zompist bboard

Well it's quite a tough choice, but I seem to be tending for the Flaidish grammar. Elkaril was quite intriguing for me; I felt like it sort of gave Almea a new dimension. I know that Flaidish isn't quite so alien (but it's funny!), but still, it's a bit of an undiscovered country. The reason I'm fav...

(Power courses through his body, and eminently fashionable hat appears on his head)

Well, it's a not uncommon practice for tribes to name themselves after the place they live in . . . it may or may not be a direct reference, i don't know.

Yes.

Yes. They both come from proto-Central Ekaduns, meaning "a fork in the river"; cf "the Angles".

A documentary on the English Civil War i was watching last night seemed to agree with Z - the Roundhead's non-professional soldiers were the ones with the pike formations.

Which of course, were quite effective against cavalry.

After reading, my mind is filled with questions . . . Was the close bond that existed between the "little Cuezians" and their older brothers likely to have existed before the invasion, or was it simply a back-projection? I'm slightly confused - the names that the Cuezians found are given in Methaiun...

(I thought I'd give Mark a break, though I probably should let him to discuss Almea. I'm just going on published material). the thing you have to remember is that Eretald corresponds roughly to early 18th century Europe. Gunpowder does exist, but cannons (pusheki) are somewhat unreliable. The real p...

Okay, so it was late last night, I couldn't get to sleep, so i thought to myself, "hey, let's try some morphophonemic analysis! Good practice for future fieldwork!" Anyways, this is what I came up with. Would I be right in assuming that von is a verb, and -po is some sort of subordinating marker? Se...

Oh, and is the -y the same as English? Or is it a rounded front vowel? I really like the whole English-sounding idea. It makes flaidish sound comical. People elsewhere have been talking about perceived sounds of various languages; I've always thought English sounded faintly silly. I mean, a word lik...

Do flaids have eight fingers as well as toes? Only it seems that the numbers seem to be perhaps four-based . . .

(edit) oh wait, now i see. 6=two-three. 8= two-four.

Browsing the numbers page before, I couldn't help but notice that Flaidish has made an appearance! I remember a while back that Z said something about having devised some basic elements of Flaidish morphology or something. Has there been any progress since then? If so, could you kindly throw us rave...

In this story we seem to see some of the "maddening smugness" of the Cuzeians; the amusment with which they note pagan practices is funny in itself.

Xurno! I'd really like to live in a land where you have to be wary whenever you pass a street busker . . . they might be your provincial governor . . . And obviously, soi halezai . . . though i'm not sure what the plural of Xaleza is in Xurnese. And yes, other cultures are covered *diachronically* i...

Whoops, sorry, forgot to log in. That was me.

And yea, this is way better than most religious texts. Yea, verily, it is . . . :) The cataclismic wars seem to fit into everything else nicely. ;) Obviously, the ilian records of this event will be very interesting. . . Do all Erelaean cultures have stories about the times before the fall? Or do t...

I really like it all so far (sorry that I can't get more specific . . . my thoughts are in disorder.) I was going to try to render the spider riddle in Elkaril, but I'm not up to it. Anyone else feel like a challenge? Oh, and zomp, you realised you've described the Four Great Fathers as having beard...

So Haleza Grise wrote:You mention that elcari can only marry from other lineages. How do they inherit their lineages - is it patrilineal?

Or do female elcari inherit their lineage from their mother, and male ones from their father?

You mention that elcari can only marry from other lineages. How do they inherit their lineages - is it patrilineal?

Oh, and Happy New Year all! Living where I do, I imagine it'll take 15 hours or so for most of you to catch up ;) Yah, it's 4 pm on the 30th here. So you must be 32 time zones ahead of me. :) *Ahem*. It was 8 am on the 31st when i posted that. . . so not quite, but I didn't think i'd be posting til...

For that matter, are thinkers of the present identifying new inventions with the "machines" of the Count of Years? For that matter, are the same words used? Well, the Old Verdurians mustn't have had a high opinion of machinery - witness the derivation of modern nr?sk from niruises . Oh, and Happy N...

I love it! It's definitely the best chapter yet. The whingeing of the elcari as they move into different settlements is very amusing. It does have quite a distinctive feel to it: with an elcarin outlook. I wonder how later Cuezians would take details of elcari tasting metal; they'd most probably bru...

Aidan wrote:

So Haleza Grise wrote:Hey, anyone named any of the landmasses that existed before Pangaea?

One was mentioned earlier, actually; though not labeled as such. Rodinia was the last supercontinent before Pangea, it was around about 1.1 to .75 billion years ago.

Named after what, the sculptor?

Ooh, ooh! And don't forget bodies of water! There's the Panthalassic to balance Pangaea, the Iapetus Ocean, the Rheic, the Cannonball Seaway. . . . And my personal favorite, the Tethys. Now there was a Sea! I miss it. :) Though Niobrara was good too, while it lasted. (The sea, not the river. At lea...

Don't rely on the tabloids for information, So Haleza Grise! I'm not . . . I haven't done any comparitive law, but a couple of my friends have. Particularly, i'm referring to the inquisitorial process rather than the adversarial, the lack of jury trials (every Space Race always has a jury), but als...

I see... thats an interesting contrast to many popular Earth religions. Not all. (I think) Judaism and many eastern religions (I'm thinking Confucianism and Daoism mainly, but I don't know anything there) simply aren't that concerned with where you go, or if you go anywhere. It's comprehensible; on...