I started learning Arangothek the other day, just for kicks. I've been around this language for some years now (I even sometimes blame the existence of Sandic on my having come across this conlang as a young child), and while I've glanced through its "Teach yourself"-styled manual, I've never actually sat down and invested time to learn it.
Arangothek is the language of Arangoth, a fictional country in a fictional world. It is perhaps unique among fictional languages in that it is not only associated with a conworld, but that its conworld is one with which people regularly interact in IRC roleplaying. #blkdragon*inn has existed since 1995, and Arangothek has been around since at least 1997. Created by Pat Feaster, it's got a dictionary (two-way since three days ago when I got frustrated not being able to look up words on a whim offline) and some small to medium-sized texts translated by its author. It used to have a more prominent role in the setting, but with people moving on who used to know it, it gradually fell out of use.
I've been following the lessons in the "Teach Yourself Arangothek" booklet that I printed, and yesterday I felt a familiar itch coming on. A song was stuck in my head, and while I would normally translate it into Sandic to free it, it already existed in that language. I *could* have just hummed it in Sandic and then let it go- but I decided to give it a shot in Arangothek. Surprisingly, the words fit the first time!
Na nerre ai min an perpix
konnenet ve min
na nerre ai min ne siloth an perpix
"Mother carry me,
I am your child
Mother, carry me to the sea"
Then, today, I was watching the nasty weather outside, and hummed "rain rain go away" to myself in Sandic. Would Arangothek work for this song, I wondered? I had to substitute tok ("water") for "rain" (as the more than decade-old dictionary was mum on this word), but yes it did!
na tok, ken an dalimbix,
ben hest degelta an issix!
"O water, run away!
come (back) a different day"
No comments:
Post a Comment