Agirowen (or in its syllabary, Yag.gir.row.wen) is a conversational language that evolved from a parametric magical language (and can still be used as one). It is one of three languages natively spoken in the magical kingdom of Chinereya, and is also spoken by Binding Batteries (and their fans) even outside of Chinereya, especially as a supplement to English when trying to explain complex magical concepts.
| Agirowen (Yag.gir.row.wen) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Oligosynthetic | ||||||||||||
| Alignment | Direct | ||||||||||||
| Head direction | Final | ||||||||||||
| Tonal | No | ||||||||||||
| Declensions | No | ||||||||||||
| Conjugations | No | ||||||||||||
| Genders | |||||||||||||
| Nouns decline according to... | |||||||||||||
| Case | Number | ||||||||||||
| Definiteness | Gender | ||||||||||||
| Verbs conjugate according to... | |||||||||||||
| Voice | Mood | ||||||||||||
| Person | Number | ||||||||||||
| Tense | Aspect | ||||||||||||
| Meta-information | |||||||||||||
| Progress | 0% | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Creator | DistrarSubvoicar | ||||||||||||
Classification and Dialects[]
Of the three languages natively spoken in Chinereya (Agirowen, Bisgyupers, and New Argon), Agirowen is mainly distinct for its very consistent CVC syllable structure (it is said aloud as "Yag gir row wen"). It has a lot of very regular patterns, and has more strict standardized in territories that speak it than the other two languages. Because of this, Agirowen often comes off as having a certain scholarly formality or high society feeling to it. Also, it is natively written using a runic syllabary-abuguida, unlike how the other two langs are natively written with logograms.
There are four dialects of Agirowen. The main dialectual differences for the more common dialects of Agirowen are:
<y> /ħ/ vs /j/ , <k> /tʃ/ vs /k/ , and <s> /s/ vs /ʃ/
with <y> /ħ/ , <k> /tʃ/ , and <s> /ʃ/ being more typical for inner city speak and cities closer to the capital, and with <y> /j/ , <k> /k/ , and <s> /s/ being more typical in smaller villages or on the fringes of territories for which Agirowen is the official language. (referenced orthography is for the Romanization used by Binding Batteries, who tend to prefer writing in a Human script rather than a Chinereyan one).
The "textbook correct" dialect is similar to the village one mentioned above but with <ch> /tʃ/ existing alongside <k> /k/ , and is representative of medium sized towns and cities near the middle of the relevant provinces of Chinereya, as well as tourist towns that interact a lot with visitors from the Human world.
The fourth and rarest dialect of Agirowen is the "Argon-ish" dialect, called that because it is much more similar to Agirowen's proto-lang, Reybenyun Argon, in that its pronunciation (particularly of vowels) is consistent by syllable rather than by individual letter. For example, in the "Argon-ish" dialect of Agirowen, the syllable "ton" is always pronounced /thoʊn/ (with the single phoneme version of oʊ ) in any word it appears in, while "ron" is always pronounced /rɑn/ , thus a vowel letter like "o" can make different sounds in different syllables but stays the same across different instances of the same syllable. No teaching material for Agirowen, even in Chinereya, teaches the "Argon-ish" dialect, because it takes significantly more work to learn its pronunciation for very little benefit to the learner (since it is so rarely used). But it is still important to acknowledge its existence.
Phonology[]
Consonants[]
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Epiglottal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||
| Plosive | bh | dh th | gɦ k | |||||||||
| Fricative | v | s | ħ | |||||||||
| Affricate | tʃ | |||||||||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||
| Flap or tap | ||||||||||||
| Lateral fric. | ||||||||||||
| Lateral app. | l | |||||||||||
| Lateral flap |
Vowels[]
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |||
| Near-high | |||||
| High-mid | oʊ | ||||
| Mid | |||||
| Low-mid | ɛ | ||||
| Near-low | |||||
| Low | ɑ |
Phonotactics[]
CVC syllable structure only. If an Agirowen word (such as the name itself) is written in a way that doesn't look CVC somewhere, that is due to written stylization, and such words are still pronounced with only CVC syllables. The native script is a runic syllabary-abuguida that is designed to handle CVC syllables only. When a consonant is missing at the start or the end of a word/syllable, the missing consonant is by default an implicit 'y'.
Some syllables are reserved for grammatical particles (sometimes referred to as "word role suffixes" in informal explanations, but technically they act more like particles than suffixes). The max size of a word is five "stem" syllables and two "word role suffix" syllables. The minimum size is two syllables. The vast majority of words have either two or three "stem" syllables and one "word role suffix" syllable.
Writing System[]
| Letter | Bb | Dd | Gg | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Rr | Ss | Tt | Vv | Ww |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sound | /bh/ | /dh/ | /gɦ/ | /k/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /r/ | /s/ | /th/ | /v/ | /w/ |
| Letter | Yy | Ch | Xx | |||||||||
| Sound | /ħ/ or /j/ | /tʃ/ | /ks/ | |||||||||
| Letter | Aa | Ee | ɪi | Oo | Uu | |||||||
| Sound | /ɑ/ | /ɛ/ | /i/ | /oʊ/ | /u/ |
Grammar[]
Nouns[]
Any Agirowen word ending in the word role suffix/particle lar, ran, ten, yin, or yun is a noun.
-lar words are concrete/tangible objects. For example, kitritlar means "feline, cat-like thing", and voklar means "I/me/myself"
-ran words are abstract objects. For example, vokran means "the self, sense of self, personal identity"
-ten words are elements (when Agirowen is being used as a magical language, which happens fairly often) or essences. For example, kitriten (kit.rit.ten) means "feline-ness, catitude" and vokten means "introspection, self-awareness".
-renlar words are professions/occupations. They are the noun variants of verbs, and thus "do-ers" of something. For example, gistonren means "to heal", so gistonrenlar means "healer, doctor".
-yin words are units of currency. For example, weseriyin (wes.ser.riy.yin) is very similar to the word for "yellow" and the word for "excited" and means "gold coin". chinereyin (chin.ner.rey.yin) is "Chinereya's currency" and thus "Stars [of currency]". yamerikayin (yan.mer.rik.kay.yin) is "America's currency" and thus "Dollar[s]".
-yun words are countries or places. For example, Chemerayun is the Agirowen way to write Chinereya, the country that Agirowen is native to, and Yamerikayun is the Agirowen way to write America. Much like people from the U.S., Chinereyans mostly use "America" or "Yamerikayun" or refer to the U.S. , and would instead say Kanadayun for Canada, and Meksikoyun (mek.sik.koy.yun) for Mexico. This is because most tourists visiting Chinereya from Earth are from the U.S., and as such the U.S. has influenced Chinereya's ideas of what Earth is like the most.
Words with no word role suffix/particle, and words that have an accent mark on the first stem syllable's vowel (such as Tórgonlaren and Bérsonlar) are proper nouns, and are usually capitalized to help them stand out (whereas all other kinds of words are all lowercase, at least in the most careful and technically proper romanization of the language. In the runic script, proper nouns that would have an accent mark in the romanization have a special diacritic that is specific to the runic script, since those nouns are so called "formal form nouns" and have different meanings than the words with the same spelling but no such diacritic.)
Verbs[]
Any Agirowen word ending in the word role suffix/particle ren is a verb.
-ren words are direct actions. For example, gistonren means "to heal", neren means "to grab/hold", and gantonren means "to be/exist".
-laren words are events/passive occurrences. For example, bersenbayenlaren literally means "the event of giving birth" and is used to mean "birthday", and Tórgonlaren (note that the accent mark there only affects intonation and meaning, not pronunciation) literally means "event of The Sun" and is used to mean "sunrise" or "morning" depending on the context.
-ronren words are habitual actions, and are sometimes used to express the idea of "acting in an _ manner". For example, suberonren (suy.ber.ron.ren) literally means "the habit of improving/encouraging something" and is used to mean "to often act in a supportive manner". luyulronren means "to regularly/habitually sleep/rest".
Adjectives[]
Any Agirowen word ending in the word role suffix/particle ron, yen, or sey is some form of adjective, adverb, or other modifier.
-ron words are basic adjectives or adverbs. For example, yanyaron (yan,.yar.ron) means "happy" (or "good" in standard expressions like "good morning"), and vorgendaron (vor.gen.dar.ron) means "good" in the moral philosophy/moral virtue sense (and means the dulled neutral "fine"/"okay" when talking about how someone is feeling).
-yen words are colors, or sometimes color-based genders or similar. For example, weseriyen (wes.ser.riy.yen) literally means "enthusiam color" and is used to mean "yellow". kelvaryen is used to mean "brown" or sometimes "male", and kureyen (kur.rey.yen) is used to mean "pink" or sometimes "female". It is also the ending of optional gender marking adjectives, such as mayen ("male-gendered"), viyen ("female-gendered"), noyen ("neutral-gendered"), and voyen ("voyik-gendered). {There are no mandatory gender markings in Agirowen,. Also, noyen isn't rude the way calling someone an "it" is rude, but instead is a word that someone who identifies as Agender might use when describing themselves to emphasize their gender identity, similar to how the other gender marking adjectives are.}
-sey words are numerical modifiers. For example, narsey means "1" and gensey means "2". naksey (literally "large-number") means "much/a lot of", and dengansey means "many" or "a group of".
-seyron words are ordinals. For example, narseyron means "[the] first" or "first place", and genseyron means "[the] second" or "second place". The words nakseyron and denganseyron both mean something like "the umpteenth" (and sound just as childish to professional scientists as "the umpteenth" does in English).
Honorifics[]
-yon words are honorifics, and are either attached to the ends of names (in the same way that -san and -kun are attached to the ends of names in Japanese) or used as honorary titles similar to "Mister" or "Mrs".
For example, John-noregaryon is how one would refer to a friend named John whose Responsibility one particularly notes and respects, and Tim-dangonyon is how one would refer to a friend named Tim whose Innocence (as in the moral virtue, not as in ignorance or childishness of any kind) one particularly notes and respects. Such honorifics are possible with pretty much any moral virtue. The examples given are for the most common specific honorifics (the one most commonly used to respect adults and the one most commonly used to respect children). The generic honorific (analogous in some ways to the Japanese -san) is -dangonon (said as dan.gon.ron by native Agirowen speakers, but as dan.gon.non by anyone capable of pronouncing "non" as a syllable).
The honorary titles are Kelvaryon (for males, "Mister"), Kureyon (for females, "Mrs"), Gargenyon (for gargens), Chemureyon (for mureys), Ragavoyikyon (for voyiks), and Noyilyon (for agender or non-binary people). Since gender is culturally considered to be a very high society and smart scholarly thing to know about by Chinereyans, any of them that know about one gender will know about all six of them listed here, as well as all the pronouns and honorary titles related to them, since all six of them are taught at once.
Syntax[]
All permutations of words (but not particles) are valid, but different permutations result in different meanings. Words early in a sentence always "modify the target" for the rest of the sentence after them (that is, the entire sentence is treated as head-final in a nested way). The part of speech of the last word in the sentence (the deepest scope target) determines the most about what kind of idea the whole sentence conveys. For example:
Kítritlar (Cat) mewren (eat) toron (fast) waskarten (water) = "The Cat drinks the rapidly flowing water"
Kítritlar (Cat) toron (fast) mewren (eat) waskarten (water) = "The Cat rapidly drinks water"
toron (fast) Kítritlar (Cat) mewren (eat) waskarten (water) = "The agile Cat drinks water"
Kítritlar (Cat) mewren (eat) waskarten (water) toron (fast) = "The Cat drinking water is exemplary of rapid movement"
toron (fast) mewren (eat) waskarten (water) Kítritlar (Cat) = "There exists a Cat whose fundamental nature is rapidly drinking water", or in some contexts "The Cat known for rapidly drinking water is nearby, and has a noteworthy presence here."
Kítritlar (Cat) toron (fast) waskarten (water) mewren (eat) = "The agile Cat-shaped water entity is eating"
waskarten (water) Kítritlar (Cat) toron (fast) mewren (eat) = "The water-elemental Cat is rapidly eating"
Lexicon[]
Dictionary Doc:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bmIi3xmPYrnzKIhHXfJS1nSjup7kH18S/view?usp=sharing