avatarconlangs

[avatarconlangs]

OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!

“THANK YOU FOR 1,000 FOLLOWERS!!!!” “Bongtaimaika laonuchong gee jei luilin suchong!!!!”

[1-7-5-0] [follower-plural] [causes] [me] [thank] [you-plural]

(1*512) + (7*64) + (5*8) + (0*1) = 1,000

[Bong-tai-mai-kaa] [FOLLOWER-chong] [CAUSE] [jei] [THANK] [su-chong]

Follower (Southern Earth-ese slang) ~> Laonu

Causes (Context Word) ~> Gee

Thank (Proto-Earth-ese) ~> Ly-win ~> Luilin

Earth-ese Dictionary: http://lexicon.ga/344

I haven’t had the chance to do these translations-and-thank-yous for a while because I was on hiatus with my exams but seriously, thank you guys so much! This blog got so much more popular than I thought it would and I’m really happy with the languages I’ve created. This has been a lot of fun :D

#avatar #conlang #lok #atla #the last airbender #legend of korra #constructed language #notice #earth conlang #southern earth conlang #translation

[avatarconlangs]

@beebfreeb  “any thoughts on possible writing systems or nah?”

Above everything, I usually try to stick to what we’ve seen in the show. I’ve answered two similar asks here and here but basically since every culture seems to use the same script (Chinese) in the show, I decided that the writing system is a universal logography from the Spirit World. It’s difficult to learn since it relies on conveying meaning with different structures than any of the four languages but it’s compatible with all of them.

This isn’t very naturalistic at all and would be a major pain to create but thankfully I don’t have to create it on this blog ;)

WHAT’S NEXT?

Since I gathered a lot of followers during my hiatus, I was wondering if there’s anything specific you would like to see more posts on? Translations, how the languages developed between regions or between ATLA and LOK, character speculations, the conlanging process etc. Feel free to suggest!

#answer

[avatarconlangs]

WHAT’S NEXT?

Since I gathered a lot of followers during my hiatus, I was wondering if there’s anything specific you would like to see more posts on? Translations, how the languages developed between regions or between ATLA and LOK, character speculations, the conlanging process etc. Feel free to suggest!

#notice

[avatarconlangs]

COMMUNITY VOCAB?

What if you let the community suggest vocabulary to you? Put down some rules on how to create new words, and then focus on the theoretical part while people interested in this project lends you a hand with the word creation - @milyard

This could be interesting. I’ve done a post somewhat talking about how I create words here but I could do a more extensive post and provide the resources I use too.

Although, does anyone have any suggestions for websites that people could submit the words too? I think they might confuse my ask box if you send them here or to a separate Tumblr account.

#notice #answer

[avatarconlangs]

EARTH-ESE GREETINGS

Most greetings in the Earth Kingdom are variations of the traditional phrases although they vary the most out of any of the other languages depending on class and region.

Common Greeting

Proto-Earth-ese = [1st/3rd.they] [greet] [2nd] (”I/One greets you”) (‘1st’ is used when it’s one person and ‘3rd.they’ is used when the speaker is one of a group)

The lower upper-classes/middle classes are the ones who are the most likely to use this phrase properly.

Northern Earth-ese keeps this phrasing for the most part but Southern Earth-ese includes plural suffixes instead of ‘3rd.they’. So [1st(-plural)] [greet] [2nd(-plural)] (”I/We greet you/y’all”). Northern Earth-ese has a plural adjective but it’s only used for emphasis.

While Earth-ese doesn’t like dropping pronouns, in more casual situations you can drop the ‘you’. In much more casual situations, especially amongst lower middle-class people, family, or younger people you can just say ‘greet’.

In more formal situations amongst the upper-class, you make it fancier: ([Declare]) [1st/3rd.they] ([great]) [greet] [2nd] ([great]) (”I declare the great I/One greets the great you.”), usually first addressing someone by their full title. Ba Sing Se is notoriously amongst the Earth Kingdom for preserving the whole thing and elaborating on it. In rougher areas, it’s often a game/joke to put on an Upper Ring accent and make it as long as you can.

Common Farewell

Proto-Earth-ese = [Command] [leave/stay] [good/happy] (”Leave/Stay well”) (The use of ‘leave’ or ‘stay’ depends on who in the conversation is leaving.)

Southern Earth-ese slang tends to replace the ‘command’ with their context word for ‘invitation’ or in some Northern Earth-ese middle-class communities you use ‘request’. In very Southern Earth-ese areas, it’s shortened to = [Leave/Stay-invite] (”Please leave/stay”) although it’s not interpreted as an actual command/invitation.

Other Phrases

While Kyoshi Island is in the South, its Earth-ese is closer of Ba Sing Se Earth-ese so its standard greeting is = [Declare] [greet] (”I declare this greeting”) while its farewell is = [Declare] [leave/stay] (”I declare this leaving/staying”).

Around Omashu, they’ve abandoned this format entirely, using the Proto-Earth-ese word [Love] instead. It’s related to the story of Oma and Shu and how the person they see would be (their) love. In the Southern Earth Kingdom, they replaced the verb with another word.

Lower Ring people use = [You] [resemble] [good/happy] (”You look well”) or = [Hope] [good/happy] [be] (”Hope you’re well”). Although, some people often replaced ‘good/happy’ with ‘bad’ or something insulting as a joke to the point it became a sincere greeting in many areas.

Variations of ‘Oi’ and ‘Ai’ (”Hey!”) are common across the Earth Kingdom to quickly get someone’s attention. They’re considered rude in polite company.

For ‘goodbye’, a common phrase is [True] [jewel] [inside] [a] [chest] = (”Jewels go in a chest”). This generally implies that while it’s a shame to leave, you had a nice time.

Sandbender/Si Wong Earth-ese

The usual greeting is “I see you”, which came about after communicating with each other within dust storms.

[Now-1st-2nd-drift] [see] ~> [Y(a)-(j)ei-su-(yum)en] [lowk(in)-(k)oo] ~> “Yungsen luku!”

Sandbender Earth-ese is almost completely unintelligible to most other forms of Earth-ese. I’ll probably do a more complicated post but it combined context words into an auxiliary verb at the beginning which shows the tense and pronouns of what follows.

‘Goodbye’ is the equivalent of “Cover your eyes”, telling someone to prepare for the dust storm = [See-plural] [cover-3rd.they]. (‘See’ with a plural suffix means ‘eyes’ and adding the ‘3rd.they’ pronoun to the end of a verb turns it into the passive adjective form e.g. ‘cover’ ~> ‘covered’)

Fire Nation Occupied Areas

The Earth-ese natives were forced to say “(Faiya Gazri) Ozai vo loki” (”Hail (Fire Lord) Ozai”) in greeting and farewell but in the pidgin they began to borrow, “Utan” (from ‘good morning/afternoon/night). It just means ‘good’ but it was what connected the various Fire-ese greetings. (If you want to actually describe something as ‘good’ in the pidgin you’d usually use ‘utu’, which is the un-conjugated version).

Korra Era Earth Kingdom

As ‘Helo’ and ‘Kahgu’ became more common throughout the Earth Kingdom, a blacklash occurred against ‘losing the Earth-ese identity’ and ‘homogenising with the rest of the world’, especially amongst those who disliked the United Republic. In the Upper and Middle Rings in Ba Sing Se, many people insisted on the old greetings. Then, once the Earth Empire rose up, they popularised new phrases along with other Zhaofu-based vocabulary to replace loanwords.

The new greeting/farewell they decided on was = [Move-in.front] (”Moving forwards”). It’s used as a call and response like, “Moving forwards?” “Moving forwards.”

While Wu’s supporters often brought back the traditional greetings, after the Earth Empire’s collapse most people either embraced the UR greetings or, usually if they were older, returned to what had been popular in their area beforehand.

#legend of korra #the last airbender #lok #atla #avatar #conlang #constructed language #earth conlang

[avatarconlangs]

have you looked at a program called vulgar? it's a language making program that, for $20, lets you put in a TON of rules and sounds and stuff then generates a lot of words and basic grammar for you. i think the wordlist could help you - @thunderin-brainstorm

I have heard of Vulgar - it’s awesome :D - but the problem with these conlangs is that to make them accurate to the show, I had to make them not very realistic, especially with sounds. For example, ‘ak’ and ‘ack’ in-universe are pronounced differently even if I pronounce them the same. This is because there were too many complications with the Americanised pronunciations and variations in spelling. I didn’t want an ‘Aang/Ong’, ‘Sokka/Soak-ka’ situation :P

BLOG UPDATE

Hm…I’ve come across a problem. I really like this blog, the languages I’ve created, and exploring the cultural and generational differences in them. However, the problem I’ve been having with my attempts to finish the Earth-ese posts for family names and greetings is Earth-ese has a lot of different accents and dialects, which means coming up with a lot of new words.

Sentence structure and stuff is fun and relatively easy to puzzle out but creating new words is monotonous and difficult because I have to account for sound changes and accents before cataloguing them all individually. Frankly, it’s pretty boring ^_^’

I want to keep running this blog and answering asks and stuff but what I’m saying is that I might have to go into the more theoretical side of it, at least for now.

#answer

[avatarconlangs]

“consider starting yourself/linking a ko-fi? It's a lot of work, and I think that people would be more than willing to donate to you to ease the more monotonous work that comes with some sections of making a conlang :)” @firelxrdsdaughter

Wow. That’s a kind suggestion but I don’t think I’d want to make money off this. Right now I’ve just decided to focus on the bits of this I find the most fun so even if it’s a lot of work I can enjoy it. It’s a hobby but I never imagined it going so far that I’d start a ko-fi. Honestly, I can hardly believe how big it’s got already.

(Thank you all so much for the 900+ followers btw! You’re amazing and I really hope you like this blog!)

BLOG UPDATE

Hm…I’ve come across a problem. I really like this blog, the languages I’ve created, and exploring the cultural and generational differences in them. However, the problem I’ve been having with my attempts to finish the Earth-ese posts for family names and greetings is Earth-ese has a lot of different accents and dialects, which means coming up with a lot of new words.

Sentence structure and stuff is fun and relatively easy to puzzle out but creating new words is monotonous and difficult because I have to account for sound changes and accents before cataloguing them all individually. Frankly, it’s pretty boring ^_^’

I want to keep running this blog and answering asks and stuff but what I’m saying is that I might have to go into the more theoretical side of it, at least for now.

#notice #answer

[avatarconlangs]

BLOG UPDATE

Hm…I’ve come across a problem. I really like this blog, the languages I’ve created, and exploring the cultural and generational differences in them. However, the problem I’ve been having with my attempts to finish the Earth-ese posts for family names and greetings is Earth-ese has a lot of different accents and dialects, which means coming up with a lot of new words.

Sentence structure and stuff is fun and relatively easy to puzzle out but creating new words is monotonous and difficult because I have to account for sound changes and accents before cataloguing them all individually. Frankly, it’s pretty boring ^_^’

I want to keep running this blog and answering asks and stuff but what I’m saying is that I might have to go into the more theoretical side of it, at least for now.

#notice

[avatarconlangs]

WATER-ESE GREETINGS

Water-ese doesn’t use ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good night’ like other languages would because, in the poles, day and night doesn’t tend to mean much for much for the year. ‘Mu’ is like ‘hey’ but they also use a general call and response:

[Immaterial-question] [feel-present-2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-present] [2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-subject] ~> [G(o)-(l)ahn] [nihik-m(in)/n(i)-(g)a] [m(in)/n(i)-(m)iq] ~> “Gahn nihik(ma/na) (miq/niq).”

Northern Water-ese = “Gahn nitiqma mah?” / “Gahn nitiqna nah?” Southern Water-ese = “Goon ninikma mik?” / “Goon ninikna nik?”

There is some variation depending on whether you know the person you’re talking to or not. This is allowed because over time this question lost all its meaning and you use it with nearly everyone. You have to answer “Naka” (Content/Happy) no matter how you actually feel. Otherwise, you look odd.

It eventually corrupted into just ‘Naya’ with the Swampbenders as a greeting, reply, and farewell.

If you actually want to know how someone is feeling you have to say “Can you please tell me if you are happy or not?” instead.

[2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-subject] [tell-1st-can-question-2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-present] [time-question-2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-present-happy-or-not]? ~> [M(in)/N(i)-(m)iq] [hookma-rra-ti-m(in)/n(i)-(g)a] [kan-lahn-m(in)/n(i)-(g)a-naka-rak-nik]

Northern Water-ese = “Miq tookmaratma kanlahnmanakaraniq?” / “Niq tookmaratna kanlahnnanakaraniq?” Southern Water-ese = “Mik nookmarratma kanloonmanakaranik?” / “Nik nookmarratna kanloonnanakaranik?”

Then you say “Hope to see you” for goodbye.

[2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-object] [see-hope-2nd.familiar/unfamiliar-present] [1st-subject] ~> [M(in)/N(i)-(y)ok] [du-gurahn-m(in)/n(i)-(g)a] [rr(a)-(y)ok]

Northern Water-ese = “(Sook) dawgawsahnma mah!” / “(Sook) dawgawsahnna nah!” Southern Water-ese = “Mik duguroonma (rok)!” / “Nik duguroonna (rok)!”

For much more formal scenarios you can, however, replace the first question with, “It’s good to see you.”

[See-1st-present-2nd.familiar/unfamiliar] [be-3rd.immaterial-present] [good] ~> [Du-rr(a)-(g)a-min/ni] [moa-g(o)-(g)a] [naka]

Northern Water-ese = “Dawramin moaga naka.” / “Dawrani moaga naka.” Northern Water-ese also uses the respectful 2nd-person pronoun ‘faw’ = “Dawrafaw moaga naka.” Southern Water-ese = “Durramoon muaga naka.” / “Durrani muaga naka.”

#water conlang #conlang #constructed language #avatar #atla #lok #the last airbender #legend of korra

[avatarconlangs]

AIR-ESE GREETINGS

Amongst the Air Temples the general way of greeting/farewell(ing?) someone is to wish them peace.

[Peace-noun] [you-mod] [clause>-object] [wish-verb] [me-subject]

Peace (Proto-Air-ese): Mashung Northern Temple = Magsha Southern Temple = Futung (Modern Standard = Fantang) Western Temple = Mikshung

Wish (Proto-Air-ese): Pangsa Northern Temple = Mimag Eastern Temple = (P)piiosa Southern Temple = Fangsu (but replaced with the Southern Water Tribe word ‘Koneguroonsu’ to make ‘Kanguransu’ or ‘Kanjanransan’ in the Modern Standard) Western Temple = Chaksik

[Mash(ung)-(l)ang] [k(a)-(m)at] [p(ag)-(t)ag] [pangs(a)-(p)i] [f(a)-(h)ik]

“Mashang kat pag pangsi fik” is the full “I wish you have peace” but this is often cropped (and mixed around):

Northern Temple = “(I) wish that (your) peace” ~> “Fik pangsi sag [clause<-object] kat mashang” ~> “(Pa) mimi mag (ka) magsi!”

Eastern Temple = “(I wish) that peace your” ~> “Fik pangsi sag mashang kat” ~> “(Fik piiosi) sa pashang kat!”

Southern Temple = “Peace (your) that wish (I)” ~> “Mashang kat pag kanguransi fik” ~> “Futang kat fag kanguransi fik” “Futang (kyat) fa kanguransi (fik)” MODERN STANDARD = “Pating ky fee kanjanransi pik”

Western Temple = “Your peace (that I wish)” ~> “Kat mashang pag fik pangsi” ~> “Kat pikshak chag fik paksik” “Kat pikshak (cha pik pakisk)”

The above are general variations but these are still mixed around and especially amongst children these are sometimes shortened to just ‘peace!’

Tenzin especially insists on these old greetings/farewells. However, with the influence from Republic City, ‘Helo’ is much more common greeting with the new Airbenders along with a variation of ‘Kagu’ (‘Kahgu’ or ‘over’ in UR Fire-ese) as a farewell.

#air conlang #conlang #constructed language #lok #legend of korra #avatar #atla #the last airbender

[avatarconlangs]

Does the avatar start out knowing all speak or does it unlock when they learn theyre the avatar

The Avatar all-speak is a natural part of them from birth. It develops and overlays with their personal understanding of language though so a two-year-old Avatar will understand and be understood by everyone on the level of a two-year-old. It’s like a magical quality to their speech/hearing that allows people to know what they’re saying regardless of language.

In theory it’s a good way of telling who the Avatar is and Korra got to abuse it from a very young age but due to the separated nature of the nations in the past it was hard to tell. If you’re surrounded by people who all have the same native language then no-one really notices.

Avatars can also learn other languages in a way normal people can learn to do accents. Aang was taught at the Air Temples and because he was already pretty adept at learning languages he didn’t think he was anything unusual.

#answer #worldbuilding

[avatarconlangs]

What are common greetings and farewells from each nation? Do they vary depending on the region? Are there any that are more appropriate for formal or informal situations?

Originally this was going to be one post but just like the family names it got too long so here’s Fire-ese to start https://avatarconlangs.tumblr.com/post/175248902401/fire-ese-greetings and the rest should come soon :)

#answer

[avatarconlangs]

FIRE-ESE GREETINGS

Mainland Fire-ese

Traditionally, the main type of greeting in the Fire Nation was based off the sun, whether it had risen (‘Utan Yishu’ | [Ut(u)-(j)an] [Yishu] | [Good-adjective] [morning]), it had past noon (‘Utan Susin’ | Good Afternoon), or whether the sun had set (‘Utan Joonshi’ | Good Night).

Then, for goodbyes, you would either say ‘leave well’ or ‘stay well’ depending on who’s leaving.

[Good-adverb] [leave-present.informal/formal] ~> [Ut(u)-(m)eh] [yomir-bi/ki] ~> “Uteh yomirbi/ki!” [Good-adverb] [stay-present.informal/formal] ~> [Ut(u)-(m)eh] [linshu-bi/ki] ~> “Uteh linshubi/ki!”

If you’re informal with the person you’re talking to then you use ‘yomirbi’ and ‘linshubi’ but if you’re formal then you use ‘yomirki’ and ‘linshuki’ instead.

An even more formal greeting would use the titles of the people talking like “Wife Ursa presents herself to Fire Lord Ozai of the Fire Nation.”. The ‘better’ person’s title is placed first.

[Fire.Nation] [Fire.lord] Ozai, [spouse] Ursa [focus.particle] [present-present.formal] ~> [Faiya] [Gazri] Ozai, [gusung] Ursa [mao] [faojit-ki] ~> “Faiya Gazri Ozai, Gusung Ursa mao faojitki.”

If the people are of equal status then the other person would repeat this. However, if the person is of much higher status they may either not reply or just say “(I) see”

[At] [look-present.formal] ~> [Ching] [zaka-ki] ~> “Ching zakaki.”

Then, for farewells, you would say “Your presence was an honour.”, once again using titles.

[Fire.Nation] [Fire.lord] Ozai[-genitive] [presence] [honour] [be-past.formal] ~> [Faiya] [Gazri] Ozai[-ku] [lighu] [shoko] [mu-kur] ~> “Faiya Gazri Ozai’ku lighu shoko mukur.”

Then, once again the ‘better’ wouldn’t be expected to reply with the same reverence. Of course, one way they would say ‘goodbye’ would be “Mon yomirki” which means “Leave!”

However, with the growth of imperialism, while these greetings/farewells still remained, a new set were enforced to be used when you needed to show you were a loyal Fire Nation citizen: “This Fire Nation citizen hails the Fire Lord.”

[Fire.Nation] [Fire.lord] Sozin/Ozai/Azula [this] [fire.nation-person] [focus.particle] [hail-present.formal] ~> [Faiya] [Gazri] Sozin/Ozai/Azula [uza] [Faiya-yu] [mao] [lo-ki] ~> “Faiya Gazri Sozin/Ozai/Azula (uza) Faiyayu mao loki.”

Or “The Fire Lord is hailed.”

[Fire.Nation] [Fire.lord] Sozin/Ozai/Azula [passive] [hail-present.formal] ~> [Faiya] [Gazri] Sozin/Ozai/Azula [vo] [lo-ki] ~> “Faiya Gazri Sozin/Ozai/Azula vo loki.”

Then, to say goodbye you may say “For the honour of the Fire Lord”

[For] [Fire.Nation] [Fire.lord] Sozin/Ozai/Azula[-genitive] [honour] ~> [Ching] [Faiya] [Gazri] Sozin/Ozai/Azula[-ku] [shoko] ~> “Ching (Faiya Gazri Sozin/Ozai/Azula’ku) shoko!”

People also used this for the ‘Phoenix King’ too, even if that was short lived. [Phoenix] [Person-rule] ~> ‘Finak Yudai Ozai’

After the fall of Ozai’s empire, Zuko tried to reel back the cult of personality around the Fire Lord, returning to the old system. While the old ‘Good morning’s were still used informally, especially in rural areas, as time went on they began to borrow from the increasingly-global UR Fire-ese greetings.

UR Fire-ese

In the UR it was common to find a plethora of different expression of ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ depending on what the different people inherited. While it’s still common, a more universal set of phrases came with the introduction of the telephone. ‘Helo’ (hello) was invented to confirm you could hear each other while ‘kahgu’ (over) was the set way of confirming you were done speaking. So, these got adopted into general speech, often across the world, although there has been a backlash from this from the more traditional people within the countries.

#fire conlang #worldbuilding #ur fire conlang #conlang #constructed language #atla #lok #avatar #the last airbender #legend of korra

[avatarconlangs]

To everyone who followed during my hiatus: Welcome :D

My exams and my hiatus ends this Wednesday and then I’ll have the whole summer to start working on this blog again. (I’m also thinking of starting a Galra language blog from the series Voltron if you’re interested in that)

How do you make the conlangs for the Avatar universe? 😍😍 Are they based on the cultures each nation was originally based on or do you do something else? I'm so curious! Being a huge linguistics AND Avatar: The Last Airbender fan myself :)

I was inspired with real languages with some of thelanguages so Fire-ese has a word-order and a grammatical formal/informaldistinction like Japanese and I also liked the idea of more complicatedpronouns; Earth-ese doesn’t have grammatical tense or much conjugation likeStandard Chinese; and I made Water-ese have a lot of long compounded words likeInuktitut and a lot of other Native Canadian languages.

Then, I tried to addthings I thought would reflect the ideologies of the elements and the nations. Forexample, Earth-ese has very rigid word-order because earthbending and stone isn’tvery changeable while it’s more flexible in Water-ese (the element of change)and utterly free in Air-ese (the element of freedom). Then, Fire-ese reflects alot of the strict hierarchy we seem to see from the Fire Nation.

These aren’t meant to be entirely naturalistic so I really just had fun and experimented with whatever I thought would be interesting and made the languages different from each other. Meanwhile I mainly relied on the names inthe show to come up with the words so every character can pronounce the names of the other people in their country.

#notice

[avatarconlangs]

How do you make the conlangs for the Avatar universe? 😍😍 Are they based on the cultures each nation was originally based on or do you do something else? I'm so curious! Being a huge linguistics AND Avatar: The Last Airbender fan myself :)

I was inspired with real languages with some of thelanguages so Fire-ese has a word-order and a grammatical formal/informaldistinction like Japanese and I also liked the idea of more complicatedpronouns; Earth-ese doesn’t have grammatical tense or much conjugation likeStandard Chinese; and I made Water-ese have a lot of long compounded words likeInuktitut and a lot of other Native Canadian languages.

Then, I tried to addthings I thought would reflect the ideologies of the elements and the nations. Forexample, Earth-ese has very rigid word-order because earthbending and stone isn’tvery changeable while it’s more flexible in Water-ese (the element of change)and utterly free in Air-ese (the element of freedom). Then, Fire-ese reflects alot of the strict hierarchy we seem to see from the Fire Nation.

These aren’t meant to be entirely naturalistic so I really just had fun and experimented with whatever I thought would be interesting and made the languages different from each other. Meanwhile I mainly relied on the names inthe show to come up with the words so every character can pronounce the names of the other people in their country.

#answer

[avatarconlangs]

This is to do with my fanfiction. My depiction of Sokka is post everything except Korra, and I was wondering what sort of accent/dialect he might have speaking English according to your linguistic basis. - dicebox mun/mod

My answer here would be that he speaks with the accent his voice actor has.

In my world he has a Southern Water Tribe accent but that has no equivalent in the real world. Because everyone in the show already had a voice actor and an established accent I never created a basis for the way in which anything on my blog is pronounced. The literal only rule I created was ‘th’ always makes a ‘t’ sound.

#answer

[avatarconlangs]

Hey, it's me again, the anon who is weirdly interested in alcohol names! (Thank you for rikankao, by the way) If you would be so kind to do it again... what would whisky be called? The name comes from an anglicization of the Gaelic word for water, since it used to be called "water of life". So, I guess, broken down... what's the Avatar 'verse equivalent of a language as old as gaelic, and then, how would that language's word for water have been adapted to a more modern language by Korra's time?

My first thought when translatingthis was to translate this into Water-ese, obviously. This would have been Yahmukraga from ‘Yahmuk (Still Water)’and ‘Ragar (Life/Living)’.

NOTE: ‘Kahmack’ is flowing water and ‘Gahmo’ issteam. This is where they get the 3rd-person pronouns ‘Yuk’, ‘Kack’,and ‘Go’ respectively.2nd NOTE: In Modern Northern Water-ese it would be pronounced ‘Yahminsaga’.

However, then I thought about the‘old language’ thing and I got an idea: a whisky (or something) company in theAvatar Universe going up to Avatar Aang and asking for an old Air-ese word touse for their drink. So, I’ll give the Southern Temple Air-ese word as well 😊

[Water-noun] [life-modifer] -Proto.Air>[Stangk(o)-(l)ang] [Pish(ak)-(m)at] -Southern.Temple> [Langk(in)-(l)ang][Fit(ak)-(f)at]

So ‘Water of Life’ in SouthernTemple Air-ese would be Langkang Fityat.This is the traditional Southern Temple phrasing. However, you can swap thesetwo around or use Fyatfita Langlangkinwhich has the affixes in the front instead. Feel free to combine and mess around with these words as you please.

WATER-ESE DICTIONARY: http://lexicon.ga/341AIR-ESE DICTIONARY: http://lexicon.ga/343

#answer #water conlang #conlang #constructed language #avatar #aang #legend of korra #lok #air conlang #southern air conlang