Ril Siliquænaryirvarinir Hwirdar                                                             (Updated 20th October 2009)

(Of the Ordering of Elfinspeak)

Note: an asterisk [*] refers to a footnote located at the end of a section

Another note: This text is in the process of being revised. Any sections listed in the table of contents are revised and updated. The sections listed as text below the table of contents are unrevised and may be outdated.

Table of contents:

● The Prepositional Article

● But If and When...: Other Useful Words

● Compound Words OR Why Siliquænaryirvarina is Such a Long Word

● The Superlative, The Diminutive and Other Affixes

● What's in a name: Siliquænaryir Naming Techniques

● A Word on Word Order and Sentence Structure

Introduction and Origins

Siliquænaryirvarina (literally "Elfinspeak" or "language of the Elves") is the name for the language I'm creating.

A classmate of mine is writing an epic fantasy and asked if I could help her come up with a name for her Elfin race. She also dropped a few hints that she'd be delighted to have some Elfin sentences. So I, in all my linguistic nerdiness, decided to go and make the entire language. After working with the language for some time I started feeling more like I was finding out a language than inventing one. Typos started representing irregularities and I started getting the idea that Siliquænaryirvarina exists in it’s entirety in my mind and I have only to find it out and document it (much like when a story starts running away from it’s author and the author is left with nothing but to write out the story as it happens or as it is dictated by the characters [if this sounds like crazytalk, then J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Louis Stevenson were crazy and I’ve no objection to being crazy with them]). I’ve only seen a very little bit of the lore in which Siliquænaryirvarina exists so I really can’t say a great deal by way of vocabulary, to date there exist hardly more than 100 words, but the grammar is doing a very nice job of sorting itself out. And so for the enlightenment and entertainment of those interested, I here set forth what I know of Siliquænaryirvarina.

A Brief Overview

Here's a quick taste of how the language works for those with no patience for the entire grammar (or for use as a quick reference for those already familiar with the language). In my opinion the best way to get the idea of a language is simply to read it. To that end I begin with a few sentences (see the texts section of this site for more of the same).

Tal silenya aer ilmarinil ald narikar lorinir þrinir.
(A star shines upon the hour of our meeting.)
[More literally: a star she-is shining down-on-the time of-meeting of-us.]

Þil Ilmina aen ænyir eren swælnil.
(I think that the night sky is beautiful)
[More literally: the night-sky she-is beautiful I-do think.]

Tal air nalhwothan anir torarinan anen Alivion.
(Her brother's name is Alivion.)
[More literally: The of-her brother of-him name it-is Alivion.]

● All words work as stem+suffix.

● Word stems normally end in consonants and all suffixes begin with vowels

● There is a suffix for each usage of a noun, such as feminine singular, masculine plural, etc.

● There is a suffix for the verb and for the adjective

● Aside from the suffix, there is no difference between nouns, verbs and adjectives; any word can be used as any of the three.

● The noun endings are the third person pronouns used alone (a, ar, en, etc.). Er (I) and Þrin (we/us) are the first person pronouns. Second person pronouns are the third person pronouns with Roor- added to the beginning (roora, roorar, rooren, etc.).

● The pronouns take tense endings to form versions of the verb “to be”

● Verbs do not change form at all. Instead, a verb is preceded by a pronoun with a tense ending to denote who does it when.

● The form of the article changes to imply different things about the relation between subject and object.

● Siliquænaryirvarina has plenty of compound words (Siliquænaryirvarina is a good example of one)

● Any word with any ending can be used as a name, but some devoted name endings do exist

● Word order doesn't really matter much, everything is denoted in the word itself, much as in Latin (but SVO or OSV is the preferred word order in most cases)

The Sounds of Siliquænaryirvaina

Consonants (pronounced as in Modern English unless otherwise noted)

b
c (soft velar ch as in some pronunciations of German "ch", sort of an sh pronounced at the back of the throat)
d
f
g ("hard" g as in "get" or "go", not the J sound)
h
hw (one sound, not a double consonant. Pronounced just as it's spelled, a sort of wooshing noise)
k
l (pronounced in the front of the mouth as in British English, Siliquænaryirvarina does not have the American velar L)
m
ŋ (eng, pronounced as the English digraph "ng")
p
qu
r
s (never voiced)
sw (pronounced as in English. eg. "swing", "swoosh". The letter "w" never appears on it's own, it is only used in the digraphs hw and sw)
t
ð ("eth"; English voiced "th" as in the words "there" and "the")
þ ("thorn"; English unvoiced "th" as in "thorn" and "thing")
v
y (always used as a consonant, not be be mistaken for a vowel)


Vowels
Please note that there are two ways in which the letters "a" and "i" can be pronounced, I have not yet figured the rules for how a certain appearance of "a" or "i" should be pronounced in a certain word, but I suppose if you just use what feels right for precise English you cannot be far wrong.

a (as in "father" OR as in "apple")
e (as in "get")
i (as in "it" OR the "ee" in "eat" or in Spanish "Si")
o (as in "on")
u (as in "up")
æ (as the "ay" in Modern English "hay"; please note that the letter combination "ae" is not a diphthong but two distinct sounds, and should not be used as a representation of the letter æ)

Dipthongs
oo (similar to German ü or the "oo" in english "food")
au (as Modern English "ow")

Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives

Nouns, verbs and adjectives are formed by appending endings to a stem. Each stem ends with a consonant and each ending begins with a vowel, so putting together words is reasonably straightforward.
Any word can be used as a noun, an adjective or a verb; one need only apply the correct ending for a particular usage.
There are t-athree types of words, which are call'd first, second and third order for lack of more interesting terminology. There is no real difference between the words of each order, the order dictates which endings to use and nothing else.

The noun endings

First order	Second order	Third Order	description
-a	-a	-i	Feminine singular; same as above, but feminine. Siliquænarya is an Elfin woman; Fulivna is a female cat; Træna is a city wall
-ar	-at	-in	Masculine singular; used if one thing is being spoken of and it happens to be male [or personified as male]. e.g. Siliquænaryar is an Elfin man; Fulivnar is a male cat; Trænar is a city wall
-an-	-an	-an	Singular ending [uncertain gender]; used if the speaker knows the noun does have a natural gender but does not know which gender it is. There is no real equivalent for this in English so it may take a bit of explaining (feel free to email me if you'd like more information). The usage of an is similar to the English usage of the word "one" as a pronoun. In Siliquænaryirvarina everything [including walls, rocks, the Moon, spam and soup] is either masculine or feminine and -an is used if the speaker does not know which it is. It can only be used of persons or animals and is never used of inanimate things. I cannot belabor this enough, -an does not mean "it", there is no Siliquænaryir nueter noun ending and no equivalent for the word "it". For example: Erad þirinyil tal karidan losilyalinyiraryir. [I saw a swift-running horse (implied: I do not know if the horse was male or female)]
-æ	-i	-ia	Feminine plural. Used for a group of things which are all female (or personified as such) e.g. Siliquænaryæ is a plurality of Elfin women.
-æn	-ir	-ia	Masculine plural. Used for a group of things all of which are male (or personified as male). e.g Siliquænaryæn is a group of Elves, all of whom are male.
-oþ	-oþ?	-ol	Ordinary [mixed gender] plural (e.g. Siliquænaryoþ, "Some Elves" or "a plurality of Elves" as in the English sentence "I saw some Elves". "Some Elves" is a group of more than one elf, some of whom are male and some of whom are female.) [I am unsure if the second and third order endings are indeed the same as the first]
-en?	-en?	-en?	"racial" or "generalized" plural (e.g. Siliquænaryen is the race of Elves or all Elves in general) [I am unsure if the second and third order endings are indeed the same as the first]

To compare these last two plurals, noonen is all rocks everywhere and noonoþ would be the word for a certain group of rocks; varinen would be all existing languages considered as a whole, varinoþ would be a certain set of languages (for example, the languages spoken in a certain area or a certain family of languages.)

A note on genders

Siliquænaryirvarina only has Masculine and Feminine genders, there is no neuter gender so every noun will be spoken of as if it is male or female. When it comes to things like Elves and cats, this is rather obvious. Elfin women get the feminine noun ending and Tomcats take the masculine ending. But it's not quite the same when we're dealing with things like city walls and languages, these things have no natural gender. In Modern English they take the neuter gender (we call them "it") and in many Indo-European languages they are assigned a specific gender. But Siliquænaryirvarina words are either a bit more complicated or a bit simpler (take your pick) and leave as much potential for poetry as possible. Nouns which do not have a natural gender in Siliquænaryirvarina are given a gender according to the whim of the speaker or writer. Hence Træna and Trænar both mean the same thing ("wall") and the only difference is the speaker's decision to personify the wall as masculine or as feminine.

The Adjective and Verb Endings

First order	Second order	Third order	description
-ir	-er	-et	Adjectival ending [comparable to Modern English "-like" or "-y"]; There is no real difference between Siliquænaryirvarina nouns and adjectives. For example, Arinyir means "small" and the same word can take the form arinyar (or arinya) to mean "a small thing". Adjectives are not separate words, there is simply an adjectival ending which signifies that the word is an adjective. the adjectival is also the possessive ending, it can be appended to any noun or pronoun (after the noun ending) to form the possessive, e.g. Siliquænaryarir means Elf's (or "of the Elf").
-il	-el	-al	Verbal ending; Siliquænaryirvarina verbs have only one form. The tense and person and whatnot comes from a "helping verb" (a "tobe" word) which directly precedes the verb. Again, there is no real difference between verbs, nouns and adjectives.

Please refer to the wordlist for the entire corpus of Siliquænaryirvarina words including examples of the same word beings used as an adjective, a noun and a verb.

Pronouns and the "verb" to be

Pronouns

The first order noun endings are the third person pronouns.

Siliquænaryir	English
ar	he
a	she
an	one, heshe
æ	they (feminine)
æn	they (masculine)
oþ	they (regular plural)
en	racial plural

There are only two first person pronouns:

Siliquænaryir	English
Er	I
þrin	we

Second person pronouns are created by adding roor- to the beginning of a third-person pronoun: For example roorar is "you "  when one male is being spoken to and rooræ is "you" when several females are being spoken to.

Possessive pronouns are formed by adding the adjectival ending to a pronoun
e.g. enir is "theirs" (lit: “of them”); Erir is "mine" (of me); þrinir is "ours" (of us); arir is "his" (of him) etc.

"To be" forms and tense endings

The pronouns take tense endings which stand for the conjugations of the verbs. Siliquænaryirvarina verbs do not actually conjugate but instead are preceded by some form of the pronoun which tells us the person, number and tense. As of yet, I have only discovered three tenses (present, past and future) plus two "obligation" forms (must and should). I’m not sure if there are more tenses, but the language is thoroughly functional with those discussed here.

ending	tense
-en	Present tense, used with singular pronouns
-er	present tense, used with plural pronouns
-ad	past tense
-iþ	future tense
-ard	denotes obligation, best translated as "must" or "have to"
-eŋk	denotes obligation to a lesser degree, best translated as "should" or "would be best to"

A few examples:
aen is "she is", ænad us "they [masculine] were" and aneŋk is "one should"


Please see the appendix (to be linked shortly) for full tables of all the to be pronouns complete with pronunciation.

The Prepositional Article

The idea of a prepositional article might be a little difficult to grasp for someone who didn't think it up, so allow me to elaborate a bit.

In Modern English we have words such as "the", "this", "that" and "a" which imply a bit about the distinctness and distance of the noun being referenced, "a cat" is a cat of a group, "that cat" is a more particular cat, "this cat" is as particular as "that cat", but is somehow closer to the speaker in either distance or affection (that cat which I have never before seen on the other side of a field vs. this cat here in my lap who I've raised from a kitten). Siliquænaryirvarina takes the ideas implied by the articles and combines them with prepositions. English has phrases such as "that cat on top of the bookshelf", "this cat under the chair", "a cat standing beside me" or "I am thinking about my cat". The equivalent Siliquænaryirvarina phrases are a bit different in that the article and the preposition are combined into one word, nir fulivna is "the cat underneath", ril fulivna is "about/concerning the cat", tir fulivna is "with the cat/in the same place as the cat", ald fulivna is "the cat looking down upon".

I here list all the prepositional articles I've found out so far, along with usage examples embedded in English sentences.

(The English word or phrase in italics is replaced by the Siliquænaryirvarina word in bold):

Tal - Subject [The tal boy hit the ball]

Ral - the object when the subject has performed some action on or to the object [the boy hit the ral ball OR He spoke to ral the weasel]

Þil- a feeling or opinion expressed about the subject [I think the þil weasel is evil. OR he loves þil her]

Tor - that, "id est", a statement of fact [we all know that tor weasels are evil]
Ort - with, using, by means of [the boy hit the ball with the ort bat. OR He rode here on a ort fast horse.]

Eld - against, opposed [The Elves fight the eld Dwarves (actually, english speakers would just say "Elves fight Dwarves")]

Ril- about, concerning [The book is about [the] ril Elves OR She said that [the] ril weasels are evil]

Tir - alongside, with, in the same time or place as, in/into (a certain place)  [The moon is in the sky with the tir stars OR They ventured into the tir palace]

Nil - amidst, in [The fishes are swimming in the nil water]

Nef - against, by, next to, close enough to be touching [The tree grows beside the nef river]

Eþ - above, over [I looked up and saw the eþ clouds]

Nir - beneath, under [the horse is standing under the nir tree]

Ald - upon, down on [The mother sees the ald child. OR The sun shines upon the ald earth]

Hwil - a place or thing being departed from or left behind [I left the hwil mountains OR He is no longer a hwil fool]

Norn - a destination, a goal or an aspiration [he walked to the norn river OR I want to become a norn famous actor]

Æŋ- something gained, achieved, or received [I caught a æŋ moth OR I learned a æŋ new language]

Vin- a defining factor, "having" [a woman with vin beautiful hair]

Def- during, while [he was sad when def she was ill OR they traveled for a def year]

Ið - behind or after

Na - surrounding, encircling

Cor - over, through, across; distance traversed

But If and When: Other Useful Words

I don't have this fully worked out at this point, but as far as can be told these Siliquænaryirvarina words work in much the same way as their English counterparts.

The alsos:

These are small words which add important little bits of meaning to a sentence

Ila ---> “and” or “also”. Can be used to begin a sentence or any other time when information is added to what is being said. For example: Tal fulivnar ila tal karidar æner losilyir. (The cat and the horse are swift) And another example just as valid: Tal fulivnar aren losilyir. Ila tal karidar aren losilyir. (The cat is swift. The horse is also swift.). Also, the language does not allow comma seperated lists, the word ila is used instead

Fil ---> The negative. Negates the word or clause which follows it. For example, "aen thirinyil" is "she sees" and "fil aen thirinyil" is "not she sees" (implies that someone other than her sees) and "aen fil thirinyil" is "she not sees" (or more clearly, "she does not see").

Hwelan ---> ”but”, “although”, “alternately”. Hwelan can be used at the beginning of a sentence or whenever contrasting or contradictory information is introduced. For example: Mindgon aen ilminir hwelan tal silenyoþ oþen kæminir. (The sky is dark but the stars are bright)

Orn ---> "if", "provided", "depending upon". For example:æniþ inonyil orn tal kalidoþ oþer losilyir .(They will leave if the horses are swift)

The questions:

These words are appended to the end of a sentence or phrase (never at the begining) to turn it into a question.

Tilk ---> is it so? Changes a statement to a question. For example: Tal karidar aren losilyir is a statement, "The horse is swift" but Tal karidar aren losilyir tilk? is a question, "Is the horse swift?"

Narikur ---> "When", "the time at which" Anad inonyil narikur? (he did leave when?)

Irinur ---> "Why", "the reason for". Example: Anad inonyil irinur? (he did leave why?)

Noradur---> "Where", "the place". Example: Anad inonyil noradur? (he left where?/which place did he leave?)

Ortur ---> "How", "the means by which" Example: Anad inonyil ortur? (how did he leave)

Æðanad ---> "who", "what". This word is the only question word which does not come at the end of a sentence. Instead, it is used to replace the pronoun in a statement. It is constructed of the element æð- plus a noun ending plus a tense ending. The supposed "person" can be denoted by using a definite noun ending, but the word most commonly takes the form æðanad. Usually the whole point of asking "who?" is that the speaker has no idea who and doesn't know if who is male or female. However, the speaker can imply that he thinks who is female (æða-), an entire race of something (æðen-), an all-male group (æðær-), etc.; a nicety which English does not have. Example: æðanad inonyil? (who left/did leave?)

Long Description of The Language (Tal Hwirdar Siliquænaryirvarinir)

Compound Words OR Why Siliquænaryirvarina is Such a Long Word

In the Siliquænir language there are many many compound words. As in German (and similar to the Modern English use of hyphens), a noun and it's modifying adjectives are often compounded into one word. The phonological rules for compounds are here laid out, but first an example:

Siliquænaryirvarina is made from Siliquæn (Elf) + ary (an intensifying syllable used to add emphasis to important concepts, see the next section for details) + ir (adjectival ending, changes "Elf" to "Of Elves)+ varin (language) + a (singular feminine ending).

The above example is a quite straightforward, all the elements string neatly together and require no phonological manipulation. It doesn't require much thought, just string the adjective before the noun and have done with it*. However, if a voiced consonant and an unvoiced consonant are going to be placed directly next to each other in a compound, then the unvoiced is dropped alltogether and only the voiced is pronounced. (Example: "Elfinbeauty" Siliquænirenda from Siliquæn+ir+hwend+a, the Hw of "hwend-" is unvoiced so it is overpowered by the voiced R of -ir) Also, if the consonants are identical then they overlap and the sound is only pronounced once (Example: "Glorious-road" Kænyiralinyan from Kæny+ir+raliny+an, the Rs of -ir and raliny- meld into one letter).

* There are a few words which are exceptions to the adjective-before-noun rule (eg. ægolarigir [which means "pregnant"] is made up or ægola [womb] and irigir [filled] but these are set words. Any compounds made by a writer or speaker on a whim are to be adjective + noun.

The Superlative, The Diminutive and Other Affixes

There are some words which hardly exist but for the sake of compounding. These words are infixed between the stem word and the ending and can do a great deal towards modifying the meaning of a word.

ariny (the diminutive)

No finely crafted language is complete without it's diminutive. The word arinyir means "small", used as a compounding element it should probably not be directly translated but implies a smaller version of the original word.

So hwinyarinya is a short song and Siliquænarinya is a little Elfin girl.

ary (an intensifier)

The element -ary- is rather interesting, I don't believe it has a true parallel in Modern English. It can be used in much the same way italics might be used in printed English, but it can also be used as a poetic device to add syllables to a line for the sake of rhythm. It adds length to a word and thus (in Siliquænir thought) weight, importance and meaning. Used on it's own as an ordinary word, aryir means something similar to English "much", "great" or "very". Whenever one is speaking of a grandiose concept such as a race of people or a highly respected position or a difficult area of study it is considered rude to not use -ary- . For example, you may have noticed that while Siliquæna is the word for "Elf", Siliquænarya is the more commonly used form and Siliquænaryen is the proper word used to refer to the race of Elves, *Siliquænen could be considered a term of disrespect.

ily (nearly)

Ilya is a word which means "nearly" or "almost", as a compounding element it shows up conspicuously in the word torilya which basically means "a fictional thing" but more literally means "something almost existing". It takes the meaning of the original word (in this case "to exist")and modifies it so that it is nearly or not quite the meaning of the original word, but still incredibly similar.

indy* (the superlative)

The word mindyir means "great" or "vast" and from it we get the element -indy- which is only ever used as a compounding element and never as an actual word. It is the superlative, plain and simple. Hwendir is "beautiful" and Hwendindyir is "most beautiful"

* please don't pronounce this as Indiana Jones' nickname, instead think of it as indya lacking the final vowel.

it (titular infix)

-it- is also never used alone as a word. Inserted between the word stem and the noun ending, -it- changes the word from a noun to a title and is sometimes used interchangeably with the name form of a noun. Alivar means a man of good character, alivitar is a title used to address a man or good character (I like to translate it as "Sir" or "Lord"). The name Alivion could also be used to address a man of good character, but having the title is very convenient in case a person named Alivion were present and you wished to address another gentleman of good character.

Also, these infixes can string onto one another, so hwendilyindyir (hwend+ily+indy+ir) would be "nearly the most beautiful". In fact, ilyindy is used rather frequently and could be thought of as the comparative.

As a bynote: Try breaking the word hwendindyirilenyarinyaryen [roughly meaning "most beautiful little star ever"] into it's constituent parts. Hwendindyirilenyarinyaryen is a superb example of several aspects of Siliquænaryirvarina including the use of [far too many] infixes, the length of potential compound words and the fact that some words can look incredibly dificult to pronounce but are actually easy, just long.

What's in a Name: Siliquænaryir Naming Techniques

[This section is only partially re-worked. It lacks examples, which I intend to provide very soon.]
Generally, any word whatsoever can be used as a name. To create a name from a word the endings -ion or -ian (for masculine names) and -iel or -ial (feminine) are used. Masculine names of this type from a stem ending in Y can take the form -gon or -gan instead of -yion or yian. So if we wanted to make a masculine name out of the stem Ariny- we would end up with the name “Arinyion” (or “Arinyian”). But since that's a bit of a mouthful even for a Siliquænaryirvarina speaker, the Y is changed to a G and the I is dropped and we end up with “Aringon” (or “Aringan”). This doesn't always have to happen (for example, “Kænyion” is the name for the Sun), but it is reasonably common considering how difficult it can be to pronounce -yion after some vowel clusters.
However, names do not have to follow the stem+ending formula which other words follow, a name can be comprised of any sounds in the language. The purpose of a name is to signify a unique individual and as such names have much more variety than any other aspect of the language. Some names do not have an underlying meaning, but are new words crafted to signify the person and nothing else. [insert example here] Other names are formed by compounding an entire phrase or sentence, then eliding and omitting sounds until a usable name is formed. In these cases, the compounded phrase is the person's proper name and the shortened form is used in ordinary conversation. [Example goes here].

The meaningless names seem to be more common for women and compounded phrase names tend to be more popular for men, but they are by no means exclusive.

A Word on Word Order and Sentence Structure

As in Latin, Siliquænir word order doesn't really matter that much at all. The pronouns and articles do most of the work for sentence structure and word order isn't nearly as important as it is in Modern English, but the preferred or common sentence structures are as follows:

Subject Verb Object

Object Subject Verb

The idea is to state the subject, state the prepositional pronoun imideately followed by the verb (they work as one and absolutely cannot be seperated by another word ) and then tack the object onto either end of that construction. For examples please refer to the sentences.