Garla Solarian

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Revision as of 06:08, 26 December 2006

Garla Solarian: a conlang written by Harvey Steffke. According to Soloralist lore, Garla Solarian, the Language of Light, was created by the ancient Solaria to aid them when casting magic. The conlang was never totally finished but the basic concepts are as follows:

Gender-specific vowels

Each vowel has a specific gender in Solarian. "E" and "u" are masculine vowels, and "a" and "i" are femanine vowels. The "o" vowel is neutral and can be used to make a word more vague. "A" and "e" are casual vowels and "i" and "u" are respectful vowels. These vowels are used in words with neutral o's to make the word more specific. An examples of gender-specific vowels is shown in the next section.

Each person has their own gender and age, thus their own gender-specific vowels when referring to them, however, the formality of the vowel changes depending on the topic. A wise old man can still be described as unskilled in drawing or playing the trumpet, so in such cases the immature “e” vowel would be used to describe the skill while the mature “u” vowel would describe the man himself.

Ô: The Neutral o

The ô letter is called the neutral o. It appears only in root words and is changed for actual word construction by the rules of gender-specific vowels. Example of ô usage:

Karôt - root of royal person
Karat - princess
Karet - prince
Karit - queen
Karut - king
Karot - royal person (vague)

Korôt would refer to “the word used to describe a person” while Korôt would simply “some person.” The distinction is that Korôt is a definition while Korot is simply a vague term used to describe someone without specifying gender or maturity.

The ô is never actually used in writing unless specifically referring to the root of a word, such as in literary texts such as this. It is, however, important to know where the ô is in a word. The word “yorôn” meaning “people other than the group you belong to” or simply “they” in English, has both a ô and a o vowel. The vague term of yorôn is, of course, yoron. Without knowing where the ô was replaced in the word yoron, when you wanted to change the word to feminine immature (such as, “they, those girls over there, are being loud”) you would be unsure which ô to change to an a. Thus the root of the word is always written with the ô.

a – Feminine, immature
e – Masculine, immature
i – Feminine, mature
u – Masculine, mature
o – Vague, no information on gender or maturity
ô – Root vowel, used only in definitions or when referring literally to a word.

NOTE: Gender-specific vowels only apply when the vowel is substituting an ô. The word Karôt has an a as a second letter, but the word Karôt itself does not automatically refer to females.

However, words that are not altered by gender-specific vowels may still have an innate gender. Ukana has the "a" gender, so substitue "ô" for "a" when refering to Ukana. If the gender is neutral, when referring to the word either change the ô to the proper gender or, if the word lacks an ô, use o instead.

Example 1: galasôm is a verb that means “to have (possess).” Ukana is a word meaning meaning “food” and has the inherent a gender. To say that you possess food, the Solarian becomes “galasam ukana.” This form of galasôm is always used when talking about food, because food’s gender or maturity cannot change. It is always a. The source of the food or its age is irrelevant, as describing this would require additional words other than just “food”. To continue the explanation, if the food is very old and spoiled, the a gender does not become an i gender, because food’s gender is always a. The words to describe the food may be different gender, but since the verb targets the noun it will always use the noun’s inherent gender, if it has one.

Example 2: hypôs is the word for soul. The ô can be modified depending on the gender and maturity of the person with the soul. However, to simply say the phrase “to have a soul” in Solarian is “galasom hypos.” This is because hypos has no inherent gender, and “to have a soul” does not describe anyone in particular. The gender is vague, so it is left as a normal o.

Pluralizing

If something is plural, then we are talking about more than one of it. You can have a (1) rock, or you can have (many) rocks. When talking about many rocks, the root word “rock”, which is singular, becomes “rocks”, which is plural.

In English some words pluralize into totally different forms. The plural of “that person” is “them,” the plural of “you and me” is “us.” In Garla Solarian, the root words are still the root words, but a suffix is added to indicate plurality.

To pluralize any word, add "ôn" to the ending of the neutral form of the singular form of word. If the word already has an ô in the root form, change that to a normal o. The ô is changed to reflect the nature of the word. Example of pluralizing:

Karôt - root of royal person
Karut - king
Karotôn – root of multiple royal people
Karotun - kings

If the word is to describe people that would fall under different vowel classes (such as both a boy and a girl, like children), then the vague form of pluralizing is used. Example of complex pluralizing:

Karôt - root of royal person
Karoten – princes
Karotin – princesses
Karoton - multiple royal people

Karoton is a very vague word that simply describes royalty in general. If you want to describe multiple gender groups, the individual words must be used.

ve – and
Karoten ve Karotin – princes and princesses

Ve is the word for “and.” It is used to imply that the message applies to more than one concept equally. So whatever was referring to“Karoten ve Karotin” refers to both princess and princesses as if it were one word.

Please note that you can’t pluralize a plural word by adding another “ôn” suffix. The plural of more than 1 is still more than one. If, for example, you are talking about several groups of people, instead of trying to pluralize “people” again, the word for “group” is pluralized instead, since you now have more than a single group.

Singularity

The opposite of plurality. Singularity is the concept that one thing in particular is important. This is used to denote proper names. It is also used to imply that the message is talking about a particular object, even if more than one of that object exist. Even though the word "rock" is singular, there are thousands of rocks in the world, so to describe a single, special rock requires singularity.

To indicate singularity, capitalize the desired word. Example of singularity:

Karat – princess
Mercôn - person (root)
côm - to be
Mercan cam karat. – She is (a) princess.
Mercan cam Karat. – She is the princess.

Côm is a verb, which we haven’t talked about yet. The neutral o in verbs targets the gender of the noun the verb refers to. In this example, it targets princess, which is a gender, so côm becomes cam. More on that later.

This is a complex example, as it uses verbs in relation to nouns and gets into word order. All of the words are a gender in this example. She is a female, princess is female, and the verb connecting the two is talking about a female. Note that the first example literally translates to “she is princess.” By capitalizing the word Karat, singularity is added and it is implied that she being a princess is important.

This example lacks the context to understand the message (the princess? The princess of what? Why is this important?) but conveys the concept of singularity: any other princesses that exist are not the ones that matter here. By contrast, the phrase “Mercan cam karat” means “she is a princess”, which lacks singularity and implies that there are more than one princess, or an uncertain number of them, and does not place any attention on her being a special princess different from any others.

Singularty is not used to simply stress that something is important. Using a previous example, galasam ukana means “to possess food.” Writing galasam Ukana means “to possess the food.” By giving singularity to ukana it is implied that this food is somehow special and different. If the message you are trying to convey is something along the lines “I’ve been starving for a week, but finally I have some food!” then singularity is not appropriate: while eating for the first time in a week may be important, there is nothing special about the food in particular. A different method of clarifying importance should be used.

Possession

Possession is used to describe ownership. The word shirt is vague, but if you say it is Bob’s shirt, than who own the shirt is obvious (Bob does). Possession does not simply stop with people owning objects. People or objects can possess traits too, such as color.

To indicate possession, place the object or trait being possessed after the possessor.

Des – regarding/of
Ukana – food
Bob des Ukana – food of Bob

A simple example, this simply translates to “food of Bob” or more commonly “Bob’s food.” This sounds backwards from what we know in English: it looks like “Bob of food,” but in Solarian the larger group (the possessor) is written before the object or trait being possessed.

Note the singularity: Bob refers to one particular person. Regardless of if there are other people named Bob in the world, this implies that one particular person named Bob possesses this food.

Saiar - destiny
Karat - princess
Mercan cam karat. – She is (a) princess.
Mercan cam saiar des karat. – she is a princess of destiny. (She is destiny’s princess)
Mercan cam saiar des Karat. – She is the Princess of Destiny. (She is Destiny’s Princess)

A follow-up on the previous example, this again combines singularity with possession and gives more context to the message. Notice that destiny is possessing princess in this example. Destiny can be said to be the larger group, and it possesses the word princess, thus the term refers to the princess of destiny, or destiny’s princess, as the two terms are interchangeable in English.

In the second example, Singularity is used on princess to indicate there is only one princess of destiny, no more. Destiny does not possess more than one princess. Thus it may be translated almost as a proper noun such as a title. (Princess of Destiny).

Because destiny and princess are both nouns, placing several nouns in a long string can complicate the message, so the word “des” is used to clarify what is possessing what.

Verbs

Nouns are things and concepts. A person is a noun, a table is a noun, the color blue is a noun. They are all said to exist even if they are theoretical things you can’t touch such as “Thursday.” By contract, verbs are actions. Running, eating, possessing, believing, and stopping are all verbs. Nouns tell you what we’re talking about. Verbs tell you what those things are doing.

Verbs all end in "ôm" and are further modified for tenses. The specific target of the verb alters its gender. No verbs have innate genders. Verbs are altered in the following ways by their subject to change their tenses:

Refering to verb itself – keep spelling the same
Present form – add “ar” (something is happening right now)
Past form – add “al” (something happened in the past)
Future form – add “sarom” after original spelling (something will happen in the future)
Command form – add “a” (instructing someone to do an action)

Ral - you (femanine casual)
Sarôm - to go (root)
Sarômar - present form (Ral saramar = You go)
Sarômal - past form (Ral saramal = You went)
Sarôm sarom - future form (Ral saram sarom = You are going to go)
Sarôma - command form (Ral sarama = You, go!)

To indicate that an action is currently happening, add a "b" after the tense.

Sarômar - present form (Ral saramar – You go)
Sarômarb - current present form (Ral saramarb = You are going)
Sarômal - past form (Ral saramal = You went)
Sarômalb - current past form (Ral saramalb = You were going)
Sarôm sarom – future form (Ral saram sarom = You are going to go)
Sarômb sarom – current future form (Ral saramb sarom = You are going to be going)

Indirect Targets

Some verbs act on nouns but refer to other nouns as well. This is called indirect targetting. To use this concept, add "yô" to the indirect target, where ô refers to the gender vowel of the thing performing the action. Example of indirect targeting verbs:

Ukana - food (a gender)
Sarôma - go (command tense)
Tzarô - oneself
Tzaru - oneself (male formal)
Ukana saroma tzaruya! - Food! Go to me!

Ukana (food) and tzaru (male person) are both nouns. The verb sarôma (to go, as in to move) is acting on the food. The food is the one doing the moving. Tzaru is the target of the moving: where it the food is moving to. Thus tzaru is transformed into tzaryô because it is the indirect target of the verb, which is further modified to tzarya because food is a gender.

Note: The sentence “Saroma tzaruya ukana!” (Go to me, food!) or “Ukana tzaruya saroma” (Food, to me, go!) mean technically the same thing. The "yô" clears up any possible confusion on what is going (the word with the "yô" obviously not being acted on by the verb, so it must be the food) and where it is going (to the word with the "yô", so me). However, in more complicated sentences things can be pretty darn tricky, so be careful and use the word order “verb-preposition-targeted noun” if possible.

Questions

Questions: to ask a question, keep the word order of the sentence like it would be if it was a statement and add a question mark. The question mark asks the truth of the sentence. Example of a question:

Rel cem berenep carawye. - You are a government revolutionary.
Rel cem berenep carawye? - You are a government revolutionary. Is this true?

In some cases it may be unfitting to use this form, since is requires a "guess" at the truth. If you want to ask someone the time, asking “It is 4:20, is this true?” is ridiculous because if you don’t know the time, you’re not going to be right on your guess. To ask a straight out question such as "what time is it?” it must be reworded so that it is not a question, but a command.

Karacem tzare chronar. - Tell me the time. (me = gender e for this example)

Note the lack of question mark, because obviously this is a request rather then a question. It still caries the same meaning as the question, however.

In English this sounds like a rude demand, but in Garla Solarian carries no negative connotation and is simply the base form to ask a question. It can be made into a rude statement (Tell me the time, stupid!) or a polite one (Please tell me the time, good sir) with the addition of further words, but the core of the command stays the same in both cases.

Transformations

Note: all four transformation notes are for translaters and word designers and are not crutial to understanding the language)

Transformation of a noun into a verb: to change a noun into a verb, change all neutral o's in the noun to the noun's gender, then add "ôm" to the end of the noun. Example of noun-verb transformation:

Solor - sun
Solorôm - to sun (as in, to leave out in the sun)

Transformation of a verb into a noun: to change a verb into a noun, remove the "ôm" and change the last o in the word to a neutral o. If there are no o's in the word, change the last vowel to a neutral o.

Lumsôm - to heal
Lôms - healer (neutral)

Transormation of the adjective to an adverb: add “ow” to the end of the word.

Pailak – courage
Pailakow – courageously

To change words from an adverb to an adjective, remove the “ow”.

Master Word List

Not available online. Talk to Harvey Steffke Bill Dusch to get a copy of the word list if you really need it.