Hallowspeak Update 11

Alright everyone! A very exciting week for Hallowspeak this time, not only for the Project, but also for the Team!!

Firstly, the Project updates!! Following a very boring beach trip I had yesterday, a good few new ideas for the project have been brought to the table. (listen okay i don’t like swimming so i sat on a beach chair and analysed a language)

Now, following on from last week’s conundrum about how the newly discovered plural suffix interacts with the cases, we have a couple options! Since we’re having such a difficult time finding cases with and without the plural, perhaps Hallowspeak actually has inverse number? Inverse number is when instead of a suffix for the plural, every single word is either singular or plural by default, and the suffix is used to switch which one it is. Then, by definition, the regular version of a noun without a suffix would be much more common, because it would be the most common amount of it.

Another option might be a tiny bit of fusion. Until now, we’ve found that Hallowspeak is very agglutinative, meaning each little piece that you can attach to a word has just one meaning. However, fusion is when the prefixes and suffixes can encode multiple things at the same time. So maybe, the reason we can’t see the plural suffix in all those possible combinations is because certain combinations actually have their own unique suffix!!

Now just before we continue, the second person verb endings have changed to “ino” and “dino”, to “in” and “ino”. We noticed a mistake that we made here a while ago, so we just needed to correct that. It’ll help us later, too, just wait!

Next, some new words and verb endings added to Hallowspeak!

Citari:

This appears in Elderbug’s line “Wo, citari bakara” It’s pretty safe to assume that “Wo” is just an interjection that’s like “Oh”, or “Woah”, and Elderbug’s lines show that he’s pretty surprised to see a traveller here, so perhaps citari means traveller!

-caro:

“Mia” appears twice in Zote’s lines, once without a verb ending “jydo mia bis”, and once with a verb ending “miacaro”. The first verb without a verb ending is the first person “Me” (heh, fitting for Zote, always talking about himself). Now, notice how “miacaro” is the only word in that voice line, no object, which means this verb must be intransitive, which is like “He sleeps”, no object, just a subject. If Zote is still talking about himself, which cmon, he probably is, that makes “-caro” the first person intransitive verb ending!!

Tono:

Elderbug’s line “akala em tono” can be fully translated, except the word tono. It means “I want to __” Elderbug talks about not wanting to go down into the well like the other adventurers, and is content staying here, so “tono” could be “stay”!!

Me:

“Me” appears in both Quirrel’s “Se kja me cipyrin” and Snail Shaman’s “kweno nin mea”. Since we see it both plain and with the plural suffix “-a”, we know it’s a noun. We also know that “kweno” means “fearlessness”. Hallowspeak is currently thought to have OVS (object, verb, subject), so this sentence means “[noun] [verb] fearlessness”. What could that be? Well, we’ve been missing a very curo a word for ages now: “person”. (or bug, i guess). And just as luck would have it, the word “person” would fit here perfectly! Look at “nin”; that’s got our new corrected verb ending – I told ya it’d help us later! That “n” is a super short verb, so it’s probably a very common one, perhaps a modal? What about “need”? “People need fearlessness” – makes sense!!

Wait, but why would the verb “nin” have the second person “you” ending, if the subject is “people” – shouldn’t it be the third person plural “they”? Well instead of thinking we’ve made a mistake, I think we have a possible new grammatical construction!

As well as “kweno nin mea” from Snail Shaman, we also see this verb ending mistake in “kala negosa tros” from hornet, which should also have a third person ending! Neither of the verbs in those sentences, “nin” and “negosa”, have the correct verb ending! Let’s look at Snail Shaman’s line first. Keep in mind that if the subject is a pronoun, it’s not included because it’s already shown on the verb, so this can’t be explained by “mea” meaning “you” Well, perhaps it means “_ like you”, but literally means “__ you”. Let’s try that out! Snail Shaman’s line would translate to “People like you need fearlessness” That makes loads of sense!! Now let’s try it with Hornet’s line. It would be “Siblings like you __ god”. You’ll never believe this, but Hornet’s English line during this line talks about how she knows what kind of creature Ghost is, and knows what they want to do. This makes even more sense, and fits with the English line! Incredible!!

Also, this gives us another verb ending. If Hornet is talking about “you” as in every vessel, that would make it the second person plural “y’all”. Seeing as we already have a second person plural, but no second person plural intransitive, the “-sa” ending on “negosa” must be that verb ending!! We now only have one verb ending missing!!!!

Just one final test. “Se kja me cipyrin” can’t be translated, but we can tell the roles of the words in that sentence. It would be something like “[Adverb], [Adjective] person like you [Verb]”. Quirrel is describing Ghost, and also talks about other adventurers in similar situations, so even if we don’t know what it means, it makes sense!!

Now, for the Team Updates!! There have been two very exciting things this week in the Hallowspeak Team!

Firstly, it was my birthday on the 27th!!! I’m 15 years old now! I went to the mall with some friends and played a real piano for the first time, so that was super fun! However, that isn’t the most important item of news about the Hallowspeak Team Members this week!!!

Remember all the way back in Update 4, with the Femboy News? Our beloved member Nuhrii was revealed to be a femboy. However, that wasn’t.. entirely accurate. After @Bash (nuhrii’s other username) had a very busy and hectic hiatus from the project, they revealed to us a few days ago that they had discovered themself as being trans!! We all want to wish them a huge congratulations on figuring themself out, and hope they have tons of good luck in living their true life!

Thank you all for tuning in to this super long Hallowspeak Update! Tune in next time!!!