Arêndron

From KneeQuickie

Arêndron is a conlang designed by Michael S. Repton as part of his conworld Atragam. The name "Arêndron" is pronounced (in IPA) /aˈɾɛɪndɾɔn/; it is a genitive form of Arêndros, the name of the region where the language originated.

Internal History

...to be added later when I get some of the details finalised...

External History

Atragam grew out of a story I began planning around 1994. The story was originally set in the world of the "Warlords" series of computer games, and my first Arêndron words were created by inventing meanings for Warlords placenames. (A very few of these words still remain in the language, such as gor "gate", from the placenames Ungor and Gorag.)

I wrote a first draft of Arêndron grammar in 1996, at the same time as I was starting to develop the accompanying conworld Atragam; as I knew nothing of linguistics at the time, the grammar was almost a clone of German, the phonology included what I thought was every sound in every existing language (but of course wasn't), and the orthography was a nightmare. In addition, I was utterly shameless in copying words, mostly elements of placenames, from English and Tolkien's languages.

After this, I shelved Arêndron for some years. I came back to it in 2003, inspired by having discovered Mark Rosenfelder's Language Construction Kit. This second attempt was much more mature and thorough, and although Arêndron did not instantly develop into the complex language it is now, that was when it began.

In late 2005 I realised that there were many aspects of the language I was not happy with, and I decided to start again from the beginning, this time developing the proto-language simultaneously so that I could back up the features of the language with a history of where they came from. I am putting up the revised draft of the language piece by piece on my site as the details become finalised.

Characteristics

Arêndron is a highly inflecting language, with number and case inflections on nouns and pronouns, and person, tense, voice, aspect and mood inflections on verbs. The dominant word order is VSO and prepositional, with adjectives and relative clauses coming after nouns. Arêndron is also noteworthy for its trigesimal number system.

Arêndron has a moderately large phonology, with 30 consonant and 17 vowel and diphthong phonemes. The selection of phonemes was designed to be interesting and consistent, giving the language its own "feel", and at the same time to make Arêndron fairly easy to learn by English speakers.

To greet someone in Arêndron, say Rêŋ dêla! /ɾɛɪŋˈdɛɪɫa/, or, more casually, Reuŋa! /ˈɾəʊŋa/. Goodbye is Kœlarû! /ˈkɘːɫaɾʉː/, or, more causally, Drau! /dɾaʊ/.