Unified Sesean Etymology Chart

An absurdly large chart showing the etymological origins of all 1054 words and category syllables of Sese, Zese, and BreadSpeak combined.

(Click to view the full PDF file.)

Background

Sese, Zese, and BreadSpeak are constructed languages created by Jack Eisenmann. What these languages have in common is that they can be considered to all be part of the same "family" because of their related vocabulary: BreadSpeak's vocabulary is largely derived from Zese, and Zese's vocabulary is largely derived from Sese. I have thus somewhat humourously named this group of languages "the Sesean languages".

Zese and Breadspeak both implement a system in which the first syllable of any multi-syllable word indicates its semantic category. For instance: "TA--" words in Zese relate to time, and "Ve--" words in BreadSpeak relate to materials and substances. Additionally, most words (and category syllables themselves) will be etymologically derived in some way, either from another word from the same language (BreadSpeak "Gagi" (good) → "Fegi" (happy)), a word from the language's predecessor (Zese "PUDO" (water) → BreadSpeak "Vedo" (water)), or from a natural language (English "Goal" → Zese "GOGO"). These features are intended to aid memorization of vocabulary, and to make it so that words have some logic for sounding the way they do, instead of just being random syllables stuck together.

The etymological relationships among these three languages is thoroughly described in the following pieces of official material:

Notes

The official Zese etymology document describes the etymology of "BIKI" (see) as being in a mutual relationship with "BIGE" (white), "BIGA" (gray), and "BIGO" (black). However, I think this is very likely to be a mistake, as it makes much more sense to assume that "BIKI" is derived from "KAKI" (feel), in the same way that "SAKI" is.

I have no idea why Zese's articles "KISO" and "KISI" are listed as being derived from Sese's proverbs "TOTO" and "TITI", and not the articles "SOSO" and "SISI". But whatever, I'm going with it anyways.

Changelog