#SORRY FOR THE MILE-LONG YAP I'M SO BAD AT KEEPING THINGS BRIEF

[madwormm]

YOU'VE OPENED A CAN OF WORMS AND I'M TUMBLING OUT

soooo how is 'hawk tuah' a SLUR in my conlang? it's actually really simple!!!!! (there are like. five separate layers you need to know to understand why)

k'i'e is a language for the k'i'e alien race (pronounced kuh-ee-ehh), an alien species i made up and have been slowly building onto in my free time. there's not much you need to know about them to understand the basics of their language. i don't have any good drawings (still tweaking their design), but think sentient desert t-rexes who live on the sides of river valleys (they dig into the cliff sides and traverse through tunnels).

k'i'e is my first conlang, so the construction is pretty simple. there are simple base words that can also function as roots to be combined and turned into more complex words. roots are divided by glottal stops (represented by apostrophes).

for example, take the words ek, which means sky, and bu, which means water. by combining them, you get ek'bu (ek-boo/ɛkʔbu), which is rain!!

'hawk tuah' in k'i'e is actually he'tuih (heh-too-iih/hɛʔtuɪ), which is made up of he (far) and tuih (claw). 'he' & 'tuih' had already existed as roots before i combined them to make he'tuih. it was really just for a joke, but I found it ironically worked quite well in terms of meaning, so i kept it.

now, as for how it's a slur (short (kinda)) infodump about the k'i'e ahead):

the k'i'e are actually divided into two species, aboveground k'i'e (eih'k'i'e*) and belowground k'i'e (pk'k'i'e**)

*eih means above (ehh-iih/ɛɪ)

**pk means below (phk/pk) ('p' as in 'purse' and 'h' as in 'house', NOT 'ph' as in 'phone') (that sound doesn't exist in k'i'e)

a lot of algae grows on their planet. k'i'e are very strict vegetarians. they value peace, and killing anything can easily lead to violence. wayyy long ago in k'i'e history, a group decided to start eating fish. they were TIRED of plants. that was SCANDALOUS to the others, so the fish-eating group was banished to the furthest depths of the tunnels and locked away.

deep in the tunnels are a lot of lakes. this new underground group found that they had all the fish they wanted, and decided that they didn't need the others anyway. they stayed happily, and evolved, becoming more amphibious. thus, eih'k'i'e and pk'k'i'e are kinda like different variations of the same base species

occasionally an eih'k'i'e will wander too far in the tunnels, and encounter the pk'k'i'e. pk'k'i'e are rather aggressive, remembering how they were cast out from their friends and families by those above, and will attack any eih'k'i'e in their territory. eih'k'i'e, being very prideful and righteous, get kinda butthurt with every attack ("we didn't do anything wrong in the first place!!!"). they don't like the pk'k'i'e. thus, the creation of the slur, he'tuih.

he'tuih means 'away claw' literally. it's a dig at how the pk'k'i'e are more amphibious, and less hard-skinned than the more reptilian eih'k'i'e. they DEFINITELY still have claws, but the eih'k'i'e are again, butthurt over being attacked by just wandering a little too far, so they're essentially just saying "yeah, they're not strong whatsoever!!! their claws act more like flippers!!! they can't hurt anything if they tried!!!"

tl;dr: he'tuih is a slur used by land species against water species because land guys really hate water guys. slur is pronounced similar to hawk tuah. conlangs are really funny sometimes.

EDIT: changed spelling mistake. eih'k'i'e all the way!!! (i messed up and accidentally wrote "ui'k'i'e" a few times in place of that, which is not a word in k'i'e at all)

it's so funny to remember you can do whatever you want with a conlang. hawk tuah is a slur in mine now. peace and love everywhere <333