SEN Language

IMPORTANT: At the moment, SEN language is still purely a concept language. Any and all information on this page are subjected to change.

Introduction

In the world of Ar ciel, there exists a Reyvateil named SEN. Her life since birth was chained to the fate of singing destruction songs in Hymmnos. As such, she hates Hymmnos, hates how the language can possess so much power, and how it directly reveals every single layer of her emotions. Hence, she created a language by herself, a language which unveils emotions only when she desires, and she is the only person in the world who understands this language. It has no official name, but can be called "SEN language" for simplicity's sake.

There is no alphabet for the language, since it has no written form. However, here's an unofficial 16-letter alphabet used to write down this language. It's extremely simple, as the language itself has very poor sound inventory.

ø o i ı ĸ h x ŋ r l n ß ſ þ ð v

The 4 letters ø, o, i and ı are vowels. The rest are consonants. The 5 letters ß, ſ, þ, ð and v never appear word-initial, and don't have uppercase forms.

• Ø, ø: /a/. Like in father.
• O, o: /ə/. Somewhat like in bird.
• İ, i: /i/. Like in eat.
• I, ı: /ɯ/. Unrounded u. Somewhat like in open.
• K, ĸ: /k/. Like in key.
• H, h: /h/ Like in he. Never silent.
• X, x: /çj/. Somewhat like Japanese hi plus first half of ya. For example, xø is pronounced exactly the same as Japanese hya. xi is pronounced exactly the same as Japanese hi.
• Ŋ, ŋ: /n/. Like in need.
• R, r: /ɾ/. Somewhat like in better.
• L, l: /l/. Like in love.
• N, n: /m/. Like in man.
• ß: /s/. Like in sea.
• ſ: /ʃ/. Like in sheep.
• þ: /θ/. Like in thing.
• ð: /ð/. Like in the.
• v: /v/. Like in vain.

As for grammars, SEN language is an extreme agglutinative language. A sentence might contain a single word that covers all subject, verb and object in one. It seems to follow SOV structure, with I being the default subject in all sentences (similar to Hymmnos).

Example 1: Xøßŋiſ.

• xø = you (object).
• ßŋiſ = to praise.

=> "I praise you" = "Thank you"

Example 2: Hoøðıß xıßriŋøŋınıß.

• ho = subject definer (similar to Hymmnos rre).
• øð = melody.
• ıß = to be.
• xı = your.
• ßriŋ = funeral.
• øŋ = song.
• ınıß = will be.

=> "This melody will be your funeral song"

Relative color harmony

As you might know, the majority of the world's languages have genders. However, the word "gender(s)" is not exactly proper, and the correct word to call the classification system used in languages would be "noun class(es)." Now, SEN language also has noun classes, but unlike most languages that classify nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter (or common and neuter in some Scandinavian languages), SEN languages classifies nouns by color.

So, instead of a table being female, a book being male and milk being neuter, in SEN language, a table belongs to Yellow class, a book is of Green class and milk is of White class. Adjective and verb will be inflected/conjugated (taking different endings) depending on the color class of the noun.

Things that have constant color are obviously sorted into their respective color classes (ex. Sun into Red class, Moon into Blue class), but things with varied colors (books, for example) are sorted through a different method: Each color represents a different state of emotion and feeling. Remember, SEN is a native speaker of Hymmnos, and this new language she creates is still heavily influenced by Hymmnos - most noticeably the consistent I pronoun, and the fact that the language can express emotions.

In particular, there are 8 color classes: Red, Yellow, Green, White, Pink, Blue, Gray and Black. They're grouped into 4 opposing pairs: Red >< Pink, Yellow >< Blue, Green >< Gray and White >< Black.

• Red: Represents anger, hot and destructive things.
• Pink: Represents love, affection, caring emotions.
• Yellow: Represents power, capability, effort and eagerness.
• Blue: Represents sadness and despair, as well as cold, calm things and silence.
• Green: Represents happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction.
• Gray: Represents pain and diseases.
• White: Represents purity, hope and justice.
• Black: Represents darkness, evil, hatred.

Color classes affect verbs. In SEN language, the sentences "The Sun shines" and "The Moon shines" will have different conjugations for the verb "shine" because Sun and Moon belong to two different color classes (Red and Blue respectively).

Things are a bit more complex with adjectives: Adjectives also belong to color classes. An adjective that describes a noun that's the same with its color class will not be inflected, but an adjective that describes a noun of a different color class will be inflected by taking the noun's color class' ending. For example, in the phrase "calm Moon," "calm" is a Blue adjective and won't be inflected and will be in its dictionary form, but in "bright Moon," "bright" will be inflected and take the Blue class' ending, because "bright" is a Red adjective.

Similar to the situation of noun and adjective, in a noun phrase with more than one noun that belong to different color classes, the "main" noun will retain its dictionary form while the other noun(s) must be inflected (taking word endings) in accordance to the main noun. For example, the phrase "Reyvateil's melody." "Reyvateil" belongs to Yellow class and "melody" belongs to Pink class. But when put together, the word "melody" must take "Reyvateil"'s Yellow class' ending.

Pronouns are even more interesting: They don't belong to a preset color class. Rather, from a base dictionary form, colors are added to them to express emotions. This is a much more convenient way than Standard Hymmnos, and is fairly similar to Pastalia Hymmnos.

For example, when you say "I sing a song" (which is literally "Song sing" in SEN language due to SOV syntax and the "I" being default in all contexts), if "song" and "sing" are conjugated with Green endings, that means "I happily sing a happy song." On the other hand, if "song" and "sing" are conjugated with Blue endings, that means "I sadly sing a sad song."

There's no way to say "I happily sing a sad song" or so in SEN language, because that's illogical. However, to say "I happily sing a pure song," a dummy "it" must be inserted into the sentence, so it becomes something like "I happily sing its pure song," with "it" here considered a White noun (and thus "song" will be inflected accordingly, becoming a White "pure song").