Dua & Xai

When we talked about kinship terms we used the affixes -dua and -xai. These suffixes can be used in many areas. -dua is an augmentative, and -xai is a diminutive. -Dua tends to make things larger in size or greater in power. -Xai tends to make things smaller in size, or cuter.

Some examples:
Feridua - Super store
Ferixai - Convenience store
Lazadua - Ocean (One of the major oceans of the planet)
Lazaxai - Sea (Smaller, but still major bodies of water ex: Mediterranean sea)
Kopodua - Boulder
Kopoxai - Pebble

These can also be attached to names. Adding -xai to someone's name or a nick name is a term of endearment. The words it's attached to depends on what level of endearment is intended. Adding -dua is an informal honorific, unless used with a person's title where it becomes very formal.

Colors: Saturation and Brightness

I've posted the color words before. These words describe the hues of color, or what we would think of as the colors of the rainbow. We can also talk about the saturation and brightness of colors.

Saturation is how vivid or pale a particular color is. The scale of this is described with the words raxi for high saturation, and hili for low saturation. Here are some examples where the word is the color being discussed.

Lanu-raxi
Akari-hili

Note: These translations of the words raxi and hili is only in regards to color. They can be used to discribe light as well, but they do not mean saturated. They mean the level of light, similar to bright/dim.

Brightness is how dark or light a particular color is. The scale is described with the words Peibu and Hexi. These are also the words for white and block respectively. So the close to white the color is the more bright it is.

Afi-peibu
Itaka-hexi

Olisa Ajinosa

Today we're going to talk about facial expressions! Facial expressions are called olisa ajinosa, types of faces.

There aren't words for specific expressions like a smile or a frown in Reisu. Instead we can say 'aji ida', or 'happy face'. We can also say 'Aji upa' or 'sad face'.

Leika aji ida! Make a happy face!
Make face happy!

Aji upa bei? Why the long face?
Face sad why?

Kuxadu aji ono idogi lo e. Don't get angry with him.
Don't-turn face 2PSingPoss angry to 3PSing.

Most obvious in the third example, it's more common in Reisu to talk about having a certain face than feeling the emotion itself. For example it would be better to say 'leika aji ida', 'make a happy face', than to say 'geki ida' (think happy, feel happy, or be happy).

You can also have aji imo, scared face; aji yifa, scary face; or aji haha, laughing face.

Olisa sulano

Today we're going to talk about olisa sulano or flavors (literally types of taste). There are several words that that we can use for olisa sulano.

Sweet	Iki
Salty	Zute
Sour	Peri
Bitter	Sate
Spicy	Ubi
Savory	Abo
Fatty	Huxua

There are other things that could be olisa sulano in the proper context. Textures of foods for example like siri (crunchy) or zuba (smooth). Pretty much anything that could be described as part of tasting is an oli sulano.

Many of these words can also be olisa zegono or fragrances (types of smells). Iki kuala roki! Sweetness smells good!

Ei eli amuhe ubi ro peri! Bo olisa sulano xido sula akuga :)
1P-SING enjoy food spicy or sour! But types taste-POSS new taste best :)
I enjoy spicy or sour food! But new flavors taste best :)

Case of the cute

Being a girl I am a lover of cute things. Cute animals, cute objects, even sometimes cute babies. I like to think this is sort of universal, being drawn to cute things.

In Reisu the word for this is 'guxi'. It is used not only to describe the cute or adorable quality in things, but the feeling they invoke, or the effect of the cute. Guxi vola xidoki, or the cute melts the soul. In better English, looking at cute things has a soul melting effect.

In these ways guxi is a specific type of larelai, and a specific type of puati. While others may find different things cute, the feeling cuteness invokes is so universal it is it's own two syllables instead of some compound of larelai or puati. And important enough for me to want to do a post just on this word.

Lastly, a helpful phrase. As you might often hear on the internet: Oki bofiru komo-denu guxi! Look at this cute cat picture! Literally, View picture-this kitten(cat-baby) cute!

You're hot then you're cold

I know I haven't been posting much. There is no excuse. Mostly it's because we have new people at work which is keeping me from goofing off and conlanging there, and at home I've been playing too much WoW. Totally going to level a new toon when Cata comes out. Probably a female Worgen druid if they don't make their voices too annoying.

Ahem... anyway...

It's started getting really hot here! It actually has been hitting 90 degrees a few days. Now I love the warm weather compared to the cold, but when wishing for summer I always forget how annoying driving is in the hot weather. So I thought it would be a good time to talk about Reisu temperature words.

The main words to describe temperature are rati and fuxu, hot and cold respectively. The proper word for temperature is 'juaratifuxu' or a 'hot/cold scale', often just shortened to ratifuxu.

Like other modifiers in Reisu we can use them as verbs. While in English we would need to use a dummy subject and verb "It's hot", in Reisu we can just say "hot" or "rati".

Temperature especially in relation to the weather is common small talk in English. At least it's what clients always seem to talk about at work. However we don't normally say just hot or cold. We exaggerate saying freezing or sweltering, or we downplay it saying warm or cool. We can use quantifiers in Reisu to do the same thing. On a scale of coldest to hottest the words go this way.

fuxuge > fuxu > fuxutai > ratitai > rati > ratige

So getting into the car I might begrudgingly mumble 'ratige...'

The conceptual space of beauty

So I was very productive recently, and I worked out how Reisu divides the conceptual space of beauty. To talk about this in Reisu we have to talk about the senses because beauty is perceived by the senses.

See - Oki
Hear - Milu
Smell - Zego
Taste - Sula
Touch - Hola
Think - Geki

Hola is special because it doesn't simply mean physical touch. It also means emotions. Geki means thought with or without emotions. I did not mean for this ambiguity to occur, but I worked out the meaning of hola when I worked out how to handle the copula, so it's too late to change now. A little ambiguity is good, right? I have said that before I think, but for some reason when it's in my own writing I see it as a glaring error. I tell myself to stop being so technical, and on to the words for beauty.

There are different words for saying something is beautiful depending on how the thing is perceived. For example using 'larelai' to describe beautiful music is awkward. It's better to use 'nali'. However if you're talking about a concert and you wanted to comment on the visual spectacle of it we could use 'larelai'. Here's a chart of the words for beauty and their antonyms:

What is perceiving the beauty	Beautiful (adjective)	Ugly (Antonym)
Eye	Larelai	Yeto
Ear	Nali	Gomu
Nose	Roki	Jiro
Mouth	Xali	Fuma
Skin	Xuma	Goti
Mind	Puati	Deto

Below are some example sentences to highlight the difference between these words in relation to the main five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

Lila nali, bo yeto.
Music sound.good, but look.bad.
The music was beautiful, but the performance was bad.
~There's no need to specify that you're talking about a concert even though we used the noun for music. Obviously if we're using yeto we're talking about something visual. There's a similar idea in the sentence below.

Pana larelai, bo fuma.
Food look.good, but taste.bad.
The meal looked delicious, but it tasted was awful.
~Larelai is referring to how the food literally looked, as in how it was plated. This not referring to how it sounded when described, or how it was written on a menu. We would use nali/gomu to describe how something seems when being read about despite reading being visual.

Yesisopua xuma, emodoge neina, bo ei eli yesijeva.
Silk feel.good, people-many say, but I like cotton.
Many say silk feels nice, but I prefer cotton.
~Yesisopua and yesijeva are compound words formed from yesi for cloth. Most of the words for types of cloth contain yesi-.

So what of puati and deto? We would use those to speak of things that are experienced primarily in the mind. Another way to think of it labeling goodness or badness in '-isms'. For example religious, political and psychological options or experiences are primarily labeled on a scale of puati/deto. We can call emphasis to those feelings effecting us physically by using xuma/goti instead, but xuma/goti has connotations specific to physical and emotional experiences that puati/deto does not have.

Below are some example sentences. These can all be translated as 'God is good', but they have different connotations.

Doza aku.
~God is good, and this is a fact.
Doza puati.
~God is good, and this is my personal belief (or, and this is how I think).
Doza xuma.
~God is good, and I have experienced his goodness physically/emotionally.
Doza nali.
~From what I've heard, God is good.

Consider the boxes

Today I'm going to go into detail on how I divided up space for expressing bigness and smallness in Reisu.

Consider the boxes below:


Space is divided three ways: Up and down, left and right, front and back. We can say things have bigness and smallness in any of those dimensions.

For example: Saku akari ya yuba, or The red box is tall. Saku soxu ya timi, or The purple box is short. So the scale of height goes between the words yuba and timi. These words don't imply where the starting point is, so yuba can also be used for deep, and timi can be used for shallow. So to say The volcano is tall we can say Tozaikusi yuba. To say the ocean is deep we can say Laza yuba.

For the yellow and orange boxes the words are molo and niki respectively. These words are for looking at distance left to right. For example we would say Taxisopua molo for a long snake and Taxisopua niki for a short snake.

The green and blue boxes are for length front to back. These words are daga and fitu. So a long road is Tagu daga, and a short road is Tagu fitu.

So we can describe each of the boxes as follows:
Saku akari ya yuba.
Saku soxu ya timi.
Saku itaka ya molo.
Saku itakari ya niki.
Saku afi ya daga.
Saku lanu ya fitu.

Modifiers

As you may have guessed, Modifiers in Reisu go directly after their word they are modifying. For example: 'Oo ono kikino kei?' onp comes after oo instead of the other way around. Adjectives, adverbs, etc, all function the same way. They come directly after the word they modify. Here's an example of what placement of a modifier does to the sentence. The modifier is underlined.

Rigi raxi hata.
      (The) sun shines brightly.
Rigi hata raxi.
      (The) bright sun shines.

For clarification hata doesn't mean bright. I means very, intensely or intense. When raxi is used as a modifier it means bright, so it's awkward to repeat it. Adding the simple intensifier makes more sense.

And since we're talking about modifiers, for fun here's some color words:

Red	Akari
Orange	Itakari
Yellow	Itaka
Green	Afi
Blue	Lanu
Purple	Soxu