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

[dunomapuka]

That is a capital idea. Dimana Lokud would fit in well alongside the Miwan languages. Someone should make a linguistic map of that whole area...

One of my ideas for that area is that Lewsfárah, and then Mɨdu inherit the Fáralo colonies of the South Coast, so a form of Namɨdu ends up being spoken along a long stretch of the coast (gradually entrenching itself from ca. 600 onward), maybe even into the Peninsula, but not penetrating far into the interior. The way this interacts with Lokud and other local languages should be interesting. More on this when I'm done with Jouki Stəy...

[dunomapuka]

I needed a break from my Relay language, so I decided to do something with Lukpanic. Specifically, the language of the island city of Poalugbum (Faɽmu), where the native Lukpanic dialect survives. It's called Fu.

My artistic intentions are for city and language both to be slightly sinister, with bizarre sound changes and near-monotheistic worship of the cruel goddess Poalu (Faɽ).

[the duke of nuke]

Lovely! It's really nice to see some development of the later Lukpanic languages, by their original creator no less

There do seem to be a few sinister things about the Lukpanab even from early on, though I think that might well be because of Coastal Western influence. What's your view?
(Also, can you guess why I changed the chaos goddess' name? It's a real reason, though a very obscure one... Perhaps I'll make a picture of her. Pictures are good.)
[/rambling]

[dunomapuka]

I believe you said once that she was modeled after Tori Amos? Thus Tåle, Tori, whatever.

I originally wanted the Lukpanab to be a nice, agreeable, peaceful people. Now I've sort of lost interest in that notion... they were not warlike, sure, but that doesn't preclude a taste for human sacrifice...

Actually, I'm laughing hysterically as I write this, because I just found a mythological sample text I wrote for P.Luk. It's absurdly nasty and insane - at the top I have a list of words used in the text, to be added to the lexicon. They sound like death metal lyrics: "thrust, push; barb, thorn; penis; flesh-textured; raw meat; to have sex (of animals); anger, wrath; confusion, chaos..."

It remains unfinished because I was trying, and failing, to fit it into some kind of metrical scheme.

---

P.Luk. Lukpanab is reflected in Fu as Ɽupam, with the generalized meaning "people," while Lunuəsi survives as nwof, meaning "foreign; from the mainland."

[the duke of nuke]

I believe you said once that she was modeled after Tori Amos? Thus Tåle, Tori, whatever.

Indeed. I practically worship Tori Amos anyway, so it was inevitable that a red goddess should turn up in my Akanaran work .
I am actually working on a method of producing fresco-style pictures to appear as Akanaran art, so there will be a devotional picture of Tålelina appearing soonish.

I originally wanted the Lukpanab to be a nice, agreeable, peaceful people. Now I've sort of lost interest in that notion... they were not warlike, sure, but that doesn't preclude a taste for human sacrifice...

Actually, I'm laughing hysterically as I write this, because I just found a mythological sample text I wrote for P.Luk. It's absurdly nasty and insane - at the top I have a list of words used in the text, to be added to the lexicon. They sound like death metal lyrics: "thrust, push; barb, thorn; penis; flesh-textured; raw meat; to have sex (of animals); anger, wrath; confusion, chaos..."

It remains unfinished because I was trying, and failing, to fit it into some kind of metrical scheme.

That does seem pretty extreme... On the other hand, not incredibly so - we have the Miw in Akana (also peaceful but with horrific religious rituals), and I'm sure there are a few historic examples in our world, though most - like the Aztecs, or Papuan cannibals - seem to have been more combative.

Either way, I'll probably update the Culture of Ishe article when you've published a bit more on Poalubgum and Fu in order to reflect the "revised" Lukpanic culture.

[dunomapuka]

Either way, I'll probably update the Culture of Ishe article when you've published a bit more on Poalubgum and Fu in order to reflect the "revised" Lukpanic culture.

Sure. I still see them, to be clear, as a relatively peaceful people*. My general suggestion, though, is "go nuts." I use Lukpanic as a sort of repository for kooky ideas, in an area of the world where I have (relative) carte blanche. I find it slightly humorous; Fu, even more so. Often the idea makes me laugh out loud as I work. A slightly sinister island city whose language has a short, funny-sounding name.

The local cult of Poalu has essentially absorbed Taliəlina (the reflex should be *Taleñ or *Taneñ or something, but I don't know if it survives), particularly her chaotic personality and perhaps some details of her artistic depiction. I eagerly await your Tori-inspired artworks. Anyway, I will certainly publish some culture articles, once I've done some reading for inspiration.

I don't recall if I finally decided whether Proto-Lukpanic was written. My inclination is to say NO. But, I would like writing to show up by the Fu era - whose date is completely flexible. I said 100 YP on the wiki but that's just pencilled-in. I still have to change a few references to writing in the Lukpanic materials - but I am honored to now show up as the god of crafts!


*For example, I really like what you wrote here:

Serious conflict was rare in the Lukpanic cities; it seems that none of them originally had standing armies, and in the rare event of war between cities or of raids from nearby peoples, citizens would simply arm themselves with clubs (I.L. ŋau) and spears (dåŋu). Armour was almost unknown.

[dunomapuka]

I found myself suddenly thinking about Pre-Proto-Lukpanic, the ancestor of Lukpanic, and those "few small isolate languages scattered across the northwestern part of the continent." If anybody's interested in developing these, I encourage them! Anyway, here's the quick 'n' dirty phonology and SCs that I coughed up in half an hour:

PHONOLOGY
p t k kʷ ʔ ʔʷ
pʼ tʼ kʼ kʷʼ
m n ŋ ŋʷ
w s ɬ ɮ x xʷ h
a i u ə

ə is never stressed. Stress rules otherwise the same as Proto-Lukpanic. No vowel hiatus (/ʔ/ is used to break it up); words don't begin with a vowel. No consonant clusters, but all consonants can occur in any position, including finally.

SOUND CHANGES TO PROTO-LUKPANIC (not necessarily in this order)
ə > /i/ medially after a stop.
remaining ə > 0.
x, h > 0 except initially; where both > h.
xʷ > f.
Initial /ʔ/ > 0.
ʔ > /k/ before /a i/.
ʔ > /p/ before /u/.
(the above rules apply when /ʔ/ follows a stressed vowel or is used to signal a morphological break. otherwise, it is lost between vowels, occasionally kept irregularly, and treated as above.)
ʔʷ > /p/.
ejectives > voiced stops.
labiovelars > labial-velars.
VCC > VəC, so *kasən > *kasn > *kaən.
final stops neutralize to /p/ (if unvoiced), /b/ (voiced).
/ɮ/ > /l/.
/ɬ/ > /s/; except finally, where > /l/.
w > β.
f > h.
final /n ŋʷ ŋ/ > /l m 0/.
final /h/ > 0.
final /β/ > /b/.
/i u/ > [e o] / _a.

This language was on the isolating side and it formed plurals by partial reduplication. The speakers are hunter-gatherers and may have a Pacific Northwest- or Ainu-like culture. They worship many gods, chief among them *Pahiŋ, goddess of the earth (In Lukpanic, this is Pai, a rather secondary character, superseded by Poalu etc.).

The language was not spoken in Lukpania, but far to the north, maybe on the coast. When the Lukpanab migrated south they found the land inhabited by the Tulameya, whose languages influenced their own, changing the look and feel of it dramatically.

I don't actually want to call it "Pre-Proto-Lukpanic." If you develop it (or a daughter) you can call it whatever you want.

[Cedh]

Looks good so far! I've just gone through the PL lexicon to figure out possible protoforms (have a look in your inbox for the results), and it seems to work quite well. The frequency of proto-phonemes is somewhat skewed though wrt cross-linguistic markedness, so the next ~100 words added to Proto-Lukpanic should probably include more intervocalic voiceless stops, more /s/, and fewer non-centering diphthongs. Also, I'd expect many PL stems ending in /p b/ to alternate with /t d/ or /k g/ in suffixed forms, and stems ending in /l/ to alternate with /n/ or /s/, especially in verbs (where non-suffixed forms are very rarely used).

[the duke of nuke]

Interesting! Your mention of an ancestral earth-goddess spurred me to work out what the names of the classical gods would be in the proto-language:
Poalu < *(p/ʔ/ʔʷ)uHalu[X]
Dunom < *tʼunuHa(m/ŋʷ)
Lajisa < *latʼ(i/ə)(s/ɬ)a[X]
Tålelina < *taliCəlina[X]
Teletel < *taCəlitaCəl
Ruŋme < *(x/h)uŋʷu[X]
where C is any consonant, H is ʔ/x/h, and X is x/xʷ/h/ŋ (square brackets indicate uncertainty).


And I'll get to work on Tulameya at some point soon. I do have a wordlist somewhere, and even some grammar notes...

[dunomapuka]

Looks good so far! I've just gone through the PL lexicon to figure out possible protoforms (have a look in your inbox for the results), and it seems to work quite well. The frequency of proto-phonemes is somewhat skewed though wrt cross-linguistic markedness, so the next ~100 words added to Proto-Lukpanic should probably include more intervocalic voiceless stops, more /s/, and fewer non-centering diphthongs. Also, I'd expect many PL stems ending in /p b/ to alternate with /t d/ or /k g/ in suffixed forms, and stems ending in /l/ to alternate with /n/ or /s/, especially in verbs (where non-suffixed forms are very rarely used).

Indeed... the distribution of sounds is really weird, yes. There's too many ejectives. So my sound changes will be subject to a couple revisions. (I never really nail it until the 3rd or 4th try.)

As for the stem alterations, I just didn't really want them... to counteract my tendency to use them everywhere! The saving grace is that the PL verbal system is quite young - perhaps totally postdating all the word-final neutralizations. That's why it's so clunky and unassimilated: it descends from a bunch of serial verbs and particles that got stacked on top of each other.

Duke: it would be cool if the Lukpanic pantheon was a mix of extremely ancient spirits and recent innovations... maybe a couple of those are imports from Tulameya. (what are the speakers called?)

[4pq1injbok]

... so the next ~100 words added to Proto-Lukpanic should probably include more intervocalic voiceless stops, more /s/, and fewer non-centering diphthongs. Also, I'd expect many PL stems ending in /p b/ to alternate with /t d/ or /k g/ in suffixed forms, and stems ending in /l/ to alternate with /n/ or /s/ ...

Some thoughts:

The PL centering diphthongs, given that they compensate for loss of an illicit coda /l/ in composition, seem most straightforward as proto-long vowels. (Which might easily have had other reflexes before a proto-V, or word-finally.)

I think I would've gone with a more restricted set of proto-final C in PPL than in PL, probably just /l/ or /l (nasal)/. There's a sound change attested somewhere in Austronesian where the /u/ is lost in final /pu bu mu/, seemingly through being reinterpreted as simple rounding of the C. (In fact Japanese sorta did that with just /mu/.) That's a good fit for the PL final labials; labials are a strange target of neutralisation, otherwise.

If there aren't enough outcome /s/, that's a good place to invoke /s/ < */ts/ vel sim while something else happened to old /s/.

[Cedh]

TzirTzi had to cancel his hosting account recently, so the wiki has moved to a new location. It's now hosted at

http://akana.conlang.org/

We've taken the opportunity to upgrade to the newest version of MediaWiki. This means that the stylesheet will need to be adapted a bit. In the meantime, the wiki looks slightly less polished, but everything seems to be working. We've also moved the forum over to http://akana.conlang.org/forum/, so update your bookmarks.

[dunomapuka]

In the 3rd and 4th centuries YP, Buruya Nzaysa came to be widely used as a trade language in much of the Eigə valley. When Buruya became part of Huyfárah in 351 YP, the language's position was challenged even among native speakers by the politically more relevant Fáralo language, but the decline of Huyfárah from the late 5th century onwards allowed Buruya to rekindle its own cultural heritage, and the language was thus able to gain renewed vitality.

Good to have that situation cleared up

[Drydic]

If you had waited 10 days, it would have been a year...

[Ser]

In the 3rd and 4th centuries YP, Buruya Nzaysa came to be widely used as a trade language in much of the Eigə valley. When Buruya became part of Huyfárah in 351 YP, the language's position was challenged even among native speakers by the politically more relevant Fáralo language, but the decline of Huyfárah from the late 5th century onwards allowed Buruya to rekindle its own cultural heritage, and the language was thus able to gain renewed vitality.

Good to have that situation cleared up :-D

Why didn't you wait 10 days??

[roninbodhisattva]

Does anyone know if there are any extant notes on the !Ho languages, who has them, and if they're available to work with?

[Corumayas]

I don't know what notes he might have about them, but that family was one of Radius' projects.

[Pole, the]

And are there any mirrors of Nualis-Takuna?

[Click]

Here they are.

[Pole, the]

Thanks.

[roninbodhisattva]

I don't know what notes he might have about them, but that family was one of Radius' projects.

Hmmm, maybe I'll just send him a message.

[CatDoom]

Hey all!

I Just discovered the Akana wiki through another thread, and it looks really cool! I've been skimming the recent posts here and Dunomapuka's "Pre-Proto-Lukpanic" really tickles my fancy. I've developed a bit of an obsession with glottalic consonants, and I'd love to start tinkering with a Northeastern isolate (or maybe a geographically tiny language family like Pomoan).

I'm not sure what the etiquette is for that sort of thing, though. I'd really hate to step on anybody's toes. ^.^;

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

You can basically do anything you want, just make sure that you don't mess up things already known about the place and the time where your language (family) will be spoken.

[Cedh]

Welcome, CatDoom!

If you have a good idea what you could place somewhere in Akana, you can indeed simply go to work on it provided you make sure it fits into the setting, like Dē Graut Bʉr said. And if you are in doubt whether a particular idea fits in, just ask (here or at the AkanaForum); we're happy to answer such questions (even if some of the senior Akana contributors aren't all that active anymore). For instance, I'm not sure whether Dunomapuka has any additional information about Pre-Proto-Lukpanic other than what's posted here, so that would be something you could ask him directly if he doesn't respond within a few days. But there's definitely space for a new language (family) in the Northwest, and I personally think that Akana needs more languages with glottalized consonants anyway. So go ahead!

[dunomapuka]

Hey all!

I Just discovered the Akana wiki through another thread, and it looks really cool! I've been skimming the recent posts here and Dunomapuka's "Pre-Proto-Lukpanic" really tickles my fancy. I've developed a bit of an obsession with glottalic consonants, and I'd love to start tinkering with a Northeastern isolate (or maybe a geographically tiny language family like Pomoan).

I'm not sure what the etiquette is for that sort of thing, though. I'd really hate to step on anybody's toes. ^.^;

As it happens I did some revisions of Pre-PL a few months ago based on feedback I had received and I've developed a good sense of the internal history of the family. I'd like to post it but it currently exists in a somewhat scattershot note format that I'm not sure how I'll develop into a good article.

I got rid of the glottalic consonants, sadly. but Akana has some awesome material for you to work with - some of the Western languages have ejectives. Or you could always craft a language isolate. I like isolates. Or indeed a small family, as you said. I just have to declare Lukpanic pre-history off limits for the moment because I do have some cool material that I just haven't released yet.