Queranaran (The World)
| Queranaran | |
| Spoken in: | Dar Irenalliê, Harathalliê, Withwandiê, Ontumun & other Daine countries of Eosphora |
| Timeline/Universe: | The World |
| Total speakers: | More than 15 million |
| Genealogical classification: | Daine |
| Basic word order: | OSV |
| Morphological type: | inflecting |
| Created by: | |
| Elemtilas | late 1980s, revisited in 2010s |
Queranaran is the language spoken by very many Daine of the Eastlands of The World. Here, we'll take a look at a snippet of spoken Queranaran that appears as part of a humorous Turgun story. One thing even Daine and Men share in common is this basic dynamic of female-male relations:
eiyem an ossetiyas : amanou racasawatimnemiye damoman sjaereerenyest : nico : manadiradiralyost Here the girl is asking her fellow: "I know this already, but I'm asking anyway : my new raca, do you think it's pretty, love? It's so very blue!"
eiyem an ossetiyas: evidential markers, the first meaning "surety" the second indicating insecurity of information, but a thing desired; putting the two together makes for an idiomatic expression seeking confirmation of opinion. (Reverse the order and the meaning changes to something like "I'm not entirely sure, but I'm going to go ahead anyway."
amanou: 1st singular feminine possessive particle
raca-sawati-menem-iye: a raca is an animal hide or woven cloth, generally wrapped around the waist; raca-sawati can mean an article of clothing, and in specific a nicely tailored sarong / kilt / kirtle-like piece of clothing; menem is an infixed adjective meaning "new"; racasawati is an -i class Teyorish noun and -ye is the nominative singular suffix of that class
damo-man: damo is the Native dative prefix; while man is the 2nd singular masculine pronoun
sja-ere-erenye-st: sja- is a preverb meaning "from within towards without" / "from inside out"; erenye- is the verb root "to be beautiful" while -st is the durative aspect marker. Reduplication of verb roots yields a kind of moderate emphasis best rendered by "truly" or "so very"
nico: can mean 'male Daine' and can also serve as a term of affection or even a proper name (Nico & Enca are the names of very ancient culture heroes among the Daine of many lands)
mana-dira-diralyost: mana is a preverb meaning "within the entire extent" / "thoroughly"; diralyo- is the verb meaning "to be blue", again reduplicated to denote moderate emphasis.
ha : manaerenyest : eiyem : sjahuuryost: enca And he responds: "Sure, tis pretty. But I'm sure it's grey, love."
ha: a discourse indicative of divided attention; an affirmative marker of some ambivalence. It is often used where a polite agreement might be in order or where the opinion sought might not be coming from the surest of sources or where the listener hasn't been paying close attention to the speaker.
mana-erenyest: mana preverb as above; erenye- verb as above, noting that it is not here reduplicated, indicating a less than enthused agreement
eiyem: evidential marker as above, indicating surety
sja-huuryost: sja- preverb as above; huuryo- verbal adjective meaning "to be grey"; with durative aspect marking
enca: can mean 'female Daine', or be a term of affection or a personal name
liyieram : sjadiradiralyost : nico She says: "No, let's make this clear: it is indeed very blue, love!" And he replies: ya : eiyem : nahuuryo ateh tinnengast which means "Myeh. Anyway, I know what grey is."
liyieram: evidential marker of the highest factual importance, it brooks no contradiction and allows no argument; anyone who disagrees is asking for trouble!
sja-diradiralyo-st: as above
nico: as above
sjuu This is a mark of slight exasperation.
sjuu: a discourse particle of sorts, a kind of spoken rolling of the eyes
asuy : tesarave Exasperated by the contradiction, she says "huh! boys!" while equally exasperated, he says asuy : nimarave "huh! girls!"
asuy: a discourse particle indicating exasperation, most likely at the lack of understanding
tesarave: tesa is another word meaning 'male Daine' & nima as above. -arave is the vocative plural, here used generically and invocationally.
Queranaran sentences are basically OSV in structure and are prefaced by one or more pre-sentential evidential markers which help set the mood of what follows. Verbs in Queranaran conjugate primarily for aspect and mood; nouns decline for number and case and also conjugate for tense. In the exchange above, none of the nouns are conjugated for tense because the context of the conversation determines that it is a present tense raca being discussed. (A raca is an article of clothing, a long piece of cloth wrapped around the waist and tied up with a cord or fixed with a belt.)
Here it will help to understand that Daine (and Turgun) males can see the world with a kind of palette of sepia to grey tones with some darker reds. Females can see many hues and shades of color, so her obviously blue raca will bee seen by him as kind of dark grey.
Let's Learn to Count!
Daine count by twenties, according to their own lore because they count on all their fingers and toes. Starting with the little finger of the left hand, and going over to the little finger of the right hand, that's 1 through 10. Then, continuing with the little toe of the left foot and continuing over to the little toe of the right foot, that's 11 through 20. Even little children learn to "count on fingers and toes" in this way. You can see in the picture below a dapper fellow teaching a child a counting game -- you can just see that he's got his left thumb pointing to the youngster's left big toe -- which is querenos, or fifteen in the elementary counting system. But he's teaching the youngster how to count by fives: starting with his right hand, he's showing how to count "by hands", or fives. Beginning with the right thumb and ending with the left are 5 through 50; then continuing with the right big toe and ending with the left big toe, he'll count 55 to 100. He's pressing the child's toe in order to demonstrate the equivalence between the two systems. He'll say querenos maoa! and the child will repeat back the number to him.
1. minnos; 2. eryon; 3. nellon; 4. embro; 5. pancon; 6. cantos; 7. yacuen; 8. lindo; 9. sendlos 10. boadhos; 11. tolcyen; 12. rondo; 13. ereson; 14. forestos; 15. querenos; 16. dromo; 17. endron; 18. calcas; 19. orson; 20. vaseryo
Beyond twenty, an additive principle comes into play: 21. vas minnos, "twenty & one"; 22. vas eryon, "twenty & two"; 30. vas boadhos, "twenty & ten"; 31. vas tolcyen, "twenty & eleven"
Multiples of twenty run thus: 40. eryovas, "twice twenty"; 60. nellovas, "thrice twenty"; 80. embrovas, "quadrice twenty"; 100. pancovas "quince twenty"
Daine numerals are positional in nature, much like the Sandhian numerals in use by the Men of the region. Rather than ones, tens, hundreds, thousands and myriades of the usual Auntimoanian system, in Queranaran, the positions are ones, twenties, four hundreds, eight thousands and so forth. These higher numbers follow the same basic patterns the lower ones follow: 400. lemayas; 800. eryomayas, "twice four hundred"; 1,200. nellomayas, "thrice four hundred"; 1,600. embromayas, "quadrice four hundred"; 8,000. quepillio; 16,000. eryopillio, "twice sixteen thousand"; 24,000. nellopillio, "thrice sixteen thousand"; 32,000. embropillio, "quadrice sixteen thousand"; 160,000. lachanio; 320,000. eryolach, "twice one hundred sixty thousand"; 3,200,000. quinsistio; 6,400,000. eryosistio, "twice three millions two hundred thousand".
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