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reconlangmo 8: storytelling/poetry (#159)
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title: "ReConLangMo 8: Storytelling"
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date: 2020-05-29
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series: reconlangmo
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tags:
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- conlang
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- lewa
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---
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# ReConLangMo 8: Storytelling
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In the [last episode][rclm7] of [ReConLangMo][reconlangmo], we covered
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conversational discourse as well as formality and other grammatical moods. I
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also covered my goals for the gender system of L'ewa. Here I will cover the
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closest thing L'ewa has to culture, the storytelling and poetry norms. L'ewa is
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also a language designed for [spellcraft][spellcraft] and [sigil
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magick][sigils], so those norms will be covered too. This is a response to [this
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prompt][rclm8].
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[rclm7]: /blog/reconlangmo-7-discourse-2020-05-25
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[rclm8]: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/gszhy9/reconlangmo_7_storytelling_and_poetry/
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[reconlangmo]: /blog/series/reconlangmo
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[spellcraft]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incantation
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[sigils]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil
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## Stories
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Stories are told as statements that happened in the past. Stories are structured
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in the same way that you would structure them in English. There is a scenario, a
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call to action, a refusal of the call, then the story goes on in the standard
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way. Casual retelling of events is done without a narrative, and the events are
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just relayed using casual sentences.
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The particle `qu` can be repeated at the beginning of a story to enable the
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"story time" flag. Story time sentences can be figurative. Each sentence in the
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story progressively builds up the narrative to explain the themes and lessons
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that are trying to be conveyed.
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Stories are told using the narrative present tense. Speakers also relay
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secondhand information directly.
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## Poetry
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One of the morphological side effect of L'ewa root words is that only the first
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four letters of each word are unique. As a side effect of this, you can make any
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word rhyme with any other word if you want it to. L'ewa can become l'ewi, l'ewo,
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le'we or l'ewu if the poetry demands it. Poetry can be done in any meter or
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rhythm depending on the mood of the speaker. Poetry can also be formatted using
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fixed-width text. Here are a few examples:
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```
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le l'ewa de kirta
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xi firga to renma
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The language of Creators
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is beneficial to all people
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```
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```
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a'o ro zimpu ti
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e'o so vorto
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I hope you understand this
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How many words?
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```
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I don't think I have enough vocabulary to make any more yet.
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## Spellcraft
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These poems are worked into sigils by interlocking the words together into a
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larger figure. Here is an example based on the first poem:
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Ideally this would would include the letters spiraling around things, but my
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current tools are limited in what they can do. Sigils don't need to follow
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normal grammar rules. They can bend and break them as much as they want or need
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in order to flow nicer. If they need to, they can also make up words that don't
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normally exist in the dictionary. These words should be documented in the
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dictionary at some point, but there is no big rush.
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## Gender and Third Person Pronouns
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Previously, I haven't gone into details about the third person pronouns in
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L'ewa. This was done very, very intentionally. One of the goals of L'ewa's
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handling of gender is to abolish the gender binary as much as possible. This
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means that any content word can end up being used as a pronoun. In order to
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avoid ambiguity, only part of the content word is used to form something
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matching the particle rules I was vaguely gesturing about in the post that had
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details about colors. To recap:
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> Compound words still need to be fleshed out, but generally all CVCCV words
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> will have wordparts made out of the first, second and fifth letter, unless the
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> vowel pair is illegal and all CCVCV words are the first, third and fifth
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> letter unless this otherwise violates the morphology rules.
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Let's say that your gender is the word for "is meat", or `dextu`. This would
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mean the third person pronoun form would be `de'u` (`eu` isn't a valid vowel
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pair so the glottal stop is used to break it).
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```
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de'u qu tulpa lo l'ewa
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They (de'u) built a language.
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mao qu madsa lo spalo
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They (mao) ate an apple.
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```
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If you want to declare your gender, you can declare it with the word `zedra`:
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```
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lo spalo xi zedra
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An apple is (my) gender.
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```
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This would then make their pronoun `sao`.
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You can ask someone what their gender is with the gender question particle
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`zei`:
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```
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<Mai> xoi
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<Cadey> xoi ro zei
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<Mai> lo mlato xi zedra
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<Mai> zei
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<Cadey> lo 'orka xi zedra
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```
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From then Mai would be referred to using the pronoun `mao` and Cadey would be
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referred to using the pronoun `'ka`.
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If you need a generic third person pronoun, use `ke'o`.
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---
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This seems to be the end of the ReConLangMo series in /r/conlangs, but I will
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definitely continue to develop this on my own and post about it as I make larger
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accomplishments. This has been a fun series and I hope it gave people a high
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level overview of what is needed to make a speakable language from nothing.
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Be well.
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