Wenja Language: swarga

Su shayar, salwa.  Na shaja mi-janhasi su dajri -- mi-chamyugi (@brennabyrd) & mi-sushnu (yiyi nashman Shlakanra Winja-ha) swarga. Na su hu-sasarsh. Nakway smaya.

Good morning, all.  Today is not a good day for my family -- my wife (@brennabyrd) & my son (whose name is Shlakanra in Wenja) are sick.  They haven't slept well.  No fun (literally -- "No one smiles").

Fortunately they don't have the kapalpur (skull fire) like the Udam.  You learn more about this ailment from the Udam characters you meet in the world (Ull & Dah), and it's something that the Udam have developed from many years of cannibalism.  While we never find out what the kapalpur is in reality, it seems reasonable that this is some variant of Mad Cow's disease.

The word for "sick" in Wenja is swarga, but we usually hear the noun meaning "sickness" instead swargati.  Recall Ull's final words: Udam swargati-bi mari.  "The Udam die from sickness."

The source of swarga is a word that is widely attested throughout Indo-European.  The PIE root was *swergʰ- 'to worry, be sick', continued by Sanskrit surkṣati 'cares for', Lithuanian sergu 'am sick', Old Church Slavonic sraga, and Old Irish serg (both 'sickness').  And in English?  This is the source of our word sorrow.  

Tu sakwan prasti!

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Wenja Language: ku

Su shayar, sakush! Pra chashka warshtas "u" warhamas.  Inglishu, "sentence starter" kalhamas. Shaja alya "sentence starter" hawchamas : ku.

"Good morning, friends! Earlier we spoke about the command word "u".  In English, we call it a "sentence starter". Today we'll be learning another "sentence starter" : ku.

Ku is a word only found in Wenja - there is no direct translation for ku in Izila.  Speakers of Wenja can -- but don't have to -- use ku when asking a question.

Think back to one of the first scenes with Sayla, where she leads you back to her cave and offers you food (U hada).  She asks you Ku chlawata?  "Do you hear (them)?", a question which baffles Takkar as it refers to the screams of the Wenja dead. Later, Sayla asks Takkar, Ku barata? "Did you bring (the ears)?"

In short, whenever you ask a yes/no question in Wenja, you will normally begin the sentence with the word ku. Note, too, that because ku marks the sentence as a question, you don't have to indicate that what you're saying is a question through a change in pitch (like English).

Like the sentence starter u 'command', ku '?' does not have a direct source in PIE, rather our reconstructed Proto-PIE.  How did we arrive at ku?  If you look at a number of question words in English, you'll see that they all begin in wh- : who, what, when, where, why, whither, whence, etc.  This wh- derives from PIE *kw- (technically *kʷ-), which was pronounced very similar to the qu- in English quick.  As the sounds w and u are nearly identical in articulation, it seems very likely that this *kw- once was pronounced as ku, a word that marked questions.  For *kʷ- elsewhere in Indo-European, we can easily see it in Latin quid "what?" and Hittite kwid "what".

Tu sakwan prasti!

Wenja Grammar: hu-

Past, Present and Future

Here's an answer to an email we got. If you have suggestions or questions, please let us know!

Wenja are very “present” and not usually concerned with the past or the future. This is also true of their grammar. Wenja has only one verbal tense. Past, present and future are implied from context and/or additional words like adverbs.

Hars gwanam.	I kill the bear. / I am killing the bear.
Hars gwanam.	I killed the bear.
Gashjas hars gwanam.	I killed the bear yesterday.
Shayar hars gwanam.	I will kill the bear tomorrow.

The past may be (but doesn’t have to be) marked by adding the perfective unaccented hu- prefix before the verb root. You might use this in ambiguous situations where it is not clear from context that it’s in the past, and where it’s important to indicate that the action has been completed: 

Hars hu-gwanam.	I killed the bear.
	(It’s over, it’s done with, we don’t need to worry about that bear anymore!)

This type of marker is called an aspectual prefix. It is added to the beginning of a verb to indicate how the action relates to time.

Wenja Language: majish

Smarkaka, salwa!  Shaja alya Winja kam-kamya warshtas warhamas : majish.  Majish is the basic word meaning "big, large, great" and is often yelled in the context of the Udam -- majish yawdan "big warrior"!  Just think of those heavies that take 10 arrows to take down.

You'll also hear majish in the thanks of the very grateful Wenja that you save, hearing things like Tiyi majish charda "You have a big heart" or Majish charda-ha yawdata "You fight with a big heart."

And where does this word come from?  PIE *meǵh₂ 'great, large, big' (note the funny h₂ sound is a guttural sound, likely the "Darth Vader sound"), source of Hittite mek, Sanskrit mahi, Latin magnus, and Greek mega.  It's also continued directly by English much, with a variant mickle (a Scottish form).  So English magni-tude, Mega-man, and much all derive from PIE *meǵh₂.  Pretty successful word.

Tu sakwan prasti!