Č'iramṳ - The Č'ira̤ language - for NaNoWriMo challenge

[Mornche Geddick]

The last few days I have been busy translating Thurber's story "The rabbits who caused all the trouble" into ?upata, and I will post it in the ?upata thread as I have opportunity. Meanwhile, however, I'm moving to the second phase of my NaNoWriMo challenge: the Č'iramṳ language.

Č'iramṳ was created for the Č'ira̤, one of the cultures I created for the Collaborative Conworld competition we did on the old ZBB a couple of years ago. Here, to warm up, I will post some of the information about the Č'irah culture.

The Č'irah are descended from an offshoot of the same Munkee subspecies who colonised Raepʰɤn. They seem to have crossed over to the Northern Continent by boat before the union with the Humans. Their language is phonologically and morphologically very different from the major language spoken in Raepʰɤn, but both have had something like 8000 years to evolve. Their nearest neighbours are the Finlayan Golems. They call their country Xʷera or Suhɉa-oČirah (Land of the Č'irah).

The Č'irah have had to do everything for themselves which their Apʰɯron brethren could ask their human friends for. They had to find their own way in a strange land without help from anyone else, and develop arts such as pottery and grain farming on their own.

[Mornche Geddick]

Geography

Xʷera is Mediterranean in climate and surrounded on three sides by sea. It lacks the coastal mountain ranges of Raepʰɤn, but does have high hills in the west.There are more forests here than in Raepʰɤn, although to Munkees just come from the forested Raepʰɤn of the ice ages it must have seemed very open. Very little is now virgin forest. Around the edges, "mixed orchard" might be a better description. Č'irah have explored as far as the NW-SE mountain range in VR7 and W6 by ship.

[Mornche Geddick]

Farming, Animal Husbandry

Humans were responsible for collecting grain in South Raepʰɤn. The Č'irah preferred to gather their food in the forest and not the grasslands, so as a result they have only two or three grain crops, rye and two inferior types of barley. They mostly feed grain to animals, and only eat it themselves in a poor year, or if their orchards have been destroyed. In the forests they found many more types of fruits, including vine berries. The seeds that were thrown away and germinated around their settlements developed into the temperate crops of Xʷera: leaf vegetables, root vegetables, legumes, seventeen types of fruit tree including the olive, and six types of vine, including wine grapes. The Č'irah will become famous for their orchards but this could make them particularly vulnerable to an enemy who burns their crops (because trees take several years to regrow).

Luckily many of their settlements are coastal, and fish also forms a large part of their diet.

The forests still provide a habitat for deer and other animals which they hunt for food. The Č'irah haven't been so lucky as the Children of Apʰɯron in having a wide variety of animal species to tame, but they have the gʷizbo, or Great Goat, an animal as large as a small horse, which can be saddle-broken. They also have the ox, used for ploughing and pulling carts, and a domestic fowl similar to the chicken, but the current breed lays smaller eggs. They hunt duck, geese and swans, but haven't yet domesticated them.

[Mornche Geddick]

Clothing

Typically the Č'irah wear a short linen tunic (but nothing else), to protect their sparsely-furred torsos from sun and wind. In winter it may be replaced with one of wool. When swimming, racing, or competing in other sports they go naked. They make leather boots from ox hide, which support the ankle and enable the Munkees to walk further and for longer. Without boots, flexible Munkee ankles would tire after a couple of hours of travel in the plains.

[Mornche Geddick]

Transport.

Inland, they depend on woods, rivers, or their swinging posts. By 1500 they build the first stone bridges and paved roads, but only between major towns. They are more advanced navigators then the Children of Apʰɯron, having invented the galley with the single sail before they did.

Munkees have some advantage over Humans as sailors. Humans row using the power of their legs, but without a sliding seat they can get blisters. A Munkee can anchor himself to the bench by his tail and a greater proportion of the force comes from his arms.

[Mornche Geddick]

Culture, Sport, Religion

Marriage and sex are similar enough to the Children of Apʰɯron not to need a detailed analysis here.

Sports such as racing, archery, swimming and wrestling are favourite pastimes in most Munkee societies, but the Č'irah are the first to organise regular competitions. Most large towns have several festivals a year and they always include games. Swimming, rowing, archery, throwing the javelin and discus are regular favourites. The forest of P'espah has its famous ten-mile race in honour of the goddess K'oloh. The city of S'amro is the origin of the most famous game. This description comes from a treatise written several hundred years later, but we know by archeological and linguistic evidence that it was being played in this period.

A wooden frame as long as a basketball court is built of swinging posts with interconnecting ropes, poles or beams. It looks like a gridiron or a net. Players hang from the beams and swing from one to another, while passing a leather ball to one another by their feet. Team size varies, and so do the rules for scoring, but in general, the ball must be thrown at a target at one end. Players are allowed to catch with their feet or with their tail. They may use their arms to block, but not catch. The attacking player shoots while swinging, to give her shot more speed. Shooting and passing with a foot is easier, but slower, while using the tail allows for faster shots, but takes far more skill. Fouls include knocking an opposing player to the ground, grabbing with hands, feet or tail, punching (slaps are allowed) and using magic in any way whatever.

The legendary hero Gʷoraʤ had to do his Twelve Labours as a penance for a foul in the Ball Game that resulted in the death of a rival player.

Like the Children of Apʰɯron, the Č'irah have a large variety of folk heroes. Gʷoraʤ is even recognisable as one of the Sons of Apʰɯron - or at least Tɤmʰalon resembles Gʷoraʤ in famous rashness, his supermunkee strength and mood swings on heroic scale. The pair have so many adventures in common that it is difficult to believe they are not the same character. Sky and Earth are remote figures. The pantheon varies from place to place: common deities include the generally benevolent harvest, forest and river gods, the sun goddess, the usually kind but bipolar sea god (stormy when he's manic and becalmed when in depression), and the moody and untrustworthy god of the plains, whose attributes include tornadoes and panic fear. Humans have often felt something alien about forests; they are the place of adventures, peril, the pathless wilderness. Munkees often feel the same way about the plains.

The Č'irah build houses very similar to those of the Children of Apʰɯron, which may mean the practice dates from -8000, or that Munkees build the same types of house everywhere. One major difference is that the characteristic art of South Raepʰɤn is clay figures and painting. In Xʷera it is wood carving, and later, stone carving as well.

The town of S'amro is famous for another reason; it is the home of the Oracle. A solitary golem, apparently in a semi-dormant state, gives answers to questions and demands metal ores in sacrifice. The Č'irah already had copper, and they seem to have learnt bronze working from the Golem.

Another town, Nabuɫi is on the site of an abandoned Ḵsīnesīr city, and a cult has grown up around it. Ḵsīnesīr artefacts are regularly dug up and solemnly presented to the temples or to the king for a large reward, or carefully preserved in family shrines (they are thought to be magic). The Č'irah didn't know what to make of the Ḵsīnesīr skeletons. They thought they were human and that the bony plates were helmets or crowns. Now they make bronze helmets of their own in imitation. A complex mythology has developed around the ancient ones, who are said to have godlike powers.

[Mornche Geddick]

Conflict

The Č'irah have less of a sense of being all one culture than the children of Apʰɯron, ironically. The clan structure is still strong in rural areas but less so in the towns. City states are all self-governing at this time, but while some are republics, others have kings (or queens). There have been wars between city states and long before the end of the period (2500), naval warfare has started.

[Mornche Geddick]

The Munkees

I submitted the Munkees in the Species round for the CCC competition. A description follows:

Appearance
They are similar to humans, but whereas we are descended from a species of ape, they are descended from a species of monkey. They are smaller (maximum hieght c. five feet), have powerful arms and shoulders, and tails. Hair varies a good deal by race, sex and climate, from being as naked as humans to being as thickly coated as an arctic fox. They always have hair on the scalp and the tail. Their faces are often very colourful indeed, with racial variation. They may be 1) Pure bright red. 2) Pure bright blue. 3) Pure black 4) Have one or more of those colours on the nostril 5) or the eyebrows 6) or the lips 7) or the cheekbones 8) or any combination of these.

Senses
As primates they have trichomatic colour vision, similar to humans. Their hearing is like ours (good) and so is their smell (poor). As fruit eaters they have a sweet tooth. The one major difference is their sense of balance, which is much better. Their semicircular canals are similar in structure to ours but better supplied with nerves. An untrained Munkee can run along a tightrope without training.

Habits
They evolved for forest living and still prefer to live in wooded country, although they have also been very successful colonising mountain areas. They avoided plains and grasslands in their aboriginal state. That changed when they domesticated draught animals and learnt to build and weave ropes. Their first structures could be described as imitation trees: tall posts stuck in the ground with platforms attached. They have nearly as much stamina as humans, but find walking on their hind legs for several hours tiring (because their bodies are more top-heavy), and they cannot run as fast as us, because their ankles are more flexible than ours, designed for climbing rather than running.

So they arrange to brachiate whenever they can. A Munkee "road" in treeless country may or may not be paved. What it will have is a series of posts like telegraph poles, with arms or ropes to catch hold of. You will often see a Munkee swinging along, carrying a bag in his or her feet.

Their other machines are also adapted for the Munkee body. A Munkee bike, for example, will be pedalled with the hands and steered with the feet. The big toe is opposable. The foot can perform some of the functions of a hand although the toes are shorter and stubbier than the fingers.

A Munkee can drive a human car (although his arms would get cramped). A Munkee-designed car would take advantage of the Munkee's upper body strength, so that the steering and the brake would be operated by hand, the clutch, the gear lever and the accelerator with the feet. The first cars would be very similar to a horse cart, and controlled entirely with the hands.

[Mornche Geddick]

A note on Munkee Biology

Two to four times a year, adult Munkees experience two to three weeks of vigour, liveliness, and vitality, in which they can go without sleep and accomplish remarkable feats. This peak is followed by a trough of general listlessness and tiredness. The emotions are also affected: up to a third of Monkees are slightly bipolar. Biologically, this is in fact the Munkee period of oestrus. (The Torc subspecies don't have this cycle). The female ovulates during her "high tide", and the male sperm count also rises dramatically.

A curious fact : if a male wishes to seduce a female (or vice versa) the seducer actually has a better chance when the other is "in the dumps", because (as Screwtape would say) when energy is highest, so are the powers of resistance. Also, there is some biological foundation for this behaviour, as the Munkee female is still capable of conceiving for several days after her oestrus ends.

In the far future, advertisers are likely to devise methods to target Munkees when they are just past oestrus as studies will find they are more likely to buy tat on impulse at that time. School boards and colleges will take measures to prevent students from taking examinations either in oestrus or after it as that is likely to affect their results.

[Mornche Geddick]

Č'iramṳ - The Č'ira̤ language

Phonology

In contrast to ?upata, Č'iramṳ has a very large phonemic inventory. I actually took it from a random phonology generator. I liked this output and wanted to see if I could handle a lot of phonemes in a conlang.
The ratio of consonants to vowels is quite high, due to the presence of an ejective series and palatals
IPA letters are shown in black, and romanised in blue.

Nasal: m m n n
Stop: p p p̓ p' b b t t t̓ t' d d ʧ č ʧ̓ č' ʣ j ɉ ɉ k k k̓ k' g g gʷ gw ? ?
Fricatives s s s̓ s' z z ɫ lh ʃ š ʒ ž ç ç ʝ ʝ xʷ xw
Trill: r r
Approximant: ɾ r l l j y w w w̥ wh w̰ wr
Vowels: i i e e a a o o u u
Vowels, breathy voice: i̤ ih e̤ eh a̤ ah ɑ̤ ɑh o̤ oh ṳ uh

[Mornche Geddick]

Phonotactics
‣ Syllable structure is normally CV except word-finally. Exceptions nearly always mean the word is a derivation: e.g.

Code: Select all

gwizbo
(goat-AUG)
Great Goat.

‣ The dental trill and flap are homologous: r is realised as a trill word-initially and a flap elsewhere. The velars and palatals are not always as clear-cut as they look in the chart: in some dialects pairs like w̥ and xʷ or gʷ and w tend to merge.
‣ Vowels following an ejective are often pronounced with high tone. However this is not phonemic - yet.

[Mornche Geddick]

Major features
‣ Designed to resemble a Bantu language. Predominantly agglutinating and prefixing. Unmarked word order is SOV.
‣ Breathy voice takes the place of tone, as a lexical and grammatical marker, e.g. breathy voice on the final vowel on a noun marks for definiteness.
‣ 10 noun classes, 7 of which have plural forms. Class III is specially for trees, ropes, bridges and roads - long tall objects and/or thoroughfares. Class V is for all magical objects and includes golems.
‣ Noun concord prefixes, including pronouns, adjectives, subject- and object- verbal prefixes.
These are a productive source of derivations. For example les, "rope" normally carries the Class III prefix: čeles, but with the Class V prefix boles it means "an enchanted rope" while giving the Class II prefix zoles changes the meaning to "rein" or "lasso". Using Class V bo of a person means they are bewitched, mad or strange.
‣ Interrogatives and negatives are indicated by the first prefix in the verb complex, before the subject concord.
‣ Pronouns are formed by fusing the concord prefix with a demonstrative or adjective, e.g.

Code: Select all

čelhak'e 
Class III-thick
the thick one.

‣ A large number of ideophones which can modify other parts of speech and even take concord prefixes. Two examples:
row̰uuu horn sound.
boaa largeness. Conveys the idea of an echoing cavern or mountainside.

(English actually has ideophones: "the swish of a skirt in the dew" is an example.)

‣ The "dummy" or "blank" verb sama. This pro-verb exists to carry tense, aspect and mood markers for a predicate. E.g.

Code: Select all

zoš'ahsama zojano
Class II-SUB-PAST-copula Class II-SUB-black
"It [an animal] was black"

[Mornche Geddick]

Examples

I had to use colour coding to make the morphology clear.

yesawe tesožuba susk'amigalho
Class I-singperson-FEM 1-sing-SUB-Class I-OBJ-love Class I-sing-SUB-1s-OBJ-hate-DISJUNCT
"I love her, but she hates me."

Rapeni rayese ralhohšbe lhimi
Class VIII-Raepʰɤn Class VIII-land Class VIII-DISJUNCT-other many
"Raephɤn (a neighbouring country) is a land of contrasts."
‣ ra- is the class and adjective concord for noun class VIII, which includes nations. The initial syllable of "Raephɤn" has been reinterpreted as a prefix.
‣ The word for "contrast" was created by combining the disjunctive verbal suffix with the adjective "other".

bogarenko̤̤ na̤̤konasa ɉṳbo̤̤nadida
Class V-golem Class I pl-human NEG-Class V-SUB-Class I-OBJ-eat
"The golem does not eat humans."

Further posts and more detail on the language to follow...

[mèþru]

Great stuff here! Among the best descriptions I've read.

[chris_notts]

The last few days I have been busy translating Thurber's story "The rabbits who caused all the trouble" into ?upata, and I will post it in the ?upata thread as I have opportunity.

I looked this up and it looks like a good translation challenge. I might follow your example...

[Mornche Geddick]

I've been busier over the last few days than I intended to be, and got behind. However now I am picking up the slack.

The Noun Classes

Č'iramṳ has eight noun classes which are marked on the other constituents in the noun phrase / sentence that show concord (agreement) with the noun.

Thus:

bogarenko̤̤ na̤̤konasa ɉṳbo̤̤nadida
Class V-golem-DEF Class I pl-human NEG-Class V-SUB-Class I-OBJ-eat
"The golem does not eat humans."

Garenko is the word for golem (definiteness being indicated here by a breathy final vowel), and its class concord is bo, which prefixes the noun. The verb dida “to eat” contains the subject concord which agrees with bo among its prefixes. Similarly konasa has a class prefix attached and an equivalent object concord on dida.

The classes are semantically based.

Class I: Intelligent beings, e.g. humans, munkees, amphibimorphs, dragons, nightpeople, etc.
Class II: Most animals.
Class III: Long, tall thin objects such as trees (the prototypical Class III member), towers, lampposts, beacons, ships’ masts, flagpoles. But also including bridges, roads, munkee swinging posts, and ropes, including rigging. The class unity will become a little clearer when it is remembered that to a munkee a tree is both a landmark and a thoroughfare.
Class IV: Inanimates, ordinary tools, but also plants such as grasses, shrubs, herbs and flowers.
Class V: Magical and astronomical objects. Include the sun, moon, stars, comets, and enchanted objects. Also includes golems, which are not considered to be intelligent beings in Čira̤̤ cosmology.
Class VI: Large objects which don’t belong in Class III. Landscape features such as lakes, rivers and mountains, but also very large animals. It also provides some augmentatives: nogarenko would mean “giant golem”.
Class VII: Small objects, including body parts and insects.

The first seven classes all differentiate singular and plural with different concords. The final three classes do not.

Class VIII: Personal names (including of nations and institutions) and abstract nouns.
Class IX: Infinitives, participles and verbal nouns.
Class X: Mass nouns. Includes water, sand, earth, and certain types of food, but also land, sea and sky.

As mentioned earlier, the same noun can be shifted between classes by applying different class prefixes, to alter the meaning.

[Mornche Geddick]

I can't believe Janko is still at it. The numbers are coming, I assure him and everyone...

[Zaarin]

Good stuff. I love non- or near-human species that actually have sensible differences from humans while retaining relatability (*glares at Star Trek*).

[Pabappa]

Did you mean to put four dots, not two, beneath all breathy vowels but /u/? I only ask because a similar curiosity on another thread turned out to be an error due to Unicode display problems and cut and paste.

[Mornche Geddick]

I meant just to put 2 dots, but for some reason it's doing 4. I have been doing a lot of CTRL-C, CTRL-V, that's true. I'll sort it out later.