Ànómispétólšítotehaŋe. Þihàháŋkpéžísìmí. “Put skillet on stove and turn to medium heat.”
I needed a word for “stove” and decided to create the basic root ítoko for “stove” or “fireplace”—the kind of stove you wouldn’t necessarily cook on except to put something on top to warm up. To specify a stove for cooking, you use a compound of this root plus éhaŋe, which means “to cook”. When put together, it comes out as ítotehaŋe.
The second clause begins with þih-, a conjunction indicating a sequence of events (i.e. “and then”). The object is áŋe, which means “fire” in its most basic sense but is used to refer to heat when speaking about the heat of a stove. I extended the meaning of the verb žífe “to open” to mean “to set” or “to turn to” based on the motion of opening a small door to let more heat out on appliances like stoves. Over time this verb extended to mean “set” in other contexts, such as setting a time on a clock.
Finally, I also extended the meaning of another root, mí “torso”, to mean “middle” or “medium.” Thinking of my nisse speakers and measuring things by holding out their hands, something landing near the torso would always be a medium size, whether they are measuring horizontally by holding their arms open wide or measuring vertically by holding one arm up high and one down low to indicate height.
As much as I enjoy making new roots to expand a language, one of my favorite things to do is find new uses for existing roots to create polysemy in the vocabulary.