zompist bboard

Not even bothering with fiddling with the <a> in the title. Sorry.

It's here! Hurrah!

Must sleep, or could read Munkhashi. Will read, and report later.

Edit: The rank system is fascinating. Is that something natural in Munkhashi, or did the Ktuvoks create it?

The plural simple present is described as "The plural also affixes a vowel, but of opposite frontness to the root vowel," yet it's "pochô, rotô, têtse" not the "poche, rote, jachâ, têtso" I would expect from the above.

Why can <zh> appear without a vowel?

By Calto (or, I should say, by Gelálh), just when I need to get work done, this appears.
But every cloud has a silver lining.

AVE ZOMP!

This isn't really a Munkhashi question, but reading that the word ktuvok is an Elkaril borrowing, makes me wonder how it occurred that an Elkaril word got into Verdurian. Especially a word for a concept that a Cadhinorian-descendant culture would find very salient, considering how much Cadhinorian paganism deals with the Ktuvoks as antagonists. I feel like that would be something akin to English borrowing the word for "Satan" from Indonesian or something.

con quesa wrote:I feel like that would be something akin to English borrowing the word for "Satan" from Indonesian or something.

Why not? It borrowed the word from Hebrew.

Shm Jay wrote:

con quesa wrote:I feel like that would be something akin to English borrowing the word for "Satan" from Indonesian or something.

Why not? It borrowed the word from Hebrew.

Who are exactly the people from whom English-speakers (traditionally anyway) ultimately got their religion. But the Verdurians certainly didn't acquire ktuvok-hatred from the Elkaril.

Atom wrote:The plural simple present is described as "The plural also affixes a vowel, but of opposite frontness to the root vowel," yet it's "pochô, rotô, têtse" not the "poche, rote, jachâ, têtso" I would expect from the above.

I noticed this too. From other examples in the grammar (e.g., Gdurur tsekê drun tetlednadzu) I'm assuming the forms given are correct and the description/diagram of the mutation is in error.


I also notice that the gloss of "Jobat tlar" is missing "city".

Beasty! I like

In the "numbers" table, it looks like the x^8 column should actually read 8^x. Is this correct?

One minor complaint: From time to time red and green are used contrastively to illustrate two grammatical points in a sentence. The shades you have chosen of these colours are impossible to distinguish for a red-green colourblind person like myself. I also remember this happening in the Old Skourene grammar, don't specifically recall in others.

Good work, zompist!

But I spotted two errors:

1. The i below the u in the vowel chart must be an o, methinks.
2. The introduction says the language was VOS; the syntax section that it was VSO.

Barkhran Baykhan n a city on a tributary of the Tmekh [‘ox ford’]

Is zompist taking sides in the Oxbridge rivalry?

OK, corrections have been made. The plural suffix was intended to work as described, but I messed up when actually using it.

As for Oxbridge, I couldn't have a Cambridge because cams hadn't been invented yet...

con quesa wrote:

Shm Jay wrote:

con quesa wrote:I feel like that would be something akin to English borrowing the word for "Satan" from Indonesian or something.

Why not? It borrowed the word from Hebrew.

Who are exactly the people from whom English-speakers (traditionally anyway) ultimately got their religion. But the Verdurians certainly didn't acquire ktuvok-hatred from the Elkaril.

It's slightly unexpected, but certainly not implausible. Languages borrow from odd sources, and often when a concept is very common, it will have a big range of synonyms. A taboo concept might also have no common word, or the "official" term might lose out to slang or vernacular descriptions - cf. Romance caballus for Latin equus "horse".

I always took it that the Cadhinorians' vioctet mierae disappeared from their consciousness during the Dark Years and became mythologised, in the same way that the goblins and gremlins of folklore - powerful and malicious beings - were abstracted into story creatures rather than something that was believed to exist.

SHG is pretty much correct. In Caďinorian times, the salient vioctet were the vioctet mierae, the ktuvoks; but by the Dark Years vyožî generally referrred to the Powers that magicians served. So a pithy and somewhat nasty-sounding word was borrowed (from the Barakhinei, who were more in contact with the elcari).

That's weird, I deleted SHG's post somehow. At least it's still in cache:

So Haleza Grise wrote:I like the language a lot - it has the nasty feel about it that we saw in the Shikhar piece, I think. I wish the lexicon was a bit bigger, but I suppose that's consistent with a language we have no written records of.

One point: plut is listed as the verb "grind", but blutla is "mill" and blutmu as the associated action. Is that because it's a despective?

And is there an associated verb for drêchmu?

Is there a word for "cousin"?

The -la and -mu suffixes always start from the E form. You can usually work backwards, so drêchmu trêch 'ally with’.

Cousin will be rêlno, rêlsho.

zompist wrote:As for Oxbridge, I couldn't have a Cambridge because cams hadn't been invented yet...

Zompist, you put Oxford on your map of the evil empire. (and the post-Normanization back-etymology of Cam is "crooked")

Yes, but he couldn't have put Cambridge there because cams haven't been invented yet...

Also: no. Yes, "cam" as a river name means "crooked", but not in the case of Cambridge, where it's an evolution of "Cantebrigge" thanks to Norman influence. Cantebrigge itself is a random mutation of the earlier Grantabrigge, the bridge over the Granta river. Cf nearby Grantchester. The modern river name actually derives from the town, not vice versa.

If the name hadn't changed randomly, it would be Grantbridge, which could be the basis of a more subtle inclusion.

I'm perfectly happy with Oxford being in the evil empire, and not Cambridge

Also - thanks for the etymology, Sal. Something new every day.

Atom wrote: Why can <zh> appear without a vowel?

Prolly because it attaches to the following syllable.

Salmoneus wrote:If the name hadn't changed randomly, it would be Grantbridge, which could be the basis of a more subtle inclusion.

Often placenames indeed develop in strange ways. My neighbourhood's name developed more or less like Krakoczyn > Krokoczyn > Prokoczyn > Prokocim, with few regular changes.

FWIW, I have fond memories of both Oxford and Cambridge. I had lunch in the Inklings' favorite pub, I went punting on both the Cam and the Isis (and was proud of myself for not falling in), and had a nice tea somewhere at the riverside near Cambridge.

In Dhekhnami, zh and wa both cliticize to the next word; it's fair to assume that this was true of Munkhâshi as well. (Dhekhnami zh also assimilates in voicing, but this may not have happened with Munkhâshi.)

Klhêpat plikil ran, "Gat lit lhach ôthshrawalâ rurumálh piko?
say.D.past bitterly cow / be.E for who create.A.past-pl pl-god this.one.D
The cow lamented: Why did the gods create me?

Dzoteum gdirmu zh gmikmu zh dzômmu piko.
capture.E-pl-intensive war and anger and destruction this.one.D
War, anger and violence imprison me.

Khrath gogotálh zh prashino lhim dhedhlêkno lit piko.
be.A pl-ktuvok and no.man other pl-herd-man for this.one.D
There are no herdsmen for me other than the ktuvoks.

Ôthprôkhen kir mimrima mets piko."
make-follow.A-request to pl-field good this.one.D
May I be led (dragged) to good pastures.

- adapted from Yasna 29, The Cow's Lament, a Zoroastrian Gatha.

Shunshrakhalh (oops, typo: the r didn't appear)
forbidden-to.name.A-one
He who must not be named

corrections pls kthx

Edit: I guess it should be "no herdsmen besides the ktuvoks" or something like that. Huh.

A few errors:

annoy.E.past that.ideamayor come.A ktuvok (missing space)

know.B physician child (is pmôt supposed to be glossed as "know" in these sentences?)

Ôthkluwam kzhakno mrimno ruch pnakildin.
drop.B.past peasant pitchfork.D
The soldier made the peasant drop his pitchfork.

That's all I remember.

Thanks for finding the typos; they should be corrected now.

rotting ham wrote:Klhêpat plikil ran, "Gat lit lhach ôthshrawalâ rurumálh piko?
say.D.past bitterly cow / be.E for who create.A.past-pl pl-god this.one.D
The cow lamented: Why did the gods create me?

You can just say “Ôthshrawalâ lit lhach...?”. The example in the grammar has gat because that's the main verb of the sentence.

Dzoteum gdirmu zh gmikmu zh dzômmu piko.
capture.E-pl-intensive war and anger and destruction this.one.D
War, anger and violence imprison me.

Should be Dzotewum (to avoid the double vowel).

Khrath gogotálh zh prashino lhim dhedhlêkno lit piko.
be.A pl-ktuvok and no.man other pl-herd-man for this.one.D
There are no herdsmen for me other than the ktuvoks.

I think I'd say Jarul pelkho gogotálh dhedhlêkno..., i.e. there are no herdsmen without the ktuvoks. (Chal is existential ‘be’. As the subject is the herdsmen, it’s demoted to E.)

Ôthprôkhen kir mimrima mets piko."
make-follow.A-request to pl-field good this.one.D
May I be led (dragged) to good pastures.

metsil (as this is a verb).

So would there ever be an occasion to speak about a ktuvok in the E form, or would that invariably be tantamount to insurrection?

bulbaquil wrote:So would there ever be an occasion to speak about a ktuvok in the E form, or would that invariably be tantamount to insurrection?

For a human, never, since they can never be in a superior position to a ktuvok.

A ktuvok could do it, though, in an all-ktuvok conversation. But then they'd probably not be using Munkhashi!

I suppose Ervëa and Attafei could have used the E form legitimately, but of course they wouldn't have used the language of their enemies. BTW, which language did they use to communicate with each other?