anūma
I think I figured out my dilemma from yesterday. I think jaxīra is the most basic word for sound or noise and jasāora is a more specific word for sound or noise made by an animate being. This distinction of animate vs non-animate is a theme of Kēlen, so that works.
On to today’s word. anūma is an attribute of sound, meaning loud. It is sometimes glossed merely as noise, since in the inanimate singular, it would mean a loud noise.
ñi sāen matāra il jahōλen ānen ansōha ānen anūri jūma ēmma;
He fell for a long time with silence except for the noise of the air.
“jasÄora is a more specific word for sound or noise made by an animate being. This distinction of animate vs non-animate is a theme of KÄ“len, so that works.”
That’s an interesting idea! My own conlang distinguishes animate and inanimate in morphology, but the distinction’s got no real function otherwise. Basically like in German or French, it’s just a property that words have. But since adjectives don’t decline unlike in those two languages, grammatical gender doesn’t necessarily help making references clearer either. So yeah, definitely a nice way to make use of such a distinction.
I have noticed that animate nouns generally do not have quite the same stems as inanimate nouns. So it makes sense to me that some of the stative nouns that generally apply to animates might only apply to animates. From there, having distinct words for some other things associates with animates just sort of makes sense. And by animate, I generally mean animate and volitional, so people.
I make this distinction also in the particles that rename a source with SE. Inanimate sources get one particle and animate sources another. However, an animate source gets the inanimate particle if the animate source is non-volitional.
So, with jasÄora, I expect it is primarily a volitional noise made by an animate being.