As I mentioned last entry, a variety of linguistic ideas for my own two languages, the Matoran and draconic speeches, occured to me over break. Neither of the two is very much fleshed-out at this moment – Matoràu is much further along than draconic, with a three-page vocabulary list and a variety of inflections determined right now. Most of the ideas I got were epiphanies, too, which I always like better than things I sit down and mull over for hours on end, because I suddenly know something and almost always keep the thought.

Just the word Matoràu, the Matoran's name for their language, is a demonstration of how the naming aspect of the language works. Matoran is already a contration of mata, "spirit," and toran, "people." A final a can always be dropped in forming a name, and if that results in a double consonant, then the extra consonant can be elided, as follows:

mata toran

mattoran

Matoran

...leaving Matoran, meaning "the people of the spirit." All terminating vowels and -an can be dropped in naming, so ràu, "speech," can be added to Matoran and the process repeated to form Matoràu, "the speech of the people of the spirit." The same process forms the name Tahu, contracting tan ahu, "eternal fire," to Tahu.

For grammar, I've fleshed out noun declension much more than verb conjugation, despite having about an equal amount of both nouns and verbs. I have three declensions of nouns with several cases and three numbers each (singular, plural, and collective plural), filled in in varying degrees, but only first and third person singular and third person plural for the present active of both indicative and subjunctive. And the singular imperative. (Some names use the various cases: Inika is made from ini, the ablative singular of inu, star, and kan, energy or power, to mean "energy from a star.")

Draconic (title until I have a name for it), however, is much less complete. I only have a handful of words so far, but a variety of grammar stuff... and the first word I "invented" was dragon. I know, it seems unoriginal, but it gave me two roots to establish the sound of the language – dra-, to fly, and (as I finalized recently) gan, a word referring to any scaled creature with legs. ("Lizard" is so unpoetic.) Gon is the augmentative form thereof, with gyn as the diminutive, so a dragon is a flying great lizard.

Aside from vocabulary, I have very little else done for draconic, aside from plurals, so for example dragonae are multiple dragons. However, the fire-dragons have a somewhat different mode of the language: dracon (DRA-kohn) is one, and drácaen (dra-KANE) are several. Hard g and c are linguistically interchangeable.

... And there you have it. Obviously Matoràu is my own take on the Matoran language, derived from various names (and inventions of my own); aside from the word dragon, the rest of the draconic words are original. And gaia, earth as an element. A taste of my linguistics. What do you think?

Barraki are next entry, I promise!

– ToM