Also! I Just Needed To Look This Up As A Hungarian, Because Yes, While The Word Sántál Makes Sense

also! I just needed to look this up as a Hungarian, because yes, while the word sántál makes sense to me, it just sounds old school, we use sántít more nowadays

and ofc I needed to look it up in a Hungarian dictionary and let me nerd out about this one for a bit (bear with my English and the possibly wonky translation of this text)

so the word I looked up was sánta (lame), the noun from sántál/sántít

so basically,, Hungarian got the word from an old Slavic word group, possibly before the 11th century, when the Slavic nasal a still existed (btw if anyone knows about this nasal a, feel free to yap about it, I'm interested)

originally it used to mean something like to walk slowly, haltingly and then in Hungarian the meaning changed to to limp

and then some Slavic languages borrowed it back from Hungarian, apparently Serbo-Croatian and Slovene also have it as šantati

oh wow, I just had a szófosás here (basically a word for yapping in Hungarian, it literally means word-diarrhea)

Random Slovak š-words etymology:

Šajn (as in "nemám šajnu") — from German "(Geld)schein", the Austro-Hungarian banknote.

Šampón — from English "shampoo", from Indian "čāmpo" (to press)

Šanca — from French "cheance" (accident, luck), from Latin "cadentia" (falling) — used first for a good result when throwing a die.

Šanovať — from German "schön" (pretty)

Šantiť — from Hungarian "sántál" (to limp)

Šarkan — from Hungarian "sárkány" (dragon, virago, vixen, Xanthippe), from Proto-Turkic "siāŕgan" (carp, dragon)

Šarlatán — from German "Scharlatan", from Italian "ciarlatano", a blend of "ciarlatore" (chatterer) and "cerretano" (hawker), the latter coming from the village of Cerreto di Spoleto, known for its tricksters.

Šašo — from "šach" due to their clothes' black-and-white chessboard pattern

Šelma — from Middle High German "schelme" (plague)

Šovinizmus — from N. Chauvin, an excessively patriotic First French Republic soldier famous from the play "La Cocarde Tricolore"

Štamgast — from German "Stamm" (trunk, tribe) + "Gast" (guest)

Šuhaj — from Hungarian "suhanc", from "suhancár" (Swiss) since the Swiss often used to serve abroad as guards, mostly young men, hence the Slovak meaning

Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:

A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin

A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans

A clock that isn’t 24-hours

More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know

Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain

Multiple moons/no moon

Planetary rings

A northern lights effect, but near the equator

Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks

Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals

Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands

The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage

No concept of virginity or bastardry

More than 2 genders/no concept of gender

Monotheism, but not creationism

Gods that don’t look like people

Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats

Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot

Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom

“Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls

A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language

A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)

I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.

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a-honap-leanya

2 weeks ago