LotM - Jun 23: Nesyanian
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LotM returns with a vengeance, highlighting the elegance of Nesyanian!
This public article was written by [Deactivated User] on 2 Jun 2023, 16:19.
[comments] eyilotm jun 23lotm
10. LotM - Aug 17: Mayessa
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11. LotM - Aug 18: Tsienic
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12. LotM - Aug 19: Xhorial
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18. LotM - Dec 19: Siren
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21. LotM - Feb 16: Jutean
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40. LotM - Jun 16: Silvish
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54. LotM - May 18: Uyendur
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55. LotM - May 19: Norþic
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58. LotM - Nov 15: Aveli
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60. LotM - Nov 17: Adenish
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62. LotM - Nov 19: Balak
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68. LotM - Oct 17: Ulyan
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69. LotM - Oct 18: Umofa
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70. LotM - Oct 19: Amaian
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72. LotM - Sep 15: Mbamigi
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73. LotM - Sep 16: Lonish
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75. LotM - Sep 18: Rùma
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76. LotM - Sep 19: Mikyoan
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The first LotM of 2023 is afoot as @Siblaime's Nesyanian, a wonderfully fleshed-out language with a pretty conscript to boot.
Nesyanian scratches an itch for me in its syntax - it is extremely head-initial. VSO word order (a personal favorite), adjectives and adverbs follow whatever they modify, and possessors follow the possessees. Verbs are particularly fun; they are capable of encoding so much in them permitting stacking of tenses, moods, intensifiers and multiple objects. Nouns are no less complex; ten cases and three numbers, plus "a bunch of other affixed modifiers". Overall it tends towards agglutination... strongly.
What I particularly love is that Nesyanian was clearly crafted through diachronics to produce doublets and other little quirks that make it feel so dang natural. For example, Old Nesyanian featured derivation through contrastive stress, which then developed into contemporary Nesyanian as phonologically different words, e.g. indė and enda ("to do" and "action", respectively). These little touches make for a language that screams "I'm real!"
[top]Phonology
Nesyanian's inventory is large but familiar, with a nice six-vowel system (the cardinals and a fun phonemic /ə/), and plenty of consonants, including the somewhat uncommon ejectives. There are also a bunch of diphthongs, many of which are found in my native dialect of English. I always found that English-like diphthongs are shunned by conlangers since they're too familiar, but @Siblaime peppers them throughout the grammar and lexicon in ways that leave the language pronounceable but still feeling foreign. Nesyanian is also blessed with some phonotactics (yet another level of detail by its author; no stone left unturned), and despite its rich number of phonemes, actually has a restrictive syllable structure, capping at CwVC, CɾVC or CxVC for maximum complexity.
Ejectives are also found in Nesyanian (for the sake of breaking too much Standard-Average-Europeanness, per its author), though their distribution is limited to syllable onsets (but not part of a cluster) or medials.
[top]Script
I could sit here and reinvent the wheel, but instead check out this nice article on the Zetaha script that is used for Nesyanian and several other languages.
[top]Grammar
There is a fantastic article on Nesyanian grammar, which has been admittedly used as the main source of information here. Nesyanian nouns appear to not have any real class divisions or gender distinctions (though countable and non-countable nouns are distinguished), but are instead declined in three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and ten different cases. Nominal derivation is also achieved through a number of different suffixes.
Verbs, as mentioned, permit all sorts of affixes for mood, voice, polarity, and objects. The verbal template consists of various slots around the stem; the following table (lovingly copied from the Nesyanian grammatical article) illustrates this template:
prefix IV | prefix III | prefix II | prefix I | 0 | suffix I | suffix II | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
function |
Tenses are simple, expressing past, present, and future, while there are several moods, including indicative, optative, conditional, and an unmarked imperative.
[top]Further reading
Feeling inspired and want to read more? Check out other information on Nesyanian:
[top]A Note on LOTM
Got suggestions for how the next LOTM should be written? See something in Nesyanian that wasn't covered and you wish it had been? Hate my guts and want to tell me? Feel free to shoot me (argyle) a PM with your thoughts, suggestions, and hate mail. Also feel free to drop by the LOTM clan if you have other feedback, want to join in the voting process, or nominate a language! Why yes, we're back, finally! Thank you all for the patience demonstrated during LotM's prolonged absence.
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