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

krinnen · Post by **krinnen** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:00 pm

404 Not Found

The server can not find the requested page:

akana.superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php/Main_Page (port 80)

Please forward this error screen to akana.superlush.co.uk's WebMaster.
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.7a mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.2.5 Server at akana.superlush.co.uk Port 80

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:30 pm

I hope TzirTzi can get the wiki running again soon...

In case the database should have suffered, I have a full backup from September 20, so don't worry about the contents of the wiki. Some work was done after that, but nothing of too high importance.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:52 pm

Erp?

Um. I thought this wasn't supposed to happen anymore.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:54 pm

In the hope of allaying the wrath of the divine which is upon us, I will go outside and sacrifice a squirrel to the goddess Ombàsi.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:12 am

If this situation does not right itself within a couple days, it may be advisable to email TzirTzi. His last unpruned board post was two months back, but I looked up his profile and the given email is threewordsthewiser@gmail.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 11:43 am

Sorry I havent been around for ages - was on holiday, then moved into a new house sin internet and there I am still. I'm using a computer at uni atm.

The site went down because the server got corrupted. A backup has now been successfully restored - from a fortnight ago tuesday. So that's... the 24th of September? I think? Anyway, the most recent changes in the backup are from the 22nd of Sept., so hopefully not too much will have been lost.

I'm really sorry that this has happened but I'm afraid I can't say that it definitely won't happen again as obvs it's happening in a realm beyond my control - all I can say is that this is the first time in, I think, a year or so of using this server that there's been a problem of this magnitude. So hopefully that's indicative of continued mostly problemlessness...

Virgin media reckoned that they'd be setting my internets sometime this week. So from then on I'll be active on here again and will react more quickly to any site issues that happen.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 5:58 am

Radius Solis wrote:One further element I'd add to your list: asking Zompist if he'd mind if we ported over all the remaining information from the Almeopedia, including his more recent entries (Faraghin), so that everything will all finally be in one place. And then we'd no longer have to be taking up space on his wiki, too.

Just done this, and some of the necessary adaptions as well. Radius, could you please check if I missed something? I haven't uploaded the maps yet, but I'll do so later. Also, some of the articles had already been included, e.g. the history of Huyfárah and some Kasca/Ndak stuff, so I didn't give everything an article of its own. (You'd best use the Recent Changes for finding that.)

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:11 pm

Tzirtzi - whew, thanks you for the swift return of the wiki.

cedh audmanh wrote: Just done this, and some of the necessary adaptions as well. Radius, could you please check if I missed something? I haven't uploaded the maps yet, but I'll do so later. Also, some of the articles had already been included, e.g. the history of Huyfárah and some Kasca/Ndak stuff, so I didn't give everything an article of its own. (You'd best use the Recent Changes for finding that.)

Yep, I'll go through it today. Thanks!

-----

Edit: done; looks good. I'm particularly happy to see the NT grammar all on one page finally! (The original was written in the format of consecutive ZBB posts - it has never before now all been a single document.)

A few things:

* The "Kečǽnə" article is pretty unnecessary, as I'd previous incorporated an adaptation of the text into the external history article, while the lists of languages are superseded by the articles "Edastean languages" and "Isles languages". So I'm VFDing this - let's wait a week to see if anybody objects or catches anything before we do it, though.

* The "Ndak Calendar" and "Aiwa Canal" articles seem like they might belong merged into the "Ndak Empire" article - since we don't have a whole lot of descriptive information for the Ndak, I thought it'd be good to have it all on one page. Thoughts?

* Conversely, the religions information you had merged into the same article is not actually about the Ndak empire at all, but Classical-era Kasca. It belongs on the Kascan culture page, eventually. However, it's desperately begging to be rethought and rewritten, so for now I've stuck it on a subpage: /Culture_of_Kasca/Religions.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:25 pm

Radius Solis wrote:* Conversely, the religions information you had merged into the same article is not actually about the Ndak empire at all, but Classical-era Kasca. It belongs on the Kascan culture page, eventually. However, it's desperately begging to be rethought and rewritten, so for now I've stuck it on a subpage: /Culture_of_Kasca/Religions.

I've gone and done precisely the same thing for the "Peoples" section on the "Aiwa Valley" article. I figure the info for each tribe can be filed into appropriate pages, if it's up-to-date. We could consider sticking an equivalent list of tribes back on the Aiwa Valley page; it just needs a partial rewrite.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 6:01 pm

I wrote:But for now I only have computer access at work, so I probably won't be able to make very substantive contributions till I get a working computer again (hopefully soon!)...

I have a working computer again!

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 2:27 pm

Relating to a recent discussion I started on the wiki (is Meshi a Miwan language or no?), I would tentatively like to claim stewardship of the Meshi language, pending more information on Eige-Isthmus.

The one idea I've got in mind is <i>massive lenition</i>.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 2:33 pm

Go for it. It would be really good to have a real description of at least one Eige-branch language.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:09 pm

Radius Solis wrote:Go for it. It would be really good to have a real description of at least one Eige-branch language.

Well, I'm waiting for some meatier description of PEI/PEV first, so Meshi, perhaps, is poised to become the second well-described member of the Eige languages :3

Nonetheless, I'm already thinking that some of the loanwords I've made for Ndok Aisô will have Meshi origins.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:38 pm

I have made a design for our wiki so it won't look just like Wikipedia any longer. It's based on an existing MediaWiki theme, with some rearranging and recolouring of elements. I hope you like it... a preview is here:

In order to upload it, I would need FTP access to the server, or else a hand by our webmaster TzirTzi...

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:13 pm

Nice, cedh. It looks a lot nicer than the current design to me. My only criticism is that the pile of links in the upper right seems a little messy.

boy#12, go for it! I hope to get a lot done on PEI in the next few weeks, but that's contingent on my computer staying fixed. It wasn't being cooperative earlier today...

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:54 pm

cedh audmanh wrote:I have made a design for our wiki so it won't look just like Wikipedia any longer.

I really like that a lot. I would echo Corumayas' comments about the links in the upper right - maybe it could be reduced to two horizontal lines? (E.g. 'main page' through 'printable version' on one line stretching across most of the top of the page, then 'Cedh' through 'log out' on a line below it?) Aside from that it looks really good, and I can't wait to see see it in action.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:35 am

Similarly I like your design, cedh

And actually I quite like the visual effect of the crowded top right hand corner, though it might be a bit hard to use..

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:55 am

At cedh's request, I have uploaded the new skin and changed a couple of settings - allowing file uploads and disallowing edits by non users.

Edit - have tested uploading an image. Worked fine, although got an error trying to create a thumbnail.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:07 pm

Thank you!

In order to view the skin properly you should all clear your browser cache when you next visit the wiki:

Mozilla / Firefox / Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload, or press Ctrl-Shift-R (Cmd-Shift-R on Apple Mac); IE: hold Ctrl while clicking Refresh, or press Ctrl-F5; Konqueror: simply click the Reload button, or press F5; Opera users may need to completely clear their cache in Tools > Preferences.

I've also made a table version of the basic history for an easy overview of who's where at what time. Could be a useful thing to have...

----
EDIT:

TzirTzi wrote:Edit - have tested uploading an image. Worked fine, although got an error trying to create a thumbnail.

I'm not sure what the settings on the server are, but it appears that the ImageMagick software is missing. The MediaWiki manual says there is an alternative, the GD library, which could be pre-installed with PHP (it works on my local PHP installation). To use this lib instead, comment out the following two lines in LocalSettings.php by placing ## before each line:

Code: Select all

$wgUseImageMagick = true;
$wgImageMagickConvertCommand = "/usr/bin/convert";

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:27 am

Looks great, cedh! The table is a good idea, too.

I've uploaded some more detailed thoughts about Eige-Isthmus morphosyntax. I'm still in extrapolating-from-Faraghin mode, but working toward identifying where there's room to invent things and what those things might look like. I'd appreciate comments, if anyone can muster the patience to read through it...

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:04 pm

BTW, is the complete phonology of Ngauro avalaible somewhere?

Cause I'd like to start on a script for Ngauro, so that ultimatly we have one for Ndak Ta, and for further daughters.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:07 pm

How are you with the idea of a logographic script? Ngauro's writing was the first in Peilash, so it probably shouldn't be phonemic or syllabic or anything like that, just straight logographic, like all the original scripts on Earth have been (the ones that arose in the far distant past; Hangeul doesn't count). There's already a set of Talo-Edastean runes... the original idea was for Ndak writing to work very similarly to Chinese, with each glyph composed of a radical for meaning and a radical for pronunciation. But the twist is that for the Ndak the two types would come from different sources - the pronunciation radicals from its own rune system, and the meaning radicals from Ngauro.

That was the original plan from years ago, anyway. Nice as the idea sounds, I doubt I'm up for doing a logography anytime soon. Any takers? If not, I'm open to other ideas, but I think realistically an alphabetic script is out of the picture that early in the history.

(No, we don't currently have a finalized Ngauro phonology, unless Corumayas has been hiding one. With a logographic script you wouldn't need the phonology. With something else, it may take time before he gets to the point where Ngauro's phonology is finalized, I don't know.)

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:47 pm

Hm, on the other hand, abjads follow logographics script quite early in history - simply because people who know about writting, but don't have themselves a writting system yet are not willing to learn such an intricate system.

Logographic are indeed what is generally spontaneously created, but as soon as it is adapted for another language, we see simpler script appear (vis Cananean, linear B).

So I am thinking: we could do a fully logographic script for Ngauro *and* a simpler script for Ndak Ta - which could be an abdjad, a syllabary or an abugida (an alphabet, however, already requires a certain level of phonetic analysis and is thus less likely in this situation).

What do you think?

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:45 am

On the other other hand, the Ndak script might be more complex than Ngauro, not less-- look at what happened when cuneiform was adapted for Akkadian, or Hanzi for Japanese.

Anyway, I have ideas about Ngauro phonology, but it's not settled yet. And of course it should change over the course of the Ngauro's thousand-odd-year history, so that will need to be worked out. (It occurs to me that the pre-Ndak runes might be based on Ngauro writing too, but reflecting an earlier stage of the language.)

It's always been my intention to offer up Ngauro for scriptmaking once it has a goodsized vocabulary, but I'm not sure how long that'll take... the proto-language needs to be pretty well settled before I can really get to work on it. It could be a few months before Ngauro is ready.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:26 am

A well-known scriptmaster wrote:I plan to create a few proto-scripts for some of the (base) langs here.

I'm not sure if you had seen it, but two weeks ago Sano announced his intention of creating a script for Akana. I think we should get him involved in the script discussion...

----

I did an analysis of Miwan compounds yesterday and added the results to the PEI page. To sum it up, Old Eastern Miwan is clearly head-final, but earlier stages of the language appear to have been head-initial at least for genitives. This fits in with the Faraghin data, which also points to a head-initial (pre-)proto-language. My suggestion: PEI and PEV were head-initial; PI and PMiw switched to head-final, but Ngauro and Meshi remained head-initial.

BTW I've found a rather fascinating word during this research. It means "bird's nest", attested in Forest Miwan as zafwi:ta and in Eastern Miwan as zafwita:. It is clearly related to FMiw kwintas "bird" (from PEI *gwent "to fly", cf. Faraghin ghantač "dragon"), and it shows some unusual sound changes not present in the uncompounded form. Most saliently, there is a lenition of PEV *kw to *fw after a morpheme that might just be related to the PI genitive prefix *as-. In Western Isthmus, any plosive following this prefix lenited in a similar manner. AND: the POA change involved here is parallel to the unusual NT change *gw > *bw! Maybe this word is our first glimpse of Meshi...