The Verdurian language (known in Verdurian as soa Sfahe, "the Speech"]) os a constructed language invented by Mark Rosenfelder in 1995[1] and hosted at his website, Zompist.com. Verdurian is a fictional language, which in Rosenfelder's conworld is spoken in the nation of Verduria, on the planet Almea.
Verdurian is the most-developed and best-known of the languages of Almea.
Grammar and phonology
editVerdurian has a phonology with eight vowels and twenty-one consonants.[2] Among the most exotic oe sounds is the voiced uvular fricative (ʁ), which is spelt as an R with a hacek over it in the transcription.[Ethnoslavica: Johannes Reinhart, Tilmann Reuther, Gerhard Neweklowsky, (C) 2006, p. 213.] Verdurian also has its own alphabet.
This language has two genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (nominative, genitive, accusative and dative).[3] There are four tenses (present, past, past anterior and future).[4]
Real-life history
editWhen Rosenfelder was a freshman in college, his dorm was next to that of a Dungeons & Dragons aficionado, one Chris Vargas. Vargas introduced Rosenfelder to the game, and Rosenfelder created the wilderness and also the languages for the game. All the players in Vargas and Rosenfelder's Dungeons & Dragons group were given Verdurian names.[5]
Many of the words were inspired directly by French or Russian. Others, such as "elir" for life, were a priori coinages by Rosenfelder.
Fictional history
editIn Rosenfelder's Almean universe, Verdurian is spoken by about 55 million people in the kingdom of Verduria, as well as nations nearby in Almea's Cadhinorian plain.
Verdurian is a member of the Eastern language phylum. This derives from a proto-language called proto-Eastern, spoken by invaders of the Cadhinorian and Xurnese plains, about 4,000 years before the present time in Rosenfelder's universe. Some of the Eastern invaders were Cuzeian, while others were Cadhinorian. Cadhinorians picked up civilization from Vuzeians. The Cadhinorians spoke a classical language called Cadhinorian (its relationship to Verdurian is analogous of that of Latin to Spanish). After the fall of the Cadhinorian Empire, Cadhinorian developed into several daughter languages, among them Old Verdurian, which evolved later into Modern Verdurian.
Verdurian in popular culture
editVerdurian makes an appearance in the novel Gaits of Heaven, one of Susan Conant's "Dog Lover's Mysteries". The character Johanna does linguistic research with a feminist bent on grammatical gender "in Hebrew, Verdurian and various other languages in which verbs as well as nouns are masculine, feminine, or, in some instances, neuter".[Gaits of Heaven, Susan Conant, (C) 2007, p. 102.]
Samples of the language
editProše mižu: --Žaneno, tan satenam mážula er gorat, kiei finta attróue so syel er tan lažecom brac, pro dy řo ažlädam fne soa pera almea Ekaiei. -- From the story of the tower of Babel [6]
Translation: Then they said: "Come, let us build a town and a tower, whose top will reach the heavens; and let us get ourselves glory, so that we are not scattered across all the earth."