Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

[dunomapuka]

The Proto-Isthmus material is lookin' good. I have this vague notion that I want to work on Doroh, though I'm unclear if PI is in a state where I can do that yet, and also of how much work I want to do. But the demon is whispering in my ear to lead it in some vaguely Low German direction.

I've been thinking for a while that Doroh should be treated as a little subfamily rather than as a language. Don't some of its words end up in Komejech? Do we have a list of those?

[Basilius]

Yeah, we discussed this earlier...

<< I feel that at some point we'll have to decide, somewhat voluntaristically, that we have enough info on the skeletal features of (Proto-)Doroh (don't we already, BTW?), and then to (collaboratively?) add necessary detail essentially on an a priori basis. For a number of reasons, Doroh appears to be the Isthmus language we need most urgently, and thus the natural starting point for retro-stuffing Proto-Isthmus and then fleshing out its other daughters. [...] Then we'll have to decide on how much dialectal differentiation we want for the historical Doroh; but even if we choose to keep it at a minimum level, realistically the Doroh who ruined Huyfárah around 786 YP must have spoken a language quite different from Proro-Doroh of ca. -1300 or -1400 YP. I am not sure which stage of the language we should focus on first. >>

I'd join such a collaborative effort too (obviously, I'm interested in the Doroh dialects on/around Affalinnei in the first place), but I think it depends on Corumayas' word (on whether the essential bits can be reasonably considered finalized, for the purposes of such a project).

Don't some of its words end up in Komejech? Do we have a list of those?

I think for such a list to be available, *someone* should compile it :)

[Legion]

I've been thinking for a while that Doroh should be treated as a little subfamily rather than as a language. Don't some of its words end up in Komejech? Do we have a list of those?

That's not really a concern; I may have made such a list at some point but I can't find it back and if I did it would be seriously outdated anyway.

[Taernsietr]

Huh, reading through the newer posts I had an idea. Has anyone written (with detail, not as in the outline) anything about major and minor wars that happened? I thought about describing a people that formed itself from refugees, along with their languages, so instead of creating a new family from scratch we could derive from, say, two or three well-developed conlangs into a pidgin of sorts. This could be the language of a semi-isolated city or a community inside any nation.

What do you guys think?

[Corumayas]

The Proto-Isthmus material is lookin' good. I have this vague notion that I want to work on Doroh, though I'm unclear if PI is in a state where I can do that yet, and also of how much work I want to do.

Thanks. I'm still working on it, though it's mostly a matter of organizing information that's already been discussed elsewhere, so it shouldn't take too long. There will still be gaps, but they'll be gaps that anyone who wants to work on an Isthmus lang can fill.

But the demon is whispering in my ear to lead it in some vaguely Low German direction.

A Low German-ish descendant would fit well, since Isthmus is kind of an alternate-reality Germanic already... in fact it was a book on early Germanic langs (Old English and Its Closest Relatives by Orrin W. Robinson, which I salvaged from the wreck of Borders a couple months ago) that inspired me to write up its grammar.

I've been thinking for a while that Doroh should be treated as a little subfamily rather than as a language.

Sounds good to me; it'd allow several people to design their own versions of Doroh. Maybe we could treat it a bit like the Lukpanic family, and try for a nice dialect continuum.

Huh, reading through the newer posts I had an idea. Has anyone written (with detail, not as in the outline) anything about major and minor wars that happened?

Not really. I think the most detailed descriptions of wars are in the Huyfárah article, starting around here, but they're still extremely brief summaries.

I thought about describing a people that formed itself from refugees, along with their languages, so instead of creating a new family from scratch we could derive from, say, two or three well-developed conlangs into a pidgin of sorts. This could be the language of a semi-isolated city or a community inside any nation.

That's similar to what Radius did with Puoni, actually, except it wasn't a pidgin, just a descendant of Fáralo with some Tlaliolz and Miwan influences.

Another (maybe more realistic) option for a pidgin/creole might be in the Fáralo trading posts in Tæm Hou; it could be a mixture of Fáralo and a Peninsular lang. The only problem is that the Peninsular langs are all spoken too early, so you'd have to derive a daughter of one of them first...

[roninbodhisattva]

Has there been any work done of !Ho languages done out in the open / available?

[dunomapuka]

Not really. I think the most detailed descriptions of wars are in the Huyfárah article, starting around here, but they're still extremely brief summaries.

I've been meaning to write the definitive description of what happens there from the Silver Age onward, but I keep stopping and starting over. I'll take another stab at it, with a fresh mind.

(It's just as well - our view of the world a few years ago resembled the Edastean empires floating in a featureless void-world, whereas now we have at least a vague sense of the diverse and colorful peoples that surround them, especially to the east.)

[dunomapuka]

Has there been any work done of !Ho languages done out in the open / available?

None at all! Ask Radius for details, though.

[dunomapuka]

I've been plotting the history of Huyfárah out to about 800 so far - I find that I have a semi-blank slate. I've been incorporating what we know about what happens in Woldulaš, Čisse, the Takuña, etc. Though I've come up with some completely new developments.

Is there anything in particular I should know, maybe of material that people have written about this period (cedh, duke?) that remains unreleased?

[Radius Solis]

Has there been any work done of !Ho languages done out in the open / available?

Only minimally: one time ages ago, in another thread that's almost certainly gone, I did post a basic phonology of Xshali. I don't think I even have the original anymore, but I remember at least the general shape of the inventory (below). i do also have a diachronic scenario in mind for certain aspects of that language: the development of a series of consonant mutations affecting mainly the accompaniments of word-initial clicks, arising from assimilation with final consonants in now-lost grammatical morphemes. Also, though Earth's click languages are largely isolating, there is no particular reason one couldn't be more synthetic, so I was planning to model the morphology somewhat on the Dravidian languages.

From memory, the consonants go basically like this. I recall there being rather more pulmonic consonants than this, but I can't figure out what they would have been. IIRC the vowel list was small and boring, to counterbalance the outlandish consonants and keep it from being a !Xóõ.

Code: Select all

m    n         ɲ    ŋ
p    s    ɬ    ʃ    k    ʔ
pʰ   ts   tɬ   tʃ    kʰ   h
b    d              g
ʋ    ɾ    l    j	

plus four anterior clicks: |, !, ||, ǂ 
each with five accompaniments: k, kʰ, ʔk, g, ŋ
totalling 20 clicks

[Cedh]

Has there been any work done of !Ho languages done out in the open / available?

Only minimally: one time ages ago, in another thread that's almost certainly gone, I did post a basic phonology of Xshali. I don't think I even have the original anymore [...] I recall there being rather more pulmonic consonants than this, but I can't figure out what they would have been.

I found the following Xšali consonant chart in an IRC log from September 2009. It seems the extra consonants were mostly palatals contrasting with the postalveolars:

<Radius> plain p c k ?
<Radius> aspirated p_h c_h k_h h
<Radius> implosive b_< d_< J\_< g_<
<Radius> affricate ts) tS) tK)
<Radius> fricative s S K
<Radius> nasal m n J N
<Radius> approximant w r l j (w)
<Radius> click | ! || =
<Radius> click accompaniments:
<Radius> plain k
<Radius> aspirated k_h
<Radius> nasal N
<Radius> glottalized ?k
<Radius> when you get it into a nice table, it turns out the affricates and fricatives all nicely fill up the gaps in the stop rows
<Radius> columns: labial, dental, postalveolar, lateral, palatal, velar, glottal. All the obstruents fit into a quite tidy pattern, despite the lack of plain /t/

...and an interesting comment about possible diachronics from Proto-!Ho to Xšali:

<Radius> looks like I'd had the protolanguage with only two click accompaniments, plain and breathy-voiced
<tzirtzi> breathyvoiced? did it have breathy voiced stops?
<Radius> yeah
<Radius> which became implosive, after causing tonogenesis

[Radius Solis]

Thanks, Cedh! That reminds me I dropped a click accompaniment when I posted that - the original plan was for five, and later I thought I'd scale it back to four, but then this time around I forgot I'd decided that.

As for the language itself, don't hold your breath, but there is a new ray of hope: Dewrad asked me the other day if Xshali were up for grabs, so we got to talking, and at present it appears we have agreed to collaborate on developing the language - with him as the main person. (That's for the language; cultural inquiries should still be directed to me.) We'll see how this goes, and there are significant limitations on how much time we each have to do this, but I hope we can at least get the language further along than it has been for the last four years.

[Nortaneous]

Finally found the sound changes from Ingomoe to Hanheliubl, so I think I'm finally going to start working on that. Porting the SCs over to ASCA now, although I'm going to have to revise them in the process because they sort of suck.

[the duke of nuke]

Yay! Good to see the Steppe getting some attention
I hope you don't tone down the strangeness of Hanheliubl too much.

[Nortaneous]

Radius: I found this, although I think the only difference between that and the IRC log phonology is the missing /r/ there.

Yay! Good to see the Steppe getting some attention
I hope you don't tone down the strangeness of Hanheliubl too much.

It'll probably get toned down a bit just by the fact that now I have some slight idea of what I'm doing, but the grammar will probably be much more interesting to make up for it. Also, it turns out that the SCs I dug up aren't all that accurate, so I'm having to fill in the gaps a lot.

How well did Proto-Western handle vowel clusters? I want to nuke them, but I'll hold off if they're sufficiently stable. (edit: turns out the answer is "not at all". right then, off they go)

[Cedh]

How well did Proto-Western handle vowel clusters? I want to nuke them, but I'll hold off if they're sufficiently stable. (edit: turns out the answer is "not at all". right then, off they go)

Proto-Western separated all vowel clusters with a glottal stop. However, IIRC you're deriving from Iŋomœ, which tolerates vowel clusters quite well (the Horse & Sheep sample text contains /eu oːu aɯ aːu œːu œu eːu ɯːu/, and in the lexicon I see /iu ɯːi eiu aɯiu oiu eo ao/ at a quick glance).

[Nortaneous]

How well did Proto-Western handle vowel clusters? I want to nuke them, but I'll hold off if they're sufficiently stable. (edit: turns out the answer is "not at all". right then, off they go)

Proto-Western separated all vowel clusters with a glottal stop. However, IIRC you're deriving from Iŋomœ, which tolerates vowel clusters quite well (the Horse & Sheep sample text contains /eu oːu aɯ aːu œːu œu eːu ɯːu/, and in the lexicon I see /iu ɯːi eiu aɯiu oiu eo ao/ at a quick glance).

Yeah, but they appear to be recent developments.

[Radius Solis]

Oh wow, that thread still exists? Cool!

Say...... the original Cursed Relay was in 2006, and the Second Relay was in 2009, so... what if it's a triennial event? 2012 is right around the corner! Something to think about, maybe? We could get another whole region populated with languages, maybe something on Tuysafa or Zeluzhia this time.

[Corumayas]

There's some interesting stuff in your new history of Huyfárah, Dunomapuka. I especially like the bits about philosophy and religion: Maké, and the various weird cults that keep popping up.

(Also, we should do the same for Athalē at some point. Aside from the little bit Cedh wrote about the House of Rikhus we don't really have anything about them after 389.)

Dewrad asked me the other day if Xshali were up for grabs, so we got to talking, and at present it appears we have agreed to collaborate on developing the language - with him as the main person. (That's for the language; cultural inquiries should still be directed to me.) We'll see how this goes, and there are significant limitations on how much time we each have to do this, but I hope we can at least get the language further along than it has been for the last four years.

Cool. I hope so too-- it'd be great to see more of Xšalad.

As a minor contribution, in case you've both forgotten: there were 4 Xšali loanwords in the original Adāta lexicon. Their sources were given as follows:

gamun 'cumin'
naga 'cardamom'
t'ekim- 'to trade'
t'uluš 'cinnamon'

Adāta borrowed the last two as thekin and thulus.

Say...... the original Cursed Relay was in 2006, and the Second Relay was in 2009, so... what if it's a triennial event? 2012 is right around the corner! Something to think about, maybe? We could get another whole region populated with languages, maybe something on Tuysafa or Zeluzhia this time.

Was it really that long ago? Man, how time flies.

Anyway, I was just going to say good idea, but... it seems to already be under way!

[Radius Solis]

Although I provided basically zero background for the speakers of Dimana Lokud, it was in the back of my mind at the time to stick it somewhere in Akana, if it is wanted. That's why I left the description with so few references to any kind of setting, because I didn't know of a good place to fit it into. But now I'd like to work on that, at least enough that I can have an idea of climate and technology so I can give the lexicon some life.

So let me ask, first, is Lokud wanted? I can understand if not, since half of its words are closely based on wordforms in Haitian Creole (though no Creole definitions were kept) and thus comes off feeling somewhat IE-ish. Of course I did the same thing for Jamna Kopiai, half of whose roots were ripped from Pirahã in the same manner, but words of French origin are going to be more recognizable than words from an obscure Amazonian language.

And then there's the question of where to put it. It should be somewhere temperate or cold, not too close to the tropics; there isn't much such land left in Peilash outside the Sishin mountains, and I have thus far been happy to leave Tuysafa entirely to others. An island would be a possibility. So would southern Zeluzhia. Any suggestions? The time period would be no earlier than the Classical era, and probably somewhat later.

[Cedh]

Dimana Lokud is definitely welcome, at least as far as I am concerned. As for where to put it, at the moment I would suggest either (north)eastern Tuysafa (so it might interact with some languages created in the ongoing reconstruction game), southern inland Siixtaguna (so it might interact with Affanonic, Lotoka, and Doroh - for example, it could be the last remainder of the language family spoken in the "walled town culture" of that area), or the Peilaš west coast, NW of the Lukpanic area (so it could interact with Western languages of the Coastal and Steppe subgroups). Or maybe the eastern edge of the Western Steppe, at the foot of the mountains (so it could interact with descendants of Çetázó)...

[Corumayas]

I agree, it's wanted! I don't think we should be picky about where your words come from... after all, we already have one lang whose phonology and vocabulary are largely Japanese, and a whole family that seems to have a bunch of cognates with (or loans from?) Chinese.

As for where to put it, in addition to Cedh's suggestions, there's of course some areas that are more untouched if you want a freer hand: the far north of Peilaš is undescribed west of Qedik territory; northern and central Tuysáfa are free; and of course southern Zeluzhia is completely empty.

[dunomapuka]

I veto southern Siixtaguna cause I think there's too much going on there already - all the other ideas could work.

[Radius Solis]

Having thought about this a bit... what would you guys think of placing it in the southern Ici forest as one of the non-Miwan minority languages there? There was always hypothesized to be one or two isolates still hanging around down there even into the Pencek era, and the phonology fits well into the areal trend established by Miw: syllable pattern C(approx)V(C), mostly open syllables, simple voicing contrast among both stops and fricatives, and standard average consonant inventories. Of course grammatically there's not much similarity, at least with the little that's known of Miw grammar - but that's not unreasonable, and who knows, maybe some of Lokud's more interesting grammatical features will turn out to occur in Miw too. For all we know Miw could have obviation, or verbal spatial deixis, or a large inventory of counter words. Or perhaps there were such features in nearby Hitatc languages, not that the phonology is so much of a match with those.

If we set the time of Dimana Lokud to the classical era we could get a small number of loanwords, via Miw, finding their way into Naidda and Buruya Nzaysa, and later on, more of them into Pencek and Puoni. Plus any other languages in a position to take Miw loans. I'd be happy to import Miwan and a few Edastean loanwords into Lokud, as well. There would be room for at least one descendant as late as 1200-1500 YP, or possibly more if they spread south over the mountains into the back regions of Xshali territory. I did want to leave open the possibility of a descendant or two (and if anyone else would like to derive a daughter they're welcome to do so).

[the duke of nuke]

Sounds good to me
(Not that any of my languages actually feature in that area...)