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Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2013 7:12 pm
by xybre
Myself I lived in a city of 600 people and later 1500 before moving to a village* of over 60,000 people on the outskirts of a major city where I moved later in life with close to 3 million residents.
So I wonder what constitutes a large or small population to you? To me 6000 sounds pretty large for a rural town, but my anecdotal experience may be heavily skewed by my sample size.

Additionally I lived near an area known for wine a couple of years ago (I move around a lot, sort of a nomad) and got to visit the wineries, I prefer sweet wines, typically whites, though I've experienced some great smooth red wines. My Polish roommate a few years ago had this habit of bring home the most awful almost blood-tasting red wines. What sort of wines are common in the region you grew up in?

*"village" and "city" are terms that are apparently dependent on the type of local government structure and nothing to do with the actual population. At least around here. I find this odd and it seems to introduces a lot of linguistic ambiguity.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2013 10:19 pm
by Drydic
Dewrad wrote:(Also, Tedur is not impressed at being called a bydlo. He's not even Polish, for a start. He comes from a very nice respectable family: his father was a school teacher. He suspects you're Serbian, but that's only because he's rabidly Serbophobic. That's not actually a very common prejudice in Dravia. I suspect it's rooted in women troubles, as he refuses to discuss it.)
Rusanov is an Eastern Serb. Or rather his parents are.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 9:01 am
by Salmoneus
Incidentally, since when was Dravia in eastern europe anyway?
I've had even Romanians get pissed off at having their country described as 'eastern european'! Dravia borders, presumably, Austria, the Czech Republic, it can't be too far from bordering Italy even. It's clearly a Central European country.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 10:14 am
by Dewrad
Salmoneus wrote:Incidentally, since when was Dravia in eastern europe anyway?
I've had even Romanians get pissed off at having their country described as 'eastern european'! Dravia borders, presumably, Austria, the Czech Republic, it can't be too far from bordering Italy even. It's clearly a Central European country.
Quite so. Dravia borders Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia: the Habsburg influence is far deeper than any Russian or Soviet influence. I'm thinking that Italian irredentists in the 19th and early 20th centuries might well have claimed at least the western Dravian speaking communities around Petava (Ptuj) and Marborc (Maribor) as speaking "Italian dialects".

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 10:27 am
by Salmoneus
Oh, not the CR, I guess there's a 'Hungarian panhandle' to the north?

And hell, Italian irredentists would have claimed Mongolian as an Italian dialect if it had been within 100km of Trieste.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:15 am
by Aurora Rossa
Dewrad wrote:Dravia borders Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia:
What about Croatia?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:10 pm
by Nortaneous
Rusanov, there's being a fascist, and then there's being incapable of responding to anything without going "beep boop i am a fascist" for twenty paragraphs. Also you live in Louisiana and you are calling a Welshman American.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 7:52 pm
by Bristel
I really like this sort of deep world and conlang building that should go hand in hand.

I just hope I can make my alt-history Aquitaine as interesting. (my conculture won't be a Romance speaking group, though)

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:02 pm
by Yaali Annar
I wish that everyone would just play along with the pretend game and not break out of character.

I don't really have a question to ask. But I enjoy reading the answers from your penpal in Dravia.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:12 pm
by Sevly
What pretend game?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 1:44 pm
by din
What's Tedur's favorite dish? And do they have any good bread or pastries?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 2:12 pm
by ivazaéun
Which sports teams do you support?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 12:00 pm
by hwhatting
Salmoneus wrote:Incidentally, since when was Dravia in eastern europe anyway?
I've had even Romanians get pissed off at having their country described as 'eastern european'! Dravia borders, presumably, Austria, the Czech Republic, it can't be too far from bordering Italy even. It's clearly a Central European country.
Well, we can assume that this is the cold war usage of "Eastern Europe", i.e. the European countries of the (ex)-communist bloc.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 12:18 pm
by Salmoneus
To clarify: was Dravia a Soviet satellite, or was it an autonomous communist power like Yugoslavia or Albania?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 1:42 pm
by WechtleinUns
This is some really good stuff. I like how this Dravian guy is just no-nonsense awesomeness. Would it be all right if I asked a question of my own? Basically, could you ask Ted about the architecture in Dravia, and the different styles that exist within the capital and around the countryside?

Thanks very much. :D

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:10 pm
by Imralu
What's the largest shoe size available in most shoe shops there? I have to shop at freak shops in Germany.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:42 pm
by ObsequiousNewt
How is the quality of translated software, instruction manuals, books &c. into Dravian?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 9:23 am
by Civil War Bugle
Does Ted vote, and if he does, what are his voting preferences?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 10:44 am
by Dewrad
Until a few days ago, I'd been out of contact with Tedur for a few months: he wasn't answering emails or responding to Skype calls. Initially, I assumed that I'd offended him when I said that he looked a hell of a lot like one guy in the classic 2003 film Dravian Jizz Boys IV, but he assures me that it's just a chef's normal hectic schedule around Christmas time that's prevented him from answering his emails. He has also (unprompted) reassured me that he hasn't been in police custody during this time.
Civil War Bugle wrote:Does Ted vote, and if he does, what are his voting preferences?
Tedur Covaç wrote:Fuck off do I. Nobody votes these days. I mean, what's the point? We might have hundreds of political parties, each as minority-driven as the next, but ultimately all politicians are the same. They're all corrupt, and only in it for themselves. As we say, Qui ne's lenzraje rèn la man si jara copèrta de mèl?(1) If pressed, I'd call myself a moderate socialist, but isn't everyone these days?
I feel that I should interject here that Tedur's views are actually pretty unusual. (Well, aside from his assumption that all politicians are corrupt: that seems to be almost universally held.) Most Dravians are actually pretty engaged: turnout for the last four elections to the Nation Assembly has averaged at 83%, which is well above the European average of 77%. Tedur, however, is right about the multiplicity of political parties: there are currently 25 represented in Dravia's unicameral legislation (Convocata Dravènca(2)), which is no mean feat given that there are only 150 seats. The current government is broad left-wing coalition, led by the Demócratei Socialei and the Partait del Zant dravènc.


1) "Who wouldn't lick his hand if it was covered in honey?" A Dravian idiom basically saying that one should take full advantage of good fortune. The idiom is more often encountered in a vulgar variation, la man mi jara copèrta de mèrda "my hand was covered in shit", normally indicating resignation, that the speaker has had to make the best of a bad lot:
  • - Deau qu'o toi sèi sudat, paidaç!
    - Za, alcoin m'ha rauvat l'autó. La man mi jara copèrta de mèrda e jèu hai caminat quà.


    - Christ, you're soaking mate!
    - Yeah, someone's gone and stolen my car. My hand was covered in shit, and I walked here.
2) Dravian possesses two adjectives corresponding to the English "Dravian": dravean and dravènc. Broadly speaking, the former denotes "characteristic of Dravia" and the latter "belonging to Dravia". Thus, na convocata draveana would be "a Dravian-style parliament", while la convocata dravènca refers to "the Parliament of Dravia".

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 10:46 am
by Drydic
What does Tedur think of Dravian cops?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 11:06 am
by Dewrad
ObsequiousNewt wrote:How is the quality of translated software, instruction manuals, books &c. into Dravian?
Tedur Covaç wrote:Haven't the faintest. I know VLC has been localised to Dravian, as has Firefox. That gets me all the porn I need, so I could care less about the rest.
Imralu wrote:What's the largest shoe size available in most shoe shops there? I have to shop at freak shops in Germany.
Tedur Covaç wrote:Shit, I don't know. I have normal-sized feet, size 43 unless they're trainers, in which case I take a 44. What kind of bizarrely deformed feet do you have?
Salmoneus wrote:To clarify: was Dravia a Soviet satellite, or was it an autonomous communist power like Yugoslavia or Albania?
Tedur's history is dreadful, so I'll answer this one: It started out very much as a Soviet satellite, but broke away at roughly the same time as the Hungarian Revolution, aligning itself with Yugoslavia.
ivazaéun wrote:Which sports teams do you support?
Tedur Covaç wrote:FC Sojane-Loraiva, obviously. My brother supports FC Lublo Spartac, but that's because he's mentally defective.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 6:37 pm
by Dewrad
Jose wrote:This is some really good stuff. I like how this Dravian guy is just no-nonsense awesomeness. Would it be all right if I asked a question of my own? Basically, could you ask Ted about the architecture in Dravia, and the different styles that exist within the capital and around the countryside?

Thanks very much. :D
Tedur's answer to this was something of a shock, I wasn't aware that he knew anything about architecture at all. Nor was I aware he was going for more than a few sentences without swearing.
Tedur Covaç wrote:Well, I'm not exactly a well-travelled man, but from what I can tell the predominant architectural style in Dravia (for older buildings at least) isn't all that different from other Central European countries. Most big public buildings dating from the Empire are still standing, and primarily they're examples of Baroque architecture. Of course, that's not the only type: a lot of our older buildings here in the south of the country are from the Ottoman period. Many village churches are converted mosques, most bridges in the countryside were built by the Turks and so on: the overall impression is actually fairly Balkan, I guess.

In the post-Imperial period (from the late 19th century to the post-war period), the most popular architectural style was "Neo-Romanesque", with elements of Byzantine revival. I think it was so popular because it harked back to our country's earliest days of independence, and that it was something that both Catholics and Orthodox could lay claim to. Many of our oldest churches are Romanesque, both in the Catholic north and here in the Orthodox south. For example, the Basilica of SS Peter and Paul in Sojane is a magnificent example of a 11th century Romanesque basilica. It was built on the orders of Metropolitan Bishop Saint Marèl of Sevara, if I recall correctly. The Palas del Zant, where the Convocata meets, was origianlly built as the Prince's Residence in the neo-Romanesque style.

Or were you mainly asking about vernacular architecture?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 7:25 am
by jmcd
Aurora Rossa wrote:
Dewrad wrote:Dravia borders Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia:
What about Croatia?
That's actually a god point. Do you have a map of your country you could show us?

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 10:14 am
by Dewrad
There's a (work in progress) map of Dravia here (it's a big file).

Tedur's hometown is in the south-east of the country in the contat of Valeira, on the road between Sojane and Alb Monastare.

Re: Meet my angry Dravian penpal!

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 11:13 am
by hwhatting
Dewrad wrote:There's a (work in progress) map of Dravia here (it's a big file).
Oh, they have lake Balaton! Means lots of tourists during Socialist times.