zompist bboard

Yes! Just noticed the page was up. Rather interesting language, even if a bit dark in some respects. As far as terrestrial politics go, I could easily imagine the Dhekhnami instinctively treating the Spaniards more deferentially than the Italians, and the Icelanders most deferentially of all, and ge...

It should be Uyseʔ but the board has issues with this. If we were Malay-speakers we could call it "Bahasa Uysek". ;) Oh well... Some fair points. And I was mentally contrasting Uyseʔ to a Chinese lang without tones when I remarked it was restrictive; mildly surprising to see the numbers go the othe...

What scripts, natural or otherwise, does this remind you of? Hieratic and Demotic are the first 2 that come to mind. Chinese characters ( Hanzi ) too in ways especially in the way it developed. And the Naxi scripts ( at least IMO ). I'll have to look for some more scripts because I'm sure I'm forge...

First of all, congrats on the release of the new Uyse7 material! A couple of minor mistakes in the logograms file: Top of page 3: the glyphs for 5 and 4 appear in the wrong order? Bottom of page 4 and top of page 5 (two occurrences): Ishira can't be in opposition if it is an inferior planet like Ven...

I noticed the note doesn't appear to mention "fali" anywhere on it. I know about the annoying Verdurian trait of not mentioning the denomination of money, but I'd expect that for paper money, they'd be a *bit* more formal and organized about that kind of thing.

Tolkien's fantasy races derive from Germanic and Celtic myth, and aren't intended as con-economics. If you're worried about it, it's easy enough to suggest what dwarves eat: whatever Scottish Highlanders or German miners eat. I wonder what the Khuzdul word for "haggis" is? :) In addition, one might...

I would imagine also that woven maps, while more expensive than paper maps, would also be far more durable.

I listened to the clip in "Sounds of Almea"... I was wondering if Flaidish had other peculiarities, such as being spoken with a lilt, a la Swedish or Norwegian?

In addition, I'm a little curious about the various dialects... Ledley and the Zermolaim (Dzrmullein)...

I know in the Catholic religion, excessive self-deprecation ("I'm worthless") is considered a sin just as bad as pride, daintiness as bad as gluttony, stuffy teetotallery just as bad as being a disgusting drunk (Catholics abhorred Prohibition, and not just because of their using wine in the Mass), a...

I've worked a fair amount on Dhekhnami, which promises to be fairly weird. But it's not anywhere near ready for viewing. As I've gotten tired of the "languages of nasty people sound Germanic" meme, Dhekhnami is being revamped to sound pleasant. Just another note of comparison... the bogeymen of Eur...

It's funny how Verduria looks like Germany, with Erenat as the East Prussia/Finland, and Dhekhnam as the looming Soviet Union. What's Finnish with Erenat? And what's German with Finnland? Nothing, aside from looking strictly at the map of Erelae. Germany is a small, compact, but powerful, industria...

Cheiy has never been to me something like Tibet, they are too knowledge oriented and lack its spiritualism. Somehow, it looks more like a generic frontier country. There is something close to Vietnam with its North and South relation. I cannot place any relation to on or another Earth country. How ...

If you really want to rock the boat don't add pleasing euphony to the language, give the people a motivation other than the Lex-Lutherian obsession with harassing Verdurians. Nothing easier. I've been thinking about Dhekhnam too and I've realised that from the point of view of a ktuvok (who is the ...

I've worked a fair amount on Dhekhnami, which promises to be fairly weird. But it's not anywhere near ready for viewing. As I've gotten tired of the "languages of nasty people sound Germanic" meme, Dhekhnami is being revamped to sound pleasant. Sorry to get onto a Tolkien comparison, but I've notic...

I wish English had a word for the emotion you feel when someone is talking to you as if youve made a ridiculously infantile mistake (and you havent), or when theyve just shown you that you ARE stupid and keep talking to you like everything's normal, perhaps because they assume you're used to being ...

....I'll be waiting. :mrgreen: Also I really adore the handwritten version would like to see samples in it if possible. Do the Xurnese do calligraphy? They should if they don't. Well, you know, being a very artistic people... :wink: Unfortunately, it appears that Zomp doesn't have ready access to a...

My two cents: Easterners = Indo-Europeans Eretald = Europe Xurno = India (Ezicimi/Inbamumakei = Indo-Aryans; Wedei = Dravidians) Dhekhnam = Ottoman Turks or Soviets (take your pick) Monkhayu = primordial Europeans (like the Basques) Cadhinorians = Romance peoples, obviously... but also, Naviu = Slav...

Ah, spelling reforms... it seems to me that there's little predictability on who would have spelling reforms and who doesn't. Sure, you have the Soviets in Russia, but on the other hand, the spelling reform of Portuguese... and the Portuguese aren't exactly the strictest people around. I think the s...

I noticed something about the writing system: it appears that Xurnese writing is like the Japanese, combined with the Tibetan (i.e. hundreds of years out of date, leading to phenomena like the Wylie Romanization system). Do they have a bopomofo or furigana type of deal for helping learners of their ...

Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza. Out of curiosity, what is it supposed to mean? I was trying to type "My niece is dating a sculptor" in Polish, but apparently I got it wrong. :? Well, "datować" does mean "to date" but in the sense "to assign a date/age to something" like this . As for "My niece...

Piotr wrote:

BGMan wrote:Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza.

Out of curiosity, what is it supposed to mean?

I was trying to type "My niece is dating a sculptor" in Polish, but apparently I got it wrong.

Or, in my case, how frightening the Slavic languages look to beginners. Especially Polish, which looks scary as hell for people raised on Western European languages. And it's interesting how both Xurnese and Polish seem to be heavy on hissing sounds such as sh, ch, ts, and so forth. I expect the Gr...

If I had to theorize, I'd say that multiple sentient species would coexist best (or at least for the longest period) if they occupied different niches in the environment. Multiple hominids would be less plausible to me than a hominid and a cetacean coexistence, or a hominid species and a species th...

Caught this:

rešeji ‘looked’ [re 'se dʒi] -- IPA wrong?

BTW, I like this:

"Some, due to piled up sound changes, are entirely opaque: ayu ‘owl’ → wiw;"

Kinda reminded me of the French for 'eye' (oeil > yeux). Or is yeux in fact descended from Latin oculi??

Just one thing: If all the smart people were made ewemi who were less likely to reproduce, wouldn't the Axunemi population get less and less intelligent over time, like in the movie Idiocracy ? Movies aren't really a good guide to biology. :) Evolution works very slowly; a culture that spends a few...