subbyp replied to your post: “Hey, Tinsnip! I love your Cardassian language design, and I was wondering if you have a word for “to permit” or “to allow”. I need this for reasons. (Garak and Bashir discussing Les Miserables reasons.)”:

Hmmm… I really appreciate the help, but I’m not sure if those are the situations I’m looking for. I’m trying to translate the quote “Do you permit it?”, where Grantaire is asking permission to die by Enjolras’ side.

Oooh, fun fun. Okay. Then we get cerd'lUft (shayrd'looft), to permit an action. To say “do you permit it,” you’d say you me-permit-an-action-immediate future-question, or “ka nucerd'lUft'U'o?” And your second tongue might throw in a bit more emotion… Goodness, what a lovely Cardassian situation. I bet Garak loved that bit.

subbyp asked:

Hey, Tinsnip! I love your Cardassian language design, and I was wondering if you have a word for "to permit" or "to allow". I need this for reasons. (Garak and Bashir discussing Les Miserables reasons.)

Ooh, fun! I had an adjective, cerda, meaning “allowed or permitted.” So let’s make it into a verb!

Cardassians are very territorial, and levels of permission would be built into their language, I think. They like levels. They like castes. They like layers.

So I think there would be:

• cerd’Unt (shayrd’oont) — to permit or allow to enter a place
• cerd’nuter (shayrd’nuh-tayr) — to permit or allow to handle an object
• cerd’nuUt (shayrd’nuh-oot) — to permit or allow to handle one’s body

For something to not be permitted, we throw the tas- prefix on there, negation, and we get tascerd’Unt, for example: not allowed in that place.

So if you’re trying to say, it wouldn’t be permitted, Garak would pick the word appropriate to the act. If he’s chit-chatting in Fed Standard with Bashir, he probably wouldn’t conjugate it with past or present or whatevs.

Does that help? Is the situation not a person place or thing?