Alrighty so… I am aware how long it’s been since the last actual update. But our general lack of progress recently, combined with the holiday coming to an end, has really dried up what we can talk about in the updates.
However! Now we actually do have stuff to talk about! As well as all the stuff from the previous updates that alone were too little to talk about! So, as usual, let’s get right into it with the Project news.
First off, Hallowspeak Live! That’s right, the first ever Hallowspeak Live show was hosted here on The Shellwood Ordeal discord server, on the 4th of April! It was an absolute blast, and it was fantastic being able to share the live Hallowspeak process with you all, and being able to chat with you! Due to some not great planning (that’s all on me), the show was kinda late, and the announcement of it starting didn’t leave much time for people to see it and get ready. I’m super sorry if you missed the show because of that. But don’t worry, we’re definitely doing it again sometime, and I cannot wait!
Now for a little bit of a new theory in Hallowspeak… So you may recall that we had to look through every single voice line in game in order to verify the austronesian alignment theory. But, while we were looking through the lines, we began to notice a strange suffix that kept making our job confusing. “Omis kadina”…? How can we tell what those words are, so we can check the word order? But we kept seeing stuff exactly like this! “Nadino sonina”, “okoman”… hehe, looks like we have a new suffix on our hands!!!
So, during the Hallowspeak Live show, we set about finding every instance of this “n” suffix so we could analyse them together. This is what we found:
- belo ba nakoden
- (m)exemno (es) kucin
- okoman ja?
- omis kadina
- das (bas) manuran
- nadino sonina
- sarena
- akoman
- citarin
- no eyes (multiple lines)
Soooooooo… what did we figure out with this? Well just take a look at that first one. “Belo ba nakoden”. Do you remember what “ba” means? It means “my”, meaning whatever comes after it has to be a noun. Alright, we learnt how to do stuff like that in the austronesian alignment update, so what? Well, if nakoden is a noun, then that means that “n” suffix has to be a noun suffix: either a different grammatical number (singular plural), or a different case!
Look more! That “n” appears as “na” super often, right! Well, the “a” is the plural, so we also know that the “n” can’t be a new grammatical number, since there already is one on there! For “akoman”, we actually already see a completely unmarked “ako” in some lines, mostly from Ogrim, so if this is a noun, then it must be “ako-m-n” under the surface, with the definite “m” meaning “the”!
So we’ve narrowed it down now: the “n” has to be a case! The cases we have so far are nominative, accusative, dative, and vocative. I really hope that “n” is a genitive, because we really need one! But unfortunately, that’s all we’ve figured out so far. Going forward, we might want to look at that “mexemno” line, since we see both “mexemno kucin”, and “mexemno es kucin”. There might be something there..
Now you may recall that we’ve been toying with the idea of a Hallowspeak logo for some time now, and even asking you guys for some ideas! Well we got even more ideas from Crowan, about a Hallowspeak mascot!!! Check it out!!!
Super awesome!
Alright, now for the Team news!! Apart from our usual shenanigans – this week it was discussing She Ra in #project-management ?- we have two super amazing things, and they’re both today!!!
Firstly, it’s the end of Crow’s semester!! I don’t really know what a semester is but I’m assuming it’s just like a term but in college, so yea!! Epic!! I can’t wait for more of that incredible Crowan insight! The Project is gonna be rocketing! :p
Secondly, and this is the big important announcement I was talking about….
It’s mine and Ivy’s one year anniversary!!!!!!!!!!!! ????? A Hallowspeak update proooobably isn’t the best place to get all mushy and lovey (and gay), so all I’m gonna say is I love u ivy c: and i’m like almost gonna melt from how happy i am with you ?
Aw darn, I got all mushy and lovey (and gay) anyways!
Alrighty folks, that’s the update!!! Tune in next time!