zompist bboard

Very interesting. Two thumbs up. I didn't see the Fanboy version of the Knights of Devora. Major chuckles! :D (Minor gripe/rant: I just wish everything didn't have to be in Arial. Man, I hate Arial, but all Wikis are all set up to use it, dernem.) I wonder, maybe the country entries could include fi...

Very little is known about the system, I'm afraid, unless it's described in those pesky iliu volumes. Almeans do have good telescopes, so they are aware of the craters on their moons and the satellites of the outer planets. In a telescope Vler?i can be seen to have ice caps and some tantalizing dar...

They were Egyptian Greeks I think. I don't know if they resemble pale-faced loons too closely. The educated ones among them would have likely known Latin too. Verdurian would not have seemed alien to them, like, say, Hungarian would. Come to think of it, I wonder if Erenati scholars classify Greek a...

Never mind... I found the answer by digging around some more. (That is, yes, Xurnash does use "antique" spellings, kinda like English)

This is supposed to be a language and culture board, and here we have folks talking about gazongas. How teenage.

Yes. The Zone of Fire has occasional latent periods; during one of these the Nanese settled Bekkai. Ah, okay, that makes sense. (I was thinking that perhaps they had help from the ilii.) It will be interesting to see what happens if the Verdurians or Kebreni or whoever invent steamships. Of course,...

I read this in the Historical Atlas, under the "hemisphere" entry: "The equatorial Zone of Fire has prevented significant contact and even trade between the hemispheres. Humans (uesti) in the northern hemisphere have not advanced beyond garden agriculture and tribalism, except in the Bekkayin states...

Vielen Dank! I love German, but I'm still a little rusty and I was probably not as careful in my translation as I should have been. ;) I do have another question for Mark about Xurnash. I noticed the Xurnash script still has forms for seven different vowel sounds ( a, e, i, o, u, ei, ou ), but in al...

I should also add how cleverly written it is that you assume they're both men until the farmer says “I’m very so grateful to you women.” And it just hits you like a ton of bricks. I had a nagging feeling that they were women when I was reading their description... I guess because of the one's "long...

Ah, good to have the Master himself come here cleaning things up! I'm always glad to see someone sit down with a dictionary! A few comments on items where you had questions or didn't quite hit it: bunjachi = obviously having to do with a lack of something. From bunji 'some' ( < 'two or three') + neg...

Actually, "o senhor" reminds me of a swanky French waiter saying, "would le monsieur like a glass of wine?"

But I'll agree, I don't know of anything like the Elkaril -qebat/-at vowel assignations.

BG

I didn't know about assigned anaphora in ASL, and I wasn't aware that Elkaril lacks 1st and 2nd person pronouns - the latter is indeed a non-human trait. I understand that Japanese doesn't really have pronouns either. What "pronouns" they do have are full words rather than short enclitics, and not ...

That is awesome! Thanks! :mrgreen: Glad to be of service. 8) There's also that sample of Xurnash in his Language Construction Kit: Ir nevu jadzies mnoshudacij. Toc shizen ri tos bunjachi shasik rili. Tos denjic shush bunji dis kezi. Syu shacho cu shush izraugi. ("My niece is dating a sculptor. She ...

Serali wrote:Really he has examples of it hand written?! Could you give me the link?

http://www.zompist.com/axunwrite.htm

Go about halfway down the page.

BG

i'm still waiting for Chia-Sha :roll: That would be an interesting one. I understand it has no inflections, like Chinese. I wonder if it uses a logographic script. I suppose if Mark doesn't put it up, we could try making it ourselves using the Proto-Eastern vocabulary provided. Like, doing somethin...

I'd imagine that Xurnash is rather like Axunashin with a simplified noun and verb conjugation system. (To what degree, of course, I have no idea.) As an aside: I still don't really know how to pronounce "Xurno"... I want to pronounce the X as /S/ but I'm not sure that's right (I do know "Axunashin" ...

Don't confuse peculiarities of the spelling with features of the language . I'm a little confused. I had said: "Besides the plural, verb infinitive, and preterite formations which Flaidish has in common with German..." ...which to me seems like features of the language, even though it was mentioned...

I personally think Wede:i looks rather like Indonesian. Again, I agree. Primarily because of the syllable structure, I would think. Syllable structure goes a long way in determining the "flavor" of a language, or at least so it seems to me. Having said that, it also sounds a bit like a blend of Jap...

I thought Jippirasti was based on Islam... i.e., that it's monotheistic (no god but Jippir, and Babur is his prophet, etc.) I do know that historically, Islam ate Zoroastrianism and the paganism of the Turkic tribes for breakfast, and it competed quite well with Hinduism on the subcontinent. (Person...

This isn't quite related, but I personally think that the word "dwarf" doesn't really go too well with the elcari -- they aren't fat enough and don't have beards. :P Mark was smart not to use it consistently. However, I can't help thinking that "gnome" and "goblin" would describe the elcari and murt...

Everytime I hear people speaking in Portuguese, I think that Verdurian must sound half Portuguese, half French. Personally, Verdurian reminds me of Romanian more than anything. I would have to say Elkaril, as most of the others were too European. I would say that the Cadhinorian languages are defin...

I didn't know about the board until recently (hehe) but I had a couple of questions that Mark answered. My remarks to Mark's answers are in brackets. ********** Q: Do you have any plans to do Sarroc? Dhekhnami languages? Their alphabet? A: Dhekhnami, definitely; Sarroc, eventually. I'm sure they'll ...