#irkan osla

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so I've been working on my latest conlang, irkan osla (or just osla for short), for a bit now and would like to showcase its writing system in this post! osla has a syllabic alphabet, not too dissimilar to korean hangul, where letters are stacked according to certain rules to make syllable blocks.

osla's syllable structure is (C)(C)V(V)(C), here's how the stacks work for each type of syllable:

all letters have small, wide, and tall forms depending on their position in the syllable. here are all the letters with their IPA value and romanization:

and here's an example text! i translated parts of the minecraft end poem into osla. maybe i'll make another post just focusing on the grammar when it's more developed. the poem says in english:

What did this player dream? This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.

Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind? Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.

this post is getting long, so under the cut you'll find a "sans-serif" version as well as the poem in osla and its gloss if you're also a linguistics nerd and wanna know what's going on under the hood (the roman numerals stand for the 3 noun classes)! thanks for reading!

The way regular people would write something quickly on a piece of paper with a regular pen is an aspect of creating neographies that I feel is often overlooked, so I developed this sans-serif version that people would probably be more likely to use when writing their shopping lists or diary entries:

And, finally, here's the poem translation:

pak oṇḍul phan wimbakis?

DET.I.SG.PROX play-AGN what dream-PST.3SG.I?

pak oṇḍul lümaṇiuṣerothi han buloni an wimbakis. kaṣkhaothi han nilothi an. wimbakis, run sëmamkis. wimbakis, run xokthakis, han bumxokthakis. zöga an wimbakis.

DET.I.SG.PROX play-AGN sunlight-II.SG.DAT and tree-II.PL.DAT of dream-PST.3SG.I. Fire-II.SG.DAT and water-II.SG.DAT of. dream-PST.3SG.I, that create-PST.3SG.I. dream-PST.3SG.I, that hunt-PST.3SG.I, and PASS-hunt-PST.3SG.I. shelter of dream-PST.3SG.I.

ṭauraka, run kaak samare? run glutsüna flia?

know-NP.3SG.I, that 3SG.I.ABS love-NP.1PL? that universe kind?

imba ethamo, khaṣiŋli an ka’am hu’aŋni pitë, glutsüna ṣaraka, ti.

some time-NOM.III.PL, noise-ACC.II.SG of 3SG.I.GEN thought-NOM.III.PL through, universe hear-NP.3SG.I, yes.

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translation of the first verse from gliese 710 by king gizzard! almost every verb here is in the imperative mood, which posed a bit of a challenge. in irkan osla, unlike in english, the imperative declines based on number - either first person plural, or second person singular or plural. i went for 1PL because I thought it sounded almost like a sort of battlecry and less like a literal command, but the others would work too depending on your interpretation of the lyrics. i also decided to translate 'lava' as 'fire-river', since i don't think this culture would be familiar with active volcanoes.

melt the ice reheat the dead terraform the planet compress the lungs eat the mushroom cool the lava watch the new star dance upon the night sky

blüas ṭhuṣki kxokomaŋka doanragiki na'isünaas ërki fahaaŋka ṇiiṇliphiki khenaak ömki kaṣkhalauas thufki ṭṣi glutas ixki xorosabaothi ḍi misit

gloss and IPA under the cut!

ice-II.SG.ABS melt-IMP.1PL dead.ones-I.PL.ABS again-heat-IMP.1PL world-II.SG.ABS transform-IMP.1PL lung-I.PL.ABS compress-IMP.1PL mushroom-I.SG.ABS eat-IMP.1PL fire.river-II.SG.ABS cool-IMP.1PL new star-II.SG.ABS watch-IMP.1PL night.sky-II.SG.DAT in dance-INF

/ˈbly.as ˈʈʰuʂ.ki ˈkxɔ.kɔ.maŋ.ka ˈdɔan.ra.gi.ki ˈna.ʔi.sy.na.as ˈər.ki ˈfa.ha.aŋ.ka ˈɳiːɳ.li.pʰi.ki ˈkʰɛ.na.ak ˈœm.ki ˈkaʂ.kʰa.lau.as ˈtʰuf.ki ʈʂi ˈglu.tas ˈix.ki ˈxɔ.rɔ.sa.ɔ.tʰi ɖi ˈmi.sit/

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ṭṣip busëmisti, xüṇ glutli sabaris na'isünasü eskitis. glutli rüwa ṭṣipsin fukxitis. tse zilsü, ṇibulxoŋ kaŋka omboopho ën doanhu'apo.

Moths were created when a star fell from the sky onto earth. The star shattered into a thousand moths. To this day, lights remind them of home.

A short comic about the creation myth of moths in irkan osla! Moths, especially Saturnia Pavonia moths, are closely associated with siilika, the deity of stars, hope, and spirituality. Some fun facts about the translation: In irkan osla, some nouns are inherently plural. This applies to almost all animals, including moths. So 'ṭṣip' means moths, to get the singular you have to add a suffix 'ṭṣipwa'. The same goes for stars, 'glut', here the singular 'glutli' is used. This culture uses a dozenal number system, so a "thousand/1000" actually translates to 1728 in decimal. Anyway, hope yall like it, this is probably one of my favourite things I've ever done with a conlang tbh :3

gloss under the readmore as always! also [heres] the post i made about the writing system/romanization.

moth-II.PL.NOM PASS-create-PST.3PL.II, when star-II.SG.NOM sky-II.SG.ABL earth-II.SG.ALL fall-PST.3SG.II. star-II.SG.NOM thousand moth-II.PL.ALL shatter-PST.3SG.II. this day-II.SG.ALL, lamp-III.PL.ERG 3PL.I.ABS home-III.SG.DAT of remind-NP.3PL.III.

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quick little translation exercise!

tea warms the body and the soul luunli maoŋwa han ṣidawa ragibitës /ˈluːn.li ˈmaɔŋ.wa han ˈʂi.da.wa ˈra.gi.bi.təs/ tea-II.SG.NOM body-I.SG.ACC and soul-I.SG.ACC warm-HAB.NP.II.3SG

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first sentence in my new, as of yet unnamed conlang! ṭais kharxara haiṭa (/ʈais ˈkʰar.xa.ra ˈhai.ʈa/) - I see a deer (or, rather, 1SG.ERG deer-I.SG.ABS see-NP.1SG). Just something simple to start with and very much subject to change, but I like the direction it's taking so far. The writing script is a sort of alphasyllabary, where letters can be stacked on top of each other to form syllable blocks.

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The longest word in irkan osla so far is the word for peacock butterfly, imariloanubepitaurul. Butterflies are called nubepitaurul, which is a compound of nube + pit + aurul, meaning flower leaf (aka petal) flier. Imariloa is a compound of imari + loa, meaning rainbow eye. In their mythology, butterflies were created when the deity of spring blew away petals that then transformed into butterflies. Some flew into a rainbow, and thus became peacock butterflies.

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So you know how the north wind and the sun are commonly used for language demonstrations? I made my own just to compare all the languages in my conworld! It's a short text about how the elves and their world were created:

In the beginning, there was only Ekho. It was an endless being made of pure energy, living in an endless void. But it wanted to create, so it created the earth, and it wanted to experience the earth, so it created the elves. It put a tiny piece of itself into every elf so that they may use the same magic that Ekho once used to create the earth. Ekho split into sixteen gods which then spread across the land. Each is responsible for many aspects of nature and life. All of them together keep the earth in equilibrium.

The translation into ke'eloom:

riŋba, ekho tsuro soku. ndis rooŋ onoño'one sulmaeta ŋgud za, luekhaaba onoño'one imkukhi. ghits, ndisëzarkuguts, sha kena'arkhe ndisëzarku, vin kena'arkhe ndisësuirtakuguts, sha keelkha ndisëzarku. heifkhe enëtii ndita za ekekeelëbëŋ ndisadzaku, otugan sulmaekhe ñur duzëndëŋaŋat, dare ekho tsundzun ndëku, ganë kena'arkhe she zarefe. eke dzheaz alamaksa imastëmil vin imamil ŋgobëlundar. ekenet kena'arkhe ñurkenëba duzëtsiŋa.

(info on writing system and romanization)

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lord help me i will attempt to make a polysynthetic lang

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probably gonna start blogging about worldbuilding stuff too... hopefully somewhat soon. i already had a world that some of my old languages lived in, but all those documents got accidentally deleted so i'm doing something new now. nothing too fancy, it'll just be a medieval-ish moneyless peaceful anarchy with some sort of magic system. i was thinking ke'eloom could function as a lingua franca, with irkan osla being spoken in an alpine region. i've run into a bit of trouble with my polysynthetic language, but that one was intended to be spoken in a coastal area. i also have an old conlang i'm actually still quite happy with filed away somewhere, i wanna revive it and introduce it to this world as well.