zompist wrote:Rather as in our society, those unfit for any productive task become politicians.
zompist wrote:Ha! No; those who don't feel gifted artistically have other professions available-- raising food, trading, etc.
In particular, I could see elcari who feel uncomfortable with craftsmanship (mining, smithing, building, weaving, carving, sculpting, drawing, etc.) taking the "outdoorsy"
route--leaving the cover of the cities to work as farmers, timber-cutters, and herders. Since craftsmanship is so important to the elcari, such folks might be looked down upon--however, since the elcari tend to be fairly practical types, they might not be. These functions are also crucial to the life of the society, after all.
DarkFantasy wrote:ah, okay. I had gotten the impression that all Elkari culture was centered around craftsmanship. Oh, and another question: are then any elcar that live in human culture? Like, is there ever a chance of finding an elcari bar tender or inn keeper? Are they accepted into human civilization, and vice-versa, are humans accepted into elcari civilization?
In general the Thinking Kinds don't mix much. I think some conworlders treat intelligent species as races or nationalities; my feeling is that they should be more remote than this. It's not like a medieval Arab choosing to live in China; it's more like choosing to live among orangutans.
So, I assume that other species' habitats are physically and socially uncomfortable to live in for long. Humans find the elcar cities too cold, too dull, too vertical; elcari find human cities too crowded, too warm and wet, too dirty, and the air too thick.
Elcari do come by in trading expeditions, which also typically do metalsmithing and mining work for the human countries they pass through.
A few people (considered insane by their own species) might choose to leave their own lands permanently.
zompist wrote:It's not like a medieval Arab choosing to live in China; it's more like choosing to live among orangutans.
Wow, very good point. Of course, wouldnt it be a little different considering species can communicate?
Sure; till we have aliens around, no analogy is quite right.
As another point, Almean Thinking Kinds are not interfertile (except for elcari and m?rtani), and almost always find each other sexually repulsive... another reason exile is extremely rare.
Great writing system! Are there Elkaril cheerleaders who spell out words by grimacing and changing accessories? "Gimme a pointy-headed sad-faced flat-chin!"
More seriously, are all the variations of kup and shob real Elkaril words, or are they just theoretical examples of the affixes?
Warmaster wrote:just an asthetic note: i just looked on the language page and the orthography still says "deatails are not ready" are you going to change that?
Oh, and i like the new banner on the home page!
Thanks!
I thought I did update the grammar. I'll have to re-upload it from home.
I call this one "Sly face with boler hat and cigar that wears Groucho Marx glasses and Spock ears after being attacked by Indians."
What's the morphophonemic breakdown on that, Jeff?
zompist wrote:In general the Thinking Kinds don't mix much. I think some conworlders treat intelligent species as races or nationalities; my feeling is that they should be more remote than this. It's not like a medieval Arab choosing to live in China; it's more like choosing to live among orangutans.
Yeah, common problem. I'm trying to end up with a situation, on the Hajasith at least, that's a reasoned mid-point. Species interact rather alot, but also stick to themselves. Or in other words, species interaction is moderately broad, but shallow.
Your description of the varying feelings about cities reminded me of an idea I was playing with: in the "Elven Distric" of T?l Katar, there start being fewer staircases for moving between ground and upper stories, and many more bridges between buildings at the upper stories. Reflecting the elves much more three-dimensional view (i.e. they live in trees, with physical (re-)adaptations to climbing and jumping).
Logical implications of the writing system (some silly)
1. If the Elkaril are at all given to superstition, they must try to make their faces and features like pleasant and good-omened words. In the elcari lands, there must be an interesting distinction between exclaiming ?You look like death? and ?You look like ?death??. Where our mothers warn us, ?If you keep looking like that, your face will freeze,? elcaril mothers must warn their children that ?They?ll say you look like...?. Also vowel amulets and little cubical hats must be a very popular fashion statement. Plastic surgery, when is invented, will become an Elkaril specialty.
If the elcaril are not given to superstition, then all of this applies to the uesti once knowledge of the Elkaril writing system spreads to the astrology-believing classes.
2. Early Elkaril feminists must have (either as a present thing or a future development) a secret ?women?s face? language, where the default face is the feminine one. There the prefix g- is shown by broadening the nose and narrowing the lips, and the prefix ch- is shown by two breasts below the face. Later on the secret women?s face language will be used for fashion and other frivolous ?how to attract men and keep house? magazines. Then it will be used for frivolous ?how to drive fast, get drunk, and whore around a lot? men?s magazines, only with very big breasts used for the ch-.
3. The murtany, when they write about the elcaril, instead use drawings of the buttocks to represent the syllables. The various shapes of the left buttock represent the opening consonant, the right buttock the closing consonant, various kinds of things that you wear around the buttocks the nasals, and the angle and width of the crack between the two represent the vowels, supplemented by pimples, buttock hair, fatness, etc. The prefixes and suffixes are represented by drawings of things that go into (not necessarily naturally), come out of, or found on the other side of the buttocks.
This is yet another reason why the elcaril loathe the murtany.
Of course, drawing a stylized pair of buttocks doesn?t compare favourably even to lettering an entire word, even if you've had years of practice, so even the murtany don?t use the buttock alphabet very much and have to keep looking things up, though the elkaril say that only the murtany brain has the ability to perceive buttocks quickly and easily as a gestalt.
This is yet another reason why the murtany loathe the elcaril.
Last edited by Shm Jay on Thu Jul 31, 2003 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The nice thing about Zompist-land is that the owner/creator is mature enough to appreciate satire and facetiousness I hope I can tell you, in some conlang places, saying anything else to the author but ?Oh you?re great, wonderful, so clever, I want to have your baby? will get you months of yelling and abuse from the author (and sycophants) until you pack your bags and leave
Seriously? I mean, the bit about other forums? That be wack.
I was amused by your posting, and I hope you washed your hands, or your brain, after thinking up the extension to the m?rtani.
(It's purposeful, by the way, that only two of the vowels are pleasant expressions. It's basically the same reason why sports mascots generally have a fierce scowl rather than a goofy grin.)
Curious, Lord Zompist the Impervious, have you organized how this writing system evolved? We know that the Cuezian writing system originated from basic pictures beginning with that sound, but how could a system such as this ever come to be?
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
Cevlakohn wrote:Curious, Lord Zompist the Impervious, have you organized how this writing system evolved? We know that the Cuezian writing system originated from basic pictures beginning with that sound, but how could a system such as this ever come to be?
Among humans, featural systems are all invented by individuals or committees. (The 'natural' development path seems to be from logography to syllabary to alphabet.)
It's possible this is what happened among the elcari. Or perhaps I'll think of something stranger. (They are aliens, after all.)
You know, Zomp, in that top examples of writing, the bas-relief on, instead of the sketches? How do we know it's not "Chelkaril"?
The nose is fairly narrow, top-to-bottom, which is what "narrow" seems to mean for the other examples, and the lips are noticable thicker than just lines.
Aidan wrote:You know, Zomp, in that top examples of writing, the bas-relief on, instead of the sketches? How do we know it's not "Chelkaril"?
The nose is fairly narrow, top-to-bottom, which is what "narrow" seems to mean for the other examples, and the lips are noticable thicker than just lines.
True; but you'd really have to compare the bas-relief to others by the same artist. The "narrower nose / wider lips" grapheme is relative to the other noses you draw. In carving, it usually means that the artist depicts a recognizably female face.
Aidan wrote:You know, Zomp, in that top examples of writing, the bas-relief on, instead of the sketches? How do we know it's not "Chelkaril"?
The nose is fairly narrow, top-to-bottom, which is what "narrow" seems to mean for the other examples, and the lips are noticable thicker than just lines.
True; but you'd really have to compare the bas-relief to others by the same artist. The "narrower nose / wider lips" grapheme is relative to the other noses you draw. In carving, it usually means that the artist depicts a recognizably female face.
Ah, so if it was part of a text, it would become obvious?
More logical implications (not so silly this time)
1. Elkaril writing, drama, and statuary must have a symbol to mean ?This is a person?s real face and not a word.? Perhaps a star in the middle of the forehead?
2. Elkaril drama does not go in so much for clever costumes and make-up as our own. Instead, it makes use of a mask at the beginning of each act so the audience can ?read? who the character is. The actors are of course wearing distinct clothing, but before the act begins, the actors come on to the stage and stand in their masks for a bit so the audience can read them and thus know, for example, that the man in the red robe is Hamlet, and the woman in the green robe is Ophelia. The masks look nothing like the actual character, but are that character?s name or description (?Nurse, Old Man, etc.?) This influenced the [Verdurian/Xurnese/Gurdagan/Viminian/some other/choose the most likely] drama to use masks, though the true purpose of the mask was misunderstood.
Shm Jay wrote:More logical implications (not so silly this time)
1. Elkaril writing, drama, and statuary must have a symbol to mean ?This is a person?s real face and not a word.? Perhaps a star in the middle of the forehead?
Perhaps the expression on the face could be read as the name or title of the person, but the features would be the real person's.
Shm Jay wrote:
2. Elkaril drama does not go in so much for clever costumes and make-up as our own. Instead, it makes use of a mask at the beginning of each act so the audience can ?read? who the character is. The actors are of course wearing distinct clothing, but before the act begins, the actors come on to the stage and stand in their masks for a bit so the audience can read them and thus know, for example, that the man in the red robe is Hamlet, and the woman in the green robe is Ophelia. The masks look nothing like the actual character, but are that character?s name or description (?Nurse, Old Man, etc.?) This influenced the [Verdurian/Xurnese/Gurdagan/Viminian/some other/choose the most likely] drama to use masks, though the true purpose of the mask was misunderstood.
Heh... sounds cleaver, until you realize that that would look just like a high school classroom skit for some assignment where people come out wearing signs that have their names on them. No offense, and maybe the Elkaril would view it differently, but that idea strikes me as very, very cheap...
Jay, there's no real need for a special symbol. The writing can be elaborated to almost any degree, but it still is stylized-- e.g. you still have to have pointy or square heads. It's usually fairly obvious whether a head is intended as writing or as a (non-writing) portrait.
I like the idea of masks in the form of words, though. I'll have to think about that.
zompist wrote:In general the Thinking Kinds don't mix much. I think some conworlders treat intelligent species as races or nationalities; my feeling is that they should be more remote than this. It's not like a medieval Arab choosing to live in China; it's more like choosing to live among orangutans.
Guenons in West Africa often form mixed-species groups with other guenons, or even with more distantly related monkeys like colobus. The different species have different social rôles within the group: Diana monkeys will be leaders and spot-nosed guenons will be sentries, for instance. There's nothing biologically unlikely, that I can think of, in having intelligent species on a conworld do the same.
(In case people haven't noticed, primates are a fascination of mine. I've long felt that their absence is one of Almea's few defects.)
NakedCelt wrote:Guenons in West Africa often form mixed-species groups with other guenons, or even with more distantly related monkeys like colobus. The different species have different social r?les within the group: Diana monkeys will be leaders and spot-nosed guenons will be sentries, for instance. There's nothing biologically unlikely, that I can think of, in having intelligent species on a conworld do the same.
Well, that's an excellent example of something that isn't so advisable for a beginning conworlder, but could be used by a more advanced one.
There's a purely linguistic example in the Language Construction Kit: I make fun of Larry Niven's word "klomter", which strikes me as cheap and implausible. And yet an -mt- combination isn't at all impossible.
I think the worlds people come up with after reading nothing but fantasy and D&D manuals have species intermixing simply because the subject hasn't been thought out. It's not much less silly than funny animal comics where the anthropomorphic animals marry across species boundaries, yet children are always purebred.
But sure, a well-informed conworlder can certainly create more symbiotic situations.
Zomp in the Elkaril grammar wrote:Though they cannot be written in our transcription (they can be in Elkar?l), vowels between u / ? / i can be used to indicate finer distinctions.
I checked the orthography section and i didnt see anything about in between vowels. Maybe I missed something, but would you care to elaborate?
Zomp in the Elkaril grammar wrote:Though they cannot be written in our transcription (they can be in Elkar?l), vowels between u / ? / i can be used to indicate finer distinctions.
I checked the orthography section and i didnt see anything about in between vowels. Maybe I missed something, but would you care to elaborate?
Sure: just as the vowel can be continuously varied, so can the drawn expression. Basically, the sadder the expression, the backer the vowel; and the angrier the expression, the lower the vowel (for the extension to e and ?).
What's the morphophonemic breakdown on that, Jeff?
I can tell you, in some conlang places, saying anything else to the author but ?Oh you?re great, wonderful, so clever, I want to have your baby? will get you months of yelling and abuse from the author (and sycophants) until you pack your bags and leave 
