Icemannish Thread: Sails and Skins

[Pabappa]

And now, for something new.

Very good reading as always, thank you. I have a few questions, I hope not too many.

Since I seemed to have bumped the thread, Im just pointing out the up-arrow above links to the entire previous post for anyone who's not familiar with the new format.

Proto-Icemannic Phonology
Consonants: p t t^j k q ts sʲ b/v d/ð g/ɣ ɢ/ʁ m n (nʲ) ŋ ɴ l ł j ʔ
Vowels: a aa ai au i ii ia iu u uu ua ui ə
Syllable Structure: (C)V(V)(C)(V)–VC VVC VVCV CV CVC CVV CVVC CVVCV

Is your ł a convenience symbol for IPA /ɫ/, /ɬ/, or something else?
Are the long vowels /ii/ and /uu/ simply pronounced long, or is there a glide? Can there be a contrast between /ii/ and /ji/? How about /jii/? Same question with /ia ua/, I guess .... are those phonetically [ja wa]? Im guessing not, because i see sequences of /j/ + vowel and also /i/ + vowel below ... but i want to be sure. Plus, I guess there's those palatalized alveolars ... can something like /sʲii/ contrast with /sii/ and /sji/?

It is entirely possible that, once it could be reasonably demonstrated that the gods (*ðiu) were not only absolutely present, but also powerful, that the estimation of the woman at home, battling psychic forces that few men could (or were allowed to) brave, went further up from even its pre-matriarchal state.

How many gods are there? Do they take human form? Are they bound to a specific gender? If so, how many are male and female? Can they age?

Possession: *-juk: 1st person singular feminine, *-tia: 1st person singular masculine
*-sʲi: 2nd person singular masculine
*-nuł: 3rd person singular masculine *-tut: 3rd person singular inanimate
*-taq: 1st person plural feminine
*-vik: 3rd person plural feminine

Are the gaps in the paradigm intentional?

Or, as a more fun example, the word *titsupəłaisʲi “your inability to be found, boy”:
ti-tsu-p-ə-łai-ja-sʲi
find.PASS-ABCENSE-NOM-2smPOSS

That word's got a nice rhythm to it. But I dont understand the gloss .... you have seven morphemes spelled out, but only five in the gloss. Also, what happens to the medial /ja/?

Lastly, I want to hear about the causative noun case. Would the causative be used for sentences like, "Because of the storm, I slept all day."? How would you translate a clause like "Because I'm a boy", or "Because of my son"?

Thanks for your time.

[Pedant]

Very good reading as always, thank you. I have a few questions, I hope not too many.

Many thanks, and no trouble at all!

Is your ł a convenience symbol for IPA /ɫ/, /ɬ/, or something else?

Right, forgot about that...it was supposed to be /ɬ/; on the original files (Microsoft Word) I didn't have access to IPA symbols, and forgot to change it when I switched over to a different format. Thanks for reminding me! All corrected!

Are the long vowels /ii/ and /uu/ simply pronounced long, or is there a glide? Can there be a contrast between /ii/ and /ji/? How about /jii/? Same question with /ia ua/, I guess .... are those phonetically [ja wa]? Im guessing not, because i see sequences of /j/ + vowel and also /i/ + vowel below ... but i want to be sure. Plus, I guess there's those palatalized alveolars ... can something like /sʲii/ contrast with /sii/ and /sji/?

/ii/ and /uu/ technically use glides, but they're treated as two individual moras for the most part (as in /u-u/). You could get /ji/, and potentially /jii/, but the latter is rare due to phonetic restrictions. For that matter, combinations of a long vowel with a short, or of two long vowels, usually has one of the vowels turning into a full semivowel. In the combination /uu/+/ia/, for example, the spoken form (as best as can be reconstructed) would be /uuja/; /ii/+/ia/ would be /ijia/, not /iija/; and /au/+/ja/ would still be /auja/ not **/avia/ or */avja/.

How many gods are there? Do they take human form? Are they bound to a specific gender? If so, how many are male and female? Can they age?

There are technically as many gods around in Ajjamah as there need to be; they are primordial souls (as in literally the souls of extinct animals) clinging on to some semblance of life in the Dream (one side of the Spirit World), where perception of reality is stored. (It's been really messy since humans showed up.) They enter symbiotic relationships with living beings of sufficient mental development; if one gives them enough of a shape, the god will step into it and begin acting as commanded, and in return grant certain powers to their believers. The Salvians, and the Crusaders down in Hercua, have made this into an art form--but more on them later. They take, accordingly, whatever forms are allowed to them by the belief system. If they're always human, then they're always human. If they're made to identify as male or female, then regardless of the animal's original sex they will be male or female. (Note that often several souls from different animals will fuse together in one deity of sufficient power, so there may be both male and female aspects.)
How much power do they actually wield? Well, it depends on the landscape. You can have several hundred or several thousand deities with minimal power across an area, or you can have them combine into larger beings (again, through people believing that they are but one deity, or servants thereof). Too much power to the gods also has a tendency to diminish one's own Gift, a supernatural power imprinted on the soul that differs between ethnicities. The Salvians to the south get around this by fusing their Speaking Soul with a deity quite early on, limiting their connection with other gods in exchange for keeping their own powers. The Icemannic peoples, with a similar power (detaching their Speaking Soul from their body), instead prefer to speak to deities personally in the Dream, which is not the same as prayer (because they're interacting with the essence of the god directly and not altering it to be programmed to do what they want).
The aging of gods is a fascinating topic on its own. It's not really that the god gets older (although they do) or more or less powerful (although they do); it's that the god becomes more mature. After a few centuries of existence a god has a basic "template" set out for itself, and wayward spirits joining the cluster have to change quite drastically to fit the mould. This is okay, though, because the god no longer has to worry as much about being ripped apart by thaumic winds in the Dream--it develops a shell made of memories, so to speak. As attitudes to the god change in the future, the effect is additive instead; there's a core personality, to which later experiences add and cause self-reflection in the god. A sufficiently ancient deity has a personality as complex as an adult human being, and (if their faith has kept up) much, much more power.
More on the deities of the Icemannic peoples, including their totems, personalities, and cults, later. Maybe even next post if you like.

Are the gaps in the paradigm intentional?

Not at all; these were simply the order in which I needed them for sentences. I'll finish it up soon, no worries.

That word's got a nice rhythm to it. But I dont understand the gloss .... you have seven morphemes spelled out, but only five in the gloss. Also, what happens to the medial /ja/?

Hah, another mistake! Gods was I out of it yesterday (had my wisdom teeth out)...corrections made.

Lastly, I want to hear about the causative noun case. Would the causative be used for sentences like, "Because of the storm, I slept all day."? How would you translate a clause like "Because I'm a boy", or "Because of my son"?

Quite right! Strictly speaking the causative, like the durative and interpersonal, is one of those cases that works better with "verbs" than "nouns" in Proto-Icemannic, being used almost entirely to create subordinate conjunctions. For copula sentences it's preferred to use the conjectural suffix alone (for example *ɣaatsuqava VERB+vau "I am a boy therefore VERB"), while for nouns that require additional explanation (an action that is not instinctual to them) the causative is combined with the conjectural, the causative appearing as always before the possessive pronoun (*katavaujuk VERB-vau "Because of my son therefore VERB"). For the type of clause you first suggested, that has a noun with an instinctually understandable action (a storm "storms" no matter what), one would combine the causative and conjectural with the conjunction *iŋu. (Incidentally, your sentence would be *vis^jəvun puandulavauva (iŋu) tsaanduʁukiaqatsut "I assume that because of the storm I slept, and (as a linked action while I was sleeping) an entire day passed.")

Thanks for your time.

Thank you for yours!

[Pedant]

SAILS AND SKINS: NAVAL TECHNOLOGY AND APPEARANCE OVER THE YEARS
All terms in italics are from Icemannic Dialect 17 (from Aaharanatan) unless stated otherwise; all terms in italics with an asterisk are from Proto-Icemannic unless stated otherwise.

From Little Whales to Winged Whales: A Brief Overview of Icemannic Naval Technology
The earliest vessels of the Icemannic peoples were umiaks and kayaks--affectionately called "big whales" (opohat) and "little whales" (opokit) by their riders. These have, for thousands of years, had a driftwood (or whalebone) frame, covered with skins and coated with oils and set adrift with oars (sautat) for women and paddles (pautat) for men. Both ships also use sails (*taina, also meaning "hide"). As among the Inuit, kayaks are used by men, and umiaks by women. The prestige, however, is much reversed; the reverence goes to the umiak, the "big whale" surrounded by teeming suitors who protect her and her calves from harm. It was using these that settlers first came to Laukihiina from Aihal, and from Laukihiina moved on to Maanitsoki and Harukkun, all around 1,400 years ago. (There were, it seems, also some early settlements in Tailtiinu, as can be determined by the remnants of old villages and petroglyphs. Nobody is quite sure what happened, although vampire attacks are naturally a possibility.)
Around 1,200 years ago another type of vessel came to be found across the North Passage: the dugout canoe (*tiak), originally created by the early migrating Botanists in their coast-hugging explorations of the east. Once the principle had been established, it was easy enough to trade for--or capture--canoes, which could then be used to travel back to the lands of the Botanists for raids.
From these two boatbuilding traditions--the kayak/umiak and the canoe--came a compromise set upon by the Aihalish peoples around 700 years ago, known in the Aaharanatan Dialect as the kainuter or "longship" (literally "driftwood-canoe"; plural kainutengat). A "driftwood base" (now more often than not carved from a single tree) was still used, but instead of skins wood was laid over it in a clinker pattern. (Hide sails were still popular, though.) Excellent at riparian, coastal, and oceanic travel alike thanks to its low base and sturdy hull, the creation of the longships became the catalyst for a second expansion of the Icemannic peoples--one that would eventually lead to the colonization of Tailtiinu. They are especially important in the Archipelago, where owning a longship is the minimum requirement for a clan to send a woman to the local council.
Other advancements came during this period as well, including the introduction of the sunstone (hjaitsaukar)--a rock known as Icelandic Spar in our world, which one can use to determine the location of the sun on both cloudy days and in twilight conditions)--and the rudder (raingipauta), which made it much easier to maneuver in the water. The old tradition of navigation using the stars (kynihyrä) has kept strong, however, and there are universally recognized constellations across the North Passage.
The most recent development in terms of naval technology has been an attempt to replicate the larger wooden ships of the Irthironians who landed in Harukkun. The natives called them sianjuapuat or "winged whales"; the sound if not the precise meaning has been copied in the Dialect 17 word hjanova. A fair few of the ships have been wrecked over the last few decades (the Captains Ahab of Irthiron, so to speak, do actually have to put up with rather vengeful whales in this world, especially if they go after the flying variety), and from these wrecks have come the Icemannic peoples' attempts at copying the style to better favour oceangoing as opposed to the more versatile but less efficient longships of old. The Harukkuni who were made to crew Irthironian vessels for a time have taken to selling their services as sailors and ship-designers to other Icemannic nations; this has spurred a masculinizing of sea travel once again, creating competition in the archipelago. (For this reason the ships tend to be owned, where they are made, by the local government instead of the clans, while the non-foreign male crew-members are drafted from relatively few upper-class families, in order to minimize the damage to the traditional culture.) The cannons and muskets of the Irthironian crews we shall discuss at a later time.
One group cannot escape mention here: the New Islanders, an informal alliance of all-female pirates, centuries old and spanning the entire Archipelago. Keeping alive the raiding traditions of their ancestors while their sisters have settled down and grown fat, they are a force to be reckoned with, combining the traditions of their ancestors with modern weaponry and shipbuilding techniques. Like seafaring Amazons, the crews are almost entirely female; those young boys they kidnap to grant them heirs are often set ashore (or merely put off the ship) once they've provided a suitable number of daughters. The people of the Archipelago can fight them off with relative ease, and even trade with the New Islanders once in a while; but the queendoms of the Southern Coast are somewhat more frightened of them, as are the Botanists on the western coast, and the one thing that stops the New Islanders from raiding as much as they like is the threat that the Irthironians will be called in to stop them--for the Irthironians are cursed, they say, with the power to destroy your very soul...

The Appearance of the Icemannic Peoples
The Icemannic peoples are one of four ethnic groups in the world to have developed blonde hair; the others are the Shifters (who possibly don't count because of their animal transformations, so this title is given dubiously to the Crusaders instead, naturally by the Crusaders themselves) the Swoopers of the Qutosbegek Mountains (who also have practically jet-black skin to help them maintain sufficient cover from the increased ultraviolet light), and about a third of the Sane People (who are just a little bit odd). Hair tends to be straight or wavy (more the former to the north). The Icemannic peoples have used this as a signature of their superiority, blessed, as it were, to carry a piece of the sun with them wherever they may go.
Skin colour ranges from very pale (in the Archipelago) to fair (on the Southern Coast) to olive (up in the Three Tundras). Eye colour, too, has some range, but tends to be different shades of blue with few if any greens or browns or golds. (The genes affecting eye colour work somewhat differently on Ajjamah.)
The bodies of the Icemannic people tend to have moderate layers of fat along their forms, mainly for insulation purposes against the chill. They all, without question, have quite narrow, flat noses, to keep out the cold air as best as they can.
Height in the Icemannic world ranges from rather short to among the tallest in the world. The average anthropus praeditus comes up to about 163cm tall, combining the numbers for male and female; on the Southern Coast the average is around 170cm, while in the north it's around 154cm. Note that in both places height difference is not particularly noticeable between males and females, with perhaps a centimetre or two difference on average. The people of Tailtiinu are taller still, with women averaging 173cm and men 176cm in height.
In the Three Tundras epicanthic folds in adulthood have redeveloped, with a look more similar to certain people in Poland than in East Asia.

[Pabappa]

Interesting, thanks. I dont have as much to say as with the earlier posts, but i read it and enjoyed it. Im just curious, since you've described two different things as flying whales now, are they related? One was an animal and the other is a boat ... so is the boat named after the animal?

People who live in cold climates for a long period of time may develop faster metabolisms to help keep warm. Have you thought about that as an adaptation for some of these tribes?

[Pedant]

Interesting, thanks. I don’t have as much to say as with the earlier posts, but I read it and enjoyed it.

I’m very glad to hear it!

I’m just curious, since you've described two different things as flying whales now, are they related? One was an animal and the other is a boat ... so is the boat named after the animal?

Indeed it is; the proper Proto-Icemannic term for a water-going vessel would be *tiak, but since the earliest days the Trancers have affectionately names their boats after the whales that follow the leviathans across the sea. The “winged whales” are an extrapolation on this line of thought.

People who live in cold climates for a long period of time may develop faster metabolisms to help keep warm. Have you thought about that as an adaptation for some of these tribes?

I'll see about describing changes to the Icemannic metabolic systems when I (finally) get around to writing up the bit on kuatu, the Trance State. Rest assured, however, that it has crossed my mind--all it needs is a bit more research...