Postal systems and codes

[alice]

(For optimum geek points, obviously)

Those of you who've worked out networks of postal routes for your conworlds: have you ever gone as far as creating postal codes or their equivalent?

[Pabappa]

I havent gotten that far and probably never will since the society never moves beyond medieval levels of technology. However, political parties have a long existence, and their long official names necessitate abbreviations. I've always used three-letter acronyms when translating them into English ... for example, a political party calling itself the United Pacifist League takes the abbreviation UPL, and a party named Save the World takes on the name STW. For parties with shorter names, I just abbreviate that name: the Crystals are known as CRY, and the Soap Bubbles are known as BUB. However, for some parties I only have a one-word conlang name, and the English abbreviation makes little sense, such as Raspara abbreviating to PEG. I dont remember where I pulled this from, just that I wanted all political parties to have three letter acronyms and didnt want to use the in-conlang name since that name is just one of many names the Raspara used, as they survived many years and learned different languages.

All of my major conlangs share a syllabic form of writing, so their acronyms are based on whole syllables and are pronounced as if they were ordinary words. However, I'm not sure they would be likely to share a preference for three morphemes per name the way English does.

Poswa forms abbreviations by taking:
1)the first syllable and the onset of the second (from the first word), then
2)the rime of the first syllable and the onset of the second (from every middle word), and then adding
3)everything except the onset of the first syllable of the final word.

In Poswa, the word pirapos means "league", but the archaic shorter form pirap would likely survive in abbreviations. The word žimpa means "neutral, pacifist", and -bum is a plural morpheme denoting cooperation. Thus Žimpabum means "(United) Pacifists ", and while I would expect the full form of the name UPL to be a two-word expression Žimpames Pirapos "United Pacifists' League" (-bum becomes -mes in the genitive), it's possible that an abbreviation could be used, and that would be Žimpirap, from žimp(abum p)irap. However, I think that Poswobs in general would be less prone to abbreviations than English speakers are.

Other languages use a similar mechanism. Late Andanese is the language most comfortable with abbreviations, and it is a pure CV language, so words made of abbreviations of other words sound just like other words and there is no audible pause necessary before or after pronouncing them. However, my lexicon is quite bare, so Im going to have to skip the poklitics and just make up a new phrase:

Lemonade Store Road
pinipini "lemonade" (/pini/ = lemon)
puna "store"
yaa "road"

Now, what happens here is that each /a/ in road changes to /pu/ to agree with the word it modifies. Thus you get ipunapupu "road to a store". But the /pupu/ part by itself has elements of both words, so the middle word, /puna/, can drop out. Thus to abbreviate this, you change /ipunapupu/ to ipupu and it still means a road towards a store. But when adding further morphemes, only the first syllable of /pupu/ appears, however,so then it just becomes /ipu-/. Then lemoade appears in its full form after that, so you get ipupinipini "lemonade store road". Those in a hurry could abbreviate the final morpheme as well, though, and call this ipupini "lemon store road" and be understood, because a lemon shop is likely a lemonade shop too.

Therefore, if you wanted to name a street that happened to have a lemonade store on it, you could call that street Ipupini. Since the i- is still functioning as a classifier, this could be translated as "Pupini Street" in Englisgh.

[alynnidalar]

I wrote up a lengthy thing about Sanmran addresses and then realized only about two sentences actually mentioned postal codes. So let me summarize the postal code bits.

Sanmra doesn't have a universal, national postal code system, or indeed a national addressing format either. It's all on an enclave-by-enclave basis. Most smaller cities are small enough that postal codes aren't really necessary; the enclave/city name is sufficient. But larger cities use postal codes/zones for convenience. Each city has its own system, of course. Why have one simple system when you can have fifteen conflicting ones?

Sakaran is at the extremely simple end of the scale. The city is divided into four quarters that are numbered 1 to 4. Elten's addressing system is horrible, but the postal code part is at least straightforward: the first digit refers to which of the city's three "rings" an address is located in, and the second and third digits indicate which postal zone within that ring. (e.g. 208 means the 8th zone in the 2nd (or "Middle") ring) Meanwhile Akoke, like the OCD bureaucrats they are, use numbers for everything, so you could theoretically write an entire address as a string of numbers--e.g. "928745" would mean house 45 on street 87 in the second zone of the 9th postal district.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I don't have postcodes, but I do have codes for separate universes within the multiverse. They comprise one Latin letter, a digit string, and a Greek letter. The Crackled Egg, for example, takes place in universe A³⁷⁶γ.

[doctor shark]

(For optimum geek points, obviously)

Those of you who've worked out networks of postal routes for your conworlds: have you ever gone as far as creating postal codes or their equivalent?

For Telèmor, somewhat: postal codes consist of six digits, the first two indicating the region (11-28). The other four digits depend on the region: most use the following three digits to indicate the general vicinity of the city of interest and the final digit being a more specific localizer. However, in Fotèssa, only the second two digits indicate the district with the final two digits serving to indicate the borough/more specific address.

[Curlyjimsam]

I think an early version of my concountry (from around fifteen years ago) had a three-letter code for each county. I haven't thought about the matter since.