Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The gashin "notwithstandingness", or lagom soothing ritual, is a ten-line call-and-response poem that was first seen in The Place Where We Can Stop Running, and has seen numerous times since during the series, Lin Ralazinziq. It is intended to talk lagom down from panic attacks when other lagom are nearby, as a means of showing solidarity with the problem and solving it together.

The lagom language was not previously well-developed. Only a few phrases were used, such as the series title, which translates, roughly, to "the place where we can stop running". I decided to use the gashin to develop more of the language, and will be going line by line to show off its features, and how the gashin's meaning differs from the meaning that is captured in the original ten-line poem. We could call the one that exists in the story 🍀's translation; I will be giving my own translation now that the language has been more developed at the end of this article.

Lagom is, mostly, a SVO language, similar to many English sentences such as "I go to the store" (subject: I / verb: go / object: [to] the store).

Lagom is also a front-loaded language in many ways. It is trying at all times to make sure its most important information is conveyed as early as possible, given the evolutionary pressure of possibly having one's throat torn out mid-sentence. In an emergency, this is verbs: What has been done (and to whom), or what needs to be done (and with/to what). But most of the time, it's the context of a piece of information. As an example, Lagom front-loads its punctuation. We know immediately that this is a question, because the question mark comes at the beginning. (In written lagom, this also serves as a performance guide. You don't have to read ahead; you know immediately how to inflect the utterance.)

Mid' "what causes" is a more precise version of why, asking what actions or events led up to this moment. "Why" can be about motivation; that sense is missing from "mid'". Pronounciationwise, the apostrophe is meaningful: Similar to the pronunciation of Japanese katsu, it's a sort of grace-note /ə/ sound. Words that end in /t/ and /d/ are modified with this apostrophe. (/q/ at the ends of sentences is not modified in this way, but always ends in an unvoiced plosive, not a stop.)

Rala is the lagom word for "we", and is made up of its two third-person pronouns. Lagom's pronouns do not encode gender but location: Overgrounders, those who live in villages above ground, use ra/rar/raum/raums/ragom, and undergrounders, those who live in elaborate burrows, use la/lal/laum/laums/lagom.

And yes, the reflexive is also the name of the species: "Lagom", in lagom, means "self".

Ziq is a word that means "to be chased". Lagom has verbs that denote actions done to the subject, not requiring another verb like be to do so. It is translated in the original poem as "run"; it is perhaps closer to "flee". Perhaps 🍀 decided miy didn't like the /i/ sound in "flee".

Some phrases in lagom are welded together, especially after conjunctions, which is why "ralaziq" is one word here. Lin ralazinziq turns "ralazinziq" into an adjective phrase which modifies "lin", which is why it's also welded together.

deat' "to be forced" is, like "ziq", a word with inverted agency. Qid' "because" is the response to "mid'" (more on this later), but backwards, because conjunctions in lagom are generally in the opposite semantic order to English conjunctions: Context first, then the information. The cause is first, then the effect. We are forced to flee, is why we flee.

We have come to our first use of true poetic license here. Gom "prey" is also the last part of "lagom". But lagom normally would render this statement ".ralachegom qid' raladeat'". The elided word, cheg "is [for now], has [for now]" specifically refers to a statement of possession, from the past until this moment, of attributes or conditions. (Because "cheg" ends with a G and "gom" starts with one, the second G is removed.) It might be closer to the translation "we have the current condition of being prey".

But here, "cheg" is elided, allowing for attention to be called to the etymology of "lagom", with rala "we" welded smoothly to gom "prey". Its intended meaning is to say, we are hunted because of who we are. For now.

Ash is a conjunction that allows space for both clauses to coexist in truth, even if one takes priority. This is where the native meaning of the gashin diverges from that which 🍀 has translated: Miy translated this line and the line before it as "We must [run] because we are prey / but as prey we are cunning", a statement of defiance in the face of hardship. In lagom these lines mean "even though we are cunning, as prey, we still have to run". It is a warning about trying to get too fancy with those that want to kill you.

Who knows why 🍀 translated it this way; perhaps miy was trying to reframe the gashin more optimistically, in the way that Affini do. Perhaps that's the way the gashin has evolved since its original version 284 years previous to the events of Lin Ralazinziq, which would be the version 🍀 would be most familiar with given mir previous ownership of mir lagom floret, Alagra. Perhaps a combination of both.

Here we also see the strongest version of "is", cheq: this is a statement not even of identity but of fundamental sameness. If something cheq something else, they are both, to use a Deleuzian term, nodes on the same rhizome, two aspects or facets of the same idea. This is a powerful statement about the lagom: We are this thing in the deepest part of our burrows.

Shoga "trickster" has elements of resourcefulness, lateral thinking, and creativity: It is almost closer to the original definition of "hacker" from MIT in the dawn of the computer age. (I suspect 😩🖥 "pervert", lit. "fetish hacker" might be a portmonteau that 🍀 came up with mosa because of mir experience with lagom.) It is reduplicated here for emphasis.

This is a really complex sentence, so bear with me while I break it down.

The terran standard word for the predators of the lagom is "carlai". Lagom, however, lacks /k/, using /q/ instead, and only uses /ɾ/ or /ɺ/, not usually both (ash "rala"). The name for them in lagom is thus qarai or qalai, which is also the title lagom give to the Affini. It roughly means "owner", in addition to "predator". Al- is a prefix that has a couple of overlapping meanings, including a marker of doing (like -er in English, as in "painter", "carpenter", etc), but its most prominent one here is a marker of understanding. There is a known reason that the carlai are the way they are.

zai- is effectively -ly, and marks the conversion of a verb to an adverb, which makes toqi "limit, restrict" act like "only" in context.

Lagom marks no tense, but has time adverbs that allow for sentences to talk about what happened at a particular time or timeframe, like "yesterday" (in fact, "yesterday" is exactly the kind of word these words are!), and as with many aspects of the language, modifiers are front-loaded. Again, leoq is underscoring that this is only true in the past; the present is not necessarily bound by it, and actions taken now could change it.

Zanovo "instinct, intuition", lit. "stomach-sense" is a portmonteau that is like understand ("stand under"), and with a similar but stronger meaning, closer to Heinleinian Martian grok or Newspeak bellyfeel (and is in fact based on "bellyfeel"). It is not an analytical knowing but an instinctual one.

Ait' is a prefix that denotes a word as being part of a list: Here its inclusion at the head of the list tells you that you're about to hear one.

The three words "shash", "sheq", and "qiq" are all onomatopoeia. Shash "hunt" by way of rustling foliage was probably originally shasha. Sheq "catch" is like leaping out of that foliage to perform an ambush. (As such, "catch" and "ambush" are blended meanings here.) Qiq "kill" is modified by "al-" to acknowledge there is a condition causing it, and is an onomatopoeia representing a neck snapping.

I'll reproduce the line here so you can see it again, with all of its words defined.

What this sentence is saying is that the carlai instinct is limited to hunting, catching, killing, and eating. Until they learn how to move past or otherwise control their violence, it's all they'll know how to do.

Grammatically, this is nearly identical to the previous sentence. Its main differences are the three words for what the lagom instincts are. These are translated by 🍀 as "run, conceal, deceive". "Ziq" has already been discussed; eona "cloak, conceal", reduplicated, is probably translated as faithfully as possible, but it has connotations of rendering undetectable, not merely being covered or hidden, more like "turn invisible". It refers to being able to hide even when someone is actively looking for you. And lai is a false friend in English here. It means "deceive, lie" but in a very particular way, closer to a meaning of "fawn": To say whatever you have to in order to avoid violence being enacted on you.

These three acts are the instinctual responses to the carlai instincts described in the previous line: run when hunted, hide to avoid being caught, and when all else fails, fawn in the hopes they won't kill you.

Qeosh is a 1:1 replacement for "that", in the sense of "we accept that [additional clause]". Zaqa is an interesting word, though, and deserves a moment of consideration, because it's the root of zaqara "hospitality, solidarity", an important cultural practice among lagom, and is literally "accept-them". Here it has connotations of "we give space for", "we recognize without prejudice", and "we take on as our duty". This line is saying that the lagom would, despite being the prey of the carlai, stand in solidarity with them if they ever decided to end their hunt, but also recognize that they haven't yet, and maybe can't yet.

Vom does basically mean "mourn", but is also an exclamation, something said in response when one hears that one's loved one has died. "Vom! Vom!" sounds to lagom a lot like "Rue! Rue!" would sound to us if that was still a common phrase. It is a common response to "salee [name]".

Dot' is a 1:1 replacement for "who". Il means "too", but more specific. It's not that there was more than was acceptable by the speaker, but that there was enough to cause harm to the subject. Egal "slow" is 1:1; shishi "obvious, visible" is, to reflect the meaning of "eona", closer to "detectable", and is also an onomatopoeia, using the closest sounds conversational lagom has to its alarm sounds as a warning. Chamo "honest" has connotations of speaking uncomfortable truths: It can be used in the sense of "reality checking", or in the sense of "speaking truth to power".

"Cheq" here is used instead of "cheg" for a specific reason: You can't change if you're dead, and so these attributes are now a permanent part of you. Those who were too slow to escape will forevermore be too slow to escape.

In this case, "egal", "shishi", and "chamo" are all attributes that will get you killed around the carlai, and those who died exhibited more of it than they could survive. These represent failures of the lagom instincts: Running too slow, hiding too obviously, speaking too honestly to someone with the power to harm you.

As before, the meaning of this and the previous line is somewhat different. Instead of "despite mourning our losses, we still run", it's "we run even as we mourn our dead"; We run with tears in our eyes.

Mil is a conjunction that essentially means "until" (though given the reversed semantics, it sort of literally means "which will end when"), and qimo does mean "reach", but in a mythical register, with shades of "discover", or even "create". One does not qimo a normal destination, like your friend's hab, unless you're making a joke about their hab being El Dorado or something. It is a place that appears on no map, a place that must be unearthed in order to go there. The phrase reach heaven through violence would be translated with qimo. (It would also be unintelligible to lagom. "What do you mean, reach lin ralazinziq through the very actions that stop us from reaching it? Such a thing is a paradox.")

Again, as the conjunction order is reversed, this is not a statement of defiance, but an instruction manual. Its meaning modifies the two previous lines. It is not "we mourn our dead; nevertheless, we will run until we can discover lin ralazinziq", but "we will discover lin ralazinziq by continuing to run, even as we mourn our dead". Remembering the fallen and making sure you don't become one of them are both necessary to reach lin ralazinziq.

And • is simply an end-of-text marker. It means the passage is complete.

This is the gashin in its entirety. 🍀 or the Affini more generally clearly took a lot of poetic license with it, which I'm sure they have their reasons for, though it does change the meaning of the gashin significantly. (Mind you, the story takes place in the 2550s. Not only could the gashin have changed, like I suggested above, the language Chloë speaks is not the language you and I speak. So maybe this is a slight babelization of being translated twice.)

So now that I've developed the language enough, here is my attempt at rendering a less localized, more accurate meaning of the gashin in English for your consideration, along with the gashin in its entirety in lagom. I would consider the original to still be canon, but this is more in the spirit of the original.