Lesson 2 - Discover a Noun

[Prof. Will Lestrange]

This is your first chance to add to the Parseltongue lexicon! As per Assignment Two, your prompt here is:

Now that you have chosen a class snake, it is time to see if the snake can teach you a noun! In this thread, you should make a post containing:
-An undiscovered noun in Parseltongue (i.e. it does not appear elsewhere in the first two lessons or assignments, the Vocabulary section of this class, or in an earlier post in the thread)
-Its translation into English
-The way you discovered the noun (e.g. if you showed 'your' snake an image, post a link to the image and tell me the snake's response)

[February Fortescue]

hapaun

“Rabbit” - the closest translation would be “ hop-pound” without the final “d”
I showed this photo to my Ribbon Snake friend, Desa, who immediately coiled and explained she really does not like “hapaun.” She says their hopping around makes her jittery, and she doesn't why they use those long feet to pound things, instead of using them to glide along like she uses her long body.

[Prof. Tarma Amelia Black]

Sunny called this bov (food). More precisely this is bov mauna (or bov mauna asuna) {from asuna (wet) and mauna (sticky)}.



I thought the word bov at first meant slug but then realized that Sunny also called some small lizards, earthworms and small rodents bov. So it's 'food' and apparently then it's fast, skinny and furry to further delineate what kind of food it is.

How I found out -- sitting out in the sunshine with Sunny, she evidently was feeling a bit peckish and went after a slug. She was like ... talking to herself? NOM NOM stuff and I heard that sound. More time with Sunny, though, allowed me to realize that she said that when she'd go after worms and lizards (and I sort of extrapolated mice because I never saw her go after a mouse, just the worms and lizards).

[Emily Spencer]

The word I've discovered is vaslkeno, which is Parsletongue for 'volcano'. As I've mentioned, Bslas (Blaze) was highly curious as to why I chose to name him as I did. (I should add that 'naming' him was a mutual consent thing, not me imposing my will on him. He would not have allowed that at all!). At any rate, my Parsletongue was obviously inadequate (his words) to convey the idea correctly, so I showed him this picture. After much snicker-hissing on his part at my ignorance, he helped me to parse what I was trying to say. Personally, he had never seen a volcano, but he had ancestors from the Old World that had, so he found it of some interest. For a snake, he's really into stuff like that-go figure!

[Amy Darvill]

Sitadesl....It's the name of where he was found (Citadel campus in South Carolina), and apparently any building bigger then a two room cottage. Okay, I'm exaggerating here, but it's basically his word for large house/castle/building/fort...you name it, it's a Sitadesl. To be fair, he was practically raised on the grounds, so he doesn't understand the need for the fifty different words. Is it big and sturdy looking? Sitadesl. Is it smaller and not as sturdy looking? Then it's a nest. Or if he wants to speak human, ha'us. Which gets confusing when he's talking about dorm rooms because those are also nests. Then again, snakes are not known for architectural wonders.

[Mia Granger]

Discover a noun-

The word is buc (bush.) When Fire first said this to me, I was very confused until I tried to translate it and the closest answer I got was bush! I presume she said this to me because she slithered out of a bush when I met her. Fire would describe the bush as bana (cold), and asuna, (wet.)

[Lucia Dinapoli]

The noun I recently discovered was 'sosli' which in english translates as soil. I discovered this noun from Loki, my current and very helpful snake, whilst in the Greenhouses as I was practising some repotting. All of my equiptment was collected and I was ready to start - or so I thought. I'd forgotten the most important part of repotting - the soil! If it hadn't have been for Loki blurting out this knew word and nodding his head over to the soil storage compartment I'd have started without it. I believe the translation is taken from numerous latin transltions for soil, 'soli'.

[Brianna Caedmon]

Since the forest that Maya comes from is famous for its wild ponies I decided to try to learn the words for horse/pony from her. The wild ponies honestly look more like how I generally envision horses to look so I first shower Maya this picture:





When I asked what it was she said “ʃevau” which sounds a little like the French word ‘cheval’ with the ‘l’ dropped. This would actually make a lot of sense as the forest she is from has a lot of French place names and has historically had a lot of French speaking population due to various invasions and also the fact that historically a lot of England’s ruling class (there are a lot of manor houses there) spoke French. I asked if she was aware of any other words for it in other dialects and she said she had also heard "poni" which seems like it would correspond closely to the English word ‘pony’. She said she had heard "poni" from some nomadic snakes but had no idea if it was more common than "ʃevau" outside her forest, or if "ʃevau" was actually the more standard form. Since she said that I wondered if they had a different word for pony or called them the same thing so I showed her the following image:



She called this simply "ʃevau tina" so I can only assume they have no separate word for horse/pony and call them the same thing.

[Carrie Warts]

I went outside with Fisli and we sat on the grass and we both looked up and she whispered: 'slan' and I could swear I saw a little tear coming out. I figured it has been so long since she was last out in the open air that she was happy to see the sky again. And I nailed it she meant sky, slan was sky and I gotta admit, the slan was beautiful this afternoon.

Since the forest that Maya comes from is famous for its wild ponies I decided to try to learn the words for horse/pony from her.

I believe that Fisli wouldn't have known how to behave if she would have seen a forest like the one Maya - Brianna's snake - is from since Fisli is from the desert. And a horse in the desert is also a pretty difficult animal to find there.

[Mia Fountain]

On a warm summer day while I was in the garden with ʃinʃer (Ginger), I learned the Parseltongue word for rock. I was in the garden picking some cucumbers, while ʃinʃer was looking for the best spot to sun herself. I heard her hissing in frustration about trying to find the best "rok". I turned around and asked her what she meant, as I was unsure if I had heard her correctly. "Rok" she hissed again, after showing her various sunny spots I found that the spot she was looking for was on a flat rock, that was warmed by the Sun. "Tasi rok" she said in happiness, while she slithered onto it and began to sun herself.

[Gail Allen]

Buk: Book

As we were talking the other day, trying to get my pronunciation of at least some of the words to not sound entirely stupid, my new friend couldn't help noticing the bookcases that fill my room nearly to bursting point and she pointed to them and asked ”Reaʃe vuʃ?” of course I realised what Reaʃe meant and we got a good talk about books and why I love reading, but more importantly, I learned what one of my favourite objects; Books, are called in parseltongue: buk.
So now I can properly talk about both reading and books.

[Ivonne Zwei]

ʃanasa: Cautious or careful

I was talking to my Cottonmouth about how cautious he is around humans and accidentally offended him when he interpreted that as me calling him fearful and cowardly. I managed to explain I did not mean it in that way, and he corrected me. He told me he was ʃanasa. This makes sense because the beginning of the word sounds like ʃane, quiet.

[Caius Magnusson]

Being the ambitious Slytherin that I am, I decided that I didn't want to discover a concrete noun. No, I wanted to go for an abstract one, and take my time in finding a way to explaining my thoughts in Parseltongue.

My first attempt was the word 'philosophy', which I failed at. I'oʃin kept telling me that I was describing 'ʃinkʃe' ('think') and I couldn't get him to understand what I meant by 'philosophy'. He apparently told me that it's stupid to think that thinking is anything more than thinking or something like that - I just remember that the sentence was a barrage of ʃ sounds!

I tried to go for 'Internet' later. As one could expect, they have no specific word for that - in hindsight, even though I can see how a snake could theoretically use a computer mouse by wrapping its tail around it, I don't believe that's a particularly easy task. I promised I'oʃin that I would show him what the Internet was later on.

Finally I had more success with the word 'mockery' - I'oʃin explained to me that 'noki' is the proper word in Parseltongue. For those who are curious, I was able to convey that concept by copying everything I'oʃin said in an exaggerated and childish tone, to which he got very, VERY annoyed. It was only after I asked him 'tasi teʃ?' while pointing at me that he understood I wanted to convey a new word. I do hope that I didn't misinterpret the context - it would be quite embarrassing if 'noki' meant jerk instead!

From the dialect perspective, I am curious whether 'noki' is standard Parseltongue or a word that belongs to I'oʃin's specific dialect - as far as I see, 'noki' might have been derived from 'mock', or it might have been derived from the Japanese word 模擬 ('mogi'), meaning 'imitation' or 'copy'. In Japanese, there is also a strong association between the 'k' and 'g' phonemes (as the Japanese 'g' family is equivalent to the voiced version of its 'k' family's counterparts), so I can't use the change from K to G to dismiss that possibility.

Now excuse me, as I have to show some Youtube videos to a snake that needs to calm down a bit.

[Scarlet Robloutain]

Not long ago we were talking, when Seraʃtes asked me about the steslas. She was guiding me back home when I got lost in the forest and used the steslas of Libra to bring me back safe.

I was confused at first since it was quite hard to understand what she was saying, but eventually I could make out what she meant, because she kept looking to the sky. It seemed she followed the stars towards my house and kept asking me how I did not think of that earlier. I told her I never really paid that much attention to it and that I also was confused as to why she calls them steslas and not just stars. The little viper told me that she has learned about them from an old wise man who only spoke Latin. He taught her how to read the stars so that she can always find her way back home.

On the way back she told me more about the man and the steslas. She pointed out her favourite stesla, Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star. It is a stunning sight to behold in the night sky as a bright, orange-red star and it is also located in the famous "Orion's belt" asterism.

https://imgur.com/a/T6tccEs

[Zurawlina Keller]

So, I wanted to give a gift to my new snake friend Otruta, since it turned out that nobody has gifted her anything. At first I thought it would be nice to give her a slice of my shirt that she likes to bite the most. She just replied "snitʃa", I didn't understand the word, but she clearly didn't like the gift. Then I started thinking on another gift and gave her my favourite stone so she could think about me when she looks at it, but she replied exactly the same as first time. I was very sad that I cannot think of a nice gift for my friend.

Then, one day we were walking outside and saw a boy that threw away candy wrapper. Me and Otruta said angrily in unison the one word, but she said it in Parseltongue and I said it in Ukrainian: "smittya" that translated as "rubbish" in English. That was the moment that I realised that I make terrible gifts.

[Katelin Ross]

I showed this image (the image is of a badger) to my snake the other day and asked him what the name of it in Parseltongue would be, he said, "Batʃr."

[Katherine Laurier]

As me and Airin were getting to know each other a little while after I got her, I could understand most words as she shared lots of different things. However, an unfamiliar word came up as she was talking more about herself and her background. She said, “Tasi daislek sine.” I knew tasi meant this and sine meant away, but I did not know what daislek meant.

But using context clues, I put together that daislek is the word for dialect. In her sentence, since the context of the conversation was mostly where she came from and her backstory, she was telling me that her dialect came from or is spoken in a different, far away place.