reconlangmo 8: storytelling/poetry (#159)

blog/reconlangmo-8-storytelling.markdown

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+---
+title: "ReConLangMo 8: Storytelling"
+date: 2020-05-29
+series: reconlangmo
+tags:
+ - conlang
+ - lewa
+---
+
+# ReConLangMo 8: Storytelling
+
+In the [last episode][rclm7] of [ReConLangMo][reconlangmo], we covered
+conversational discourse as well as formality and other grammatical moods. I
+also covered my goals for the gender system of L'ewa. Here I will cover the
+closest thing L'ewa has to culture, the storytelling and poetry norms. L'ewa is
+also a language designed for [spellcraft][spellcraft] and [sigil
+magick][sigils], so those norms will be covered too. This is a response to [this
+prompt][rclm8].
+
+[rclm7]: /blog/reconlangmo-7-discourse-2020-05-25
+[rclm8]: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/gszhy9/reconlangmo_7_storytelling_and_poetry/
+[reconlangmo]: /blog/series/reconlangmo
+[spellcraft]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incantation
+[sigils]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil
+
+## Stories
+
+Stories are told as statements that happened in the past. Stories are structured
+in the same way that you would structure them in English. There is a scenario, a
+call to action, a refusal of the call, then the story goes on in the standard
+way. Casual retelling of events is done without a narrative, and the events are
+just relayed using casual sentences.
+
+The particle `qu` can be repeated at the beginning of a story to enable the
+"story time" flag. Story time sentences can be figurative. Each sentence in the
+story progressively builds up the narrative to explain the themes and lessons
+that are trying to be conveyed.
+
+Stories are told using the narrative present tense. Speakers also relay
+secondhand information directly. 
+
+## Poetry
+
+One of the morphological side effect of L'ewa root words is that only the first
+four letters of each word are unique. As a side effect of this, you can make any
+word rhyme with any other word if you want it to. L'ewa can become l'ewi, l'ewo,
+le'we or l'ewu if the poetry demands it. Poetry can be done in any meter or
+rhythm depending on the mood of the speaker. Poetry can also be formatted using
+fixed-width text. Here are a few examples:
+
+```
+le l'ewa de kirta
+xi firga to renma
+
+The language of Creators
+is beneficial to all people
+```
+
+```
+a'o ro zimpu ti
+e'o so vorto
+
+I hope you understand this
+How many words?
+```
+
+I don't think I have enough vocabulary to make any more yet.
+
+## Spellcraft
+
+These poems are worked into sigils by interlocking the words together into a
+larger figure. Here is an example based on the first poem:
+
+![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/707952638813143051/716075404405768202/dotgrid-20K10-824701.png)
+
+Ideally this would would include the letters spiraling around things, but my
+current tools are limited in what they can do. Sigils don't need to follow
+normal grammar rules. They can bend and break them as much as they want or need
+in order to flow nicer. If they need to, they can also make up words that don't
+normally exist in the dictionary. These words should be documented in the
+dictionary at some point, but there is no big rush.
+
+## Gender and Third Person Pronouns
+
+Previously, I haven't gone into details about the third person pronouns in
+L'ewa. This was done very, very intentionally. One of the goals of L'ewa's
+handling of gender is to abolish the gender binary as much as possible. This
+means that any content word can end up being used as a pronoun. In order to
+avoid ambiguity, only part of the content word is used to form something
+matching the particle rules I was vaguely gesturing about in the post that had
+details about colors. To recap:
+
+> Compound words still need to be fleshed out, but generally all CVCCV words
+> will have wordparts made out of the first, second and fifth letter, unless the
+> vowel pair is illegal and all CCVCV words are the first, third and fifth
+> letter unless this otherwise violates the morphology rules.
+
+Let's say that your gender is the word for "is meat", or `dextu`. This would
+mean the third person pronoun form would be `de'u` (`eu` isn't a valid vowel
+pair so the glottal stop is used to break it). 
+
+```
+de'u qu tulpa lo l'ewa
+They (de'u) built a language.
+
+mao qu madsa lo spalo
+They (mao) ate an apple.
+```
+
+If you want to declare your gender, you can declare it with the word `zedra`:
+
+```
+lo spalo xi zedra
+An apple is (my) gender.
+```
+
+This would then make their pronoun `sao`.
+
+You can ask someone what their gender is with the gender question particle
+`zei`:
+
+```
+<Mai> xoi
+<Cadey> xoi ro zei
+<Mai> lo mlato xi zedra
+<Mai> zei
+<Cadey> lo 'orka xi zedra
+```
+
+From then Mai would be referred to using the pronoun `mao` and Cadey would be
+referred to using the pronoun `'ka`.
+
+If you need a generic third person pronoun, use `ke'o`.
+
+---
+
+This seems to be the end of the ReConLangMo series in /r/conlangs, but I will
+definitely continue to develop this on my own and post about it as I make larger
+accomplishments. This has been a fun series and I hope it gave people a high
+level overview of what is needed to make a speakable language from nothing.
+
+Be well.