliest expansions of the Chlegdarim realms after the foundation of the Inquisition, all the way through the Tālliyāia jungle. Three source languages are attested: Dzams-bltyod, Ancient Varṣāthi, and Ancient Vgorrādńi (though a few linguists consider words from this last language to belong either to level B or BH). Many other languages of the jungle are not attested directly but left traces in local vernaculars, some of whose words then have found their way into Standard Laceyiam. Level PH2 words date from the late First Era (almost exclusively Dzams-bltyod) or early Second Era until the mid-Second Era, and constitute about 4% of the vocabulary. | |||
* Level B - words from the first major westward expansion, into the rainforest of Southwestern Laltīmāhia and the mountains and deserts north of it. Starting from here, the vast majority of borrowed words are either natural features (plants, geography, animals) or specific to the cultures of conquered places. Level B dates from the first century of the Second Era to around 2E 800-900 (Chlegdarims probably bordered Dabuke populations, north of the deserts, starting from around that date), and it amounts to about 2% or 3% of words. | |||
* Level BH - words borrowed during the second - and the largest - Inquisitorial expansion, the one in the Lāmiejāya-Lāmber plain (simply the ''Plains''). As for level B words, they are mostly culturally specific, but ''Payt'umpaftl'', a language once spoken in the northern part of the plain, was spoken by a somewhat cultured civilization and gave Laceyiam some words about chemistry, alchemy, and mathematics. The Ancient Vgorrādńi borrowings are considered by some linguists to belong to this level, as they were reached later than other level PH2 cultures, and as their civilization was geographically in the Plains - in the uppermost reaches of the ''Lāmber'' river, around the northern border of the Tālliyāia rainforest; however this is a minority view, as the Plains Expansion is considered to have begun only around 2E 450-500 (the founding of the city of ''Cami'' in modern-day ''Hūmiębhāraya, ''for a long time the main Chlegdarim city in the Plains area, even though not geographically in the Plain itself -'' ''is traditionally considered to have taken place in 2E 511), when the Chlegdarims had already met the Ancient Vgorrādńi civilization; level BH includes borrowings until the late Second Era (which finished in 2E 1137). Words from level BH amount to about 8% of the total vocabulary. | |||
* Level M - from the various expansions of the Chlegdarims into the Dabuke lands in the Northwest, the southern areas of the modern-day North (''Hūnakøyda ''and ''Kaiśiluð''), in the ''Mūneilāhe ''endorheic basin, and in Tāhiańśīma, which took place starting from about 2E 1000 until about 3E 300-400 (note that the Dabuke peoples took at least three more centuries to assimilate into the Chlegdarim culture). Level M amounts to about 5% of Laceyiami words, excluding chiefly local words (mainly of Dabuke origin) used by people from Northwestern Laltīmāhia. | |||
* Level V1 - from the expansion into the North (the Ancient Naumilā-Maidikairi civilization) and contacts with the cultural spaces of Brono, Skyrdagor, and the Kalurilut, dating from around 3E 200 until about 3E 700-750. These words constitute about 4% of the vocabulary. | |||
* Level V2 - words taken from explorations and colonizations all around the planet, starting from mid-Third Era until around 3E 850 (the Third Era finished in 3E 902). Many words were taken on the spot, but some were also borrowed through Kalurilut - most notably the names used today for many Western nations, which are descriptive names in the Kalurilut language. For example the Laceyiami word for ''Ceria ''is ''Inūkutlāk'', from Kalurilut ''inuukutalaaq ''"Empire of the West"; in Kalurilut itself these names are obsolete, mostly replaced by phonetic borrowings, like ''iSiir ''in the case of ''Ceria''. Despite their huge geographical spread, level V2 words only amount to about 2% of the total vocabulary. | |||
* Level T - made of borrowings, mostly from Western languages, of the Fourth Era, that is those borrowed at the current time (the current year is 4E 133). They also include words borrowed from the indigenous languages of the Skūlgatnir islands and the so-called Limits of Védren, now-Chlegdarim islands whose colonization only started less than two centuries ago, in 3E 878. Level T amounts to less than 1% of words. | |||
=== Influence on other languages === | |||
Laceyiam has, due to the Chlegdarims' influence on culture, religion, and politics, had a large influence on other languages. The ones that had the most influence are probably ''Kambøʔu'' - a Mid-Oceanic language spoken in the Kambøʔu islands, a chain off the northern end of Tāhiańśīma, which is a diocese of Laltīmāhia - or the dialect of ''Bazá'' spoken in Gūtambāśi diocese as, being both spoken in parts of Laltīmāhia, are in a state of diglossia with Laceyiam itself like other vernaculars of Laltīmāhia do. ''Mǎng Tì'', spoken in Mǎng Tì pọk, an extremely sparsely populated country on the eastern third of Tāhiańśīma, is also influenced by Laceyiam as they are both official languages in the country (actually, despite being de jure independent, <span>Mǎng Tì pọk is sometimes considered in the West as a puppet state of Lalt</span>īmāhia). These are, however, all languages with a limited number of speakers, or minority languages. | |||
Among major languages, those that definitely had the largest Laceyiami influence are ''Kalurilut ''and both standardized dialects of ''Brono-Fathanic'' (''Bronic ''and ''Fathanic''), which are the languages of peoples that are of overwhelming Yūnialtei religious majority and thus have close relationships with Laltīmāhia (Brono also shares with Laltīmāhia about 1300 km of border along the 33rd parallel north); many languages of the ''Dabuke'' family and other local languages of Western Isungatsuaq all have been influenced by Laceyiam, though, due to Western colonization, either Cerian or Nordulic is the lingua franca in those areas. Skyrdagor in Northwestern Isungatsuaq also had some Laceyiam influence, though not very extensive; anyway as Skyrdagor countries are politically aligned with the Eastern Bloc they share modern international terminology mostly with Laceyiam (and languages such as Kalurilut and Brono-Fathanic) rather than with Evandorian languages such as Cerian, Nivarese, or Nordulic. Western languages have mostly borrowed from Laceyiam during the contact between those cultures in the (Western) early Modern Age, when Westerners discovered lots of features from the tropical and equatorial areas of Calémere - almost all located inside the Laceyiam-speaking world. Today, however, there is reciprocal cultural knowledge and, consequently, language contact between them, as shown by the ''level T ''of Laceyiami etymology as in the classification above. | |||
=== Topics === | === Topics === | ||
==== Family - Leliėmita ==== | ==== Family - Leliėmita ==== | ||