Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 51
April 12, 2018
She Who is Eaten Normally
Yeah sorry, today I’m not writing about my new book deal or my new way of writing or whatever. I’ve had a tough week, so today I’m rewarding myself. Today I’m writing about generating new words in my ergo-absolutive alternate-history constructed language.
Enjoy!
Today we’re talking about Middle Court Podzran (or, as it its speakers called it, Fash Kramoan Pta’osha), as it was spoken from around 1000 to the 1200s BCE in what is in our world Egypt.
Fash Kramoan Pta’osha means “the Official Mouth of Pto’a,” and it’s a good place to start looking at word-derivation.
“Mouth” was an easy enough word to derive. Fash is simply from (real) Hurrian fashi, and its meaning stayed the same until 1250 BCE.
But “official” was harder to get. Its root is the (real) Hittite word kram, which meant “temple.” In my alternate history, the Podzrans borrowed this word (as krom) early in their dealings with the Hittites, when their relations were peaceful. In the “equative case,” the word is kramoan (“as-a-temple”), and it’s used here as an adjective Fash Kramoan, “the mouth/language (used/spoken) in the name of the temple.”
In the same way, I made “priesthood” (kramokhat, “temple-ish-ness”), “palatial” (kramoa, “temple-like”), “law” (kramoat, “temple-like-ness”), and others, and at the same time worked out some worldbuilding on Middle Podzran society (as in, they were ruled by priest-kings).
A priest-king, then, is hashekhk kramantosha, or “he-who-is-heard of the law,” which brings up my last trick today, the suffix –k, which comes from the real Hurrian suffix –ki, and meant “person to whom.” In other words, it’s like the -ee in “escapee” (person who escapes) and “employee” (person who is employed). Hashekh means “to hear” so “hashekhk” is “he-who-is-herd” (“she-who-is-heard” would be hashekhkat, a priestess-queen).
That’s the fun of an ergo-absolutive language – everything is backward compared to English. “A giver” is khak (from kha, “to receive”) and “a beneficiary” is ak (from a, “to give”)! That lets me generate all sorts of fun words from my list of verbs, such as “a parent” (khahut’ak, one who is asked), “a statue” (manak, one who is built), “a victim of cannibalism” (hak, one who is eaten as meat), “a nun” (orkt, one who is eaten normally), “a troll” (oskhk, one who is fled from), and “a slave” (onrak, one who is gathered).
And because Hurrian is “backward” (imagine that its default verbs are passive), it has a special ways to make a verb “frontward” (that is transitive or antipassive). Hat means “to eat meat/to be eaten as meat,” but haatagh (transitive) means “to eat something as meat” and haatan (antipassive) means “to make someone eat meat” (i.e. to exercise someone or make them work). You can even combine them! Hateghan (transitive-antipassive) means “to make someone hungry to eat something as meat” (i.e. to tempt somebody with something). In this way you can generate all sorts of weird words.
Okay. Bye.
April 11, 2018
In an Old Garden
In an old garden
Red tulips have spread themselves.
Next year, there’ll be more.
April 9, 2018
Junction to be Published!!
“Debut novelist Daniel M. Bensen’s JUNCTION, in which a Japanese nature show host finds himself on an exploratory trip to an alien world, but when members of the party start to die, he wonders if one of the others might be a murderer, to Don D’Auria at Flame Tree Press, in a nice deal, for publication in April 2019, by Jennie Goloboy at Donald Maass Literary Agency (world English).”
The book is due to be out in spring 2019. I’m so grateful to everyone who this book happen! I’m just happy with everyone on the world right now. Free books for everyone! (between the 10th and the 15th — that’s the most Amazon will let me)
April 5, 2018
Spring Sense Impressions
Happy Gyulovo Week, everyone!
This week, between Lazarov Saturday and Orthodox Easter, covers almost all of the events of my nearly-finished historical fantasy The Sultan’s Enchanter.
It’s during this week in early spring that Elena, the witch of Gyulovo, makes a last-ditch attempt to save her village from a plague of mindlessness, using as her principle weapon an Ottoman battle-enchanter. There’s also kissing, but forget about that for now!
This is a great week to gather sense impressions for the story — bits and pieces to add to description and build atmosphere. And since this is the first book I’ve written that actually takes place in the country where I live, it would be stupid to let the week go by without looking out the damn window and listening to the birds.
Martenitsi dangling everywhere: you’re supposed to hang your martenitsa on the first flowering bush or tree you see (probably a cherry-plum) or hang it on whatever tree is handy if you see a stork fly by. This year, I got rid of martenitsi on the 4th, which is a bit late.
The smell of cherry and cherry-plum flowers.
Low, spreading primroses.
Lillies spiking up through the old leaves.
Green buds spotting briars. The stems of rose bushes turning green.
Blackbirds hopping around looking for worms, also calling to each other at night.
Great tits singing (dee-dee-dee dee-dee-dee) or in pairs (stop giggling) looking for nest materials.
Too cold in the morning and too hot in the day
Lots of chives and spring onions in everything.
The first bats.
The lambs that are alive now will probably stay alive.
The first flies and bees.
Worms stranded in puddles.
Diminishing wood piles.
The taste of kozunak, especially the inside part that didn’t get cooked all the way through — it’s like lemon-flavored pudding. I know it’s full of salmonella and I don’t care. You can feel it settle in your gut like ballast and in my book, that’s a good thing.
April 4, 2018
March 29, 2018
Five Star Reviews: Captivate
Van Edwards confesses at the beginning of her book that she is by nature a shy and awkward person, crippled by her social anxiety and generally unsuccessful at networking events. Like all great nerds, however, she applied rigorous empiricism to the problem of human interaction. Her organization, Science of People, does things like test handshakes for effectiveness. They use their findings (and the findings of other social and psychological experiments) as a basis for advice on how to walk into a room, find someone to talk to, introduce yourself, and have a conversation that benefits both of you. And it works.
Here’s an experiment: send me to a training session before I read Captivate, and then send me to a second training session afterward. That second time, I kept my hands visible, emphasized our shared experiences, showed my vulnerabilities, and tried to figure out what people wanted and give it to them. They all sounded like good ideas anyway, but even I was surprised how well they worked. I didn’t have to pretend to enjoy the company of the other people there – I genuinely had fun, and as far as I could tell, so did everyone else. In other words, my foray among the humans was wildly successful.
On to phase two! When you read this on Friday, I’ll be at Follycon, mingling with other spec-fic people, and hopefully, you know, not making an ass of myself. Maybe I should read that book again.
The Moon Shines Through Dust
The moon shines through dust
Gray pink and blue blur its shape
But its seas are there
March 28, 2018
A Nighttime Window
A nighttime window.
In the dark, a bird cries out.
Another answers.
March 25, 2018
A Cap of Gray Cloud
A cap of gray cloud.
But I know that behind it
The mountain is there.
March 22, 2018
The Nunkish Language
Remember Violet Evergarden? Valkren Darklocke figured out the alphabet and it turns out that the cool constructed alphabet wasn’t just English with different letters. It wasn’t Japanese, either.
Here’s a transliteration of that letter above:
Pahhuyurekukuk,
Ni acikeha ikarrikuc noka puriquyyi uhuirikon.
Nunki.
Luculia Mapleborough
Just gibberish, you say! But what about this?
I won’t give you the whole transliteration, but there’s a sentence in there that goes:
Eka goquirruru onnui rohha nunki.
The English translation of the Japanese voice over goes, “Also, thanks for putting in a work order for me.”
Thanks! Nunki! Nunki means “thanks”!
By my serifs and ligatures, everyone, it’s a CONLANG! The people on the reddit board call it “Nunkish.”
More pops up if you read through the letters. “I’m happy” in the first letter is uhuirikon. In the second letter, “I’m sorry” is gukanharikon and “(something) made me really happy” is uhunuqhun. So then is the Nunkish word for “happy” is uhu? Perhaps -irikon is “I am”?
What wonders await us! Join Valkren in his project to transliterate the stuff from the anime, and me in the effort to figure out the grammar and vocabulary of the Nunkish language.
Nunki in advance!
