The Bloodlet Sun supplement - Thorian Noun Classes

Hello and welcome to the first installment of the “Supplementary Material” for my sci-fi web serial, The Bloodlet Sun. This is where I can drop additional lore that is not integral to the storyline, but can be used to enrich the world without bogging down the main story. It’s not necessary to read these occasional diversions to follow the main story, but I think it helps the experiences and it fleshes-out the world. A full list of this supplemental material can be found in the Table of Contents, which also cross-references the chapter segments that it is most relevant to.

The first installment relates to Book I, Chapter 1, Part 2/3. Here one of more main characters, Mikarik, is speaking to a fellow passenger on his flight to Earth, an unnamed Mraboran female. They get to talking about the Thorian language and Mikarik mentions a “two-bit traveller’s guide” that he feels does not paint an accurate picture of the capabilities of his native tongue. Below is a reproduction of the relevant section of Standard Earth Commercial version, which is a new and revised addition that actual comes to address the very issue that Mikarik took umbrage at.

 

An excerpt from the “Thorian Noun Classes” chapter of The Traveller’s Guide to the Thorian Language for Speakers of Standard Earth Commercial (Stec):

“As it slowly became the lingua franca of the Known Reaches over the last few millennia, Thorian (or Native Thorian, when contrasted with Trade Thorian or Common Pidgin, as it is sometimes called) adopted many of the simplifications inherent in Trade Thorian. One of the complexities of their language that the Thorians cling on to with great zeal is the five classes into which all Thorian nouns are classified. Noun classes in Thorian serve a number of purposes including affecting the conjugation of adjectives, verbs, and objects attaching to the noun, as well as which verbs may be used in conjunction with the noun.
Anyone who has ever bothered to get off the rock they were born on are aware of the Thorians’ great appetite for territorial and population expansion at the expense of less developed and less organized species. Particularly those living in the Thorian Homesteads are familiar with the unique flavour of Thorian confidence, pride and patriotism. It is therefore no great coincidence that the five classes of the Thorian language are organized by the noun’s relationship to the Thorians themselves.

First Class (Kinship Class)
Examples: mother, he/she, doctor, liar

Nouns that refer to an entity that is a Thorian fall into the first class. The difficulty arises for a non-native speaker when they encounter a noun that, in their first language, may refer both to a person and to a non-person. For instance, in most languages, the word for ‘mother’ is the same when referring to the mother of a child and the mother of an animal offspring. In Thorian, however, the mother of a child is a first class noun and the mother of an animal is a second class noun and is therefore a completely different word. Interestingly enough, some cultural insights may be gleaned from observing which class nouns the Thorians use in a particular context. The name of the Thorian homeworld, for example, is Kai Thori, which is loosely translated as “Mother of the Peoples”. The word ‘Kai’ is a first class noun, even though the Thorian word for ‘planet’ is a third class noun, leading to the conclusion that the Thorians see their homeworld as an inexorable part of themselves.

Second Class (Living Class)
Examples: animal, bird, flower, tree

The test for whether a noun falls into the second class is deceptively straightforward: if the noun refers to a living thing that is not a Thorian, it falls into the second class. From that basic premise, we can delve into several further nuances. Large flora generally falls into the second class, but smaller flora like ‘grass’ is usually relegated to the third class. Living things that have ceased being alive (whether recently or in the distant past) do not cease being classified into the second class. Derivative products from living things which are no longer independently alive may be classified as either the second class or the third class. ‘Meat’ (when referring to meat for consumption), is still classified under the second class, but ‘leather’ (when referring to the material) is a third class noun. Although Thorian grammarians have tried to forcibly clean up Thorian classes, some cultural and spiritual artifacts remain. For example, the words for ‘water’ and ‘lightning’ are second class nouns instead of third.

Third Class (Natural Class)
Examples: wind, canyon, eye, metal

Constituent parts of living things (like organs, limbs, hair and leaves), and objects and phenomena that occur naturally, are grouped into the third class. Natural phenomena form the largest proportion of the third class and include weather events (‘rain’ and ‘the cold’), natural formations (‘sea’ and ‘forest’) and anything derived from the environment (‘wood’ and ‘rock’). Eager to lord anything over the Thorians, literary theorists from species with more ‘flexible’ languages have commented at length on the limits that classes place on Thorian prose. In Thorian, the phrase “an angry wind” is both absurdist and grammatically incorrect. ‘Angry’ is a first class adjective and cannot describe a third class noun. This inability to ascribe sentient-like qualities to non-sentient entities has been postulated as the great weakness of Thorian literary tradition. In response to this criticism, Thorian scholars point to their rich collection of adjectives that aren’t specific to the first class. These adjectives derive not from a quality the noun possesses, such as ‘anger’, but from the effect that the noun causes. For instance, a Thorian may describe the wind as being ‘netkarthai’ approximately meaning “invoking a fear that one will never see their loved ones again”.

Fourth Class (Object Class)
Examples: table, city, vehicle, explosion

The fourth class encompasses any entity that is likely to be described as a “thing” and that does not fall into the third class. One temptation for a non-native speaker is to try to convey meaning by changing the class of a noun. One has to remember that a noun’s class is an intrinsic property and does not change depending on context. Therefore, treating the word for ‘tree’ like a third class noun does not make the word suddenly mean ‘log’ or ‘wood’. Instead, many Thorian nouns trace a mad descent from second to fourth class. A tree (second class) may fall and become a log (third class) and then someone may come along and carve it into a bench (fourth class). However, just because a deliberate transformation has been applied to an object, it doesn’t necessarily mean it completed its journey to the fourth class. ‘Garden’ is a third class noun while ‘canal’ (as in, a waterway) is a fourth class noun.

Fifth Class (Idea Class)
Examples: death, order, silence, regret

Any intangible concept falls into the final fifth class of nouns. Second maybe only to the first class, this is one of the most intuitive of the Thorian classes. The fifth class is the most restricted of the Thorian classes. A few exceptions aside, the only verb that can be used when a fifth class noun is the subject of a sentence is the verb “to be”. Literary critics cite this as another disadvantage of the Thorian language. “His fear consumed him” is a phrase that does not work in Thorian because “fear”, being a fifth class noun, cannot ‘eat’ which is a first and second class verb. A Thorian writer may instead opt for “His fear became his world”.
 
One peculiar side-effect of the continued use of Thorian classes in an age of interplanetary contact, is that a Thorian speaker’s class choice when referring to a member of another sentient species is revealing of the speaker’s political stance on issues of inter-species relations:

                     Class Used                          Speaker
                     First                                      Ultra-liberal hippie crackpot
                     Second                                 Moderate to Liberal
                     Third                                    Conservative
                     Fourth                                  Nationalist
                     Fifth                                      Illiterate"