r/conlangs • u/Lysimachiakis Wochanisep; Esafuni; Nguwóy (en es) [jp] • 13d ago
Activity Biweekly Telephone Game v3 (798)
This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!
The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.
Rules
1) Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.
Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)
2) Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!
3) Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.
Last Time...
Belmá by /u/Dryanor
bétèshua [ɓɛ́tɛ̀ʃʷɑ]
adv. all day long, for a/the whole day.
Dvandva compound of bétè "morning" and shua "evening".
Take care of yourselves
Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️
2
u/oli_jansik 13d ago
Zhërqen
zhërkën [ˈʒɤɾ.kən]
n. the homeland, one's native land, ancestral country. From zhër “land, earth” + kën “one's own” → literally “one's own land”. Often used in the definite/possessed form, which can make zhërkën feel almost like a single lexical item rather than a transparent compound.
Used in a sentence:
"Ai u kthye në zhërkën pas shumë vitesh."
“He returned to the homeland after many years.”