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

[Corumayas]

I like it! It's fun to see the personal lives of these characters get filled in (lol @ Bathisēba).

I wonder about the kinship and inheritance rules you posit-- not all of them seem consistent with a patrilineal, patriarchal culture. (E.g. the idea that being related on the mother's side would make a couple closer than on the father's, for too-close-to-marry type calculations, seems backwards.)

Also, most of these people are very short-lived, and many of them come to power quite young. I've tinkered with birthdates for the early rulers some, and while your dates for Tēmekas I and his children are pretty similar to my guesses, I had Uremas I about a decade older, so that he was 14 rather than 4 at his father's death, and 27 rather than 17 when he seized power. (This went with Aiathi b. ca 156 and Phanal b. ca 195.)

Lastly, I think you have a few typos-- Xsali for Xsalad once, and missing a diacritic here and there (e.g. Lona in the last paragraph). Speaking of which, I thought it was actually Xšali... did the haček get axed?


It seems to me that the deposing of Uremas II bodes poorly for the Empire's stability. I'm looking forward to the next installment...

[Radius Solis]

Yeah, I thought Bathsheba - oops, I mean Bathisēpa - would be an entertaining addition. But the resemblance is superficial and only partial.

Good point on the kinship inconsistency. I'm not sure what to do with that now... is it unrealistic? Every culture has various inconsistent quirks, which can help lend some life to fictional ones, but if this one doesn't sit well with you I can rewrite the passage.

We can play around with the dates. I know people in that era didn't - on average - live nearly as long as we do. And though eight and nine decades wasn't unheard of even then, I'm not sure what more normal lifespans were like. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that most Romans didn't live past 50. So I've got a few people dying young, and a few dying old, but most people living somewhere between 40 and 60 years. Marrying and having children at 16 - 20 is definitely realistic for this time period. Age for coming to power is close to random for hereditary rulers, because it depends so closely on the former king's death which can be at any time. So what would you suggest changing?

Thanks for catching the typos. It's not that the hacek of Xsali/ad has gone away but that the whole name has been deprecated, and will need to be find-replaced on the wiki whenever we get the new name. Given that, I didn't even bother with the haceks.

[zompist]

Somewhat unrelated to the above, it seems like the classical empires are surprisingly small. Compared to Rome or China, their east-west extents are quite modest. It seems particularly inexplicable that it's so hard to unite the Aiwa valley, since there don't seem to be any significant geographical barriers.

I kind of like the modesty of this area... I don't feel that the Aiwa needs to be the central civilization of Akana. Xsali and Siixtaguna seem to be the really large empires.

And actually, there is a good reason for not uniting the valley: the delta has, since -1000 or so, been a backwater, without even a navigable channel to the sea. When there *was* a channel, under Tsinakan's dynasty, a large E/W empire was possible. When there wasn't, empires would tend to peter out at the delta.

The culture I'm working on reestablishes a channel around 1140, so things may change from that point.

[Cedh]

House of Mir

Great stuff!

I think most of the birth and death dates are realistic enough. The only person that should maybe be older is indeed Uremas I, but then, the way he just walks in on Mikha and stabs him does sound more like a 17-year-old than a 27-year-old.

A thing you seem to have either missed or consciously changed is that we used to attribute Phanal's death in 244 to the plague mentioned in the Pencek grammar. Maybe he had been infected but seemed to recover, and then Bathisēpa had him poisoned in such a way that it looked like he'd died of the disease?

As for the kinship issue, I agree with Corumayas that the Athalērans would probably not regard maternal relatives as closer than paternal relatives. This doesn't change much though; the marriage of Masōthi and Texozonon would have been hard to accept in almost any human society. But I have another idea: What if Hekhes had not conveniently died a year before this? In that case Texozonon would have been only third-in-line if the marriage was not accepted. Semōnes had no ambition to become emperor himself; I guess he would have sided with Uremas II. But Hekhes would probably have claimed the throne for himself if Uremas was forced to abdicate. Texozonon would prevail, if only because of Hekhes' disputed descent, but Hekhes might challenge him in battle. Texozonon's victory would then make him an extraordinarily strong ruler. But the heirs of Hekhes might cultivate their claim into a long-term rivalry similar to that between the houses of York and Lancaster in medieval England... But well, maybe this would be a bit too much since the height of Athalē is still to come?

Thanks for catching the typos. It's not that the hacek of Xsali/ad has gone away but that the whole name has been deprecated, and will need to be find-replaced on the wiki whenever we get the new name. Given that, I didn't even bother with the haceks.

I personally love the name Xšali, but I don't like Xšalad. So maybe the easiest solution would be to make the first of these the name of the country, and either use this for the language as well or use an adjectivial form, e.g. the Adāta kasaliran.

I kind of like the modesty of this area... I don't feel that the Aiwa needs to be the central civilization of Akana. Xsali and Siixtaguna seem to be the really large empires.

Xšali is, and Siixtaguna is likely to become a large empire later on. I figured the Takuña were much later than the Ngauro to begin civilization. They probably had some agriculture by -2000, and had organized as a federation of tribes between -1500 and -1000, when the Proto-Isles speakers arrived in their area. They seem to have got along mostly peacefully with Mûtsinamtsys, developing a unique and thriving culture and philosophy which was imported to Huyfárah as Etúgə around -400, as we all know. My guess is that at that time there was nothing like imperial tendencies in Siixtaguna (Rory did not describe such up to c. +100YP), but such ideas did develop later, possibly as a response to Fáralo colonies founded along the Doroh and Lotoka coast. I'm envisioning a combined Mûtsinamtsys/Takuña empire taking over Huyfárah's role as the biggest maritime empire around +700, and possibly establishing regular contact with the eastern continent some time after that.

Which reminds me that we need a finalized world map, and a language for the Takuña. I've been considering adapting Proto-Madhainic (see link in my sig) for use in Akana (which would mostly mean revising and simplifying the allophony rules, writing a syntax section, some lexical adjustments and creation of more vocab, and renaming it to Proto-Núalís-Takuña), and then deriving Takuña from that - please tell me what you think of this idea. If anybody has a different conlang to propose, that would be fine with me too.

And actually, there is a good reason for not uniting the valley: the delta has, since -1000 or so, been a backwater, without even a navigable channel to the sea. When there *was* a channel, under Tsinakan's dynasty, a large E/W empire was possible. When there wasn't, empires would tend to peter out at the delta.

The culture I'm working on reestablishes a channel around 1140, so things may change from that point.

I agree. It will be interesting to see how Mɨdu and Wï'makwå interact with each other, and what kind of role will be played by the resurgent Lasomo. And, whether we will have the whole area overrun by nomadic Habeo someday...

[Zhen Lin]

Excellent work. The personal histories are certainly interesting/amusing.

[Radius Solis]

Erp! I completely forgot that Phanal was supposed to have died in the plague. Okay, minor rewrite required.

And doing something with Hekhes in the Texozonon situation... I agree. And since you both think the close-relationship issue should be changed, I will. So rewrite of this section required as well. I'll get on both of them today.

Compromise and call the first Uremas 22 instead of 17/27?

[dunomapuka]

Nice work, Radius. I like Ngaxeuda - maybe it's just fun seeing Ndok names popping in. Which reminds me, I need to come up with revised names for the 13th Dynasty of Ngahêxôldod.

One issue though: I don't think we should blindly go ahead and import European-style racism into this world. There seems to be this assumption here that the "white" people are going to be hostile to the "black" people on the basis of race. Doesn't have to be the case, though it made for a good story there.

In fact, we have never established before that the people of the Edastean sphere look Caucasian, and should not automatically assume so, without considering alternatives...

[Cedh]

One issue though: I don't think we should blindly go ahead and import European-style racism into this world. There seems to be this assumption here that the "white" people are going to be hostile to the "black" people on the basis of race. Doesn't have to be the case, though it made for a good story there.

In fact, we have never established before that the people of the Edastean sphere look Caucasian, and should not automatically assume so, without considering alternatives...

True. What we do have though are some lexical entries indicating that the Eigə valley people are not black themselves, for instance Naidda toga "dark-skinned person", which is borrowed from Old Necine to:kə, which has the same meaning (and goes back to Proto-Hitatc *tózoko "dark brown"). Now if the Kascans borrowed this word from a "primitive" forest tribe, dark-skinned people cannot have been a daily sight to either culture, and most likely the same applies for the Miwans. Well, this does not mean the Eigə valley people look Caucasian, only that they have "relatively" light skin, somewhere in between that of a stereotypical blonde Scandinavian and a cocoa-coloured person from India. Maybe it's time someone sketched out a description...

[Radius Solis]

I wasn't intending to imply a real-world type of racism, but more a cultural reluctance to intermarry freely with a people so very different-looking, with the exact type of difference (skin color here) being less important.

I don't know what the Edak skin tone is like... but I certainly wasn't picturing northern-European milk-white. More like Mediterranean, possibly. Or even IE-Indian. The Xsali, meanwhile, I've been picturing as being quite dark but not truly negroid, even though I did use that word in the article. I was thinking more like Dravidian.

[Dewrad]

In fact, we have never established before that the people of the Edastean sphere look Caucasian, and should not automatically assume so, without considering alternatives...

For what it's worth, during a discussion with Radius I (believe that I) stated that the Proto-Westerners were pretty dark skinned- probably "average Indian" in colour, and mooted the idea that the Ndak had a similar skin colour to the Inuit or the Ainu.

[Corumayas]

Good point on the kinship inconsistency. I'm not sure what to do with that now... is it unrealistic? Every culture has various inconsistent quirks, which can help lend some life to fictional ones, but if this one doesn't sit well with you I can rewrite the passage.

I did a little refresher reading about kinship systems (this site is great)... and it turns out there is a similar thing in the ancient Hebrew marriage rules: they prohibited aunt-nephew marriages but not uncle-niece ones (at least not explicitly). They practiced patrilineage endogamy-- marrying within the father's lineage rather than outside it-- so as to keep property within the lineage. The preferred type of marriage apparently was between the children of two brothers (parallel cousin marriage). It's a somewhat unusual system but apparently common in the middle east, and most often found in herding cultures.

The more common pattern for unilineally organized cultures is lineage exogamy-- where any marriage within the lineage is prohibited. This often results in cross-cousin marriages (where you marry the child of your mother's brother or your father's sister, since they're in different lineages than yours), which is a common practice worldwide.

On the wiki (under Empire of Athalē: Family structure and naming) it currently states that "Marriages between members of closely related branches were discouraged", which implies that lineage endogamy is not the norm, but perhaps not entirely forbidden either.

Another question I have is what exactly happens when there is no male heir. It seems that a daughter can pass membership of her father's house on to her children if there are no surviving male members.... That appears to be what happens with Naiōla, at least, since her descendants are considered part of the House of Mir. That seems to be an extraordinary situation though, so perhaps it's not what's normally done.

It seems like what we could use is a more detailed picture of Dāiadak kinship, inheritance, and marriage rules. The religion surely has a lot to do with this. Dewrad, any thoughts?

We can play around with the dates. I know people in that era didn't - on average - live nearly as long as we do. And though eight and nine decades wasn't unheard of even then, I'm not sure what more normal lifespans were like. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that most Romans didn't live past 50. So I've got a few people dying young, and a few dying old, but most people living somewhere between 40 and 60 years. Marrying and having children at 16 - 20 is definitely realistic for this time period. Age for coming to power is close to random for hereditary rulers, because it depends so closely on the former king's death which can be at any time. So what would you suggest changing?

My vague impression is that most people died of childhood diseases, and those who reached adulthood had a decent chance of reaching 60-ish if they didn't get killed. A look at lifespans of some prominent ancient Greeks suggests that living into the early 60s wasn't uncommon for those who weren't murdered, or killed in battle, or something. Some of the early Roman emperors lived to surprisingly old age (Augustus: 76, Tiberius: 78, Vespasian: 70).

Birth intervals are another thing: an average of more than one child every two years is unusual I think. But in aristocratic families where there's pressure to produce an heir things might be different.

I think what you've got is probably fine, but you might put in more children who die in infancy, and let a few characters live extra long.

Compromise and call the first Uremas 22 instead of 17/27?

That works for me.

I kind of like the modesty of this area... I don't feel that the Aiwa needs to be the central civilization of Akana. Xsali and Siixtaguna seem to be the really large empires.

Xšali is, and Siixtaguna is likely to become a large empire later on. I figured the Takuña were much later than the Ngauro to begin civilization.... I'm envisioning a combined Mûtsinamtsys/Takuña empire taking over Huyfárah's role as the biggest maritime empire around +700, and possibly establishing regular contact with the eastern continent some time after that.

My concern with Siixtaguna is that it's really too far north for a major civilization (or any civilization, honestly), unless Akana has decidedly un-Earth-like climates. (Not to mention Tymytỳs, which is even worse.) As the map currently stands, the Aiwa valley looks pretty similar to northern China, and Siixtaguna is about where Kamchatka is. It's no accident that China is China, and that no native civilization ever arose in Kamchatka....

Which reminds me that we need a finalized world map

...which, in my opinion, should resolve the Siixtaguna climate problem somehow. One possibility might be to move the whole continent south; but to get Siixtaguna to a good place the Aiwa would have to be tropical, so maybe some reshaping of the northeastern subcontinent is what we need....

and a language for the Takuña.

There are loan words in Mûtsipsa', I think-- though they're mostly not identified in the lexicon, it's probably fair to assume a lot, at least, are from Takuña. Also there are several Takuña names among the philosophers. So there's some data to work from there.

Something else that occurs to me is the trade competition we've hinted at here and there between our two empires... Huyfárah was supposed to be trying to connect to the Xsali by sea to bypass the Dāiadak monopoly on trade with Xsalad. Undoubtedly they'll succeed (it's not that far from the southern colonies they already had), and when they do won't the Rathedān lose most of its income? Maybe that's what stimulates the Dāiadak to start conquering their neighbors...

[Radius Solis]

On the wiki (under Empire of Athalē: Family structure and naming) it currently states that "Marriages between members of closely related branches were discouraged", which implies that lineage endogamy is not the norm, but perhaps not entirely forbidden either.

Interesting stuff. I was looking at that same passage too, and decided that it was therefore probably going to be okay, in the exceptional circumstance of the marriage being politically important.

Another question I have is what exactly happens when there is no male heir. It seems that a daughter can pass membership of her father's house on to her children if there are no surviving male members.... That appears to be what happens with Naiōla, at least, since her descendants are considered part of the House of Mir. That seems to be an extraordinary situation though, so perhaps it's not what's normally done.

With Naiōla and in other cases, I was working with the unwritten assumption that lineage can pass to the husband or male children of a woman if there are no direct male-line heirs. I hope we don't need to change this because several important parts of the Mir article rests on it... (another case being Texozonon - he was descended from Tem II himself, but would not have been next in line had he not married Ur II's daughter.)

I think what you've got is probably fine, but you might put in more children who die in infancy, and let a few characters live extra long.

Good call; I will do that. Currently there are two deaths at childbirth on the list, probably sufficient, but iirc only one death in early childhood (Rebas, age 5). A number of girls were born that play basically zero role in the story, so maybe some of them can suffer unfortunate fates. There are also a few characters who end up elderly, like Bathisepa, but I will adjust some of the middle-age deaths upward.

---------------------------------------------
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Although I didn't state it previously, one of the purposes of the Mir article is to have something to link to for many of the numerous characters that get mentioned elsewhere on the wiki and currently stand with red links. That way we don't need individual biography pages for all those people. I will get around to doing some of this linking sooner or later, but if anyone else wants to help, please don't hesitate!

[Corumayas]

With Naiōla and in other cases, I was working with the unwritten assumption that lineage can pass to the husband or male children of a woman if there are no direct male-line heirs. I hope we don't need to change this because several important parts of the Mir article rests on it... (another case being Texozonon - he was descended from Tem II himself, but would not have been next in line had he not married Ur II's daughter.)

I think it's probably ok... the only slightly odd thing about it is that the heiress's sons would then potentially belong to two lineages, hers and their father's. (That's how it worked in the European aristocracy, I believe-- hence all those hyphenated surnames and quartered coats-of-arms.)

Good call; I will do that. Currently there are two deaths at childbirth on the list, probably sufficient, but iirc only one death in early childhood (Rebas, age 5). A number of girls were born that play basically zero role in the story, so maybe some of them can suffer unfortunate fates. There are also a few characters who end up elderly, like Bathisepa, but I will adjust some of the middle-age deaths upward.

Sounds good. Another thought is that, if you want, you could even out the sex ratios a little by adding a few short-lived children of the minority sex to families like Uremas II's. (Of course, wildly uneven sex ratios happen all the time in real families, so that's not a serious concern.)

[Cedh]

My concern with Siixtaguna is that it's really too far north for a major civilization (or any civilization, honestly), unless Akana has decidedly un-Earth-like climates. (Not to mention Tymytỳs, which is even worse.) As the map currently stands, the Aiwa valley looks pretty similar to northern China, and Siixtaguna is about where Kamchatka is. It's no accident that China is China, and that no native civilization ever arose in Kamchatka....

Which reminds me that we need a finalized world map

...which, in my opinion, should resolve the Siixtaguna climate problem somehow. One possibility might be to move the whole continent south; but to get Siixtaguna to a good place the Aiwa would have to be tropical, so maybe some reshaping of the northeastern subcontinent is what we need....

Exactly. IIRC we had already agreed on that anyway. I shall contact pocketful_of_songs directly to organize how to proceed.

and a language for the Takuña.

There are loan words in Mûtsipsa', I think-- though they're mostly not identified in the lexicon, it's probably fair to assume a lot, at least, are from Takuña. Also there are several Takuña names among the philosophers. So there's some data to work from there.

Not much, I'm afraid. The only clearly identifiable items are these four:

Takuña - autonym of the Takuña (loaned into Mûtsipsa' as the second component of Siix-taguna, the first part is a native morpheme meaning "north")
Awsákuti - the small island Nin Dûke'i
Sútupaj - the founder of Etúgə (in the Fáralo lexicon he is mentioned as Sútapaj BTW)
Rutawká - another philosopher

There may be other loan words, but I'm not sure of that. I've already done comparative work on about a third of the Mûtsipsa' lexicon, and I haven't yet found any terms where I could not identify the Proto-Isles etymology if no other was given. Anyway, the above Takuña samples seem to indicate CV(j,w) syllable structure, a fairly basic consonant inventory with no voicing distinction, a three-vowel-system, and either variable stress or tonal distinctions. Of course, a mere four names is very little to go by...

EDIT:
The Mûtsipsa' lexicon contains 64 entries where I can't pin down the etymology at first glance. Some of these are quite long, so I'd expect them to be Proto-Isles compounds, which are often quite opaque (e.g. Mû. tuufasah "contract" derives from PIsl. *túq-pataq "you say", the individual Mû. reflexes of which are tuu and psa' respectively). The definitions of others look like they should be borrowings from other Isles languages (there is an ethnonym for the Thokyunam people, regularly sound-changed to txûnaw, and some animal or plant names which I suppose have cognates on the Lotoka wordlist, from which Thokyunèhotà borrowed. Also, many of the words have to do with military and government; I suppose there are at least a few Fáralo borrowings among these (I'm fairly sure for dux "master" to derive from Fá. dukəs, which I know offhead. Have to check for more).

EDIT 2:
It turns out that dukəs was borrowed from Mûtsipsa' into Fáralo. I haven't found any Mû. words that might come *from* Fáralo, but I've been able to pin down Máotatšàlì etymologies for about half the list. I suspect most of the rest comes from Thokyunèhotà, Ppãrwak and/or Zele, but it looks like we don't have a lexicon for any of these.

[Corumayas]

The Lotoka wordlist is here if you lost track of it; I think that's all there was to Lotoka at the time. I remember seeing some animal and plant words in Mûtsipsa' that weren't directly from PI or Lotoka... but maybe they were compounds rather than borrowings. Máotatšàlì had cognates or similar borrowings for some, as well as other animal names (like "arctic fox"). I don't know if anything there can be identified as from Núalís.

[dunomapuka]

The Lotoka wordlist is here if you lost track of it; I think that's all there was to Lotoka at the time. I remember seeing some animal and plant words in Mûtsipsa' that weren't directly from PI or Lotoka... but maybe they were compounds rather than borrowings. Máotatšàlì had cognates or similar borrowings for some, as well as other animal names (like "arctic fox"). I don't know if anything there can be identified as from Núalís.

I think we need to change every one of those to cold-weather versions though

Actually, the same could be said for the Isles languages too -- cinnamon and rice wine and whatnot (those are some of the terms that got borrowed into Fáralo). Rethinking their climate and culture is probably a good thing; previously the Isles/Lotoka/Takuña sphere had been way, WAY too generic Asian/Polynesian "exotic jungle people." Let's start thinking of them more like Vikings or Eskimos.

[Corumayas]

Well, that's why we put the origin of Lotoka in the peninsula further south. If the Aiwa is northern China, the Peninsular region is southern China (a little too literally, it's true). Although Lotoka itself is probably more like Korea or something.

Also, "cinnamon" in Fáralo is a loan from Xšali via Adāta...

Actually, Proto-Isles itself has an extremely "ancient Middle-eastern" vocabulary-- e.g., I noticed while reading Guns, Germs, and Steel that the PI array of crop names is exactly what Diamond identifies as the eight "founder crops" of the Fertile Crescent. The Asian/tropical scenery seems to be all loans or new coinages. It's somewhat as if very early Phoenicians sailed west and settled Japan, the Philippines, etc....

[Radius Solis]

Hmm. The Aiwa isn't really supposed to be northern China though... it's supposed to resemble the Gangetic plain of India. Or did we change that?

[Corumayas]

Hmm indeed... I've definitely been thinking of the Aiwa in northern-China terms, but if that's not at all what you had in mind I can certainly adjust.

In that case, maybe we do want to move the Aiwa south aways-- say 10-15°? Though given that the shape of the continent is rather different than India, we might get something more like southern China or the US deep south (or maybe Texas/northern Mexico?) rather than northern India.

I think the ideal fix for Siixtaguna and Tymytys would be to move them south 15-20°: that puts Tymytys in a New England/northern Japan kind of place, and Siixtaguna then becomes our Korea/northern China/mid-Atlantic (a far more likely place for a major empire). Moving the Aiwa 20° puts it south of the Ganges, but 15° might work... that puts it around 25° (so roughly Ganges/Rio Grande-esque), Siixtaguna around 40°, and Tymytys around 45° (I'm going by the original map here-- the most recent redraws seem to have stretched the northern regions towards the north pole, which is surely the opposite of what we want).

On the other hand, saying that Akana is significantly warmer than present-day Earth is a valid solution too; it just makes it a lot harder to make these comparisons with Earth places (which is the only way I know how to do climate ).

And of course a third way to handle it is boy#12's proposal to rethink all these cultures as much more northern.

Zompist drew the old world map, right? What was behind the placement of the latitude lines on that?

[zompist]

Heh, it's complicated... Radius drew the initial map; I revised it.

The original intention was something like the Gangetic plain, but more temperate, largely because snow was known:

http://www.almeopedia.com/index.php/Kasadgad

One idea for Siixtaguna is to *rotate* the continent clockwise a bit. So Siixtaguna would end up farther south without changing the location of the Aiwa much.

Of course, coastlines can be altered as well.

[Cedh]

In the last two hours I've played around a bit with my vectorized version of the original map. It's not complete yet, but it looks quite good: I've tilted the northeastern part of the continent clockwise so Siixtaguna ends up at about the same latitude as Huyfárah. Some additional coastline changes are necessary to make Siixtaguna align with the rest of the continent and to make the Ttiruku island arc tectonically believable again, but I should get a modified map ready this weekend.

Living in Europe myself I can't help being surprised at the latitude numbers you need for temperate climate without the Gulf Stream I'm estimating New England has a climate similar to southern Finland, but the latitude difference between these is almost 20°...

[Radius Solis]

I like the rotation option, myself. It would solve a lot of issues...

Also note that Puoni and Naidda have words for olive and olive press, and Puoni has names for citrus fruits, appropriate for the warm climate I thought the area had. Though I could change those if needed.

[dunomapuka]

MAPS of Akana, collected from around the thread. Now in one post.

The Rathedan, with provinces of the Athaleran Empire shown.
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/8493 ... an2om9.png

Dialect areas of Adata.
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/7895 ... an3xf9.png

Map of our corner of Peilas, labeled with regional names.
http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/7744/01regionsmv2.png

Language families in -4000.
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/2189 ... 000mg1.png

Language families in Ndak times.
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/4653 ... 000en5.png

The Ndak empire in Tsinakan's time.
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/7668 ... irebx8.png

Athale and Huyfárah, in the early 400's or so. Buruya is now supposed to be within Huyfárah's borders, though.
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/8045 ... rahjg3.png

Globe showing the northern hemisphere.
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6330 ... ortzy8.gif

Globe showing the southern hemisphere.
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/2149 ... outnr4.gif

The latest revision of the world map.
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/176/ ... dh2sp3.jpg

Ethnolinguistic map of the upper Xoronic area.
http://mrpretzel.wikidot.com/local--fil ... n_1200.jpg

[Cedh]

Here is a preview of my current map revision, with some tilting of Siixtaguna, some reshaping of the island coastlines, and a slight rotation of the whole continent. Most visible coastlines should be final, but I think I'll modify the northwestern part of the continent somewhat because of the tectonics, and I also have to add in some edges of the two eastern continents. I want to make sure they're close enough so early humans could easily cross the straits (because I think Zeluzh would be a likely place for humans to evolve), and at the same time that they're far enough apart so that warm ocean currents from the east can get through to the Huyfárah coast.

[Radius Solis]

Re tlaliolz: I once had a sketched Andagg/Ndak parent. But I say ignore that, and work out a Tlaliolz/Ndak parent, from which I can derive, when I get around to it.

Okay. Due to this, I have gone ahead and worked out some things about proto-Talo-Edastean and gone into some discussion of how NT developed from it. Along the way I've tried to address some of the... quirks... of Ndak Ta that resulted from its creation by a much more novice conlanger than I am now.

Since the wiki is currently down - again - I will put this here for now.

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PTE: */p t ts) k q k_w q_w b d g g_w m n N N\ N_w s x x_w r l w a e i o u ai) au)/

The sound changes from proto-Talo-Edastean to the Ndak Ta of Tsinakan's era are characterized by the loss and merger of many dorsal sounds. Some of the changes involved assimilations that behaved in very unusual manners, which has been a source of puzzlement for Edastean scholars. There are not a huge number of changes, as the time depth between PTE and NT is only around half a millennium, but least the following ones occurred:

1. Loss of dorsal fricatives: *x was deleted in all environments. *x_w lost its fricative component and merged with preexisting *w in all environments. In most cases where a vowel hiatus was created by loss of *x, the second vowel of the sequence was deleted (this rule forbidding most hiatus probably predates proto-Talo-Edastean, and continued to be active in Ndak Ta). Thus: *laixod "year" NT /laid/, and *saxi "female" NT /sai/ (merging, amusingly, with /sai/ "foreign").

2. Vowels in checked syllables (i.e. before a coda) weakened: *a, *e, *i, *ai, and *au were lowered or centralized to [6, E, I, 6I, 6U] respectively. *u and *o appear to have been unaffected. The timing of this rule is constrained by the loss of *x and *N\; vowels before coda *x were apparently not weakened, or else a phonemic set of them would have been created when *x was lost - whereas when *N\ was lost later, the nasalized vowels it left behind continued to display weakening. This rule continued to be active in Ndak Ta. Thus *netrai "wife" NT [nEtrai].

3. The uvular stops *q and *q_w merged into their velar counterparts *k and *k_w. Similarly, clusters of *N\q and *N\q_w merged into their velar counterparts *Nk and *Nk_w. Thus: *qola "funny" NT /kola/, and *iN\qwi "liver" NT /iNkwi/.

4. Remaining instances of the uvular nasal *N\ which had not been clustered with uvular plosives, merged into *N only after *u and *o. In all other environments it was deleted, leaving prior vowels still nasalized and thus creating a set of contrastively nasalized vowels. Once again, in cases where a forbidden vowel hiatus was created, the second vowel of the sequence was deleted. Thus: *aN\eka "air" NT /a~ka/.

5. The voiced labiovelar plosive *g_w was apparently fronted to [b_w] without losing its labiovelarization. When following a nasal, the entire *Ng_w cluster was fronted to [mb_w]. Thus: *g_wai "star" NT /bwai/. The exact nature of this change has long been debated, for it is peculiar in two respects. First, the retention of labiovelarization following such a fronting is nearly unheard of in the known sound changes of any other language. And second, only *g_w fronted, leaving *k_w and *N_w alone - more often, if any member of such a series fronts, the whole series will.

6. Perhaps the most bizarre development in Ndak Ta is the direction reversal of nasal assimilation. In Tlaliolz, whenever morphology brought together a nasal followed by a stop, the nasal assimilated to the POA of the stop, as happens in myriad other languages. At some point in its history, Ndak Ta reversed this, such that stops were assimilated to the POA of the prior nasal. It is further debatable whether it occurred before or after rule #5; while we here are listing it afterwards, some have proposed that the morphological collision of *m with *g_w occurred more frequently than with *k_w, such that the resulting backwards-assimilation of *mg_w to [mb_w] spread by analogy to other instances of *g_w and finally taking the cluster *Ng_w with it. If true, this would would reduce the two unusual characteristics of #5 to logical consequences of a single unusual development, #6. It is notable that morphological collision of /m/ with /k_w/ in Ndak Ta was so rare that its specific outcome ([mp]? [mp_w]?) remains unknown (and unaddressed in the NT grammar).


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Due to preceding discussion and a dash of the comparative method, I also have a fairly clear picture of some of the most important changes from PTE to Tlaliolz, but I'm not ready to write them up just yet.