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

[Radius Solis]

1. Radius has said that he imagined the Aiwa valley (and especially Kasca) as more like the Ganges than northern China, and his description of Kasca reflects this.

I admit to not remembering the details of his description.

It wasn't mine. The text this hinges on was written by Zompist in the earliest days: in re the whole Aiwa valley including Kasca, he said "The closest Earthly analogue would be the Gangetic plain of northern India". Ever since then I have worked under that assumption when dealing with cultures and climates. In the mapdrawing I tried to follow that, intending a rough physial resemblance to the Ganges region in terms of positions of rivers/mountains/coast, but I left it at that and drew the rest of the continent to my whim, because I don't know how to draw maps in such a way that Aiwa=Ganges still works in the larger context.

Some time back one of the suggested fixes was to pivot the continent a little, around a point in the neighborhood of Buruya, such that Kasca, Huyfarah, and Siixtaguna moved south and the middle/upper Aiwa, Rathedan, and Xsali-land moved north. I liked that idea, it seemed to solve a lot... is it still workable or is that approach moribund now?

[masako]

Please disregard.

Thank you.

[Salmoneus]

1. Radius has said that he imagined the Aiwa valley (and especially Kasca) as more like the Ganges than northern China, and his description of Kasca reflects this.

I admit to not remembering the details of his description.

It wasn't mine. The text this hinges on was written by Zompist in the earliest days: in re the whole Aiwa valley including Kasca, he said "The closest Earthly analogue would be the Gangetic plain of northern India". Ever since then I have worked under that assumption when dealing with cultures and climates. In the mapdrawing I tried to follow that, intending a rough physial resemblance to the Ganges region in terms of positions of rivers/mountains/coast, but I left it at that and drew the rest of the continent to my whim, because I don't know how to draw maps in such a way that Aiwa=Ganges still works in the larger context.

Some time back one of the suggested fixes was to pivot the continent a little, around a point in the neighborhood of Buruya, such that Kasca, Huyfarah, and Siixtaguna moved south and the middle/upper Aiwa, Rathedan, and Xsali-land moved north. I liked that idea, it seemed to solve a lot... is it still workable or is that approach moribund now?

I don't think that there is much of a problem.

The gangetic plain has a Cwa climate. I'm suggesting that the Aiwa plain have a Cfa climate in its lower reaches, fading into steppe in its upper reaches (as, indeed, the ganges does iirc).
I imagine this Cfa is a bit colder than India, but within the same climactic band.
It's got perennial rainfall, albeit with a summer peak, as opposed to having a strong dry season. However, the gangetic dry season is not a result of latitude, it's a result of Asia. Our continent is nowhere near that big, so we're not going to get those monsoon effects. Winters still ought to be dryer than summers, though (as in China).

The mouth of the Ganges is Aw. You'ld need to do more than tilt the Aiwa to get its mouth that far south.

Xsalad would have much the same climate as the Aiwa, only hotter, and I'm guessing a more seasonal rainfall pattern.


So I don't think there's much of a problem. The main thing rotation would do is lower Siixtaguna, but as I say I don't think the latitude is a killer there anyway. Probably something in the region of Belarus, or New Brunswick - not an ideal place for a civilisation to start from scratch, perhaps, but perfectly liveable. And sometimes it's more interesting to have civilisations adapt to non-perfect conditions.

[Radius Solis]

Sal - alright, sounds good. I'd say let's go with that... pending thoughts/objections by others of course.

I think perhaps a little tilt might still help, even if it can't do everything. The biggest effects would be on Siixtaguna, the West, and Xshalad:

* Siixtaguna may not need to be warmer, but it can't hurt either; one principal effect of the cold would be to slow down advancement and growth, and we probably do not want that civilization to be technologically TOO far behind, say, Huyfarah.

* The West is not going to end up unacceptably cold either way, and so the whole question is pretty irrelevant for it save for the climate zones to expect there. Based on prior posts and writings of others, I think a big chunk of it is supposed to be plains... would that be more or less realistic if it moved north a touch?

* We need to avoid Xshalad being too equatorial. The closer we can get it to an India-like temperature band the better; there's still room for flex on questions like vegetation and temperature, but there are two things I really would like to have for it: a seasonal rainfall pattern, and grassy plains in its central inland zones (if necessary the plains can be a consequence of human activity).

[Salmoneus]

On the other hand, if we were to want Siixtaguna to eventually fall behind, that could be a good reason...

Talking off the top of my head, I think the impact on the west would be:
- less mediterranean climate
- probably more temperate forest
- there should be an interior steppe in either case
- there will still be some steppe somwhere in the south, which I think is where proto-western was to be from anyway. Although it may have to be further south. Also, off the top of my head I'm not sure about coastal alignment, so that might not work out properly.

Of course, we needn't tilt the west if we tilt the east. We could change the angle of the eastern peninsula instead, or, if we tilt the whole of the east, we could enlarge the mountain-plateau area in the centre.

for Xshalad, you can get a coastal-india climate just by pushing south. I don't think you'll get much by tilting it, given its alignment (it's near the pivot so won't move much). You won't be able to get a monsoon climate at all. You probably won't be able to get a north-indian climate either. However, the current Cfa can have distinct wet and dry periods. On the other hand, the dry periods will still not be dry-dry, only moist-dry. On the other hand, things like seasonal flooding can still happen. So it depends what you want, really.
[Also, India is gigantic, and has five or six climates in it]

There should be steppe up in the Tjakori region. How far south it goes I don't know, but that can be fiddled anyway (eg by making the course of the valley steeper or shallower).




- One thing to mention - if we tilt our continent, will that mean getting rid of that nice eastern continent's climate by tilting that to match? or will it mean abandoning the nice semi-realistic looks-like-tectonics alignment of the two?

[Radius Solis]

The Xshali grasslands do not need to be steppe. Sahel as wikipedia describes it would be perfect, and you've already got some in mostly the right areas. But would it be realistic for it to expand a bit further south? You've got a swath of green "humid continental" right below - could the pink sahel extend through the northern half of that? There is a range of rolling hills and eroded old mountains parallel to the coast, if that helps at all.

Rainfall-wise, the best would be if I could get Nile-style gentle annual floods on the main river, keeping the fertility high enough to support two crops a year, with a rainfall-dependent single annual growing season further from the river, such lands being correspondingly less fertile. How close to this do you think we can get?

[Salmoneus]

I think most of these issues are vague enough to be no concern.

On the map I put sahel, but it should probably be steppe, and indeed there isn't really much of a distinction anyway. By sahel I mean 'hot grassland' and by steppe I mean 'cold grassland', so the dividing line is more or less arbitrary. Either way, it's going to be dry but not desert, be mostly covered in grass (or grass-substitutes), and have small clumps of trees in sheltered areas by lakes and rivers. There may or may not be snow. There probably won't be a marked dry season, except that probably the Tjakori will have a dry winter due to the surrounding mountains. If the mountains (particularly to the north-west) were higher, it would be dryer, if they were lower it would be wetter. I think.

As Xshali is further south than the Aiwa, I would expect a fairly big humid area. I'm sure there's many way to fiddle with that, though, from mountains parallel to the coast to a steep rise to the northern mountains to unusual wind patterns (which are far beyond my powers to predict). How big do you need your grasslands to be?

Crop fertility can be manipulated by changing the crops and/or the soil. Obviously rice would require far more water than sorghum. It's not unrealistic that the rivers there would have a flooding season (iirc the chinese rivers have marked wet and dry seasons), and I think that whether there are floods will mostly be an issue of the river and the river bed more than the rainfall (some rivers are prone to flooding at a tip of a bucket, while others, in deep sheer gorges, couldn't flood if you poured a glacier down them).

So I think that what you want is probably within the realms of reasonable hand-waving, although I'm willing to be corrected by someone who actually knows what they're talking about...



Oh, and I guess the mountains to the west will have a drying rainshadow effect to some degree in the winter.

Also, it looks like the Xshali area is around the size of Europe, so no doubt there will be a lot of microclimates and variation within it.

[Cedh]

- One thing to mention - if we tilt our continent, will that mean getting rid of that nice eastern continent's climate by tilting that to match? or will it mean abandoning the nice semi-realistic looks-like-tectonics alignment of the two?

I still have the revised continent map high on my to-do-list, and I consider the coastlines of the whole northeastern part finished. I've tilted the Aiwa region by about 3-5° (with a pivot near Buruya), and I've tilted Siixtaguna a second time (possibly 10° more, with a pivot in the Doroh area). Also, I've adjusted the curve of the island chain a bit, so the eastern continents still line up well with Peilaš. I don't think this will have much impact on the climate of any area except for Siixtaguna, whose eastern tip is now at a latitude similar to Vladivostok.

I'm still very much working on the western and southern third of Peilaš, mostly because I can't seem to find a tectonic scenario that would explain all the mountain ranges we have so far, except maybe by positing six different plates (South, West, Xšali, Aiwa, Isthmus, Siixtaguna - but this is too much IMO). I'm currently thinking about having the mountains of the south run along the eastern rather than the western coast. Anyway, I'll try to sort this out this weekend. Rad's mention of an ancient mountain range along the Xšali coast might give the decisive clue, I hadn't known of that one...

[Salmoneus]

Vladivostok, yes. But I prefer to phrase it as "about the same latitude as Boston", which sounds a lot nicer. Of course, Siixtaguna is actually currently rather further north than either Vladivostok or Boston. On the other hand, it's considerably more moderate and temperate than either Manchuria or Labrador. I think New Brunswick is a good parallel.


How far south are you putting it? I'd like to suggest strongly in advance that we not homogenise it into being exactly the same as everywhere else. I think that having a different culture with a different climate would be good. But I'm only one voice, I admit.




Of course, one option could simply be to make the planet hotter. Then we wouldn't have to move anything.



Be aware that moving those southern mountains (which look extremely nice, btw) would have immense climactic effects. At the moment there's a giant rainforest there. Putting a big rainshadow onto it would do away with that. Whether we want that or not, I don't know.

[Cedh]

Vladivostok, yes. But I prefer to phrase it as "about the same latitude as Boston", which sounds a lot nicer. Of course, Siixtaguna is actually currently rather further north than either Vladivostok or Boston. On the other hand, it's considerably more moderate and temperate than either Manchuria or Labrador. I think New Brunswick is a good parallel.

Yeah, probably. I meant to compare it to the eastern coast of Canada originally, but then picked Vladivostok because of the Gulf Stream - there's nothing like that near Siixtaguna. But then again, I do know how the Gulf Stream affects Europe, but I'm not at all sure about its impact on the New Brunswick region. Probably a good deal less significant than in Europe, I guess.

How far south are you putting it? I'd like to suggest strongly in advance that we not homogenise it into being exactly the same as everywhere else. I think that having a different culture with a different climate would be good. But I'm only one voice, I admit.

It's still further north than Huyfárah, but not much. However, it will still be significantly colder because the Ttirukan islands block any warm ocean currents, directing them into the Kasca Bay instead.

Be aware that moving those southern mountains (which look extremely nice, btw) would have immense climactic effects. At the moment there's a giant rainforest there. Putting a big rainshadow onto it would do away with that. Whether we want that or not, I don't know.

I'll be sure to keep this in mind, don't worry!

[Radius Solis]

Vladivostok, yes. But I prefer to phrase it as "about the same latitude as Boston", which sounds a lot nicer. Of course, Siixtaguna is actually currently rather further north than either Vladivostok or Boston. On the other hand, it's considerably more moderate and temperate than either Manchuria or Labrador. I think New Brunswick is a good parallel.

Yeah, probably. I meant to compare it to the eastern coast of Canada originally, but then picked Vladivostok because of the Gulf Stream - there's nothing like that near Siixtaguna. But then again, I do know how the Gulf Stream affects Europe, but I'm not at all sure about its impact on the New Brunswick region. Probably a good deal less significant than in Europe, I guess.

Vladivostok's surrounding sea temperature is pretty directly comparable to that of N.B. or Boston. The gulf stream just about completely misses everything from Cape Cod north:

[Salmoneus]

More than miss it! There's a corresponding cold current (Labrador in NA, can't remember what in Asia) that actually cools those areas.

[And there will be a gulf stream on Akana. There'll be a great big gyre in the ocean, and those islands won't block the stream, I'm fairly certain. At least, I hope not - that gulf stream is what produces that wonderful expanse of temperate forest on the eastern continent. The islands should block the current - the Aleuts fail to block their current, and so does New Guinea, even. Though they may encourage a 'back-wash' sort of effect toward Kasca.

[Radius Solis]

Cuba also quite fails to block the Gulf Stream even though the passage is only 90 miles wide and very shallow.

[Corumayas]

More than miss it! There's a corresponding cold current (Labrador in NA, can't remember what in Asia) that actually cools those areas.

Won't a similar cold current affect Siixtaguna? If it's like New Brunswick or northern New England, I think it'll have punishingly long and harsh winters; the cold may be less of a problem than heavy snow lasting nearly half the year. If we want it to develop a major civilization, I think we need to avoid that somehow.

For what it's worth, for ideas for the Ngauro and their predecessors, I've been looking at three models: neolithic & bronze age China, the eastern (especially southeastern, especially Mississippian) US, and of course (but not really for climate-dependent things, and I'll try to draw from the others more) early Mesopotamia.

[Salmoneus]

Yes, there will be a cold current. However, winters wouldn't be as cold or long as in north america, because the area is more maritime - there isn't that huge frozen weight behind it in the winter.

It would, however, still be cold. But the Orkneys developed one of the earliest civilisations in Europe (though it wasn't sustained). The Vikings were culturally sophisticated and enourmously influential in the world for centuries. Novgorod was the greatest power in eastern europe, and one of the richest cities on the continent. For centuries, Sweden was a major power. The Hanseatic League, almost the definition of wealth for centuries consisted almost entirely of cities in the Baltic. Cold and snow are problems, but not problems that are insurmountable.

[Radius Solis]

Whoops, missed this.

Questions: do we have Talo-Edastean to Tlaliolz soundchanges? And more importantly, do we have a Talo-Edastean lexicon? I'm working on some Andagg sound-changes. [I know, I can work words out from Ndak Ta - but it's extra effort if it's been done already]

We do have those sound changes, and we do have a partial lexicon (the NT core vocab but not most of the extention yet). Or rather, I do. I will spend the time I have available for it today working on getting the lexicon wikified. At some point I should upload everything I've got for Tlaliolz too, but that's lower on the priority scale since nobody's project depends on it.

Warning: proto-Talo-Edastean is butt-ugly.


In aid of that: HELP! Does anyone know where I can find a compehensive list of all the NT words believed to be loans from other languages (that shouldn't appear in pTE)? Or if there even is one? I can identify several loans but I'm pretty sure there's more.

[Cedh]

In aid of that: HELP! Does anyone know where I can find a compehensive list of all the NT words believed to be loans from other languages (that shouldn't appear in pTE)? Or if there even is one? I can identify several loans but I'm pretty sure there's more.

I don't think there is such a list; if you check the NT vocab against the items listed on the Proto-Isthmus/Lexicon, Proto-Eigə-Isthmus, and Talk:Proto-Eigə-Isthmus pages you should find all possible loans from the Eigə-Isthmus family that have been officially proposed. As for Gezoro loans, I think you indicated them in the NT wordlist in the first place. I don't think any borrowings from other language families have been posited yet.

Anyway, I'd suggest you leave out most derived or compounded words, and a number of roots too, in order to make pTE look even more reconstructed.

[Corumayas]

To sum up, the following Ndak Ta words are loans from Ngauro:

diàka 'king'
kaime 'study', kenla 'teacher, scribe'
Kasadgad
mos 'city'
naka 'god'
santa 'legal', santau 'illegal', sanlena 'public'

Also, kwir 'goat' is a loan from Faraghin.

There might be other loans; for example, these look like they could have possible cognates in Faraghin:

alpau 'make, create' (Far. foghan 'make, craft')
sai 'female' (Far. šoi 'woman'; but you said this was probably a loan from NT)
sau 'coast' (Far. sif 'sea, ocean')

And these are similar to Miwan words, but the loan is likely to be in the other direction:

ntindo 'metal' (FMiw di:ndi:n 'metal')
eplain 'ball' (EMiw plaj 'bead')

Finally, there could be some more that we don't happen to have Faraghin or Miwan cognates for (yet). I'll leave that up to your judgment.

But--! Ngauro would be influential during the PTE period too, so some loans could be that early (this has been suggested for diaka and mos so far).



Sal: I guess what I really need to know for my own purposes, climate-wise, is what the lower Aiwa and adjacent regions (e.g. the coastal plain and piedmont areas north of it) are like... for example, is the delta too wet for wheat? Is irrigation needed for farming in any part of the region? Is wood abundant, or would it need to be imported from higher ground? And so on.

[Radius Solis]

Thank you both!

[Salmoneus]

Sal: I guess what I really need to know for my own purposes, climate-wise, is what the lower Aiwa and adjacent regions (e.g. the coastal plain and piedmont areas north of it) are like... for example, is the delta too wet for wheat? Is irrigation needed for farming in any part of the region? Is wood abundant, or would it need to be imported from higher ground? And so on.

Wheat: haven't a clue. If anything, might be too wet for wheat, which I guess must have limits. Irrigation? Depends what farming you want.

I don't think we need cleave perfectly to earth's crops. I would hazard that the lower Aiwa is very fertile, temperate in climate, and wet, so some form of cereal crop ought to be possible - if that's what we want the staple to be. I shouldn't have thought irrigation would be necessary, although obviously there will be areas that aren't great for cereals - but if we wanted irrigation we could just change the crop. Or indeed the geology, which plays just as large a part in these things. As an extreme, the entire plain could be permeable, with rivers running in deep gorges and the rest of the plain entirely barren grassland, or even a rainfall-rich desert....

Trees: looking at it, it seems there's three major options. First, monsoon forest. I think that with the latitude and the coastline that's unlikely to be too big - perhaps a coastal 'florida' region. Second, temperate broadleafed forests. This seems most likely. However, a third option (my favourite, but I'll not fight the consensus) would be pampas. It seems the pampas that you get in argentina in places where there should be forest is a result of geology - the soil is too compact, and not airy enough, for forest.

If the valley were mostly pampasy, there would be trees along watercourses and elsewhere it would be grass - but thick deep grass, and very fertile for crops. Additionally, we could easily say that certain areas of the valley did not share that soil type, allowing us to plonk forests down in areas that are not climatically that different.


There are also two other possibilities. One is tropical dry forest - but we're probably too far north, so I'd say Xshalad for that. The other is mediterranean - which for some reason occurs in Gilan and Colchis. Don't know why. Probably not applicable.

[Radius Solis]

To sum up, the following Ndak Ta words are loans from Ngauro:

Mm. Alright, thanks again. So, to take care of some of these loose ends:

1. I'm going to go ahead and definitively proclaim (barring strong reasons to the contrary arising in the future) that Faraghin did indeed borrow NT sai "female". The correspondence of the proto-Ferogh form with NT isn't just close, it's exact; and I want a reflex of it in Tlaliolz, which would have split off well before any Ndak contact with the Faraghin.

2. Miwan dindin and NT ntindo I am proclaiming unrelated, being formed by onomatopeia in both languages - their similarity reflects nothing more than areal trends in sound symbolism (which is exactly where I got them in the first place: from English ding).

3. Diaka and kenla were borrowed from Ngauro into proto-Talo-Edastean before it broke up. Tl. has reflexes of both. Mos can be among this group too, either way is fine with me; I certainly don't need a word for "city" for the Tlaliolz.

4. "eplain" is hereby proclaimed to be native to Talo-Edastean, both for the existing reasons and so that I can have an iflin in Tlaliolz - I'm loathe to toss out the relatively few native words that fit really well into the language's intended feel.

None of the rest figure into Tlaliolz, so to leave room for future decisions I will leave them out of the pTE wordlist.

[Corumayas]

Cool; I've removed the Ndak Ta loans from the PEI and PI root lists.

Thanks for the climate ideas, Salmoneus. Pampas does look promising, especially the way it goes from humid in the east to semi-arid in the west, with dry "thorny" grasslands all around the edges. That sounds a lot like what we want for the Aiwa region to me. (It also sounds a lot like the North American prairie; I'm not sure why that surprises me.) The only thing would be to justify the forests that occur in certain areas (mostly in the east), but it sounds like that wouldn't be too difficult.

[Corumayas]

Nobody's said anything about the new relay idea in a while. Meanwhile, it seems like several people are working (or thinking about working) on daughters of Proto-Western and Proto-Nualis-Takuna on their own. Do we still want to do a new relay?

Also, Sano has just withdrawn his offer to create a script for us, due to his becoming insanely busy...

[Radius Solis]

Nobody's said anything about the new relay idea in a while. Meanwhile, it seems like several people are working (or thinking about working) on daughters of Proto-Western and Proto-Nualis-Takuna on their own. Do we still want to do a new relay?

I do! Last I heard, the plan was to prepare for that by improving the wiki and wrapping up loose end that impinge on the setting in question (whichever it ends up being).

It's true I've expressed an interest in proto-Coastal Western, but I have not claimed it for certain - mainly I'm just thinking I'd like to do that if we do another relay. All I have for it right now are some vague thoughts rattling around the back of my head, none of them earth-shattering enough to demand I make them into a conlang. That and a couple sound-change lists I know I don't want to try.

Also, Sano has just withdrawn his offer to create a script for us, due to his becoming insanely busy...

[Cedh]

Nobody's said anything about the new relay idea in a while. Meanwhile, it seems like several people are working (or thinking about working) on daughters of Proto-Western and Proto-Nualis-Takuna on their own. Do we still want to do a new relay?

I do! Last I heard, the plan was to prepare for that by improving the wiki and wrapping up loose end that impinge on the setting in question (whichever it ends up being).

It's true I've expressed an interest in proto-Coastal Western, but I have not claimed it for certain - mainly I'm just thinking I'd like to do that if we do another relay. All I have for it right now are some vague thoughts rattling around the back of my head, none of them earth-shattering enough to demand I make them into a conlang. That and a couple sound-change lists I know I don't want to try.

I've been toying on and off with a Western language for months now (with an interesting backstory), and I've arrived at a set of sound changes that come out extremely cool, although they're fairly conservative for the intended time depth of 3500 years (the language is roughly contemporary with Adāta). I have yet to work out suitable intermediate stages to see how the grammar would change - the first of these, "proto-Mountain-Western", would be my relay entry if we start from PW.

I think most of the wiki is well organized now, but there are still a few rather basic articles missing. We should write up some short articles for the most relevant regions, cities, and cultures as far as we have ideas on these. Have a look at Special:Wanted Pages for the most obvious holes.

Also, we need authoritative maps. I'm happy to announce that I've successfully worked out the tectonics of Akana (with the help of a neat find: G.Projector lets you map Plate Carrée images on a globe; using this in parallel with Photoshop allowed me to figure out the plate movements). I'm rather busy with other things until Dec 1, but I think I'll publish a world map soon, and if no-one requests major changes I should have the revised map of Peilaš ready by Christmas. IMO that should be the "go" signal for a new relay...