Sajem Tan

Sajem Tan (IPA: [ˈsæ.jem tæn]), known in English as Common Honey, is a collaborative constructed language. It was started in November of 2015, with a post on the CONLANG listserv by Shanoxilt Cizypij, who would later become tribemember Viţit (Bird), who suggested attempting a suggestion put forth by Brett Williams, who would later join as tribemember Jidök (Flower). The language is nearly fully-functional; much has been written in and translated into Sajem Tan, such as the myths below and the song Let It Go from the Disney movie Frozen. Despite a now-defunct ban on worldbuilding, the tribe has garnered a culture and a world of its own, which is still developing.

History
In 2009, Brett Williams made a post suggesting a collaborative idea for a language with particular, prepared, distinct, unique social roles. You don't just become "a speaker" of this language, you must take on a more particular title. I'm imagining a conculture as well, I suppose, but it's not just a fictional culture-- like the language itself, the imagined society is meant to come to life as the players take their parts.

A part I imagined today just as an example is known as The Zebra. I imagined that The Zebra was given the task of inventing, teaching, being an authority on how the conlang is handwritten.[...]The Zebra, I randomly imagined, has a unique personal taboo of being unable to say the word for "apple", and says some standard circumlocution like "unsayable-red-thing". In videos or at in-person gatherings, The Zebra wears zebra-colored face paint. So you see the various levels at which I mean to construct the roles: They are given responsibilities and powers. They are talked about, described as being a certain way, given some ambiance. They're given particular linguistic distinctions, their own very unique idiolect of the language. And they are also given certain real-world actions that they do, ways they dress or dance or sound or act. So it's very all-encompassing, as culture+language are, even though it's still just art. In November 2015, Bird, as stated above, suggested carrying out this idea. He proposed nine roles, and, within 2 days, all of the roles had been filled except for Bear. The tribe moved to Skype to discuss the language every Saturday, with weekly emails to the CONLANG listserv to summarize the tribe's activity. Following the Great Porn Fire, the tribe moved from Skype to Discord, and now tribal discussion takes place everyday, albeit with a less-than-optimal pasta-to-pastry ratio.

Tribe
The tribe is organized into Firefighters (which name is a reference to the Great Porn Fire), who are moderators; Deputy Firefighters, who joined as firefighters but never really interacted with the tribe; and Cüjimâ (Ants), who have joined the Discord server but have never joined the tribe.

Original Nine
As stated above, there were originally nine roles. These roles appear in The Creation Myth and are as follows:
 * Divöm (Thunder), phonology
 * Tërnön (Rain), morphology
 * Jidök (Flower), semantics
 * Šëšën (River), pragmatics
 * Ţefam (Stone), orthography
 * Zaţën (Spider), syntax
 * Kižüt (Bee), corpus
 * Ţefnöm (Bear), pedagogy
 * Viţit (Bird), overseer

Some of the original tribemembers left, though lately some members have begun to take some of the vacant roles as secondary roles: Stone has taken on the role of Bear, Tözen (Fog) has taken on Bee, Cyfek (Algae) has taken on Flower, and Snym (Cloud) has taken on Rain.

Culture
Many of the ideas put forth by Brett Williams have been implemented by Sajem Tan. For instance, the tribemembers typically have roles; for example, Divöm (Thunder)'s role is phonology. (However, there is no Zebra; the closest would be Bird, who had the role of overseer before stepping down; Ţefam (Stone), whose role is orthography, and Ţefnöm (Bear), whose role was pedagogy/teaching.) There are also taboos: Kižüt (Bee) cannot refer to Bird by name, instead calling him "the swift feathered one". Distinctive markings and clothing have been discussed whenever the topic of in-person meetups has been discussed, but nothing much has come of it yet.

The tribe is said to live in a land called Sajem Din, "common home". Some locations within Sajem Din include Šitukmunfemek Xataxym (the Pit of Bad Ideas), the Vmëfëc Kižütdin (Wisdomful Beehive), and the Tözenmêt Snijatâ (Foggy Mountains).

Mythical creatures
A number of mythical creatures inhabit Sajem Din. The most famous and important of these are the tetanâ, cömekâ, and tyţemekâ.

Myths
The tribe has many myths describing its origin, the advent of its various members, and important parts of our history. The first and most important myth is The Creation Myth.

Foods
In Sajem Tan culture, the names of foods are used to refer to various abstract concepts, often related to productivity.  tamat (pastry) - on-topic, productive conversation dûden (pasta) - off-topic, unproductive conversation cic (cheese) - to test the validity of something by facetiously throwing nonsense at it and seeing if it still works rüzim (chocolate) - off-topic conversation that turns out to have been productive and on-topic all along jyţak (strawberry) - something that is pastry, though it doesn't seem like it at a glance dülak (dumpling) - something that could be either pasta or pastry rüven (sandwich) - something that leaves a lasting impression; a distinctly memorable culinary experience, for better or worse 

Numbers
Number symbolism plays a big part in Sajem Tan culture. Multiples of three happen to be particularly famous.

Six
The number six is important to the tradition of Sajem Tan because it is the number of sides of the hexagon, which draws from the tesselated hexagon patterns of beehives. It is for this reason that Sajem Tan uses base 6 (though there is a base 10 system, too).

Nine
The number nine is important as well because, in the early days of the tribe, there were nine members, as is reflected in The Creation Myth. These nine members gave their names to the months of the Sajem Tan calendar. The emblem on the flag of Sajem Tan is made up of nine hexagons.

Gender
Traditionally, Sajem Tan tribemembers have belonged to one of two genders: dove or pigeon. Which one someone is was determined entirely randomly by coin toss. However, despite the arbitrary-ness and the randomness, which gender someone is was not to be taken lightly. The mythical origin of this practice can be found in the Myth of the Coming of Fog. The practice has since ceased.

Language
The language is the primary focus of the project, as you can see from all of the information on this page that has nothing to do with the language.

Phonology
The phonology was created by Divölm (Thunder) from her favorite phonemes.

During the first Age of Great Reforms, the phonology was reformed. What you see above is the post-reform phonology; the main difference is that /ɵ/ became /œ/ and /ɤ/ became /o/.

Phonotactics


Sajem Tan words fall into three categories: roots, particles, and compound words. Since Sajem Tan has self-segregating phonology, there are different phonemes and syllable structures available to roots and particles.

A Sajem Tan root is comprised of zero or more (F)CV (optional fricative+consonant+vowel) syllables, followed by a mandatory (F)CVC syllable. When a syllable starts with only one consonant, it can be any consonant, but syllables that start with two can only start with a fricative and a nasal. The last consonant of a word must be either t, k, c, n, or m. The vowels allowed in roots are a, e, ë, i, ö, ü, û, and y.

A Sajem Tan particle must contain a vowel, which can only be â, ê, o, or u. It can start with one consonant, a consonant cluster (fricative+nasal, as above), and it can end in t, k, c, n, or m, but none of these are necessary.

Compound words appear to break these rules, but that is only because they are many roots and maybe particles put together. So, for example, the only time you'll see  in Sajem Tan is in a compound word, such as fmyvûknoc "creation" (create+a particle denoting the end result of a verb).

Non-Sajem Tan words which are valid according to Sajem Tan phonotactics are called vödemâ, a word which has its origins in the Volapük word vödem, which means "vocabulary"—chosen because it was itself a vödem and it has to do with words in some way.

Orthography
Sajem Tan is written in four ways: two native writing systems: jegenţeknoc "hooked writing system", the cursive form invented by Stone; and tözenţeknoc, the script invented by Tözen (Fog); and two romanizations, discussed below. Some, such as Tytyt (Clover), have remarked on the unintentional similarity between some letters in both writing systems. They are shown in the gallery below.

Animacy
Sajem Tan nouns are either faunal (or animate), floral (or vegetal), or lithic (or inanimate). Which category, or animacy, a word falls into is based on what it means: any word denoting an animal or a part of an animal is faunal, any word denoting a living thing that is not an animal would be floral (so this includes plants, fungi, and germs), and anything else is lithic. There is also a neutral animacy, which is used for mixed groups, or for generalities when something could refer to anyone of any animacy, similar to singular "they" in English. Though this is Sajem Tan's answer to the concept of grammatical gender, the tribmembers' genders do not correspond to this scheme: gender-wise, tribemembers are either doves or pigeons.

Faunal tribemembers must refer to themselves in the third person, floral members must refer to themselves in the second person, and lithic tribemembers refer to themselves in the first person. Each animacy is also referred to with its own set of personal pronouns:

Vocabulary
Sajem Tan vocabulary is one of the most delightful parts of the language, and one of the places where the tribe has the most room to be weird.

The longest word in Sajem Tan right now is süfekalifažilitikesixalödöšyc "cookie", which comes from the English nonsense word "supercalifragilisticexpialidicious". Sometimes, this is shortened to süfek, but only by fools.

Multiple meanings
Some words have multiple meanings, that may or may not be related. For instance, dûden can mean "pasta", "to distract", "distracted", or "unproductive". These meanings are related, because, in the tribal culture, pasta is a metaphor for off-topic, unproductive conversation. Some multiple meaning words have this feature on accident: töröt means both "ice" and "orzo (that which is on-topic to an off-topic discussion)". Others have opposing meanings for humorous purposes, such as vmëfëc "wisdom; silliness" and xögak "courage; foolishness".

A lot of the time, a tribemember's name will double as a word for their role: for instance, ţefam means both "stone" and "orthography" because Stone's role is orthography, and kižüt means both "bee" and "storyteller" because Bee's role was to collect the corpus of Sajem Tan.

Inside jokes
The vocabulary of Sajem Tan is rife with inside jokes which often take much explaining to appreciate. Many of these are our food words. Another example is rüven "sandwich", derived from the personal name Reuben, which happens to be both Wind's name in real life and a kind of sandwich. The word was coined after Wind garnered the nickname of "Sandwich" due to this double meaning. The word ţefam "stone" also has the meaning of "to get a lot done in an afternoon" in reference to Stone's near completion of the reference grammar in one afternoon.

Vödemâ
There are many vödemâ (see above) among the vocabulary of Sajem Tan. Some are close matches to the non-Sajem Tan source word, such as vödem itself; others are only matches in spelling, such as göden (Old Orthography: golden) "rusted, old, tarnished", and others are more phonetic matches while not being similar in spelling, such as jymin "to choose a location by spinning a globe; to teleport by pointing at a map" (derived from the titular character of the Irish short film Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom, who chooses to go to Ireland by spinning a globe).

Many vödemâ only work in one orthography. Many of them have meanings opposite to those of their source words for humorous effect.

Other words can be derived from non-Sajem Tan words. These are not vödemâ, since in these cases the words are not phonotactically or phonetically licit in any sense. These are rather true loanwords, albeit often with significant semantic drift.

Oddly specific words
There are also many words with oddly specific meanings, such as sesût "to sing Let It Go" and femek "Sherlock Holmes; to exclaim 'Elementary, my dear Watson!'" (as well as its original meanings of "mind" and "think").

Many of these are compound words, such as the always famous femekukmunkanöt "a door that you keep wanting to push but it's actually a pull door, or vice-versa", literally "mind-opposite-door".

Dialects
Sajem Tan has a number of dialects, created by (and often named after) tribemembers. In the following list, dialects have their creators' names in parentheses.
 * Ţeţat Tan (Ţeţat (Wind))
 * Tözen Tan (Tözen (Fog))
 * Zekmhetan (Sienna Land)
 * Žirik Tan (Žirik (Fish))
 * Pleb Tan (Milek (Fern))
 * Tanðab (Fish)
 * Ebarani (Ţûfam (Metal))
 * SnymTelzlnoln Tan (Snym (Cloud))