Zompist Bboard Again

Might as well make a post about this…putting it out there might give me enough motivation to get out of this depressive rut in which I've become all too comfortable. Seeing as WeepingElf made one about his legendarium, I figure I finally will as well. I hope this isn't too bare-bones to stand here as its own topic…if it is, let me know. Otherwise, I hope to use this thread to kind of be a one-stop shop for things so I don't end up cluttering up the board.

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The setting of Twin Aster is the Eta Cassiopeiae system. Around star A, there is the planet Ítöð, which is the home of the aʕȝúr (singular ʕaȝúr), which are sort of a caniform/humanoid species. There are a number of continents on this planet, namely:

- Matanhír (where the Tim Ar started out)
- Máðíhír
- Nȝûrin (the Empire of the Violet Sun is based here)
- Sóhatékhír
- Tethír (where the Tlar Kyanà hail from)
- Tuóntón
- Ȝurkéłis
- ʕeteĝkuólo

An interesting, multiple-continent-spanning feature is the Burning Mountains (Áhrak ü Êt Ðek Nöĝ), which stretch for over 10'000 km by some measures. As you might guess from the name, they are really volcanically active. Eta Cassiopeiae B (Háʕán Haȝ Ðún Ü, "the Second Sun") is prominent in the sky, even when at opposition. Naturally it has (barren) planets of its own. The Tim Ar managed to get there first and colonized it as a resource base/scientific base/status symbol.

You'll note that I generally use Tim Ar names for things in the broad like this since they carry the biggest sticks at the time the story is set.

There's also the Messerini line, which I named after my great-grandmother, which is a line that spans the globe; above it, cultures tend towards patriarchy whereas below it they tend towards matriarchy. As you can imagine, the conflicts between cultures on either side of the line can get ideologically ugly.

There are a number of languages and language families, including but not limited to the following:

- The Tim Ar-O languages: Includes Classical Ĝate n Tim Ar (that "CT" I often post about) and its descendants as well as O, gPangin, et al.
- Kgáweq': Currently an isolate for which I've lost most of my notes, though I might go back, rewind things, and make other languages related to it
- The Caber languages: You may be familiar with their logograms.
- Waqwaq: Spoken somewhere in Tethír.
- The Mziddyun Sprachbund: Where triconsonantal roots are an areal feature and everybody knows your name, even though they all know it differently. Currently includes the Wokratak languages, Sengin, Raholgic, and maybe others. The problem is, I love developing these but the Sprachbund is basically a desert for most of its extent.
- Taltic: A moribund language group whose heyday was a couple thousand years and a lot less consonants ago.
- Khaya: Another language made for logograms; similarity to "Maya", whose logograms the script owes a large debt to, is coincidental.
- Sisok Tlar Kyanà: Language of the Tlar Kyanà whose dialects are close to where mutual intelligibility breaks down.
- The Dujajikiswa languages: A language family that I haven't done enough with in a while. I should pick it back up.
- Təmattwəspwaypksma: Phonemes? Where we're going we don't need…phonemes.
- The Tsioric languages: The liturgical language of the Patchwork States comes from this family.

I want to develop CT more since it's kind of the "workhorse" language used for diplomacy and everything. My problem lately is motivation and time, and also I keep losing the notebooks with the cuneiform I developed for it. I may just do a wholesale change to hieroglyphics, but I'm not sure I want to—cuneiform very much suits the aesthetic I'm going for with the culture, which is very martial. My other problem is that it's a millennia-old language used as a lingua franca and I want to keep it reasonably "updated" despite it being native to a culture in antiquity—they need to talk about spaceships and petrochemicals, after all—but I don't want to just kludge it badly. Has anyone here ever done anything like this before? If so, do you have any tips or tricks?

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 8:32 pmThere's also the Messerini line, which I named after my great-grandmother, which is a line that spans the globe; above it, cultures tend towards patriarchy whereas below it they tend towards matriarchy

I love this idea. Do the cultures just abruptly change at the line, or is it gradual? Are there teenage girls running away from home to cross the line and join the feminists, e.g. to escape a marriage they dont want?

I really liked the Caber logograms, though I was inactive during the time when you posted about them the most, so I never really got a chance to show my admiration. Do you have a site anywhere with all of them collected? I was only able to find threads.

Ah, Eta Cassiopeiae! I once had a conworld there, too, but that was long ago.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 8:32 pm My other problem is that it's a millennia-old language used as a lingua franca and I want to keep it reasonably "updated" despite it being native to a culture in antiquity—they need to talk about spaceships and petrochemicals, after all—but I don't want to just kludge it badly. Has anyone here ever done anything like this before? If so, do you have any tips or tricks?

I haven't done anything like that but a few ideas spring to mind. The Vatican does just that with Latin, you could also check out Modern Hebrew, Medieval Latin and really, any of the language that favors native coinages for modern vocabulary (Icelandic, for instance).

Plenty of cultures did just that. I was reading up on Akkadian and Sumerian, and as it happens Sumerian was used as a literary / high prestige language for two millenia after the last Sumerian speaker died out.
Akkadian scribes struggled with features of the language that were difficult for them, such as ergative-absolutive alignment. It's quite possible they messed up vowels they didn't have (but as we know little about Sumerian phonology, it's hard to say).

Medieval Latin frequently used Romance constructions, and avoided some of the hardest parts of Latin grammar, to the point that you could be perfectly fluent in Medieval Latin and still struggle with some of the classical authors.

I'm told Hebrew imported Yiddish idioms and some constructions wholesale. Modern Hebrew also repurposed Biblical words for realities the ancient Hebrews had no word for. (I think it uses 'leviathan' for whale, for instance).
The interesting thing is that there are several layers of this process; the Bible is in, well, Biblical Hebrew; but the parts of the Talmud that don't use Aramaic are in Mishnaic Hebrew, itself greatly influenced by Aramaic and with original vocabular, and medieval texts are in Medieval Hebrew, influenced by various vernaculars, and still more coinage.
Biblical Hebrew, BTW, uses some constructions that are no longer current, and it seems that some parts of the Bible can get difficult. (But actual speakers are welcome to correct me!)


If CT has been used continuously as a lingua france for millenia, I think you could do worse that to emulate this process.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2020 3:25 pm

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 8:32 pm My other problem is that it's a millennia-old language used as a lingua franca and I want to keep it reasonably "updated" despite it being native to a culture in antiquity—they need to talk about spaceships and petrochemicals, after all—but I don't want to just kludge it badly. Has anyone here ever done anything like this before? If so, do you have any tips or tricks?

I haven't done anything like that but a few ideas spring to mind. The Vatican does just that with Latin, you could also check out Modern Hebrew, Medieval Latin and really, any of the language that favors native coinages for modern vocabulary (Icelandic, for instance).

Plenty of cultures did just that. I was reading up on Akkadian and Sumerian, and as it happens Sumerian was used as a literary / high prestige language for two millenia after the last Sumerian speaker died out.
Akkadian scribes struggled with features of the language that were difficult for them, such as ergative-absolutive alignment. It's quite possible they messed up vowels they didn't have (but as we know little about Sumerian phonology, it's hard to say).

Medieval Latin frequently used Romance constructions, and avoided some of the hardest parts of Latin grammar, to the point that you could be perfectly fluent in Medieval Latin and still struggle with some of the classical authors.

I'm told Hebrew imported Yiddish idioms and some constructions wholesale. Modern Hebrew also repurposed Biblical words for realities the ancient Hebrews had no word for. (I think it uses 'leviathan' for whale, for instance).
The interesting thing is that there are several layers of this process; the Bible is in, well, Biblical Hebrew; but the parts of the Talmud that don't use Aramaic are in Mishnaic Hebrew, itself greatly influenced by Aramaic and with original vocabular, and medieval texts are in Medieval Hebrew, influenced by various vernaculars, and still more coinage.
Biblical Hebrew, BTW, uses some constructions that are no longer current, and it seems that some parts of the Bible can get difficult. (But actual speakers are welcome to correct me!)


If CT has been used continuously as a lingua france for millenia, I think you could do worse that to emulate this process.

And another model might be presented by Arabic, about which however I know little so I can be of no particular help.


One thing that keeps Vatican Latin "updated" is its relationship with the other languages around it, from which it can borrow new coinings. E.g. www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions ... on_it.html

Does CT have this sort of relationship with other "updated" ('current') languages? Or is it still the everyday (written?) language of a significant modern society - in which case it might more likely be the source of its own neologisms?


A related question - what kind of writing system does CT use? If logographic, its writing system may have changed relatively little over a millennium or two, regardless of developments in spoken language. I often wonder whether this is a reason behind China's relative political stability across history compared to Europe: logographic writing can remain semantically relevant over vast time periods (and over different dialects and even perhaps languages), regardless of phonology - and writing is the superpower of political administration... and of science and advanced technological innovation.

So I feel like the type of writing system in use might have a bearing on how an anciently-rooted lingua franca would keep its relevance in a rapidly developing technological society.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 8:32 pm Might as well make a post about this…

My favorite part, "... A moribund language group whose heyday was a couple thousand years and a lot less consonants ago."

Good job, that's all very elaborate.

I really really like this post, actually, because I like the idea of making whole worlds of conlangs all at once, and at least giving descriptions of them.

I don't see a lot of that on this group. But there was a post I saw on here last time I was here, it did describe and even link to a bunch of different conlang language families. Something like that.

So, after seeing dewrad's thread about triconsonantal glossing conventions, I'm batting around ideas for yet another triconsonantal language for the Mziddyun.

/m n nˤ ŋ/ m n ṇ g
/p t tˤ k/ p t ṭ k
/ts tsˤ tʃ tʃˤ/ c c̣ č č̣
/θ θˤ s sˤ ʃ ʃˤ/ z ẓ s ṣ š ṣ̌
/ð ðˤ l lˤ j ʕ/ d ḍ l ḷ y h
/ʢ/ r

a i o a i o

Adjacent to o, /ŋ k/ become [ɴ q]. Adjacent to [ɴ q], /i/ lowers to [e].

I don't want to go the Arabic route and make the basic verbal template CaCaCa. I'm trying to think of ways I can handle things differently, but I'm kind of coming up short. The idea I'm running with at present is:

CiCoC – active
iCoCC – passive
iCCoC – middle, reflexive

where the i-o vowel pattern is indicative of the simple present indicative—so, say, given a root √kšṭ, kišoṭ 'you destroy', ikošṭ 'you are destroyed', ikšoṭ 'you self-destruct'. I also came up with a word atkošṭi that I'm rather fond of and that seems like it would be some sort of nominalization, but of which form I cannot say.

I'm considering having aspect be signified with the changes in the vowels. One notes that the stems all end in a consonant, so you theoretically could have a third vowel added into the mix at the end.

i-o: imperfective (kišoṭ 'you destroy')
a-i: perfective (kašiṭ 'you destroyed')
i-i: continuative/protractive (kišiṭ 'you take your time in destroying')
o-i-a: frequentative (košiṭa 'you mess things up here and there')
a-a: intensive (kašaṭ 'you annihilate')
a-i-a: intensive perfective (kašiṭa 'you annihilated')
o-o: attenuative (košoṭ 'you inconvenience')
o-a: attenuative perfective (košaṭ 'you inconvenienced')

And it's 1:00 AM here and I'm hitting the proverbial wall, so I guess I'll stop here for now.

The Empire of the Violet Sun (EVS) is a multicontinental empire (though it primarily comprises territory in Nȝûrin). It's set up sort of like the Soviet Union or United Kingdom in its method of having separate lower-order member states under one banner, except people actually want to join it. The EVS was organized as a reaction to the existence of both the Tim Ar and the Tlar Kyanà. As a rough comparison, think of how the "first world" was the West, the "second world" was the USSR and its sphere, and the "third world" was everything else; it's a similar situation here, except the Tim Ar and their sphere are like the first world, the Tlar Kyanà and theirs are like the second world, and the EVS forms its own third world with everybody else comprising a "fourth world".

The EVS was originally formed by a practical union of three people groups—the Tilatlak, the Uch Ndai, and the Åü. Ostensibly, everybody's equal, but in practice there's a hierarchy with these three groups forming sort of a geopolitical Triumvirate and the Tilatlak being first among "equals".

Being south of the Messerini line, the EVS and a majority of its constituents are matriarchies. This is a major driver of the bad blood between them and the Tim Ar, who are mostly to the north of it, Mziddyun notwithstanding. The Tlar Kyanà are also south of the Messerini line, but are generally seen as antagonists due to their willingness to meddle in others' affairs. (Westphalian sovereignty isn't really a Thing™ on Ítöð, but the Tlar Kyanà are notorious for being particularly unsubtle and obnoxious about it.)

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The Mziddyun is a large desert region, mostly lying within the continents of Sóhatékhír and Máðíhír. The Tim Ar somehow found themselves possession of it (I'm not yet sure of the particulars of this, might have something to do with the fallout of the Jädäwan War—that would make sense). Given its relatively low population and desolate nature, it was pretty much all deposited into a political ashcan, the Msítiun Special Administrative Zone, though it was later proven to be abundant in certain resources and now there's more of a reason for keeping their hands on it.

The Mziddyun lends its name to the Mziddyun Sprachbund, which is, as the name suggests, a Sprachbund centered on the desert. The main signifier of the Sprachbund is triconsonantal roots, and the several language families spoken within the Sprachbund all feature them. These include the Nyudyic languages, Sengin (an isolate), the Raholgic languages, the Wǫkratąk languages, and the as-yet unnamed language or language family I started to describe above. These each have their own unique quirks; Sengin has allophonic consonant mutation, Raholgic has lexically-significant consonant mutation, and Wǫkratąk is…well…Wǫkratąk.

There were some migrations and counter-migrations throughout the history of the Mziddyun and Wǫkratąk-speaking peoples can be found in the extreme north of the desert as well as the extreme south, with some population off to the east.

The citizens of the Msítiun SAZ are largely left to govern themselves. Given the war and recent climatic events, most of the permanent settlements therein have been abandoned. There is one major permanent settlement, name unknown for now, that serves as an effective capital city. There's almost a caste-like system dividing city slickers versus country bumpkins, and those who are not of the former status must seek permission before entering. On the outsides of the city is a paramilitary-patrolled region of sand with a lot of posts sticking up out of the ground; the Msítiun refuse to disclose to outsiders just what, exactly, this is.

One cultural factor that has diffused throughout the Sprachbund is that of the "talking drums". Similar to the IRL talking drums one may encounter in certain parts of Africa, drums are used for long-range communication. Bands of nomadic families frequently have their own cadences that serve as identifiers, with differences in rhythm and meter often proving significant. The talking-drum system is often used for communications at a distance, often involving calls for help, greetings, warnings, and reports about the weather.

Another common cultural factor is that of Confluence. When some nomadic bands cross paths, it heralds a week-long festival of merrymaking. Marriages often take place at this time, and a common pastime at such events is drumming competitions to see who is the fastest, who is the loudest, who has the most endurance, and/or who can cause a failure of the drumhead the quickest.

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The Bâigas serve a purpose as a buffer state between the Tim Ar and the Tlar Kyanà. It's not that they can't govern themselves (as much as someone can in a world where the Melian Dialogue is king and without Westphalian sovereignty); they just suck at it. A common thought is that the Tim Ar routinely overthrow their governments. The reality is the Tim Ar actually try to prop them up, and the Bâigas are perfectly willing and able to run themselves into the ground to the point that intervention is necessary.

This whole thread is interesting, but I want more of:

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:59 pm triconsonantal language for the Mziddyun

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:59 pm o-o: attenuative (košoṭ 'you inconvenience')

Can you, or do you have, more examples of how this aspect would be used?

masako wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 8:36 am This whole thread is interesting, but I want more of:

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:59 pm triconsonantal language for the Mziddyun

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:59 pm o-o: attenuative (košoṭ 'you inconvenience')

Can you, or do you have, more examples of how this aspect would be used?

Sure:

√gṭp 'recede'
> gitop 'you recede, you go away'
> goṭop 'you step back, you step down'

√krp 'defecate'
> kirop 'you defecate'
> korop 'you break wind'

√grz 'flow'
> giroz 'you flow'
> goroz 'you trickle'

√dlh 'impale, skewer'
> diloh 'you impale'
> doloh 'you poke'

√ṇlh 'overuse, deplete, run down, run out'
> ṇiloh 'you use to excess'
> ṇoloh 'you take a little too much'

√rč̣l 'spin, twist, rotate'
> rič̣ol 'you twist'
> roč̣ol 'you turn around'

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Administrative Divisions of the Kmtön n Tim Ar (subject to change)

mkîȝ (pl. mkîȝ ar) – roughly 'region'. There are eleven: Éí, Entáhtórula, Ïĝuntá, Krníĝ, Lákðor, Mrkás, Seksín, Sínsio, Tikát, Uêlmi, and ʕëkoð.
ȝôtáʕ (pl. uȝétáʕ) – roughly 'province', 'state', or 'oblast'. There are quite a number of these.
haʕm (pl. aham) – roughly 'county' or 'raion'. Sub-level of a ȝôtáʕ.
łiłtúke (pl. iłtúke—might change that to ihtúke or ihłtúke, as CT dislikes geminates) – roughly 'metro area' or 'selsoviet', more or less a focal city and its suburbs; provinces often have more than one.
kámr (pl. ákmr) – 'city', more or less.
lûk (pl. íluk) – roughly 'borough'. Sub-part of a large city.

There are a few special cases:

kámr ȝér (pl. ákmr ȝér) – 'free city'. There's a few of these, typically city-states that have special status due to joining by treaty or otherwise willingly handing over sovereignty to the Empire. Not quite a province, but carries more weight than a city.
łektóron (pl. ełktóron) – roughly 'suzerainty'. There's a handful of these, and they can be made up of one ȝôtáʕ or multiple uȝétáʕ. These are typically not part of any mkîȝ but are reckoned to themselves; they tend to be smaller than an mkîȝ, though.
lérnar îktu ro (pl. élrnar îktu ro) - 'unorganized territory'. There's two main ones, namely the Lé Mêĝ (the area of the eponymous valley) and the Ȝátákorekô out to the south central area, which is still bombed to all hell and hasn't recovered.
mkîȝ haĝkë n ákðu tísík – 'special administrative zone'. There's one of these, namely the Msítiun.
húkór (pl. úhkór) – '(frontier) territory'. Typically these are recently-captured lands that haven't undergone the full process of admission/assimilation into the Empire yet, for whatever reason.

So awhile back, I worked backwards from Classical Ngade n Tim Ar and (Proto-)O to come up with Proto-Tim Ar-O. I have decided that the result was less than satisfactory, so I have reworked it.

The new starting phonology for Proto-Tim Ar-O (hereinafter "PTO") is:

*m *n *ŋ
*p *b *t̪ *d̪ *t *d *tʲ *dʲ *k *g *q *ɢ *ʔ
*ð *ɹ *j *w *ʁ
*l

Vowels: *a *ɛ *e *i *ɔ *o *u
Diphthongs: *ia *iɛ *ie *iɔ *io

C(C)(R)(V/e{j/w/ʁ})(C/R(ʔ))

To Classical Ngade n Tim Ar

I'm pretty focused on maintaining this phonology as-is given how much work I've done on the language otherwise.

m n ŋ
t k
θ s x h
ɬ
ɹ l ʕ

a e ø i y ɤ o ɯ u + low or high tone

How did we get here?

1. Tone split
V → [+ low tone] / [+vc]_
V → [+ high tone] / [-vc]_
[+vc] → [-vc]

2. Fricative genesis and creation of syllabic consonants
p t̪ t tʲ k q ʔ → f θ s ʃ x χ h / _{i,u}
{i,u} → Ø / _R
{i,u} → Ø / R_
i → Ø / _V
ɛ e ɔ o → e i o u
ʕ → à / {C,#}_{C,#}

3. Glottal stop affectation of coda resonants
l ɹ j w ʁ → ɬ s ʃ f χ / _ʔ%

4. Loss and replacement of *l and resulting coronal shifts
l → ʕ
θ ð → ɬ l
s ʃ → θ s
t̪ t tʲ → p t̪ t

5. Dental randomness
t̪ → s / _E
t̪ → p / _B
t̪ → t / else

6. Loss of the glottal stop and *ʁ
ʔ → Ø
ʁ → Ø
Lenition of *p
p → f

7. Vowel rounding funtime land
[+V +front/back ±hi ±tone ±ro][+V +back/front ±POA] → [+V ±hi ±tone ±ro ±POA]

8. Fricative stuff
f {q,χ} → h x

9. Allophonic stuff
[-vc] → [+vc] / [+vc]_[+vc] (except /h/)

To Proto-O

I'm open to suggestions on how to make this suck less. I'm pretty dead-set on this phonology as well, as it was part of a challenge to get to an eight-phoneme conlang.

*N (one nasal archiphoneme)
*p *t *k
*h
*w *j *ʁ (these pull double duty as vowels when in nucleic position, surfacing as *u *i *a, respectively)

*e

Out of convention, *ʁ is written r.

How did we get here?

1. Coronal processes
t̪ d̪ tʲ dʲ → t d s z
ð ɹ → j ʁ[/list]

2. Lenition of voiced stops
b d {g,ɢ} → w l ʁ

3. Debuccalization of sibilants
{s,z} → h

4. Uvular fronting
q → k

5. Nasalization of *l and nasal archiphoneme generation
l → n
N → [assimilate in place to following consonant] / _C
N → n / otherwise

6. Loss of *ʔ
ʔ → w / _B
ʔ → j / _{E,a}
ʔ → Ø / else

7. Resyllabification
Stuff resyllabifies due to onset rules; larger onsets preferred

8. Merger of *o into *a
o → a

9. Allophonic stuff
p t k → pf ts kx / _{j,i}
p t k → β z ɣ / V_V

I was recently engaged in mapmaking for the world and I made a map of the Tim Ar Imperium. It’s…larger than I expected it to be. About 20% improvement on the size of the peak British Empire, in fact. (Their having annexed a whole continent and inheritance-by-default of a desert the size of Australia helps matters here.)

I have the mkîg ar mapped out; now I have to place the Free Cities and provinces and stuff.

So some world maps and stuff, mainly focusing on the Tim Ar Imperium. GPlates was used to crunch the numbers, where relevant, but these are still approximate values.

A world map; pardon the eye-searing colors, this was more so I could get a feel for how things worked out. Some of these are not individual polities themselves but blocs thereof, compounded for ease of making the map, and will be worked out in greater detail later.


The Tim Ar Imperium (in red; interior grey areas are bodies of water I forgot to turn black, and the turquoise I forgot to edit out when I made the map). I crunched the numbers on the Imperium, and it's an absolute unit. It covers more territory than Asia, but hey, the wonders of modern technology and telecommunications.


On its first order, the Imperium is split into five viceroyalties and two special administrative zones. In the north, and in the darker hues, from west to east: The Viceroyalty of Uluhír, the Viceroyalty of West Kaorðér, the Viceroyalty of the Core Imperium, the Viceroyalty of Méoménsú, and the Viceroyalty of Greater Kelekeð. In the south, in much lighter tints, are the Gurkéłis SAZ and the Mziddyun SAZ.


The next level down is that of the namestnichestvo. There's a map of those and several other, lesser polities that exist outside of the main hierarchy: Suzerainties (in gold), free cities (the white dots), unorganized territories (dark grey), and frontier territories (lighter grey). The SAZs, which have no real internal structure, are also indicated in robin's egg blue and off-white.


Suzerainties and free cities typically got special administrative privileges and greater internal autonomy due to handing over their sovereignty to the Imperium with some degree of volition; the largest of these, the Suzerainty of Deverris, is about the size of Iraq and is located south of the Core Imperium. Special administrative zones have some permanent habitation, but it's generally sparse and semi- or impermanent. The Mziddyun is a desert the size of Australia wherein a Sprachbund of triconsonantal languages is found and was basically inherited after the Jädäwan War when nobody else really wanted it (joke's on them, there's resources and strike points there); Gurkéłis is an entire continent that ended up getting annexed and is currently being bulldozed over…much like Australia, though with a less memetically-lethal reputation.

The unorganized territories are basically where the Imperium threw up its hands and said "All hope abandon, ye who enter here"; in the case of the Lé Mêĝ, which is about the size of two and a half Californias, it's because of the logistical difficulties stemming from the impassable forests, mountains, and valleys (similar to Papua New Guinea), whereas the remaining unorganized territories were bombed out during the war and are nigh uninhabitable. Frontier territories are either recent acquisitions or pride points where no reasonable permanent habitation is expected.

There's levels below that of the namestnichestvo—the oblast (more like a state in the US), raion, selsoviet, city, and borough. I haven't worked out a map of oblasts yet.

You're Pogostick Man! Talk about losing track of nicknames...

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 8:32 pmMy other problem is that it's a millennia-old language used as a lingua franca and I want to keep it reasonably "updated" despite it being native to a culture in antiquity—they need to talk about spaceships and petrochemicals, after all—but I don't want to just kludge it badly. Has anyone here ever done anything like this before? If so, do you have any tips or tricks?

Latin writers/speakers have generally not minded borrowing words from other languages. Currently at least, the main worry is in fact using existing words, instead of unnecessarily making up new ones.

What can be dug out of ancient texts may sometimes be surprising. Thanks to Roman plumbing, we have words of ancient, classical pedigree for:
- rain gutter(s) (colliciae)
- bathtub (solium (balneī))
- decorative water fountain (salientēs)
- drinking fountain (sīlānus, so-called due to its tap being often decorated with a head of Sīlēnus, a minor god attendant of the god Bacchus, who would spit the drinkable water from his mouth)
- faucet/tap (epitonium)
- restroom/W.C. (lātrīna)
- public restroom/W.C. (forica)
- toilet (lasanum, the fixture with a seat).

There are many other concepts that don't exactly require peculiar relatively high technology but are uncommon enough that their ancient attestation is a bit surprising: ventriloquist (ventriloquus), painter's studio (pergula), watering can (nassiterna), principal of a loan (caput, sors), accountant (ratiōcinātor), bra (strophium), fremitus marīnus 'tsunami' (actually meaning any kind of massive water upsurge, literally "marine uproar, loud noise of the sea", but notably used by Ammianus Marcellinus while clearly talking about the rare occurrence of a tsunami, even if it wasn't most likely an established term for the concept*).

Technology can advance in odd ways though, and produce interesting gaps: the ancient Romans had no buttons or a concept of tables made of rows and columns (they used hierarchical lists instead), so for those we do need new non-ancient words.

A couple people here mentioned the Vatican's glossary, but I'd like to add that people today generally dismiss its translations as too clunky, being more like descriptions rather than usable words or terms. Imagine rendering "anime" as "Japanese animated cartoons" in English. It works if the reader/listener doesn't know the concept, but if they do then "anime" or something like "Japanimation" or "J-cartoons" would be better.

Examples of non-ancient words, using various strategies:
- non-Greek borrowings: cifrum 'zero' (since the 12th century), anime (sg. neut., uncountable, genitive animis = 3rd declension) 'anime' (cf. mare maris 'sea')
- Greek borrowings or coinages: autocinētum 'car', plectrologium 'keyboard'
- semantically-extended ancient words: raeda 'car' (from its ancient meaning 'four-wheeled carriage'), abacus 'keyboard' (from its ancient meaning 'board of tabletop game')
- derived native words: orbiculus 'button' (since the Renaissance, from orbis 'circle'), taeniola 'movie' (from taenia 'narrow thin stripe of cloth; headband, ribbon', as a reference to film tape)


* For those who are curious, because it's honestly fascinating:

Paulo enim post lucis exortum, densitate praevia fulgurum acrius vibratorum, tremefacta concutitur omnis terreni stabilitas ponderis. Mareque dispulsum retro fluctibus evolutis abscessit, ut retecta voragine profundorum, species natantium multiformes limo cernerentur haerentes. Valliumque vastitates et montium tunc, ut opinari dabatur, suspicerent radios solis, quos primigenia rerum sub inmensis gurgitibus amendavit.

A little after sunrise, after a great amount of vigorously flashing lightning, the steadiness of the land turned into a violent earthquake. The sea retreated, driven away as the water rolled back, uncovering its deep chasm with many types of swimming animals lingering in the mud. Its vast valleys and mountains, believed to lie under the immense water since the beginning of the world, now received the rays of the Sun.

Multis igitur navibus velut arida humo conexis, et licenter per exiguas undarum reliquias palantibus plurimis, ut pisces manibus colligerent et similia. Marini fremitus velut gravati repulsam versa vice consurgunt, perque vada ferventia insulis et continentis terrae porrectis spatiis violenter inlisi, innumera quaedam, in civitatibus et ubi reperta sunt, aedificia conplanarunt: proinde ut, elementorum furente discordia, involuta facies mundi miraculorum species ostendebat.

Many ships were stuck on the dry soil, and many people impertinently wandered to the leftovers to pick up fish and similar things with their hands. "Uproars of the sea", as if outraged for having been pushed away, rose back up, dashing violently through the hot shores into the islands and extended spaces of the mainland, levelling innumerable buildings in cities and wherever else they found them: it was as if the elements had been in fury and the look of the world had been turned upside-down, showing the strangest of sights.

̉—Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 26:16-17. You may recall a similar incident happening after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, when the sea retreated in Sri Lanka and nearby coasts and some people died after rushing to pick up the fish that the sea had left after temporarily retreating.

Ser wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 2:11 pm[highly informative post]

Ser, please forgive me for my lateness in thanking you for your excellent post. I am sorry I let it sit so long without a response.

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So there are four main "higher-order" groups of CT descendants: Eastern, Central, Western, and Southern.

Eastern Tim Ar is characterized by vowel rounding causing velars to labialize:

ŋ k g x ɣ → m p b f v / _{y,ø,u,o}

Central Tim Ar is characterized by sound changes inspired by allophony I just noticed in the Wikipedia article on Wari', wherein nasals become post-stopped before /a/, with either the the first element in hiatus dropping or original /a/ fusing with or becoming affected by its following vowel in hiatus, thus phonemicizing the distinction:

m n ŋ → mb nd ŋg / _a (and thence → b d g ~ p t k; this will probably also occur before original /ʕ/)

Western Tim Ar is characterized by dumping original /m/:

m → w (and thence → ʔ with some frequency)

And then we have Southern Tim Ar, which (under areal influence) simply denasalized its nasals (this was often succeeded by one or both of original /ɹ/ and/or /l/ becoming /n/):

m n ŋ → b d g

Interestingly (to me, at least), this last one phonemicizes a voicing distinction in the plosives, at least in initial position: Compare ded 'animal feed' (< nen) vs. ted 'gap; cave' (< ten)—CT voiced its obstruents intervocalically or when next to another voiced sound (unless /h/ did something with it in the plurals).

Of these, the smallest group geographically is the Southern group, whose progress was stalled by the presence of the Burning Mountains (though there is a healthy amount of variation caused by the intricacies of the terrain). Central Tim Ar was kind of penned in by the Eastern, Western, and Southern groups; of these, the former two "spread their wings" the most.

The Central and Southern varieties generally have derivations of néarik for 'twenty'; Eastern and Western varieties usually use a descendant of höarik. Additionally, Southern varieties are known to have some form of arihkêʕê for 'ninety', instead of using the suppletive téngo nihít.

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I'm trying to figure out interesting things I can do with original /h/. I would like there to be a sort of a different split in how they handle it—i.e. the split in development of /h/ isn't mappable to the same East/Central/West/South division that the plosive developments took.

Original /h/ has the effect of blocking the normal voicing processes that occur: Compare laga 'lullaby' [laɣa] vs. lahga 'to throw' [lahxa] or lagha 'to slice, to chop, to cut food' [laxha]. Coda /h/ is very much a Thing™ in CT and there are a few immediately-obvious routes it could take:

- Simply delete it, once again causing a voicing distinction to show up in the obstruents
- Have it jump a vowel and cause aspiration (attested somewhere in Mongolic, thanks for showing me that Nort), or at least lost voicing
- Vowel length
- Devoice the preceding vowel, either deleting it or fricativizing it
- Turn into a semivowel
- Become [s] / _E or [x]/[f] / _B
- Tone or phonation shenanigans
- Generation of echo vowels, where it's not _V already

What are some other things I could do with it?

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The Lé Mêĝ is, as I've stated earlier in the thread, basically Ítöð's equivalent of Papua New Guinea. The River Sobadegh has its source in the Burning Mountains in this region. The Tim Ar vacillate between just letting it exist by itself, harvesting its resources, and trying to "civilize" the peoples therein; how successful efforts are vary with time and place. There are plenty of uncontacted people groups therein, and plenty of illicit activity—smugglers and other ne'er-do-wells like to use it either as a means of passage, a hideout, or a base, for instance.

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Speaking of the Sobadegh, part of it appears to run straight through the Mziddyun. That'd give the Tim Ar an incentive to hold onto it, since it's such a major thoroughfare. There may be transient, quasi-permanent, or permanent settlements there; I'd disprefer the latter as I like the idea that, as a SAZ, it's like Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter.

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I'm actively trying to make the Tim Ar Imperium less of a Mary Sue. I want them to have some relatable/redeemable qualities, but they're nonetheless not paradise.

Just so I don't forget my own Classical plural rules:

htɹ hkɹ htl hkl → ts ts tɬ tɬ

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I think I've got a good set of changes to Proto-Central Tim Ar…but is this too much?

æ → a
h → s / E_
h → f / B_
h → Ø
m n ŋ → mb nd ŋg / _{a,ʕ}
ʕ → ŋ / _%
ʕ → h
ɤ ɯ → o u
d g → z ɣ / V_
{zɹ,ɹz,ɮɹ,ɹɮ} {zl,lz,ɮl,lɮ} → ɹː lː
ai ay au → e ø o
a → Ø / _V
i y u → ts tf f / _V
á é ǿ í ý ó ú → ɨ i̯a i̯a i̯e i̯ø u̯a u̯o
ɣVɣ → ɣV
F → Ø / _#
ɬ ɮ → ʃ ʒ
θ ð → s z
{ɹ,l} → ʃ / _#
ei øy ou → e ø o
V → Ø / Vɣ_
sts zdz → ts dz vel. sim.

If I did these right…

sáman 'to speak' → sɨmban
sokogís 'arms dealer' → soɣi̯e
masná 'missile, bullet' → mbaznɨ
tikgór 'battle plan' → tikxu̯aʃ
uantín 'march in formation' → fandi̯en
masî 'hurl s.th.' → mbazu̯o
maré 'gegenschein' → mbaɹi̯a
mahatsá 'recipe, formula, procedure' → mbatsɨ
uáu 'distract' → fɨ
irsá 'mortal, lethal' → iɹːɨ
seisú 'register, jargon' → sezu̯o
rakám 'protracted' → ɹaɣɨm
ersół 'type of alcoholic beverage' → eɹːu̯aʃ
ogén 'hail from, have as background' → oɣi̯an
soł 'slave' → soʃ
ĝûhl 'skip, hop' → ŋi̯øl
iáha 'shout, yell' → tsɨa
ðiáĝ 'column' → tsɨŋ
kaskál 'rack' → kaskɨʃ
ial 'one, some, any (near)' → tsaʃ
ialí 'any of these (near)' → tsali̯e
nié 'certain, specific (distal)' → ntsi̯a
íüł 'helper, assistant' → tsyʃ
ʕesóh 'spice' → hezu̯af
kuïðá 'victim' → kfuzɨ
húki 'door, entryway' → u̯oɣi
ðáim 'leather' → si̯am
maús 'late, deceased' → mbu̯os
síog 'prepare food' → tsox
mha 'way, characteristic' → ma
limháuʕ 'hurry, rush' → limu̯aŋ
kólïs 'copper' → ku̯alus
égn 'lead' → i̯aɣn
ûn 'gold' → i̯øn
tori 'fish' → toɹi
ugtúð 'destroy' → uxtu̯os
ðún 'one' → su̯on
háka 'two' → ɨɣa
isë 'three' → izo
höhsë 'four' → øsːo
ðúnki 'five' → su̯oŋgi
kihê 'six' → kizu̯a
kórö 'seven' → ku̯aɹø
rarê 'eight' → ɹaɹu̯a
êʕê 'nine' → u̯ahu̯a ~ hu̯a by haplalogy
arik 'ten' → aɹik
ĝus '1SG' → ŋus
łn '2SG' → ʃn
hé '3SG' → i̯a
ðéku '1PL' → si̯aɣu
ki '2PL' → ki
étí '3PL' → i̯azi̯e

Some scattered ideas for further developments, not all necessarily in the same language:

m̩ n̩ ŋ̩ ɹ̩ l̩ → u i a e o
ɹː lː → ts tɬ
si̯ zi̯ → ʃ ʒ
k g → s z / _{i,i̯}
mb nd ŋg → b d g

So I was wandering down an Internet rabbit hole and I saw some ways you could change the color of the ocean. I've decided that Ítöð has red, iron-rich oceans. Might even be a Canfield ocean.

Also, Ítöð has two kingdoms corresponding to "plants" based on what color their chlorophylls are: íðĝkü (sg. ðíĝkü), the yellow plants, and ukiklu (sg. köklu), the black plants. I've thought about maybe making a kingdom of green plants, but if I did, those would be confined to Gurkélis just to set it apart a bit.

TL;DR – This planet is going to look weird from space.

I have been reëvaluating where Ítöð is located. It requires the following:
- G-type primary, or reasonably close option
- Projected age of at least 2 Gyr, preferably 3 – 6 Gyr
- Wide binary or similar system
- No currently-detected extrasolar planets that would wreck the habitable zone
- < 100 ly distance
- Avoidance of cliché systems (e.g. Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti)

So there are four candidates as of current: Xi Boötis A, Zeta Herculis B, 85 Pegasi A, and 11 Leonis Minoris A. (The other/present option is Eta Cassiopeiae A).

- Xi Boötis A. Might be slightly too young, and it's listed as a variable star. But it's reasonably close. Xi Boötis B also has a really low-mass stellar companion, and with my current plans that's exactly what I need.
- Zeta Herculis B. Not a G-type star, but has a habitable zone of ~0.88 AU, and this may be stable even with Zeta Herculis A coming as close as 7.8 AU. A, meanwhile, appears to have a large substellar companion; this works well for my purposes.
- 85 Pegasi A. Similar to the above, but a bit more of the obscurity factor—how many people you think would have ever heard of 85 Pegasi? Then again, horse references might not make much sense in my context.
- 11 Leonis Minoris A. The eccentricity of the A/B orbit may work in my favor. The reference to a feline may not.
- Eta Cassiopeiae A, the current home of Ítöð. One lesser issue is that the physics dictates the local year might be too long.

Any opinions?

With regards to the system, when thinking about it, I decided that the companion star's apparent magnitude was a major consideration—I didn't want the night to be day-lite. To that end, I've opted to go with Xi Boötis A. The secondary is a K- or M-type star that only gets a little closer to its primary than Uranus is from our Sun, and that's another weighted factor as such stars have lower luminosities and, therefore, appear dimmer. Xi Boötis A is also a variable star with a reasonably short period; I think this might be useful in determining methods of time measurement.

Now to run Xi Boo's data through the Planet Calculator…