nyxelestia

Adjectives in Tengarsa have ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, with strong being the basic noun-phrase adjective (modifying a noun) or functioning as a noun, and weak forms either modifying verbs or another adjective.

The weak adjective class is essentially an adverbial role, but Tengarsa does not recognize them as two word classes, but instead as two halves of one word class.

( Modifiers: Adjectives (and 'Adverbs') )

In English, we have a present tense (eat) and a past tense (ate), with participle forms (eaten) and progressive forms (eating). Everything else a “modal” form – i.e. ‘will eat’ for a future tense.

In Tengarsa, you have present and future tense – the past tense is a modal construct. All verbs have strong verb and weak verb tendencies, with the basic tenses made via changing the first vowel of the verb, and the aspects done by adding suffixes to the verbs.

( Verbs )

( Gender )

( Number )

( Personal Pronouns )

( Pronoun Cases )

There are eleven noun cases in Tengarsa, with the noun stem being the singular nominative.

Each noun also has three numeric forms. Like English, there is singular, and plural. But there is an additional sub-plural form meaning dual, trial, pental, septemal, or tredecal – if there are 2, 3, 5, 7, or 13 of a noun. This is called the “magic plural”, with the numbers in question coming up often with holy or special meanings in magic. You rarely find them outside of the Spellcraft mode.

A Note on Stress

While it's not a hard and fast rule, if the same word with a similar meaning is both the verb stem and the noun stem (i.e. "sares" is both "(a) welcome" and "to welcome"), then the tendency is the stress the first syllable when it's in noun form, and the second syllable while it's in verb form. So while sares is "a welcome, the welcome", sares is "to welcome".

( Nouns )

( Consonants )

( Vowels )

There are four word orders to know – the ones used in spell craft, and the ones used in conversation.

The spellcraft one came first, with the conversational one coming later so untrained sorcerers didn’t accidentally cast spells within day to day communication. In both types, there is the statement or indicative word order, and then the word order used in questions.

While most case-declined languages have a free form word order, in Tengarsa the word order is still necessary, and reinforced, as case and word order can determine whether or not it's a spell, and if it's a question or a statement.

Spellcraft Word Order

Statements: Object-Verb-Subject
Questions: Object-Subject-Verb

(rare form – you don’t really ask questions often when casting spells)

The rare object-first word order of Tengarsa is derived from the spells tendency to name first the receiver or target of the spell, then the spell or command itself, with the agent coming last.

Conversational Word Order

Statements: Verb-Object-Subject
Questions: Verb-Subject-Object

Here, the verb is placed first to emphasize action (at least according to the magic community).

Order of Objects

In both modes, object order is direct objects, then indirect objects.

Adjectives

The degree of restrictiveness of an adjective in relation to the noun is determined by the word order. A restrictive adjective precedes the noun it is modifying, while a non-restrictive adjective will follow the noun it is modifying.

This is a conlang I made for my

paperlegends fic's universe. While it probably will never get used, I am having a lot of fun making it, so here it is!

The Tengarsa is a language of magic – literally. It’s the language used to make chants and ceremonies and spells, as well as being a language of communication for the Druids and just about any other West European sorcerer, and, in turn, their cultural/colonial descendents (i.e. America, as an ex-colony of Britain). Like English is the most widely spoken trade language, Old Tongue is the most widely spoken magic language.

The language has two parts or modes – the part used for “Spellcraft” and the part used for “Conversation”. It’s the same language, but how you use it changes drastically based on whether you’re doing magic or just chatting.

The language is to magic like what math is to science – it was never created, only notated. Humans discovered long ago (and even still continue to discover to this day) certain words have certain affects when applied to magic, much like certain numbers have certain properties when in science.

Proto-Celtic was a type of Vulgar Tengarsa, derived very incorrectly from the actual language of magic (like many other early/Proto- language forms around the world), and all the other languages since then that descended from Proto-Celtic were related heavily to Tengarsa. Today, one can still find many cognates from Tengarsa to Gaelic languages.

The name “Tengarsa” is from “Tenga Arsa”, and literally means “Old Tongue”.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Entries tagged with conlang

Modifiers

Verbs

Tengarsa: Personal Pronouns

Tengarsa: Nouns

Tengarsa: Phonology

Tengarsa: Word Order

Spellcraft Word Order

Conversational Word Order

Order of Objects

Adjectives

Tengarsa

The Basics of Tengarsa:

Phonology

Word Order

Noun Cases and Declension

Personal Pronouns

Verbs

Modifiers

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March 2013

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