Notes:Language/Cleyran
The Cleyran language is largely based on real life French. This should not be taken to mean that this is the language that the Cleyran language is translated into French as a convention representing cultural elements of the Cleyrans. Rather, the actual language by "coincidence" evolved to be very similar in grammar, pronunciation, and lexicon to French over the course of its history. The Cleyrans are literally speaking the "French" dialogue written. However their language is not a 1:1 representation of real life French as it has archaic words, alternate forms of words that developed in a divergent manner from the path taken by modern standard French, different grammatical conventions, and also a great deal of borrowed and invented words in place of the French or that have no equivalent in French. Also different Cleyrans may speak dialects with differing forms that are mutually intelligible to a greater or lesser degree with standard Cleyran and standard French.
This article largely addresses common points of divergence from French and various assorted thoughts I've had about the language in no particular order beyond a general category as a means to journal my thoughts to later be refined into a proper article.
Lexical Differences
Words that regularly differ in a significant way from standard French.
| Standard French | Standard Cleyran | Dialect Variants | Literal translation | Differences in figurative meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mie | miche, mie | miç | crumb | In Cleyran, miche as in "loaf" ( miche de pain ) is usually "grand miche", without qualifiers "miche" usually means "crumb". Other differences may exist in exactly how much bread is being referred to as in some contexts miche can refer to an entire handful of bread or a bread roll, but never more bread than can be held in one hand. Used in the dialectical idiom "vie une mie" or "vie mie": "life [is] a crumb", referring to the fleeting nature of life and the meager conditions under which Cleyrans have historically lived. The idiom is especially popular in regions where the "mie" form is used in all cases, due to the rhyme, but has been back translated into other dialects that don't have their own variant as the sentiment is extremely common among Cleyrans. |
| verrat | banf | banfeu, torqu | boar | None |
| pas | pas | passou | step | See #Grammatical Differences |
| elfe | alvu (pl. alves) | ( Depends on region and type of elf ) | elf ( specifically a Post-Tolkien fantasy elf ): Elf | Much, much more pejorative than the neutral to positive word in French |
| au-delà | ultreaux | au-delà | beyond or past something | See #Grammatical Differences |
| rat | frana | souris (mouse), francach | rat | None |
Grammatical Differences
- The "ne ... pas" form of negation is usually rendered as "ne ... mie", which is found in archaic French. It is only in this form that "crumb" is "mie" instead of "miche" in Standard Cleyran, but in time "mie" will probably supplant "miche" completely.
- The phrase "à pas" can be used to refer to something that is or was passing by the speaker, whereas this meaning would not be readily understood by any speaker of any French dialect and is also very different to the similar English word apace. "pas à pas" has its usual meaning as in standard French.
- "villa de" can be contracted to "vîde" or "vî" usually in contexts where it would not be misunderstood for "vide" ( empty ), leading to such placenames as Vîdeschamps and Vîdefleur. This is most common in Bernicia, but is considered valid and understood by all Cleyrans in Cleyr.
- "au-delà" is used by itself for "The Great Beyond" - i.e. a euphemism for the afterlife in French, no such usage exists in Cleyran. ( The most probable equivalent would be the more blunt "la pays du mord". ) Use of "au-delà" to mean "beyond" is rare in Cleyran generally, seen as something of a rustic or simplistic way to express the context of "ultreaux". "Ultreaux" does not exist as a word in French, but would hypothetically be derived from Latin "ultrorsum": the adverbal form of "ultra" meaning "further". These words are not used the same grammatically. To say "beyond this door" in French you would say "au-delà de cette porte" whereas in Cleyran it would be "cette porte ultreausse" as though "ultreaux" were an adjective of the noun "porte". The construction "Haut cette porte ultreausse" is sometimes seen and irregularly preferred depending on the noun and context, which would probably be highly confusing to a French speaker. There are some other words that would serve as prepositions in an English sentence that behave this way in Cleyran, but most prepositions behave similarly as in French.
- vrai, meaning "true", "truly", or "really", can also be used for emphatic purpose, similar to and in addition to très as an adverb or as as an adjective. For example to emphasize that someone is a good man, it could be expressed as "bon homme vrai", "très bon homme", or "très vrai bon homme". When vrai is used for this purpose, its position in the sentence doesn't matter unless it would cause ambiguity. Since this usage is a recent phenomenon mostly arisen in the Kingdom of Cleyr it has not been standardized or grammaticized, so the form of "vrai" as used this way does not change, but can be expected to be grammaticized in the future. The exact difference between the Cleyran use and the use of "vrai" in French ( which can also be used as an adverb ) is that it generally is more loosely connected to the concept of veracity and is much more grammatically flexible. For example it'd be valid Cleyran to say "vrai vrai vrai" to mean "I am being completely honest." ( Arguably this is valid French, but if more people stare at you in blank confusion than get it, is it really? Besides, I reckon most French speakers would want to phrase this using a different but related term for honesty. )