Su shayar! Kwayda gashjas “April Fools Day”, nakway Winjas warha walham. Cha, Kintukisu, dijam su. Balya glara, bladi shawgarsh, sashwal-kwa lawka! Wasar hasa, jayman-kwa tamdam shanchi tawsam.
Good morning! Since yesterday was April Fools Day, I didn’t want to write anything about Wenja. Here, in Kentucky, the land is beautiful. The leaves are green, the flowers are blooming, and the sun is bright! It’s spring (yay!), and I’m happy that winter is finally over.
Today’s word of the day is one requested by Assassin_Pan72 a few days back. What on earth is that lady saying when she bellows: Cha dijam su. Cha dijam suuuuuuu! You hear it in the village; you hear it out in Oros after completing an escort with a group of lost Wenjas. This is an expression that means “Here (the) earth / land (is) good.” The word in question is dijam, the word for “earth” or “land”. Note that this dijam su is different from dijamsu, which means ‘in the land’, as you can see below in Sayla’s scene. (She’s saying U Udam dijamsu “(Go) in Udam land”.
And where does dijam come from? From PIE *dʰ(e)ǵʰom- ‘earth’. This is word that is ALL OVER the place in the Indo-European languages. From Latin humus ‘ground’ (in-hum-ation), homo ‘man’ (homo sapiens, human), Greek khthon ‘earth’ (chthonic ‘from the earth’), Hittite tekan ‘earth’, and believe it or not English bridegroom, a modified pronunciation of bride-goom, literally once ‘bride-man’. If you’re wondering how ‘earth’ became ‘man’, the latter originally meant ‘earthling, the one from the earth (vs. gods)’. (No, this is not evidence that aliens colonized the Indo-Europeans) If you’re curious, this word is also in Wenja: dishman ‘human, earthling’.
So the word "human" etymologically refers to the earth? oO Mind blown… Although it makes sense. Gwarshta for the post! =)
How did you make a word for Kentucky (Kintukisu)? Is ther aformula for place names, or is it just made up?
In Wenja, there's no "e" vowel — the closest one is "i". So, Ken-tuc-ky becomes kin-tu-ki. The -su part is the preposition meaning "in, on, at".
So a place Like New Hampshire would become (Whatever the Wenja word for New is) Hampshir. Or maybe thats a bad example…
Also, I would like to say that this is one of the hardest languages to find information on, as it isn't on the Far Cry wiki in any detail, and the phrasebook is rare. Its not like some other video game languages, like Bethesda's Dovahzul, which is very popular. I am just so interested in conlangs.
New Hampshire would either be "Nu Hampishayar" OR "Nawa Hampishayar", with Nawa meaning "new". As for information on the languages, yes you're correct! It wasn't possible for us to have a section on the official website, as we don't work directly for Ubisoft. The only "true" sources that you'll find are this blog and our Twitter account @SpeakingPrimal.
Many people, especially on reddit, are talking about the language and are confused as to where to find information. It took me two months of digging to get to this site. It'd be cool to spread the word that indeed this is the site for Wenja.
I'd very much appreciate you let folks know on Reddit. I tried adding a link to this site on Wikipedia but it was taken down for reasons of "self-promotion". Not quite sure what else to do…
Someone learned the language enough to make a song in it:
https://youtu.be/ADT6EUlFmiU
Yeah, it's a cool song but the Wenja needs some work 😀
I don't know if you still check this blog, but I was wondering about the link with Urdu's 'dushman.'
No link here. Thee dush- is actually related to Wenja dus "bad"; the man- part means "mind" (this root is found in Wenja, too). So Persian (> Urdu) dushman originally meant "the one with a bad mind".