What's next

Warmaster · Post by **Warmaster** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 1:52 pm

Just a note, i "Borrowed" a newer times new roman font off a friend, and can now read the count of years. really good, i actuly found it quite funny, Mark, you should try some humour writing!

Post by **zompist** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 4:14 pm

Warmaster: Thanks much. As for humor, you should explore zompist.com (and linked sites) a bit more thoroughly...

Glenn, there's a DNS propagation problem I have to bug my ISP about. I suspect you're loading zompist.com rather than www.zompist.com.

And yes, that's a rift valley.

Raphael, I don't have any great ideas for making Arc?l unusual... which is one reason I'm in no hurry. (I try not to force inspiration... I'd rather wait until new ideas decide to come.)

GreenBowTie · Post by **GreenBowTie** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 4:50 pm

Nice grammar. It makes me think of dust for some reason. One little thing, though: I'm pretty sure the "ch" in German "ich" is palatal, while you have it listed as velar, and I think the wrong IPA symbol for the sound in "Bach" is used.

Not to nitpick or anything. A very nice language.

Glenn · Post by **Glenn** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 5:02 pm

zompist wrote:Glenn, there's a DNS propagation problem I have to bug my ISP about. I suspect you're loading zompist.com rather than www.zompist.com.

And yes, that's a rift valley.

Sure enough, that was the issue...I'm on the same page as everyone else now (pun intended).

I mentioned the rift valley in Arcel because I remembered you mentioning it on the old VV bulletin board. I would ask whether it can be considered (like the East African Rift Valley on Earth) the site for the evolution of humanity on Almea, but I recall that you've said that the actual points of origin for all of Almea's intelligent species are unknown.

p@,
Glenn

Iscun · Post by **Iscun** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 11:16 pm

zompist wrote:I have a whole continent's worth of history to do first. Having a map is the first step, though!

What do you have done of the history already? Do you have any major events already planned out?

Post by **zompist** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 12:09 am

GreenBowTie wrote:One little thing, though: I'm pretty sure the "ch" in German "ich" is palatal, while you have it listed as velar, and I think the wrong IPA symbol for the sound in "Bach" is used.

You're right, it's wrongly listed in the velar column. I changed it some time ago, and forgot to update the chart. And the symbol's wrong, ugh.

Post by **zompist** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 12:26 am

Iscun wrote:What do you have done of the history already? Do you have any major events already planned out?

Eh, it's at the embarrassingly vague stage. I have a couple of pages of notes, but only one interesting idea. (Ask me in a few years which one it was.)

Aidan · Post by **Aidan** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 5:07 pm

zompist wrote:And yes, that's a rift valley.

Just to mention a fascinating bit of information I've picked up, for designing geologic history. I can't tell from this map whether you know it or not, but either way, other people can probably find it useful. It's one of my major considerations when doing geologic histories.

Rift systems almost invariably have a trigonal arrangement, i.e. they have three arms radiating out from a central point at roughly 120? spreads. One arm often fails to develop into a full plate split. Rift valleys are either developing rifts, that haven't gotten to the point of letting in the sea, or those failed arms.

Once I learned this, it was amazing how true it was, looking at a plate map of the Earth. The Red Sea, The Gulf of Aden, and the Great African Rift Valley, are a three-armed system radiating out from Djibouti. The split between Africa and South America shows a clear 120? angle, with the third arm being the Benue Trough.

All the ex-Gondwana plates show it very clearly (being the last set of plate break ups), though the boundaries of the Antarctic plate, are distorted on most maps.

It's neat. I like sharing neat things

.

In particular for Arcel, the rift looks like it could be part of a three armed system with the bays around the region marked Mnese, but I can't quite tell.

Glenn · Post by **Glenn** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:26 pm

Aidan wrote:Rift systems almost invariably have a trigonal arrangement, i.e. they have three arms radiating out from a central point at roughly 120? spreads. One arm often fails to develop into a full plate split. Rift valleys are either developing rifts, that haven't gotten to the point of letting in the sea, or those failed arms.

I’ll be darned; I never knew that. I wouldn’t mind including this feature in the map of my conworld, but I doubt I could do it justice without drastically revising the map. (If I ever get a decent world map completed, I can show it to you and let you tell me how (im)plausible it is…or whether I ought to go back and redrift all the continents from scratch.

)

p@,
Glenn

Glenn · Post by **Glenn** » Fri Mar 14, 2003 8:31 am

Raphael wrote:
zompist wrote:I have a whole continent's worth of history to do first.
IIRC, you once said that you planed to make Verduria more or less familiar and pre-industrial-Europe-like (both in language and in culture), and get more weird the farther you get away from it.

That would mean that Arc?l has to be odder than both Xurno and Dekhnam from a Western point of view. Any ideas on how to do that? Perhaps by trying to adapt the strangest customs anthropologists reported from hunter/gatherer and early acriculture cultures to more settled civilisations?

Just a side comment--this is something that's been on my mind lately: taking unusual customs (in terms of religion, custom, naming, etc.) from "early" societies and extrapolating them into later and more "civilized" times, to see what they become. I think that there's a lot of scope for extremely interesting results.

p@,
Glenn

almeadude · Post by **almeadude** » Sun Mar 16, 2003 8:27 pm

Hey, I'm new. I just wanted to know when we'll be seeing Xurnash!

Post by **zompist** » Sun Mar 16, 2003 9:54 pm

almeadude wrote:Hey, I'm new. I just wanted to know when we'll be seeing Xurnash!

I'm not sure-- I keep feeling like there's something still to do on the Axunaic languages. Probably it'll gel as I go finish the materials on Xurnese religions...

almeadude · Post by **almeadude** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 6:56 am

Thanks!

almeadude · Post by **almeadude** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 11:41 am

Is Flaidish almost done?

Post by **zompist** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 1:11 pm

almeadude wrote:Is Flaidish almost done?

Eh, it proceeds in fits and starts. First I'll probably finish that drawing maps page I mentioned on another thread.

Warmaster · Post by **Warmaster** » Wed Apr 30, 2003 4:21 pm

just to resurect the old thread, i was wondering what you are working on now mark? anything near finished? it has been nearly two months since the cuezi grammar....please sir, can i have some more?

Post by **zompist** » Thu May 01, 2003 12:05 am

I'm still working on Flaidish. I won't say it's done, but it's looking a lot more like a grammar.

About 40 pages and counting...

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Thu May 01, 2003 3:34 am

zompist wrote:I'm still working on Flaidish. I won't say it's done, but it's looking a lot more like a grammar. About 40 pages and counting...

Wish I could say that about the Noyatukah grammar; I have about 40 pages, too, but it's all phonology. I feel like I'm drowning.

Warmaster · Post by **Warmaster** » Thu May 01, 2003 12:39 pm

Can't wait!

Jaaaaaa · Post by **Jaaaaaa** » Thu May 01, 2003 2:58 pm

Wow... my new draft of the Gonardoi grammar is only 10 pages and that'sthe whole thing... how l;ong have you been at this?

Post by **zompist** » Thu May 01, 2003 3:09 pm

Jaaaaaa wrote:Wow... my new draft of the Gonardoi grammar is only 10 pages and that'sthe whole thing... how l;ong have you been at this?

Heh, you could probably figure it out from posts to the board. I think I started it in January or February, but I haven't worked on it continuously.

Sometimes I wish I had some extra lifetimes to look forward to. There are some hints as to the nature of Old Flaidish; but I don't know that I can take the time to work them all out.

Jaaaaaa · Post by **Jaaaaaa** » Thu May 01, 2003 3:17 pm

Yeah, I've felt the same way.

Heh, you could probably figure it out from posts to the board. I think I started it in January or February, but I haven't worked on it continuously.

Ah, /Da?@duI?/. I only started Gonardoi in late summer. And I almost totally changed it in december.

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Thu May 01, 2003 7:34 pm

Sometimes I wish I had some extra lifetimes to look forward to.

You could become a raven mocker. You could move to Washington and there steal the unlived years of washed-up politicians and add them to your own. (I'd suggest starting with Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, but you probably couldn't squeeze many years out of them.)

gach · Post by **gach** » Fri May 02, 2003 10:03 am

Talking about the macho conlanging from the other tread. Now you are counting pages of your grammars

. Maybe it's just better for me to not count how many pages I have now

.

eodrakken · Post by **eodrakken** » Fri May 02, 2003 10:31 pm

In the Elkar?l grammar, zompist wrote:I realize that I've whetted the reader's appetite; but materials on Elkar?l orthography are not ready.

Has there been any progress on that front? My appetite is indeed whetted.