The full Aramteskan grammar has been published on Fiat Lingua. This contains all the notes and details of the constructed language that I created for the Shadowscent fantasy world. Now that the series is completed, I decided to share the work that I had done on the language, in part to stop myself from continuing to tinker with it.
From the Fiat Lingua summary page:
This document provides an overview of the grammar of the Aramteskan language, created by Lauren Gawne for P. M. Freestone’s Shadowscent series (The Darkest Bloom and Crown of Smoke). This represents the state of completed work on the grammar at the conclusion of these two books. This is by no means a complete or detailed grammar, and some sections may contain more information than others.
The publication includes notes on a variety of linguistic features. It also includes a detailed translation of the quest text in book one, and a glossary of words in Aramteskan.
So much exciting news for PM Freestone’s Shadowscent duology! Here’s an update on what’s been happening.
The Darkest Bloom translated into four languages and counting
The Darkest Bloom, the first book in the series is now available in German (with a beautiful new cover), French, Spanish and Russian, with Hungarian, Czech and Polish to come. I am very excited to see how Aramteskan words have been given grammatical gender and case markers across the different translations! I’m possibly even more excited to see how things got transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian.
Crown of Smoke pre-orders for 2nd of April 2020
The Shadowscent story is wrapping up with book two Crown of Smoke out on the 2nd of April. US readers can order from the UK, as UK Scholastic will be handling all orders. It’s a fun and face-paced adventure with the future of the empire at stake and I’m looking forward to holding this beauty:
Map of Aramtesh from Virginia Allyn
Crown of Smoke readers will get to see Virginia Allyn‘s map of Aramtesh. This map featured in the US print of The Darkest Bloom (’Shadowscent’ in the US). It’s full of so much wonderful detail.
The Darkest Bloom… as a fragrance!
Finally, 4160 Tuesdays is a small perfume house in the UK and they have teamed up with P.M. Freestone to create The Darkest Bloom, a fragrance inspired by the world of Shadowscent. I’m beyond excited to smell this. This must be the first fantasy world with its own scent-based conlang, map and fragrance.
A constructed language can have as many words as you have the time to make, but it’s where you focus your energy that can help give the language its personality. While constructing Aramteskan for P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent I wanted to give the vocabulary of smelling its own detail, since scent is so important to this world.
I have had a lot of fun creating specific verbs for different ways of smelling things in Aramteskan. As the Jakobson quote goes “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey“ (1959). English speakers can convey these meanings (after all, there are translations!), but don’t have single specific words for these meanings like Aramteskan does.
Here are some of the smell verbs I’ve created so far:
gatmar (gat-mar) v.t. to smell something deeply without knowing what it will smell like; to inhale irresponsibly.
gukmar (guk-mar) v.t. to smell something bad, often unintentionally, and then feel disgust.
hukmar (huk-mar) v.t. to smell something non-volitional, has a similar sense to gakmar but doesn’t have to make you feel as ill.
nelmar (nel-mar) v.t. to smell something faintly, often on a breeze.
nosnar (nos-nar) v.t. to smell something slowly for a long time because it has a pleasant smell, such as burying one’s nose in a bouquet of flowers.
nulmar (nul-mar) v.t. to smell, the general verb for smelling.
rashmar (rash-mar) v.t. to smell something by wafting the scent to your nose with your hand.
sugmar (sugmar) v.t. to smell cautiously, as though unsure of what the scent will be, to sniff.
toshmar (tosh-mar) v.t. to smell something that you remember but can’t immediately place.
yidnar (yid-nar) v.t. to smell with great enthusiasm, to inhale a scent deeply.
Lingthusiasm listeners will notice that Gretchen’s suggestion “to smell something and you’re not sure if it’s disgusting or not” has been added as sugmar.
Linguistically minded people will notice these verbs have a similar ending, which we don’t see in other verbs like ‘walk’ tawrad, ‘eat’ garat and ‘make’ donshir, indicating that perhaps there is some common root word here.
When P.M. Freestone first told me about Shadowscent, her YA Fantasy duology set in a scent-filled world, I was immediately intrigued. After reading an early draft of the opening chapter I was hooked. I have greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to create the Aramteskan language for this series.
You get some glimpses of Aramteskan in book one The Darkest Bloom (or Shadowscent as it’s known in the USA), but there’s a lot more of the language that doesn’t make it onto the page. Over the next year or so between books one and two being published I’ll be writing occasional posts about how the language works.
I want to start by outlining the three main things that influenced my decision-making process; the world of Aramtesh, the medium of books and how language works.
Thinking about the world Freestone built
In Aramtesh scent is prized, commodified and used to create social meaning in a way that is more like visual status symbols in our culture. I therefore made it central to many choices I made about how the grammar of the language works. There are many more verbs for smelling than, say, movement. There are also subtle translation choices; people in Aramtesh don’t talk about ‘facing forward’, they talk about being ‘nose forward’. The language also has an evidential system that marks if you know about something because you smelled it.
Of course, there are non-scent features of the world that influence the language too. Aramtesh is an empire with diverse geography, and a range of cultures. Freestone and I spent a lot of time talking through these different regions and their history. Although there is one language spoken across the Empire, it has its own characteristics in each area; People from Hagmir pronounce vowels more like Old Aramteskan, you’ll only find names with ‘ph’ in Aphorai and names that begin with ‘I’ are distinctly from Trel (Hi there Iddo!).
There’s also at least half a millennium of time history between the earliest documents of the empire and when the story takes place. I built a few centuries of language change into Aramteskan to give that sense of history; think something between Chaucer’s Middle English and Shakespear’s early Modern English.
Thinking about books and reading
The language not only had to suit the world, but also work in YA fantasy with a cracking pace. All of the sounds of the language can be written using standard keyboard, and mostly have the pronunciation you would expect as an English speaker. We didn’t want the language to feel too jarring to readers.
Did I also take into account how the language would sound if someone turned Shadowscent into a film or TV show? Of course!
I’m very excited that translation rights have been sold for a number of language. I’m looking forward to seeing how the names and words we created are translated into French, Hungarian and Czech, and very excited to see how they’ll look transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian version.
Thinking about how human language works
Because constructed languages are made through a series of conscious choices, it provides an opportunity to make decisions to include features that don’t appear in ‘natural languages’ (the term conlangers use for language that emerge through use and transmission, like English, ASL, Hindi and the 7000 or so others). I wanted Aramteskan to be mostly naturalistic, doing things that we usually find in human languages, with a few twists.
This is where my knowledge of linguistics became very useful. I know that most of the structures I’ve created are not very unusual, but some of them are so unusual we don’t have any documented evidence of them in natural languages. Take the ‘smell evidential’ I mentioned above. We know that around a quarter of the world’s languages have evidentials, which let you mark the source of your evidence. Many languages have one that marks that you saw something, or sensed it, or that someone told you about it. No natural human language to date has one that means specifically you know something because you smelt it. Adding that was a fun way to break with naturalness, while also fitting in with the world of Aramtesh.
P. M. Freestone’s debut novel The Darkest Bloom (Book 1 in the Shadowscent duology) celebrated its book birthday on the 7th of February. You can get it at any good bookseller. the blurb:
In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.
When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart.
It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote.
To succeed, the unlikely pair must uncover secrets – cryptic,
ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an
adventure that will ignite your senses!
The book features the first few snippets of Aramteskan, a language I created to be unlike any existing human language, which places smell at the centre of people’s experience. All the names in the book are from the language, and you’ll even catch some lines of dialogue.
The book will also be published in these countries (with translation), I’ve added dates where known:
USA: Scholastic (Fall 2019)
Australia/NZ: Scholastic
France: Editions du Seuil
Spain: Roca Editorial
Russia: Eksmo
Hungary: Maxim
Czech Republic: MOBA
If you are in one of these places and have to wait, trust me it’s worth it! I’m already looking forward to seeing how Aramteskan is transliterated into Cyrilic for the Russian, and how it’s going to look with case marking in a bunch of languages! I’ll be posting more about the mechanics of Aramteskan when the book is out in more places!
I’m so excited to be able to share some news from the world of fiction. P.M. Freestone’s debut YA novel about a world of scent-based magic has been picked up by Scholastic in the UK and US as a duology deal.
I’m not only excited because it’s a fast-paced and beautifully-written adventure. I’m also thrilled to be able to share the news that the book will include some bits and pieces of a language I created. The language is based on the scent-focused world of the book - what happens in a language where smell is the most important sense? I got to create and explore a grammar that is unlike any existing language.
Working with P.M. Freestone is a delight, I’m looking forward to bringing you more about the world and words of Aramtesh in 2019.
The story, from the press release:
In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.
When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart. It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote. To succeed, the pair must uncover secrets – cryptic, ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an adventure that will ignite your senses.
I’ll be sharing more information about the language and how it came to be in 2019, here and hopefully in an episode of Lingthusiasm. You can also keep up with the news from P.M. Freestone by joining her mailing list!
The book is also available for pre-order from Amazon (UK) ahead of the Feb 7th release date - where you can also see the very pretty cover.
