"Big Island" → Unn’chrónn

"Rock Island" → Gálnos’chrónn

"Fish Island" → Másyr’chrónn

Chances are if these are the names of islands (place-names), they’d erode down to more unitary forms over time. Especially if the isles are inhabited by non-elvish races. Let me know if that’s the case, and we can come up with something.

For "whirlpool," I’d agree with Mina on élvi’thyrón. "Twirling water" (élvi’már) could also work. Both of these are preferable to térqu’mar’avásh for two reasons: terquán is definitely a noun describing the concept of turning (cf. other -án nouns like sae’llán "music") and so cannot be used as a verb; and the compound is unwieldy even by elvish standards, haha. They wouldn’t need such a complex compound for the idea of a whirlpool.

Little to nothing about Nybelmarian Styrásh has been detailed so far, unfortunately.

All I personally know is that rhem is the Nybelmarian counterpart of rhím, and that Nybelmarian elves don’t compound tribe names with apostrophes (cf. Paélrhem, Iferhém, Kaýrrhem).

I don’t think it’d be possible to translate it currently. There just isn’t enough material to work with.

RAYNE. You are my muse. Those new words are beautiful.

I’ll edit this post later with my translation.

---

Alrighty then, here we go:

POEM (ANALYSIS & TRANSLATION)

“Song of the Paélrhem”
Sae’llán só Páel’rhim-ís
[song the Páel’rhím*-gen.]

*The form Paélrhem is Nybelmarian Styrásh. The rest of the song is in Sarvonian Styrásh, so I’m assuming this is a translation those elves have made from the original. If that’s the case, they’d have converted the tribe’s name to its Sarvonian form of Páel’rhím.

“The waves beat on the rocks:”
Dor-anté só-h galnos-ían só-h cash-ín:
[beat*-they the-pl. rock-acc.pl. the-pl. wave-pl.:]

*“Beat on” is sort of an English-ism. That little idiomatic verbal phrase would be expressed solely by dorán; you wouldn’t need to say dorán foár.

“The song of the cliffs”
Sá sae’llán sá-h kelsha-rías
[the song the-pl. cliff-gen.pl.]

“Playing all time as one.”
Ae’ll-í ýn avá chan’kara-thím.
[play-pres.part. as one all’time-acc.]

“The song connects us.”
Xeu-át uím sá sae’llán.
[connect-3sg us* the song.]

*Go ahead and use uím for “us” wherever it’s needed. That’s the form I’ve been toying around with. Still a little tentative, but it should work for now; it can go in the Ava’reollár verse as well.

“The tides shift in and out:”
Wel-anté foár ám jhé sá-h bavmar-ía:
[shift-they in and out the-pl. tide-pl.:]

“The cycle of the sea”
Só vaéy só thyron-ís.
[the cycle the sea-gen.]

“Moving in oneness of the Dream.”
Al-í foár avaéf sá Valanaj-ís.
[move*-pres.part. in oneness the Dream-gen.]

*We can keep peldrán as a word, but I don’t think Styrásh differentiates lexically between transitivity and intransitivity. That is to say, it doesn’t have separate words for the transitive and intransitive forms of the same action. In any case, “move” isn’t a transitive verb here; there’s no object.

“The cycle connects us.”
Xeu-át uím só vaéy.
[connect-3sg us the cycle.]

“The clouds and skies storm.”
Katr-anté só-h herin-ín ám sá-h yphero-ía.
[storm-they the-pl. cloud-pl. and the-pl. sky-pl.]

“The becoming of heaven”
Sá áseia’nareuá
[the heaven’becoming*]

*I’ve opted to compound these two, as they seem to express a single idea of “heaven-becoming” (the elves compound like this quite frequently when two words express a unitary philosophical or poetic idea; cf. “vast ocean,” line 16). If you really feel they must be kept separate, “the becoming of heaven” translates as sá nareuá aseiaís.

“Changing all in the turning.”
Meh-í chan-thím foár sá terquán.
[change-pres.part. all-acc. in the turning.]

“The becoming connects us.”
Xeu-át uím sá nareuá.
[connect-3sg us the becoming.]

“The rains fall through the winds.”
Chuh-anté á só-h avash-ín sá-h alyr-ía.
[fall-they through the-pl. wind-pl. the-pl. rain-pl.]

“We are all drops of the water.”
Styr-áns chán dol-ín sá mar-ís.
[be-we all drop-pl. the water-gen.]

“We are distinct for a moment,”
Styr-áns quóc í án sharél,
[be-we distinct for a moment,] 

“Then we merge into the vast ocean.”
Dré zilsh-áns és só kéreth’thyrón.
[Then merge-we into* the vast’ocean.]

*It’s not in the dictionaries for some reason, but on the Principles page, an example sentence provides és as meaning “into.”

POEM (COMPLETED)

Sae’llán só Páel’rhimís

Doranté sóh galnosían sóh cashín:
Sá sae’llán sáh kelsharías
Ae’llí ýn avá chan’karathím.
Xeuát uím sá sae’llán.

Welanté foár ám jhé sáh bavmaría:
Só vaéy só thyronís.
Alí foár avaéf sá Valanajís.
Xeuát uím só vaéy.

Katranté sóh herinín ám sáh ypheroía.
Sá áseia’nareuá
Mehí chanthím foár sá terquán.
Xeuát uím sá nareuá.

Chuhanté á sóh avashín sáh alyría.
Styráns chán dolín sá marís.
Styráns quóc í án sharél,
Dré zilsháns és só kéreth’thyrón.

QUESTIONS

1. You don’t need a subject to begin with; the verbs in those lines are in their participial forms, and so their subjects are in the lines immediately preceding them.

2. I think it’s fine. Ae’llán means “to perform music,” which is essentially synonymous with what you’ve got in the poem.

3. Nope; kará fits into a compound there (“all-time”).

4. They’re being used as adverbs in that context. I don’t think Styrásh is too strict about that (prepositions taking on adverbial functions, I mean), so they should be fine uninflected.

5. If the line to be translated specifically said “the time,” then yes. The line you gave doesn’t. You could say “changing the all in the turning,” sure, but that’s not what your original line was, so I didn’t insert the article.

6. Right at the beginning.

"Nature" is styrá, and "healer" is eliás in the feminine. No words yet for "explore"/"explorer."

You could even combine those two if you wanted, as áey would clash awkwardly with "nature" (stýra’áey) and would be redundant in the second (élias’áey "healer-person"...haha). The combination "Nature-healer" becomes Stýra’eliás, which sounds quite cool in itself IMO. It also presents nice "Tharianization" opportunities as Azhira’s human comrades whittle the exotic sounds of her native name down to the more pronounceable "Styrelias" or "Styralias."

We don’t yet have words for "shaman(-ess)" or "wilds." Or specifically "woman," for that matter (áey "person" is neutral and can be masculine or feminine based on context...maybe that could work?).

"Earth-magess," though, translates to mód’dél’áey. A little heavy-handed what with the accents and apostrophes, perhaps.

You’ve just gotta change yó to foár in the poem, and then it’s good to go linguistically, yep.

We’re nitpicking minutiae now, haha. I love debates with substance like this, Rayne.


I never said that articles are stressed, simply that they have stress. It’s a characteristic every word displays (much like having a vocalic sound), regardless of the amount of syllables present. The stress in a word like "an" automatically falls, of course, on the sole syllable it possesses because there’s nowhere else for it to go. Articles in poetry still have stress; they’re still words. They just might not be stressed, as you said.


Thóse hóurs thát wíth géntle wórk díd fráme
Thé lóvely gáze whére év’ry éye dóth dwéll
Wíll pláy thé týrants tó thé véry sáme
Ánd thát unfáir whích fáirly dóth excél...


But every word does have stress somewhere in it, and it can still be iambic pentameter. Mina hit the nail right on the head.

I just remembered the term I’ve been scraping my brain for since this discussion started: prosody. Wikipedia does an excellent job of summing it up in accessible terms; you should have a look at it. Interesting read.

Mina’s also right about this discussion, haha...we’re neglecting the tree. I’m done!

:flees from Mina’s undoubtedly imminent fireball of chastisement:

Thanks, Madame Shamaness.

Mina! I LOVE you. That site just made my life infinitely easier! I’d been opening word and choosing fonts that are IPA-compatible (Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma, etc.) and just copy-pasting the symbols from there. If I could give aura, you’d have one from me.


"Accent" and "emphasis" are essentially equivalent. They both refer to the part of the word that is pronounced more dominantly than the other parts. You’re missing my main point, I think: every word has an accent/emphasis/stress somewhere, both in linguistics and in poetry. That’s an irrefutable fact. There’s always a part of the word that’s a little more prominent than the rest. 

Mina’s right about the different types of stress. I’m dealing with the word-level stress, because I’m not analyzing what you’ve written as more than a free-verse poem. Essentially, a short chunk of prose.

valturáey (f.) "keeper"

teláey (f.) "singer"

léy (m.) "branch"

caothán (v.) "to give birth"

caothás (f.) "birth"

caothaín (m.) "birthday"

Rayne and I agree that the word for "blood" shouldn’t be a compound. The concept is basic enough that it’d have its own word. Perhaps dúr (or diár, dáth to conform with the noun endings already on the site)?

Art, can we add -áey to the list of feminine noun endings (distinct from the masculine -éy)?

Also, I’d like to move to expand the meaning of foár "on" to include "in, upon" as well. It’s common for one preposition to express general locative meaning (cf. Spanish en or Sindarin ned).

Ah! I think I see now where our misunderstandings are coming from. You’ve been thinking about stress in a strictly poetic sense and I from a linguistic standpoint. We’re awesome.

I’ve just been talking about the syllable(s) in each word where emphasis naturally falls – language, whispering, Ava’reollár – for the purposes of placing the marker.

(ASIDE) "Accent," by the way, is just what I’ve been calling the mark (´) above the stressed syllable in a Styrásh word. The language’s name itself is a good example: [sty'raʃ]. By the way, Rayne, can you read the IPA? I just realized that none of these approximations I’ve been giving are helpful if they’ve been incomprehensible, haha.

I haven’t been thinking of meter as much because the hymn is fairly prosaic in both languages. There really isn’t any meter that presents itself in either translation. I imagined the elves singing it with a loose melody leaving room for individual interpretation; the song would be more of an unstructured meditation than a rigidly composed choral piece, you know?

---

There are some other things in the entry I noticed when I read through it:

I. Ava’reollár
Just make sure to fix the stress when you get the chance. Leaving the accent off the initial "A" is probably the most expedient way of doing it while maintaining the proper stress.

II. phera’valturía
You’ll want to make sure that the final "n" of pherán "tree" makes it in there to keep that meaning. We don’t have a word yet for "keeper"; how about valturáey (in the pattern of styáey, del’áey, etc.)? "Tree-keepers" would then be phéran’valturaeyía. OR – and I like this option better, haha – these individuals could just have their own word: valferán, pl. valferanía?

III. phera’teloría
Same thing here as with No. II. We could coin teláey for "singer," giving us phéran’telaeyía for "tree-singers," or go with telferán (pl. telferanía) for their name. Whatever we decide to do with these two items, new vocabulary is always nice, so I’ll post valturáey and teláey in the new vocab thread along with the other words.

III. querin’caoí
"Leaf-children" would come out to be quérin’caoía (-í marks the singular dative in Styrásh and isn’t a valid plural form). I’d opt to keep this compounded form rather than craft a new word for the profession; preserves the ethereality of the ancient sect, I think.

IV. Avásh’zoúm
Fix the stress in this one to Ávash’zoúm (or the equally legitimate Avash’zoúm, cf. Áva’reollár = Ava’reollár).

V. yó
I just found in the dictionaries that Styrásh has foár for "on." It’s common for "on, in, upon" to be expressed by one locative preposition (cf. Spanish en), so I’d suggest to do the same here and expand foár to mean "in" as well. At least until we can work out a locative case for Styrásh...it needs one.

The whole concept doesn't ring true philologically, though. The elves would still take the sounds [a.va] to mean the name of their Goddess, regardless of how they're emphasized. The pattern of stress you're advocating would sound odd to their ears. Syntactical exceptions, like the supremacy of Her name in elvish word order, make far more sense.


I don't understand what you mean here, Rayne. The accents are nothing more than stress markers, that's it. We can apply the same principle to a sentence of English: "Thé lánguage óf thé élves ís ás thé whíspering óf thé wínd." They just show where the emphasis in any given word lies. Every word in every language (real or fictional) has stress somewhere. It doesn't mean that the accented syllable needs to be pronounced emphatically or in a poetically exaggerated manner. Styrásh stress patterns are only as outlandish or impossible as one makes them out to be; they're remarkably similar to French, actually, if that helps at all. Haha.

Also, could you explain what you mean by "two stresses in a row"? There aren't any occurrences of that in Styrásh, as far as I know.


The definitions for these are switched, haha. But hold off on integrating them at all for now; they're specially inflected and not very practical. You can leave them in the poem so that there aren't any blanks, and they can (presumably?) be changed later. I'll post back over here with the appropriate forms once Styrásh pronouns are worked out properly. Yó and léy are fine, I'd say.

(EDIT) One thing I just noticed: you said you wanted to keep the name as Avá'reollár to preserve its iambic form (which you gave as "a–vá–reo–llár"). If our definitions of iamb agree on it being one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, then Avá'reollár, with its five syllables, can't be perfectly iambic even when improper stress is maintained. Its syllables break down as a–va–re–ol–lar, and is properly stressed on "a" and "lar."

They might make the exception when actually singing the hymn, but when writing it down, they'd notate the stress normally, I'd say. I confess I don't know how this works in other languages, but in English, there's no denotation of irregular stress in song lyrics and poems.

I'm glad I could help!


Art might, but I don't think the elves would. They'd stress this word just like any other. The only exceptions to stress I can think of are words that are explicitly notated as irregular or loanwords. Although I don't know that the elves would be inclined to borrow bits of "lesser" languages, haha.


Nope, it literally means "we are blessed." The "we" is expressed by the suffix -áns appended to the verb stem styr- "be." Styr-áns > "be-we" > "we are." Artanhé is the past participle (perhaps passive participle would be a better term here; the action of the verb is being received rather than carried out) of artán "to bless," and translates to "blessed." So styr-áns art-anhé > "be-we bless-ed" > "we are blessed." Or "blessed are we," in this case.


The ablative case carries out the functions you outlined. The vocative case is used when the noun in question is being directly addressed, e.g. "Rayne" in "Why do you tolerate Falethas's constant annoyance, Rayne?" I've always questioned why Art combined the two cases into one when they're sooo very different. As to your second question: I don't really know why some languages convey prepositional relations via declension rather than separate particle. That's a question you might want to ask Anwulf; he's FAR more knowledgeable than I in this whole area.


I mainly did that for the sake of time and ease of perusal. If it's an important and reverent poem, I'd suggest to keep all the stress marks. I'd imagine the elves would only drop the accent in documents where formal writing wasn't demanded. Kind of like the difference between a legal contract and a letter to a friend: you wouldn't toss around contractions and abbreviations in the former, haha. I'll update my post with the formal orthography.


I think I might get around to it eventually...hehe