Some Features of Hallanacht

Hallanacht, which means night and day (in Hallanacht) is intended to be a readily learnable language. It's purpose is to add depth to artificial universes.  It is intended to be relatively easy to learn and to speak and to write. It is not deliberately made to be or seem alien or to be difficult simply for the cool factor imparted by obscurity.

It's primary roots are drawn in roughly equal parts from from Greek, Latin, Sindarin and Quenya. It is also laced with numerous words from various other earth languages. There is a perfectly logical reason for this; though for now that reason will remain undisclosed. I will venture a hint though that will reveal it for some folks:

Here's the hint: Agenothree

So Hallanacht has these features:

• Word order is SVO (Subject, Verb Object) just like english
• Verbs are not conjugated for subject or number only for tense.
• No irregular verbs. (OK, almost none... there is only one so far.)
• No definite articles
• No indefinite articles
• There are no articles!
• Pronouns though profuse, are completely standard.
• No jaw breaking phonemes. the phonetic model is taken from unaccented (west coast) American English. The most complicated phoneme is the CH found in Hebrew words like Chanukah and chutzpah .
• Imperative, paternal imperative and divine imperative verb tenses.
• has an iterative verb root!
• Is pleasant to hear and speak. Smooth and fluid, it is almost susurrous. No gravel gargling requirements like German or Gaelic or Klingon.
• Comes with a beautiful alphabet called Halla - which for now remains unpublished. (creating brand new fonts - by the way - is freaking hard!)

Pronouns

Pronouns

Halanacht has rather a large number of possible pronouns. Fortunately they are all formed in a perfectly standard way and there are actually only five roots that need to be learned.

Roots
1st person: mem
2nd person: tem
3rd person masculine: hem
3rd person feminine: shem
3rd person neuter: illem

Suffixes
-a: objective case
-im: makes it plural
-z: makes it posessive
-azim: objective case, posessive and plural
-aim: objective case and plural
-zim: posessive and plural

Prefixes
aba- respectful, formal
kek- contemptuous
ishi- diminutive

Examples:
mem /mem/ :: I

mema /mem ah/ :: me  [(mem) root + (-a) which makes it objective case]

memz /memz/  :: my  [(mem) root + (-z) posessive suffix]

memaz /mem ahz/ :: mine  [(mem) root + (-a) objective suffix + (-z)
posessive suffix

memim /mem eem/ :: we  [(mem) root + (-im) plural suffix]

memaim /mem ah eem/ :: us  [(mem)root + (-a) objective suffix
+ (-im) plural suffix]

memzim /mem zeem/ :: our [(mem) root + (-z) posessive
+ (-im) plural]

memazim /mem ah zeem/ :: ours [(mem) root + (-a) objective
+ (-z) posessive + (-im) plural]

Excerpt: A Dictionary of the Hallanacht Language: (Foreword)

A Dictionary of the Hallanacht Language

Copyright © 2010 Eldon Alexander Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Foreword


Q: So, what's with writing a dictionary of a fictitious language anyway?
A: It is done for fun and passion. Enjoy it or don't, but get off my back about it.


Q: No, Really, writing a dictionary is hard! Why would you do it?
A: Well, I am really creating a fictional universe here. The dictionary is a supporting artifact that will help me add depth to that universe.


Q: Uhm.... what?
A: Universes today are like films were in the 1930s and 40s. They are an emerging form of immersive artistic entertainment. Think of me as a film producer if you need a familiar reference. In the 30's someone who said they wanted to be a film producer would have been looked at askance. Films were not really anything anyone knew much about. Fictional universes are rapidly becoming more popular entertainment destinations than film. In ten years everyone you know will be able to tell you three or four of them that they hang out in, will talk about their favorite ones around the water cooler and so forth. I aim to create a fictional universe that people will come to see as an interesting entertainment destination.


Q: OK. So... what does the dictionary have to do with the universe? Dictionaries are not particularly interesting you know, they had to force me to buy mine for college...
A: Most universes become known because people tell stories that take place within them. People like the stories which generates interest in the universe. At some point stories about and within these universes become desirable things to have. In some cases, people eventually hop in and begin to create content for the universe themselves. A hundred different authors have published Star Trek Novels for instance. In some cases if a virtual universe is created, people adopt avatars and they start hanging out in them. These things popularize the universe. And then of course there are films which are the most easily accessible form of storytelling so they are immensely useful for generating knowledge of and - hopefully - interest in a fictional place. The Star Trek universes, Stargate, Star Wars, the Marvel universe (where you might bump into Wolverine, for instance) and almost all of the other universes that are widely known came about this way. But tellling the stories is not the path I intend to take to popularizing this new universe.


Q: Don't keep us in suspense, what is your plan?
A: Well, instead of comic books or novels or films, I intend to create numerous 'found' cultural artifacts and publish them as works of art.


Q: Whaddaya mean, cultural artifacts?
A: So things like - for instance - a set of construction drawings for a hauntingly strange stone tower, supposedly found and then translated; generally in a full 4 phase translation from Hallanacht, written in the halla alphabet, could be published on 24" x 36" sheets as a set of frameable prints. As an interesting and or beautiful cultural artifact a thing can become collectible or desirable regardless of its technical purpose or function. Think of the odd sorts of things that people collect - shards of broken pottery for instance are valuable and interesting to a bunch of people, not as pottery, but as interesting cultural fragments. They are story seeds. Seeds that grow into insight and interest. A story is merely one sort of cultural fragment that can be interesting. Ask one of these shard worshippers about her favorite chunk of flaky dried clay and her eyes will light up and you will get information and a story and even genuine passion.


Q: So, a set of construction documents for a tower? You mean like blueprints for a house or something? How are the blueprints to a house art? I don't get it.
A: I think that anything astonishingly well executed becomes art - or becomes at least aesthetically interesting. As we talk, I am looking at a 5' high Chinese wall calendar which is gorgeous and it is just a calendar with a bunch of cool writing in a weird alphabet and one rather amateurish illustration of a tiger (2010 is the year of tiger. That's how the Chinese say it, 'Year of Tiger.' They do not muck about with articles - definite or indefinite - nor do they conjugate verbs for subject at all... two very sensible things that make a language eaiser to learn and use. I have stolen... uhm borrowed... both of them for use in Hallenacht). Anyway, this calendar is a piece of art, even though it has a narrow technical purpose, it achieves that purpose with profound aesthetic impact which elevates it from being mere information into being art. At some level the technical, well enough executed, becomes aesthetic.


Q: Still, Blueprints? Not Art.
A: Well, Some of them are, or at least I think so. I remember spending about 3 hours poring over the old blueprints in the library of a Scottish castle I once visited. I found the drawings interesting and beautiful. I would have killed to have them on my wall. And they were written in English (or what the Scots called English in 1620). The writing was clumsy and sloppy and the spelling was altogether wobbly. Didn't matter, I still found them to be deeply interesting. Reading them gave me insights into the history and culture and the technology that created them. It was much more interesting to me than any 20 stories you could have told me.


And imagine this: imagine that the drawings are from 5000 years ago and written in a beautiful alphabet. Imagine also that they are covered in places with a beautiful mathematics that is visually intriguing before you even have any idea what it might be about. Suppose there is a section with two different types of handwriting occurring alternatively and imagine that as it's translated it becomes apparent that it is a running argument between the architect and the engineer - and they are abrasive and colorful and both very very right. Add beautiful paper - water stained and aesthetically tattered of course - and subtle color; insightful annotations from the translator about a bunch of things and all of sudden it becomes interesting as well as beautiful. I will never build a tower from it but I might well put it up on my wall just because it is beautiful and has many layers of interestingness in it. Especially a 4 phase translation.


Q: What do you mean a 4 phase translation?
A: Well...

• Phase I is the piece as it is, in the original language and in the original alphabet.
• Phase II is a transliteration from the foreign alphabet into an alphabet the reader can read and pronounce. This allows the reader to say the words if he wants to.
• Phase III is a word-for-word, literal translation into a language that the reader knows. Word order and idiom are all preserved which gives an interesting set of insights. For instance in Hallanacht, the expression that means tasty or delicious is literally "giant mouth dancing." If Phase III is omitted you miss interesting things like these.
• Phase IV is the full translation into the native language of the reader. Most people haven't the patience for a 4 phase translation so they ask what does it mean and the translation jumps from Phase I to Phase IV; omitting two very rich layers of interestingness.

Q: You've used the word interestingness twice now. Do you just figure that it's OK for you to just make up words any time you want?
A: hmmmm?


Q: Is that a smirk.
A: Maybe.


Q: OK now, wait. That calendar there is art because it has a pretty tiger on it isn't it?
A: The tiger is sort of lame by itself. You could draw a better one yourself with the lights off. But combined with the beautiful calligraphy and the delicately textured vinyl it's printed on it. It changes it from something that lets you associate a day of the week with a calendar day to something that you want around because it elevates you somehow.
There are many more of these artifacts that I am creating but they all require a set of original languages that they were originally 'found' in. Hallanacht is the first such language I am developing.


Q: Like what other types of artifacts?
A: Well, I have in mind an anthropological treatise written by an Eternnii anthropologist all about the humans that live in the kingdoms south of him. It provides an interesting vantage point from which to make certain biting and incisive observations about human (our) society. It is of course social commentary on us, but it is posited as being by someone else from someone else's point of view. Potentially interesting, at least to geeky types like me. Another idea is a botanical document detailing the care and feeding of a plant called the thalal. Again, sounds geeky i know, but my angle is that I want to produce technical documents that can pass muster as fine art. probably impossible, but having another language and another alphabet to write it in gives me options for interest and intrigue that I wouldn't otherwise have.


Q: So the dictionary is just an enabler for the language which is an enabler for a pretty alphabet which will enable you to make handsome technical documents and faux cultural artifacts that will generate interest in this universe of yours the same way that stories and films have generated interest in other universes? Is that right?
A: I couldn't have summed it up better if I had written these questions myself.


Q: So you are really doing this because at some point you hope to make a bunch of money from it, right?
A: You are welcome to think that if it legitimizes the work for you. Funny how money at the end of anything redeems all manner of foolishness. And there may be some money in it. That would be terrific. But there is much art here. The more of this universe I create the more it inspires me to create. The canvas is painting back, so to speak.


Q: You sir, are a geek.
A: There is no question there.