Salvian Thread: Hieroglyphs
Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:39 am
So this is basically where I'm putting any information about one of the con-cultures I'm working on, the Salvians, and in particular their language. Salvian is probably the best term for it in English, as it covers all eras of the language and its various 'dialects'. The major language, spoken between roughly 1,400 and 1,100 years before the present day, and still in use as a major language of government and magic, is called Nurnusuh "truth-tongue" by the Salvians.
NOTE: THIS PAGE IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING A REWRITE. I'm doing what I can to update each section nicely, but it'll take a bit of time. Bear with me, guys!
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Geography: the Six Regions of Salvi
3. Magic; Gifts
4. The Salvian Family; Classical Salvian Phonology
5. Calendar; Prehistory
6. The Omiri River Delta; Morphology: The Noun
7. Derivational Morphology: The Verb
8. Morphology: The Verb
9. Hieroglyphs
INTRODUCTION
Some notes on Salvi and the Salvian Peninsula:
NOTE: THIS PAGE IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING A REWRITE. I'm doing what I can to update each section nicely, but it'll take a bit of time. Bear with me, guys!
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Geography: the Six Regions of Salvi
3. Magic; Gifts
4. The Salvian Family; Classical Salvian Phonology
5. Calendar; Prehistory
6. The Omiri River Delta; Morphology: The Noun
7. Derivational Morphology: The Verb
8. Morphology: The Verb
9. Hieroglyphs
INTRODUCTION
Some notes on Salvi and the Salvian Peninsula:
- The Salvian Peninsula is a little over 2 million kilometres squared, slightly smaller than Saudi Arabia (but much, much greener).
- It lies on the eastern side of the continent of Pelia, in the equatorial zone (with, appropriately, an equatorial ocean climate catching the winds); the plateau is a little chilly (think Nepal), the highlands have a monsoon climate reminiscent of Northern India, and the lowlands are thick, steamy jungle (think Yucatán or Sri Lanka). The southernmost lowlands, closest to the Zakujama Archipelago, are choc-a-bloc full of cenotes and cave systems.
- The Salvian Peninsula, for around 10,000 years, has been inhabited by the Sorcerers-but there have been what the Salvians call "guests," temporary inhabitants from other lands. These include the Finders, the Reincarnators, the Telepaths, the Fliers, and the Jungle-Dwellers. None of these became the primary ethnicity anywhere on the peninsula, however, and tend to live in smaller enclaves to this day. The Sorcerers are closely related to the Telepaths, Finders, and Keepers.
- Each race in the world of Ajjamah has a Gift inherent to their people, some magic they can do instinctively. The Salvians have the Gift of enchantment (derived from the Primary Branch magic Nascence), which grants them the ability to program various objects with spells. Spells in turn are largely drawn from the Gifts of other animals (including other human races), from the powers associated with various deities, and/or with more abstract constructions derived from the other two. This is absolutely important in understanding their culture, religion, and (most definitely) technology.
- Temples are massive power suppliers, channeling magic to various homes from the environment around them (particularly the forests) and allowing people to use government-approved spells. Laws of the land are implanted directly into people's heads using the government-only spell Social Contract, and they follow them instinctively-but not without question, as they are allowed to discuss and even remove laws that no longer serve any purpose. As a note: Salvians can no longer maintain their level of civilization without building a temple, which largely involves a combination of geomancy, knowledge of the local biomes, sculpting skills, a knowledge of religious hand-signs (for the statues to use), and finding a deity willing to be donate part of their soul in order to act as a power outlet for the region. For these reasons, as well as the fact that the government of Salvi doesn't necessarily want a) to use up magic too quickly and b) people to be able to just go off and make their own cities elsewhere, Salvian colonies tend to be few and rather dense.
- There are two exceptions to the above rule. One is the Archipelago of Zakujama, the Hundred Isles, settled during the Second Dark Age with the few Sorcerers able to escape establishing their own small kingdoms around the temples they established on the islands. The other is Visauru, Sunland, established on the northwest coast of Anosha as a trading colony (and source of new spells).
- Federal government is tripartite: the boulē (made up of various civil servants) makes the law, the ekklēsia (with dedicated representatives from each province, but as many people who want to vote are allowed) votes "yea" or "nay" on the law, and the synod (comprising the avatars of the most important deities) cross-checks the law to make sure that people can fit it into their Social Contracts with the minimum of discomfort.
The World of the Central Sea
Some basic features of Classical Salvian:
- The language does not have a triliteral root system as much as the beginnings of one; various prefixes and suffixes may be added to words, and syncope has made the distinctions a little less tidy, but all of the features are, in the Classical language, easily understood.
- The language also has both consonant and vowel sandhi; these are either lost or elaborated on in the daughter languages, depending on which part of the Peninsula they're from.
- There are underlying elements of a previous ergative/absolutive system in verbal derivations and elements of various noun classes.
- Nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), four declensions (animate, inanimate, abstract, and miscellaneous; note that the fourth can contain examples of the first three), and seven cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, ablative, illative, and allative).
- Verbs have two tenses (future and non-future) four aspects (future is its own aspect, non-future has aorist, imperfect, and perfect), and three moods (realis, epistemic, and deontic).
- Sentences are SVO; noun phrases are head-first. Questions and negatives are marked by proclitics; topicalization is done by moving the topic to the start of the sentence.
- The writing system is basically logographic, with roots forming the basic symbol and additional prefixes, infixes, and suffixes marked using ligatures. The older style of writing resembles cuneiform; the later, a South Asian script (perhaps Sinhalese).