Ashenacom Thread: Phonology; Names on the Plains
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:48 pm
Here is the thread for a plains-dwelling race of mine, the Ashenacom, who instead of riding horses ride camelopards--in effect the camelid equivalent of the horse--and have the rather nasty ability to consume souls by setting themselves on fire.
The Basics
Phonology; Names on the Plains
First up, a note on the BASICS:
The Ashenacom are a grasslands people, and have been for many thousands of years. Unlike their Hemeraean counterparts, the Mà Qul and Duun Nam peoples, they do not ride horses. Instead, the animal of choice is the camelopard, cyphion ferus caballus, a relative of the Salvian boskoe, with cloven hooves, good speed across the plains, and (in some breeds) a tendency to spit with extreme accuracy. The Ashenacom themselves have a particularly powerful Gift for the grasslands: the ability to suck an area dry of energy and use it to produce a flaming halo around the body (and objects or animals in direct contact) for protection. (This likely evolved as a reaction to the frequent wildfires on the savanna their ancestors called home, and bears remarkable similarity to the methods used by the dragons in Malehi.) For a time, they ruled an enormous empire across both the savanna and the steppe to the west; one group, the Ashung "strong people", even became the Twelfth Dynasty of the Telepath Empire (with some local dissatisfaction, naturally, but that's bound to happen occasionally). They worshipped the ever-present sky, the earth, the animals that lived upon the grass, the major sun Suran (a rather mercurial deity), and a race of invisible flaming people with metallurgy skills called the Agaderdu. Today, most bow before the Raven Reborn in Minzatu, but there are still a few petty states scattered around what remains of the grasslands and scrublands in the east.
The Ashenacom actually speak a variety of languages by this point in history, the proto-language spoken around 2,500 years ago. The language with the most speakers is that of Kikheymür, just north of the Qutosbegehi Mountains, but the Imperial language, spoken by the Ashung, is the one to be studied here. It is agglutinative, with a number of honorifics based on kinship terms, nominal distinction between animate, inanimate, and flammable nouns (the Ashenacom are categorized as inflammable) as well as between seven basic "shapes", a base twelve numeral system (an Ashenacom crossing their arms may only be representing the number twelve), verbal distinction between indirect and direct agent and patient (four in all) in six different combinations, and 400 words for describing camelopards of different ages, sizes, and colours.
The Basics
Phonology; Names on the Plains
First up, a note on the BASICS:
The Ashenacom are a grasslands people, and have been for many thousands of years. Unlike their Hemeraean counterparts, the Mà Qul and Duun Nam peoples, they do not ride horses. Instead, the animal of choice is the camelopard, cyphion ferus caballus, a relative of the Salvian boskoe, with cloven hooves, good speed across the plains, and (in some breeds) a tendency to spit with extreme accuracy. The Ashenacom themselves have a particularly powerful Gift for the grasslands: the ability to suck an area dry of energy and use it to produce a flaming halo around the body (and objects or animals in direct contact) for protection. (This likely evolved as a reaction to the frequent wildfires on the savanna their ancestors called home, and bears remarkable similarity to the methods used by the dragons in Malehi.) For a time, they ruled an enormous empire across both the savanna and the steppe to the west; one group, the Ashung "strong people", even became the Twelfth Dynasty of the Telepath Empire (with some local dissatisfaction, naturally, but that's bound to happen occasionally). They worshipped the ever-present sky, the earth, the animals that lived upon the grass, the major sun Suran (a rather mercurial deity), and a race of invisible flaming people with metallurgy skills called the Agaderdu. Today, most bow before the Raven Reborn in Minzatu, but there are still a few petty states scattered around what remains of the grasslands and scrublands in the east.
The Ashenacom actually speak a variety of languages by this point in history, the proto-language spoken around 2,500 years ago. The language with the most speakers is that of Kikheymür, just north of the Qutosbegehi Mountains, but the Imperial language, spoken by the Ashung, is the one to be studied here. It is agglutinative, with a number of honorifics based on kinship terms, nominal distinction between animate, inanimate, and flammable nouns (the Ashenacom are categorized as inflammable) as well as between seven basic "shapes", a base twelve numeral system (an Ashenacom crossing their arms may only be representing the number twelve), verbal distinction between indirect and direct agent and patient (four in all) in six different combinations, and 400 words for describing camelopards of different ages, sizes, and colours.