All Star: Best song of the 90s?

I interrupt my being busy with the semester to bring you this essay on the beauty of All Star.

"As a scholar of Smash Mouth, I think there's a disagreement over what mugged means here, and we might actually have the same base idea. It's getting jumped, beat up, etc. It might not necessarily mean being targeted because he has something of value. The wise person says "Hey you, the way you're going, the world (that is life) is gonna catch you up and knock you down" to which the speaker replies "You know, I know that I'm dumb and that people think I'm dumb. But this doesn't bother me" What he knows is that he has to "hit the ground running," he needs to stay ahead of both the world and be prepared for one it does catch up (since the years don't stop coming). He may get knocked down by the world, but that shouldn't stop him from being who he is. That's why he explores the backstreets, and tries new things. Because he isn't afraid of the world. He's a rock star, an all star.

The second verse calls back to this imagery. The world getting cold is the same idea as the world rolling him. It's an unfeeling place. Yet as he says "the meteor man begs to differ, judging by the hole in the satellite picture" In the same way that he isn't afraid of the world rolling him, he is doesn't believe that life gets harder the longer it goes on. In fact, if the ice is going to break, might as well take it into your own hands and jump in the water on your own terms. It's a song celebrating individual freedom. It's an existentialist love song.

Consider the verse "Somebody once asked...all use a little change". Here the speaker encounters someone who has been rolled by the world. Yet they rather than taking the chance to swim, they try to run away from their problem. The singer is sympathetic, yet also realizes the foolishness in this action. A little fuel could do him some good, but it won't fix the problem. The change in sense of the word "change" highlights this. We could all do a little better with some "change" be it a change in scenery or the personality, but it will do us only as much good as we make of it. In the end, the years start coming and they don't stop coming, so we should adapt ourselves to it, rather than live in fear. And so in the end, this is why the singer is dismissive of the wise person at the beginning. He realizes that being smart does you no good if you don't use it. Why fear the future when you can instead prepare yourself for it and have fun while doing so?

Such must we all be."

Melancholic Bitch

No, that's not what I am. Rather it's a band I really like (been a fan since 2013, when they did a concert at @america and I was the official US representative) that just released a new album. Sounds great right? It is...if you live in Indonesia and can actually get a hold of one of their CDs. Only the single is on their youtube/soundcloud and so far there doesn't seem to be any other way to get the album proper. But hey, album+shirt+concert is only like $15 if you happen to be in the right area.

So yeah, it makes me happy, but also sad because I want listen. Word on the street is that it is good. It was hard enough finding their last album, Balada Joni dan Susi.

Language Profile: Knənʔtəəʔ

Name:Knənʔtəəʔ
Alternative Names: Toúījāb Shbīmut, The fishermen's language
Family: Kntic (also known as Gulf Islands), in the Central Islands branch.  Probably distantly related to the now-extinct languages of the West Bay. This is in turn has been linked to the hypothetical Gulf family, which includes the Neaso family and sometimes Towwu Pũ Saho. Closely related to the inland languages on their island
Location: On the north coast of the largest island between TbKt land and Uxlots.
History: They have lived in villages on the island for thousands of years. Recently a large Kikxotian outpost was founded on their island. Knənʔtəəʔ has become the largest and most prominent of its family from this, and is now a common third language throughout the Gulf islands.
Writing System: Not a written language, they use TbKt for writing purposes
Typological information:

• Word order: SVO, with VSO (sort of) in some intransitive clauses
• Alignment: Split ergative
• Morphological:Analytic with some agglutinative features

Notable Features:

• Incopyfixation
• Reduplication in general
• Minor syllables
• Crazy vowels
• 2 lengths
• 3 phonations (modal, creaky, and breathy)
• 9 qualities
• Relatively analytic (so I get the best of both worlds)
• Many derivational patterns
• Overly specific lexical items
• Expressionals (maybe eventually)

Some morphological markings:

• Verbs
• Subject (sometimes)
• Aspect
• Voice-ish
• Pluractionality
• Nouns

Origins: June 2017. I had recently learned about Aslian languages and wanted to do something like that
History: I was gonna do it for a two hour (and did do it eventually, though I never posted it) but then a new one was posted, so I did a two hour challenge on my own after doing Akm. Then like I week later I posted the outcome
Status: In-development. I often do translates in it, including in a relay. It's a pretty fun one to work with
What I'm doing with it and why:
Other Notes: I like to look through my birding books and turn the bird calls into words. Another source of vocabulary is typos on the internet

9/7/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on i
4/21/18- Remembered to update morphosyntactic alignment to "split-ergative" from nom-acc

Language Profile: Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm

Name: Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
Alternative Names: Dravidlang
Family:The Maruttom languages spoken in the north and interior of the Southern Continent. Might in turn be related to the heavily dependent marking and phonologically similar languages of the West Coast and interior, but that has not be proven yet.
Location:Along the North Coast of the Southern Continent and used as a lingua franca throughout the region. Despite their relatively close locations, it is firmly out of the TbKt sphere of influence.
History: I haven't really fleshed out their history at all except that they are the Kikxotians democractic rivals to the south
Writing system: Have a local alphabet
Typological information:

• Word order: SOV
• Alignment:Nominative-Accusative
• Morphological: Agglutinative

Notable Features:

• Lots of non-finite verbs
• No relative clauses
• Case system that is sort of European-like but also not
• Phonology stuff
• No phonemic fricatives
• Lots of sandhi
• Many point of articulation
• Many suppletive verb forms for marking moods

Some morphological markings:

• Verbs
• Participial endings 
• Directional
• Other derivationals
• Voice
• Tense
• Aspect
• Subject
• Mood (sometimes)
• Evidentials
• Nouns
• Gender
• Case
• Other postpositional clitics

Origins: June 2017 for a two hour challenge.
History: I was gonna do the previous two hour challenge with an Austroasiatic lang and then this one got posted so I did it.
Status: In-development. I often do translates in it. The verb system still needs a ton of work, and nouns can definitely be expanded on. Also I want to make it more unique (which I think is already happening since I haven't really looked at Dravidian grammars while working on it (for this reason) since the challenge)
What I'm doing with it and why:
Other Notes:

9/7/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it

Language Profile: Towwu Pũ Saho

Name: Towwu Pũ Saho
Alternative Names: The Language of the Mountain Peoples, Toúījāb Vīggo Kmurīt
Family: Isolate. Some (TbKt) linguists feel that it is a distant relative of TbKt and therefore an isolate branch of the Western Plains family. Others have tried to link them to the Kntic languages or even the hypothetical Gulf family, but the evidence is mostly typological in nature. Some also hypothesize that there are relatives living in the rainshadow desert, however this area is mostly unexplored and uninhabited.
Location: In the mountains and plateaus north of the Kikxotian plains. Basically, their villages start popping up as the hills start appearing. Many of them living alongside the cliffs, or even have villages built into the cliffs (think Dogon or Pueblo peoples sort of thing).
History: As far as anyone is aware, they have always lived in their area. They might once have been more spread out before being absorbed by the Kikxotians in the lowlands, however people are pretty sure that the coasts were once inhabited relatives of the Kntic languages, not of Towwu Pũ Saho
Writing System: Not a written language, they use TbKt for writing purposes
Typological information:

• Word order: SOV (but based on animacy and definiteness as well)
• Alignment: Direct-Inverse (strangely enough)
• Morphological: Analytic

Notable Features:

•  Many many (TAM) particles
• Well, sort of. They are particles that mark TAM but they also have many other functions depending on the POS they precede or follow
• Nasal harmony
• Contentive POS (not that I knew this word or classification when I started the language)
• Strong analytic tendencies (but allows compounding and some derivation)
• Direct-inverse alignment and definiteness of arguments marked with a portmanteau particle
• Detailed animacy hierarchy
• Complicated deixis/demonstrative system
• Visible vs invisible
• Proximal vs Medial vs Distal
• Above vs same level vs below

Some morphological markings:

• It's isolating so they are more of particle markings!
• Verbs
• Aspect (preposition)
• Modality (preposition)
•  Causative (reduplication)
• Nouns

Origins: Late 2016 after I decided to start conlanging again. A lot of the initial work was done in a hotel room in Cairo after being stranded there an extra day due to flight stuff
History: I wanted to do something new and had never done an analytic language before and I wanted to try my hand at a real Austronesian-alligned language. I don't remember if I had an idea for this language before the hotel room, but that's definitely where I started sketching it out. I honestly can't say what influenced it most. Obviously I was looking at Guarani for nasal harmony (I didn't know about Gê languages until later) and in world building I was definitely thinking of the Dogon. I know (at least) some Dogon languages are isolating, but I don't think that was an influence on this language, because I couldn't find any good information on them. I was reading a lot about austronesian alignment too. The direct inverse system came from me reanalyzing my attempt at an Austronesian alignment when I realized that what I had didn't really work as an austronesian system but with a couple tweaks it was (mostly like) direct-inverse.

Status: In-development. I work on it fairly often, since it is different than a lot of my other languages. Plus it just looks weird, which is great for showing to other people
What I'm doing with it and why: Sitting on it mostly :p . One day I'll figure out more uses for it.
CALS link:
Other Notes: I love getting people to say what languages it reminds them of. I once posted a story of it on facebook and got some good results.

9/2/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it

Language Profile: Neaso Uxlotsuz

Name: Neaso Uxlotsuz
Alternative Names: The Language of the Sea Peoples, Toúījāb Vīggo Gfutīt
Family: Neaso family (which might be part of a broader hypothetical Gulf family, though the links are shaky at best, especially with most of the family being extinct)
Location: In the city of Uxlots on the big delta of the big river on the northeast part of the bay and it's surrounding areas. Also serves as lingua franca in the eastern bay area. In reality, it forms a dialect continuum with other Neaso languages, which are spoken up and down the coast (to the mountains at least), along the rivers and more southernly plains and basically all over the eastern side of the bay.
History: While always an important trading center, the last couple of hundred years have boosted Uxlots importance and gave it more political power in the region, hence the choice of its language to showcase the broader features of its family.
Writing System: Modified version of the Kikxotian logography, mostly used as an alphabet with some logographs.
Typological information:

• Word order:VSO with secondary SVO
• Alignment:Active-Stative (mostly split-S but it has some fluid elements)
• Morphological: Fusional

Notable Features:

• Active stative alignment, of course
• Only stative verbs, no adjectives
• Umlaut
• Fusionality (since I've never really done that before)
• European(ish) case system
• Marked definiteness 
• Multiple declensions
• Finite vs non-finite verbs
• Lots of constructions are made with an auxillary + non-finite form
• Strong division between Parts of Speech, especially nouns and verbs 
• Limited compounding
• Willingness to loan

Some morphological markings:

• Verbs
• Agreement (one suffix)
• Tense
• Aspect
• Subject Person
• Subject Number
• Non-finitity (suffix)
•  Infinitive
• Stative
• General non-finite
• Nouns (all on one suffix)
• Definiteness
• Case
• Number

Origins: Mid to late 2015, in Indonesia while on my mission and after writing up a letter on TbKt and realizing how much I missed conlanging.
History: As mentioned, after I wrote my first letter about TbKt, I was having so much fun so I decided to make another language, to be a neighbor of TbKt that was really different than it. I wanted to do things with loan words and try out fusionality. And weird verbal things for some reason. Also a vaguely germanic feel? In retrospect, it's almost like it was meant to be a Germlang but also not at all a Germlang. Well I stopped conlanging before I sent the letter with this one so (I still have all the materials and) my friend has no idea of it and it sat around until I started again. I had a much harder time going back to this one because  the idea was just more nebulous and more difficult, but I do want to eventually fix up and flesh it out more. Now it is important for worldbuilding, but it itself is still very underdeveloped.

Status: In-development. I work on it sometimes but it usually gets shelved (because it is hard and its verbal system is a mess)
What I'm doing with it and why: Sitting on it mostly :p . One day I'll figure out more uses for it. It's weird romanization (and eventually orthography) has proved useful in justifying decisions for Papualang though.
CALS link:
Other Notes:This is probably one of my least impressionistic conlangs (so most unique :p ). I feel like it's really hard to pin the inspirations and stuff on it. Which is cool I guess.

9/2/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it

Isolating polylang?

I've already complained about polysynthesis before. I still think it's a stupid term. Anyway, here's one (very strict) definition I've seen for it:

1) polypersonal agreement
2) noun incorporation
3) extensive derivational synthesis
4) pervasive head-marking
5) verb-marking more than noun-marking

There's nothing about the phonological coherence in this one. Which, if I understand correctly, allows for the mythical "isolating polysynthetic language". Now this is a concept I've heard about before, in the back corners of internet forums and the like. I never understood how it was possible.

Then I met Abui. The author describes it as polysynthetic. Yet it sure doesn't look it. I think the most morphemes I've in a (phonological?) word is 5 and most of 2-3. Yet it's serial verbs allow for very complex verb phrases. While it's not isolating by any means (it's squarely in the agglutinating camp), it does show the diversity of "polysynthetic" languages and how the term really doesn't do justice. I'm sure if the average amateur (con)-linguist looked at it (even with glosses) they'd probably not label it as polysynthetic. Yet the author of this grammar was confident in doing so and I haven't seen anything disputing this. (Another fun one that I keep seeing brought up as polysynthetic (including by experts in the field like Michael Fortescue) with no discussion as to why it is classified as such. From my skimmings of the grammar, it sure doesn't look it).

In other news, I'm looking forward to the release of the Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis which comes out in a few months.

Diachronic conlangs

Yeah, I've been really lazy about updating. Still doing plenty of conlanging, as can be seen on reddit, just not updating here. I've been working on a big "papualang" project. But I'm getting on to do a minor, inconsequential rant about conlanging.

One thing that many conlangers like to do is diachronics, so deriving languages from other languages. That's cool and all, especially when done a posteriori (and well) or for a conlang family. Even I'm part of a diachronics project. My problem isn't with diachronics.

No it's the whole thing where you create a proto-language for only one daughter language and even more the idea that this makes the daughter lang inherently better. Why does this bug me? Because it doesn't make the language actually more realistic, especially since many of the sound changes and grammatical changes found in the daughter langs might have been a stretch to occur naturally. Also it leads to this weird idea that proto-languages were more regular than daughter langs, which isn't actually true. The other thing that bugs me about this is that the proto-lang itself is still a conlang. It's not like you made the conlang less constructed. If you have no plan on making a language family, why do the protolang. You're getting all the features you wanted anyway, but now you are taking extra steps. Just make the language without those steps.

It's a minor gripe. I'm not going to discourage people from making proto-langs, not at all. It's mostly harmless. But I do wish more people understood that proto-langs are reconstructions and aren't what people actually spoken. Are they close? In many cases, yes, probably, at least somewhat. Of course there's dialects in real protolangs, something not often reflected in constructions, academic or otherwise (at least as far as I have seen). That's okay, it's difficult to do, but people gotta remember this.

Language Profile: Toúījāb Kīkxot

Name: Toúījāb Kīkxot
Alternative Names: The Holy Language
Family: The Eastern Group of the West Plains family, though it is quite far from the rest of the West Plains family
Location: Along the western coast of the bay (it makes sense if you've seen the map), along the rivers, up to the mountains and extending out into the plains, plus as a lingua franca around the whole bay area. Also is used as a liturgical language in Kikxo worshiping communities.
History: Some 2000 years prior, nomads from the west swept in the the fertile plains and river valleys near the bay, overtaking the languages that used to be there.  Roughly 1000 years ago, with writing of their scriptures and the spread of Kikxoism, TbKt began dominating its neighbors. Presently it has split into a variety of dialects that all claim to be the same language, even when not mutually intelligible. As an important trade and liturgical language, it is widely spoken and a frequent contributor of loan words to its neighbors. There are also various pidgins and creoles based on it, especially in the Bay Islands
Writing System: Self made logography with some syllabic elements
Typological information:

• Word order: SVO
• Alignment: Nom-Acc, technically, but it is pretty irrelevant to the language, seeing as neither verbs nor nouns are marked like that
• Morphological: Agglutinative

Notable Features:

• Triconsonantal roots. Like really a really pervasive system
• Reduplication- lots and lots of it
• Full reduplication
• Very productive imitative reduplication
• Partial reduplication
• No person marking on verbs, no plural marking on nouns
• Registers and dialects
• Complicated politeness based pronoun system
• 4 basic categories of Pronouns
• Polite/honorific/superior
• Neutral
• Familiar
• Pejorative
• Fairly open, allowing for names, nouns and other things to act as a pronoun if desired
• Symmetrical voice system and applicative suffixes on verbs
• Marked Transitivity
• Xenophobia and extreme resistance to loan words and foreign influence (in the standard language)

Some morphological markings:

• Verbs
• Mood (prefix)
• Aspect (prefix)
• Valency (transfix)
• Voice (infix)
• Role of patient/theme (suffix)
• Compounding/serial verb markers (suffix)
• Nouns
• Possessed "case" (suffix)
• Animacy/Gender on certain nouns (suffix)
• Compounding markers (suffix)
• Ensuring a strong split between heads, modifiers and adjectives

Introducing Language Profiles

So after having this blog for like half a year, I am finally getting around to creating language profiles. How will this work? Each language will have some in-universe information, followed by out of universe stuff. I'll probably update them as needed and if I do lots of update or it takes a long time, do a new profile. And I'll keep a list of profiles here so that there's something central.  Or something like that.

Mythos wyrm universe:

• Ǩüttǩarrą Roś 
• Osogkum
• L'ip'ò

Kixot universe

• Bay area
• Toúījāb Kīkxot
• Neaso Uxlotsuz
• Towwu Pũ Saho
• Knǝnʔtǝǝʔ
• Unnamed-Papualang
•   South Continent
• Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
• Kélojùù 
•  Way far away continent 
  
  Edit 9/22: Added some more hyperlinks and also Papualang

Aslian Language Dump

Here's a dump of links on Aslian languages, since people keep asking me about them. (This is originally taken from a reddit post)

Sadly there aren't tons (and the grammars in the side bar are kind of lacking :/ ). But here's some
The big pile o grammars:

• Temiar
• Semai

What is good though is that the Temiar grammar has lots of links to new(er) materials, so that's gonna be the bulk of what follows (you might notice a common author):
General Information

• General Characteristics from the Encyclopedia of Malaysia
• Aslian: Mon-Khmer of the Malaysian Peninsula
• Why You should Study Aslian Languages
• Orang Asli contains information about the Austronesian Tribes of Malaysia as well
• A guide to pronouncing these languages
• Reduplication in Aslian languages
• Nasal Preplosion in Aslian Languages
• A hipster (?) magazine article on them
• Olafaction in Aslian languages

Specific Languages

• Jah Hut

• Jahai Phonology

• Temiar Grammar

• Temiar Causitive

• Maniq Phonology
  

  
  

The Problem of Polysynthesis

I hold many controversial opinions. One of them is polysynthetic is a bad term, not just because of it's vagueness but because of what it signals, especially in conlanging. Anyway, this argument with some people got out of hand (#selfexaminationhurts) (I said some dumb things too) so I never really got explain why it is bad beyond the vagueness.

Here's the first thing I never sent and then I'll follow up with some other ideas I've had since then:

"Anyway, my point is that even now, the languages we choose to label as polysynthetic (especially taking the large amount of morphemes approach) tend to fall on minority and especially disenfranchised groups. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if there was actually an agreed on definition for polysynthesis. But there isn't, because whenever someone tries to come up with something, other people get angry because their language gets excluded (the biggest example of this being Baker and his exclusion of Inuit languages) or because a language they don't consider polysynthetic is included. So we are left with a category that means "lots of morphemes and if feels that way". Which then brings us back to the point that "feels that way", for whatever reason, closely aligns with "languages spoken by minority groups". So we have a category that (like all morphological typologies, mind you) doesn't tell us really much of anything about the languages classified in it, except that 1) they have long words with multiple morphemes; 2) are not placed with the other languages for some reason.

And that's crux of it. The category doesn't tell us anything that synthetic (here being agglutinative and fusional) doesn't already tell us. Yet people defend it so viciously and want their language to be in the category. Why?"

Well, a big part of it is what I call "fetishization of the exotic" (and I am guilty of it too). Polysynthesis is seen as something cool, so you want your language in it (especially for conlanging). It is seen as cool because it is different from IE (and especially English) therefore something you want to be. And that's where the underlying "racism" (for lack of a better term) comes in. It doesn't mean that the linguists/enthusiasts are being racist, but they are, because of the way the terms has been used, perpetuating stereotypes and signaling certain ideas (namely primativity/noble savage/north americanness) through the use of the term "polysynthesis". It is the "exotic" that really binds the different types of polysynthesis together, more so than head-marking, polypersonal agreement or noun-incorporation.

Why is this important? Well, the category "polysynthesis" hurts conlanging and reduces its diversity. How? First of all, since there is little if any actual tendencies that fit for polysynthesis, it isn't signaling features for the most part. Instead it signals that you want your lang to be North American-like, especially in a Salishanesque way. This is fine and all, but it further reduces the amount of languages people learn about and makes them think that polylangs actually have many binding features. It also means that they are less likely to learn about features not found in those languages. For example, I did an informal survey on switch reference (with a bunch of polylang enthusiats) and none of us could think of any conlang with a switch reference system (other than my own, in progress one). Why? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the primary references for polysynthesis don't have it, even though it is very common in polylangs in other parts of the world (like New Guinea) and even in the United States! In all this reduces the diversity of conlangs (I've seen one papualang (excluding my own) and none based on Australian langs, for instance) because people have an incomplete view of what "polysynthesis" really is and don't realize it.

Fetishization of the exotic aside, polysynthesis would be an okay term if it could be well defined, people agreed on a definition, didn't try so hard to fit every language into it and recognized its limits and unreasonability. It would be fine if the community used a wider variety (not just of Native American langs) of languages to act as references, showing the diversity in the term and maybe counteracting some (though not all) of the underlying marks/stereotypes within the term. But it doesn't and we don't have the self-awareness nor desire in the community to fix this. So I'm stuck ranting about it on a blog. Well the next time the inevitable "how do I polylang" or "I never see polylangs (cue 15 polylangs)" post comes up, I can link this as I try to raise awareness :p

Updates and Happy Canada Day

So I've been really bad at updating this. On the other hand, I've been quite active on the conlanging subreddit for at least the last month now. So I've actually been pretty busy. I'll include links to a couple of the conlang projects I've done there to here.

In other news, I hope to do some bigger world building posts and eventually create those dang language profiles. Of course, I keep getting more languages to profile so hey! Also, I need to find a way to upload my current grammar sheets in the like.

Anyway, here's the links to languages I've done:

Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm

Kélojùù

Knǝnʔǝǝʔ

There's also been plenty of translations and vocabulary building exercises

Duty among Kīkxo's People

Time for something different!  Well sort of.  It's still conworlding, just not conlanging as it may be. Having a robust culture is an important part of creating a language. It provides the background to make things happen.

As I think I've mentioned before, religion plays a very important role in the daily lives on the Úīkmo Kīkxot (Actually that's where I got the idea for this lang in the first place). They even call themselves "Kikxo's people"! Kīkxo, of course is their main God. This posting is not an exhaustive account of their religion. That needs to be explained over the course of many posts. Instead I'll focus on one aspect: duty.

Today in may world religions class we were discussing Confucianism and the idea of the Junzi. It got me thinking "what would be the ideal person in this society?" Well, it probably would be broader than Junzi. In fact, I think it would be a lot more like the Hindu idea of dharma, obedience towards one's individual place in life.

Within this culture, people have three main duties: 1) To improve themselves; 2) To serve God; and 3) To advance society. The perfect person (úīkmo ikkuxat; gōtāpzō ikkuxat; kikxī are all common names used to describe such a person with kixkī having a very similar connotation to buddha or saint and often used as an honorific) has found balance in all three aspects, and while s/he shouldn't be worshiped, should definitely be emulated. However, none of three things mean exactly what we might think as westerners, and all three are very interconnected.

People improve themselves by learning about Kīkxo. The culmination of this is by going through all the rites in the Lōbopāb Kīkxot (lit "House of God", more normally "temple") and becoming a: possessor of the true knowledge of the Shīyto; a defender against evil; and receiving the promise of Resurrection from Kīkxo. So self improvement in this context has to do with progress through the religion more than self-improvement in a secular sense.

People serve God by keeping his commandments, both generally and caste specific. Proper sacrifices, being the best of your role you can be, taking care of the priest caste and the like are all ways in which people serve Kīkxo.

Advancing society basically means spreading the religion of Kīkxo, engaging in war with evil, serving others, and treating others well. But mostly spreading the religion. Asceticism, or rather hermitism, is seen as contrary to advancing society. In fact, the more close society is, the more advanced it is seen.

Therefore a kikxī is not just very good at whatever s/he is supposed to do, but also active in their community. A kikxī is altruistic, helpful, humble and open. A kikxī is obedient in all things. A kikxī from one caste would be quite different than a kikxī from another caste. It's not exactly what we would think of as a holy man, and that's why I think it converges quite a bit with the concept of Junzi, as I understand it, at least

Also, this took me two and a half months to write (it's 6/30 now).  I'm terrible but will hopefully start updating this blog more again

Some minor thoughts on opening, closing, and doors

So I was walking home and thinking about how mesoamerican languages use body part symbolism in word formation and compounding. Or I so I thought; I can't seem to find any references to it now. From there I was thinking how TbKt would express words for things like "door", "open", and "close". I decided that door probably wouldn't be a body part compound, most likely it would be something like "opening/what is opened". From there, I thought how the word "open" would be. I figure that some sort of thing where opening is an extension of revealing. Ends up I already have a word meaning open, so I just stuck reveal on there too. I don't have a word for "close" yet, nor do I have one for "hide" so I'm combing them into one root. Then I decided that door would probably fit better as "somethings that hides/closes things" (kind of by analogy with lid).

Some important distinctions (from English):

1. If you hide something by covering it up (from above, with another object) you use a different root YHT. I thought for a while that maybe door could be related to this root but I decided against it because it mostly has to do with things that rest over other things (hats, lids, snow, etc).
2. We might say that someone has an open mind but in this language it would be "unbounded mind" (if the ideas it is open to are "good") or a "soft/wooly mind" (if the ideas aren't). By extension the opposites are a "bound mind" and a "hard/rocky mind" respectively. A "hollow mind" could also work, though it has the implication that that person is so open-minded that they believe anything, so more like gullible. Actually, as I think about this more, I think the underlying metaphor is that the mind is a field/farm, so I'm not sure how well "hollow mind" would work. Maybe a "fallow mind"?
3. This use of door refers to things that open and shut, that is covers for door-space. This can be gates, curtains, what we actually think of as doors, and so one. A door that cannot be closed (because it is a space in a wall) is the nothinging (nonexistent) part of a wall. A "door" fills the nothinging of a wall (on that note, that whole root works really weird for english speakers, I think. A whole root for not existing).
4. I'm not sure if analogy/metonymy with doors and metaphorical ideas would work like they do in English. Probably something else would work better, depending on the metaphor. However there probably are times it would work. So I guess it depends on the figurative speech in question.

I was going to do some sentences and examples, but I don't think I will today. Just plain lazy and I ant to chase another post doing stuff on the metaphor of the mind being a farm.  Since that was a coolish sort of idea I had.  Metaphors are fun!

That last story but in TbKt

So I had fun writing the last story so I'm gonna translate it again, but in TbKt. Not that it's very sensible to the Kikxotian mind, but hey maybe it's the sort of story they publish in anthologies of tribal tales to make fun of their poor, ignorant neighbors. Also, this translation should hopefully have better flow and more flowery language (sort of), since this lang is way more fleshed.

Ūstu khosaowaxphīc-owphīc wōluf? Ūíonuc khoowaxphīc. Oshbīmiz, faoqcīl íopul. Smofizōchōp ūsimf-isumf. Īsaxumōfsā wōluf. Ugmasūkuc ofaxqīl. Īn wōluf amlōí līwūl ūstu. Usarsíuy īw naxiyka phruyāzō wōbothat. Thāxakh aksōtnāg, fīs khopīkūg īn wōluf. Īn wōluf khoāpkāg agis baxifwa ūstu. 
Most important things to note here? I tried to not bring up subjects unless the subject changed from the last sentence. So in TbKt narrative forms the subject is implied until changed. This also means that the patient focus and agent focus often switch while trying to maintain the same subject. I can't remember anything else of note right now.  It's been a while since I did this though I'm just now publishing it.  Probably could be cleaned up though but whatever.  I'm still learning this language too!

Some sentences of the Be'oi

Just to shake things up a bit here's some samples of the mountain people's language. I'm calling them the Be'oi, from their word for mankind or people. Technically they call themselves Be'oi kau Qqoi "The people on the cliffside" but no one calls that because it's long. I've been going through a swadesh list to fill out their vocabulary, which already makes me remember how much I hate creating a lexicon. That's why TbKt gets so much attention. The vocabulary practically writes itself thanks to its derivational system. I'm just providing sentences and translations, you, my dear readers, get to try to figure the structure of the language (though some of the translations are way loose).

Cirre'i e happia ijji u'e ngõnã- The bird could be eating a flower.

Hã sa uxxale fu fũxã ikkanã?- Have I ever been squeezed by a snake?

Hã sa uxxale ri fũxã ikkanã- Once a snake squeezed me.

Hã e ssevĩ litto rusu- I was going to go fishing.

Hã e ibollo u'e hufe rrixa- I was digging for worms.

Hã ãnã iyea õrẽĩ mĩ'ãũ mẽmẽ posai- I was tired and unfortunately fell asleep.

Uxxale rajji- A snake arrived.

Hã i hhi uwẽ gebba-  Maybe it smelled me.

Hã i hhi voa ngõnã- It tried to eat me.

U''ai go hã pũ ngãvõ ã ẽrõĩ- The chieftain heard us fighting.

Ba go hhi icõ ẽmẽtõ- After some time, he killed it.

Uxxale ku mẽwĩẽ; hã e hhi mẽmẽ obie- The snake died but I started to fear snakes.

yeah, I haven't made any conjunctions.  Or figured out story telling.  And a bunch of other things. I don't know if I used the right aspects and moods. But I got something out.  Enjoy!

(I think I'm gonna post this story without translation on facebook for the lulz).

Harvey Danger

So I've rediscovered Harvey Danger. Even though I've enjoyed "Flagpole Sitta" for years, I've never actually bothered to listen to their other stuff, assuming they were just another generic post-grunge, late 90s alternative band.  Ends up they are, but I really like their stuff.  I haven't listened to their third album yet, but Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? and King James Version are both really good, fun, enjoyable, witty and emotional.  All my favorite things!

Moral of the story? Don't write off someone just because they are a one hit wonder.  They might have more songs that should be hits.

Some random lyrics from them:

"I swear, I wish I could be less aware... now it’s absolutely clear to me that solitude is not the same as singularity, but that’s not why I’m lonely."- This reminds me about the fun of dividing the semantic space of "loneliness".  What is loneliness? What's the difference between solitude and loneliness? How else can it be divided? Or combined? I forget how I've divided up the space in various conlangs, if I have at all, but I know I made loneliness taboo for the Úīkmo Kīkxot. Well not loneliness perse, but bachelorhood and loneliness outside of set times. In fact one of their core religious tales is about how loneliness can drive someone to do evil things. It has two roots so far relating to loneliness, both with negative connotations (well sort of at least). One root is for humans, one is for other stuff. I dunno if this technically counts as suppletion, but TbKt has a pretty strong system of roots used only for humans and a separate root meaning the same thing for everything else. An essential part of insults is using the wrong verb form to imply that someone is less than human.

I think that the mountain tribes (one day I'll give them a name!) might distinguish loneliness from solitude by using the adversative particle.  But I dunno yet. Osogkum may use the volitional form to distinguish the two.  Again, I dunno, haven't hit that hill yet.

Speaking of alone, I just looked up it's etymology and it apparently came from "all one". Who would've guessed :p

"Friends will turn against you

People disappoint you every time
So if you've got greatness in you would you do us all a favor
And keep it to yourself?"

" Cast off the ego scars and let's go hit the bars
I reserve the right to hold my grudges
Friends like you, you know the rest
But all told, I hold on to my anger far too long"

"Some people will surprise you with a real depth of feeling
Others still may shock you with all that they're revealing
But one thing's sure: there's always more information than you ask
For."

"You can bash your head against a wall forever,
The wall will never change.
But if you start to like the bloody bruises,
The wall cannot be blamed."

And of course the classic:

"I'm not sick but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell"

Among other lyrics and songs.

I like late 90s punk/post-punk/post-hardcore/emo/alternative/etc. Pinkerton is probably my favorite Weezer album, after all. In fact I was very happy to hear that At the Drive In is realizing a new album in a couple months. One of my favorite modern bands is Two Inch Astronaut. If you are somehow reading this blog and yet haven't had me try to get you to listen to them, you should go listen to them. And check out Exploding in Sound Records. I've been following this label since 2013 and they're starting to get bigger. Some of their bands even have wikipedia pages now! Though it makes me feel sort of band that I didn't grad early Speedy Oritz stuff before they got (relatively) big.

I like to ramble.  It makes me feel like there's thoughts in my brain.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Toúījāb Kīkxot

Here's a translation for the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human rights. The first set of translators notes have to do with the translation itself, the second set more with the theory behind why I did things. Btw, check out this site

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Toúījāb Kīkxot:
Khōhim úīkmo¹ vit akhxōm qal cōroj² dumlūzō ūmpa lipha tāsah ī cāyap³ vit fnoxi⁴. Cānu mamaxīrosasā⁵ mocīph⁶ ī ahrōsh ⁷ ūmpa ziūsiwk⁸ olúīg-alúag zāraz dūchhawāx.
IPA:
[ˈk'oːʔɪm wiːkŋɔ ʕɪt ək'ʃoːm q'əl tsoːrɔdz dʊmluːtʃoː uːmpə lɪp'ə tɑːsəʔ iː tsɑːjəp ʕɪt ħnɔʃɪ. Tsɑːnʊ məməʃiːrɔsəsɑː mɔtsiːp' iː əʔroːs' uːmpə tʃjuːsɪɹk ɔlwiːg-əlwəg tʃɑːrətʃ duːts'əɹɑːʃ]
Translators notes

1 The word literally means "human, person, mankind", but has a connotation of "civilized people" (that is, only their civilization). Using "úīkmo" instead of "vīggo" (human, tribe, people, mankind, barbarian etc) reflects their values that they are superior and have greater rights compared to everyone else.

2 Úīkmo Kīkxot find the idea of people being born "free" strange. Instead the phrase "enter the world" is used. Means the same thing, but fits their sensibility better, since the verb born usually has reference to a mother, but there is none here.

3 Literally means "entitlement". Úīkmo Kīkxot don't have the same views as us regarding rights. People can feel that they deserve something, but those are based on merit, wealth and caste, not ideals.

4 Means the same, equal or even balanced. While this construction is perfectly acceptable, xenophobic Úīkmo Kīkxot would probably interpret this to mean that each person's rights (entitlements) are equal or in accordance with their individual dignity (honor, standing) and not that all people have the same rights and dignity.

5 The habitual/frequentive/gnomic aspect is used to emphasize that people are always given the following things. Takes a locative applicative suffix to show that the subject is the recipient, not the patient. While no agent is specified, the ditransitive is still used and people can understand from context that the following nouns are patients, not agents.

6 Literally means "mind, place of thoughts" but can mean reason too

7 Literally means "doing righteous acts" but like many verbal nouns, has a more abstract meaning of "knowing what is right" or conscience

8 Means "must" but uses the imperative prefix to soften it to "should". This shows that pragmatically the imperative prefix makes orders more polite and in the case of an imperative verb, still makes it more polite


A) The IPA represents the standard dialect as I have it so far. But I may add more assimilations/sadhi effects/liaison and the like so don't take it as the final say.

B) So I was looking at different translations of the UDHR while I was doing this (having already decided that I didn't want to use the word for birth (see the note above)) and it ends up that Sundanese seems to use a similar phrasing: "Sakumna jalma gubrag ka alam dunya...". My Sundanese is pretty shabby and my dictionary is still in Ethiopia, but gubrag ka alam dunya means "[something] to the natural world" and I'm pretty sure gubrag means "enter". So I'm not the only person to come up with this sort of way for translating it.

C) You may get the feeling that this culture is a culture of lawyers.  Well, it really is. Their religion's big schism is over the interpretation of a religious holiday. Lawyering and loopholes is built into their national being. Just look at their views on slavery. And a translation of a document like this would definitely be written by lawyers. So that's why there's lots of weasel words and ambiguous phrasings that they can take advantage of. "Oh yes, we treat all civilized people in balance with their deserved honor. In fact, we are the most humane civilization around."

D) Caste is a big deal for the Úīkmo Kīkxot. Of course they would write the translation to fit that, rather than trying to change their culture.

E) In retrospect, I think that the verb mamaxīrosasā should probably be mamaxīrosaī (which in turn would be probably pronounced something like [məmʃiːrɔsiː] but I haven't figured out all the assimilation stuff yet) since I've really shifted to having the benefactive also be a recipient marker and the locative being more only for physical locations. Especially since it benefits the person getting reason. So I may eventually change this up.

F) Verbal nouns probably make up one of the most ambigious, least consistent, hardest to translate and most fun form for TbKt. I really haven't done enough with them, showing all the different paths that things can take for it.

G) I thought for a long time on how to express "should". I already had an imperative, and in normal speech probably only the imperative would be used, I think, but in something more formal like this there had to be something seperate. So it made some interesting effects on the pragmatics of commands, which is cool.

H) I always love when one of my reduplications gets used. I had so much fun thinking them up and figuring out how they'd be use. It was actually one of the big things, in my opinion, that help TbKt move away from its Indonesian and Arabic roots.

I) In retrospect, it might be best that olúig takes the instrumental suffix, which would empahsize that the manner is a (compound noun) and the subject is using that noun to do the verb. Also, I'm not sure if the adjective agreement is necessary here since it could be a compound noun.

J) Conjunctions in TbKt (the one concession I give to logic!) would make for an interesting article. But I think I want to get some profiles and work on other languages up first. But maybe not, because the patient is marked already...it's all confusing. Maybe a preposition should be added.

As for the literal translation, it would be something like "All civilized beings which enter the world are independent and they have honor and entitlements which are equal. They are given a mind and sense of good doing and should treat each other in a brotherly manner."

I should do a gloss but I'm real lazy so this is good for now.

Praat

I'm never going to get the hang of praat. Good thing I'm not going into phonetics. Acoustics (and transcriptions in general) is just too hard.  Here's the chart I came out with for english though:

Slavery among the People of Kikxo: A President's Day Special

I'm doing this instead of homework because I can't focus on homework right now because my face is numb.  Silly dentist fixing my teeth.

I wanted to do a whole big article on the political system of the úīkmo Kīkxot, but I do have plenty of homework to do and really am not feeling up to it.  So I'll talk about something more minor but still president's day related: slavery.

The úīkmo Kīkxot are, if nothing else, xenophobic. Not necessarily in the "hatred of foreigners" way so much as the "hatred of strangers" way. You can figure out the difference for yourself. And they do love their slavery. They take from whoever sells and from the people they conqueror. Their religion proscribes only one rule: No follower of Kīkxo may enslave fellow travelers. The different sects interpret this in very different ways, with an extreme few saying that forbids all slavery all the way to the sects that think that means even enslaving members of other sects is okay. But for most people, it means non-followers of Kikxot are fair game.

Most people do not own slaves but those that do use them for a variety of tasks. Agriculture, manufacturing, running a household, teaching and whatever else. Slaves can even have fairly high status, personal wealth and other things that we wouldn't associate with slaves in our culture. They are (in theory) to be cared for and protected, sometimes even like a family member. But they are not free (whatever that means) and ultimately report and execute the will of their owners.

Slavery is a highly valued and protected institution among the Úīkmo Kīkxot, which may be hard to understand for a westerner. It stems from their religious beliefs ultimately. To them, Kīkxo is the ultimate protector in the fight between Good and Evil. One who worships and submits to Kīkxo is accepting his protection. When a follower of Kīkxo enslaves someone, Kīkxo's protection extends over that slave. To the followers of Kīkxo, slavery is a means of extending Kīkxo's good will and love to the ignorant savages who refuse to accept it on their own. To the followers of Kīkxo it is inhumane to free slaves and release them from the protection Kīkxo offers them. It is the evil one who tells slaves they want to be free, that deludes people into wanting to free slaves. Now of course, in theory if a slave converts to Kīkxo, they should be freed, though many slaveowners, reasonably fearing it is simply a deception to seek freedom and betray Kīkxo and the forces of good, do not accept such conversions. At least, that's what their reasoning is.

Theologians and scribes often debate the role that slavery plays in spreading the truth to other lands ("Are our neighbors converting just to avoid slave raids? Should such deceitful traitors be enslaved to teach them a lesson?" or "Are we really only spreading the religion as an excuse to expand and take more slaves?" Things like that) they almost always agree that it is a good thing and an essential part civilized life.

Happy Presidents Day

Intesification in Indonesian?

Random question of the day. Has anyone done a study/published a paper on the indonesian infix -w- (alternatively -u-). Like in panas vs pwanas and bagus vs bwagus. I think it comes from javanese, but I can't find any literature about its use in Javanese either.

I heard it all the time, especially in East Java, and occasionally I see it written to, but I can't seem to find anything actually about it. Like it is a feature that everyone seems to know and understand when someone else uses it, but no one officially recognizes it as a real thing.

I'm a just crazy thinking that this is an actual productive infixation? Is my analysis of it being an intensifier wrong? Do people actually understand it whenever it is used, or only in lexicalized words? And most importantly, why has no one studied this? It seems like a surely some Malayacist would have done a paper on it by now. If not, I guess I have a possible research paper to write, if I had time and was actually in a lingustics program.

What is love? A Valentine's Day special

Yeah I'm a couple days late. Actually I didn't even start this post until after Valentine's Day. Didn't even have the idea until afterwards. But it's what I would have done had I not been swamped up in homework.

Anyway, in honor of that special day I detest so much, let's look at words for love in various conlangs I've made. I'll basically only deal with Toúījāb Kīkxot because I think that's the one I have the most info on this for, so maybs not various conlangs. It's not a topic I spend much time on, yannow?

The basic root for love is XYS (I) which is all things relating to the liver (think Indonesian hati, if you happen to know Indonesia). Of course in actual use it rarely is used to refer to the actual liver (xīyso) and generally means "the place where emotions are". While this could mean any emotions, the úīkmo Kīkxot use it almost exclusively to refer to love. If the heart is the base noun, love itself is xoyīs, though in informal and everyday speech many people will simply use xīyso (or given that the standard is different from most varieties, probably something like xīso or sisu or something else like that). This love is more or less equivalent to the English word "love", covering a wide semantic space. In Indonesian terms, xoyīs is kasih, cinta, and sayang all wrapped in one word, which is a bit unusual since this language usually cleaves with Indonesia pretty well, being based of it after all.

TbKt (I need to think of good abbreviations) is a language that loves compounding and this is no different when it comes to love. Xīysoāb Kīkxot (lit. "God's heart") is "charity" or the Greek "agape". It's the love that God (well, not our understanding of God, but I'll use the translation regardless) feels towards his worshipers. More metaphorically it represents an unconditional (strangely enough, considering that Kīkxo's love may seem pretty conditional to a westerner) love, a care and affection so deep that it can't be gotten rid of no matter how awful someone is. It's not pity though (that's kāral), it's a deeper understanding felt towards someone, yannow? Familial love is usually represented in two ways: with a liver+owner compound (ex: xīysoāb mīznot- "motherly love") or with a nominialzation of the roots transitive verb (ex: micna "motherly love). Usage really depends on context and user preference, the first being more likely to be used in a sentence like "Motherly love is so important" while the second in a sentence like "Motherly love makes my children happy."

Verbwise, XYS can be used in the transitive or intransitive and always has a human agent (though some particularly bigoted úīkmo kīkxot would consider it improper to use with a vīggo (tribesman) agent). Intransitive ūxiys has a general meaning of "to have strong emotions/love" and is usually used with a preposition to mark the recipient. This can be used with non-human/inanimate recipients, especially in informal registers, though the more inanimate the recipient the stranger it sounds. Without any compliment, it usually carries a meaning like "in love", "unstable", "crazy (indonesian "gila" or "tergila")" or "overcome by emotions". The transitive verb form xiysa can only be used with a human patient/recipient. It almost always takes the benefactive suffix -ī (the bare stem has a causitive meaning, which is a whole nother can of worms but would have a meaning like "X makes Y fall in love" or more naturally "Y fell in love with X", but it isn't a common construction). Like many verbs of emotion, the habitual form "C(a)-" is used, so xaxiysaī is the most common way of saying "X loves Y". Being a fairly intimate verb, "I love you" would be Yān xaxiysaī ōdan (or xaxiysaīōd) in most cases.

While xoyīs describes a variety of different sorts of love, the verb forms pretty much exclusively refer to romantic and sexual love. This is especially clear with the intensified form, which basically translate to "lust". To say that you love someone in a non-romantic sense, the transitive form of the family roots are generally. Now there is some ambiguity, as these verbs could mean "to consider [patient] a Y (with the implicit "love [patient] like a Y" built into this)" (a semi-causative in nature) or "to care for [patient] in a Yly role". It most cases, agent focus is the second translation while patient focus is the first translation, but as always context rules.  As examples, Yān dichha ōdan would probably translate to something like "I care for you like a sibling" (or more likely "I'm babysitting you/I admire you" depending on the relative ages of the speakers) while Ōdan dadaxichha yān  would be "I love you (like a sibling)" (lit. "You are considered a sibling by me"). Just like other verbs of emotion, these often are in the habitual aspect, but unlike XYS, do not take the benefactive. Unlike the familial love verbs kikxa is always treated like a causative. Humans are considered unable to love someone like God loves someone, so it would be absurd for the verb to ever mean "to love someone like God loves people". Kikxa means "to consider someone God" or more regularly (and less blasphemously) "to adore someone". It is usually in patient-focus, because why would God(-like beings) not be the focus of the sentence. Therefore Ōdan kakaxikxa yān would mean "I adore you" or "I love you fully (and unconditionally)" or even "I love you in the most platonic and totally non-romantic way" (Also, kakaxikxa is quite the mouthful considering it has only two consonant phonemes). These constructions are fairly informal (and highly intimate, though as seen previously not necessarily romantic (though it usually is despite coming from the root for God)) in nature and form a nice contrast with the intensified xiysa-xiysaī, "to lust after someone".

The normal word for "boyfriend/girlfriend/lover" is xāyas and this word is rarely used to describe one's spouse. Instead one's spouse is usually referred to as a ōmazhnzō/ōmazhnzun, which literally means "reflection". Increasingly, this is used by unmarried lovers to describe that person they just /know/ is the one, and it is also highly common for any description of a "lover" in literature and poetry. Xāyas can also mean "loving" as an adjective, and in this case is used with spouses. Which can lead to sentences like Ōmazhnzō xāyas mōnak nazinitra-nitra omazhnzunmā "A loving husband shouldn't beat his wife", though a wife saying this to her husband might use fis or even mavox instead of -mā, depending on the circumstances. One final bit of (naughtier fun). A vulgar slang word! Sasās means "horny", coming from a dialect that indicates intensity with a back reduplication (xāyas-xāyas -> saxāyas), and has sound rules that go something like this: x->s and deletion of y between the same vowel āya->ā. So saxāyas->sasāyas->sasāas->sasās. Pretty cool, huh?

I think that is enough for the valentine's special. Really makes me think about how little my conlangs care about this topic. Also, be glad that I didn't go all anthropological and talk about the complex courtship and marriage customs of the úīkmo kīkxot. Let alone their opinions on PDA.

Bad Conglanging Ideas: A link

Just a fun little link that I found on reddit (r/badlinguistics is such a blast)

badconlangingideas.tumblr.com

Adventures in Indonesian translation pt 1

What I perceived as a very poor translation on Facebook has lead me to start submitting translations for Google again (it's interface is more userfriendly than facebook's. Also, it lets me do Indonesian to English, which they might need more than english to indonesian. But I like to do both) and I've been submitting translations for English from Indonesian.

For those that don't know, the way this works is I am given a phrase or sentence (with no context) and then asked to give a translation. Not having context can make it pretty hard, and man do I get some funny things. What follows is some funny ones I've got, or ones that provide good translation notes.

• "Hidup bebas di dalam air laut dan tawar."
• I can't tell if this is some sort of saying or word of wisdom or if it is information about a fish. Is it an advertisement offering a way to free yourself from the perils of water? I eventually decided it was probably about a fish.
• "Berita tertangkapnya tuyul tersebut membuat banyak orang penasaran."
• Tuyul, a small spirit of the familiar sort. Where does Google get these to translate? Tuyul can't even be translated into english without a translator's footnote, imo. Penasaran is an interesting word too. Here (and most other places) it is being used like an adjective, even though the wordform itself is a noun. I translated as curious (since that's how I almost always see it being used, and makes sense in this case), but my dictionary says that it literally means "angered" or "anxious to find out something". I guess the second one could mean curious, but why not just say that? Tertangkapnya is also an interesting word being a nominalization. I have an article about -nya nominalizations somewhere, I should probably read it again sometime.
• "Einstein dengan teori relativitas khusus dan umumnya."
• This, as far as I can tell, is a fragment in English and Indonesian. It's easy to translate (you probably don't need to know indonesian to translate it), but it NEEDS MORE CONTEXT
• "Begitu mereka terjerumus, adalah masalah besar di kemudian hari."
• Terjerumus appears to be a new word for me. I think in this case it is definitely being used like "to fall into sin". Also, this appears to be a case where "adalah" means"ada-lah" not "is".
• "Saya membeli kertas, pena, dan tinta."
• This is the one where I realized I was translating most things into the past tense. Probably accurate, but context is really important for translations and even more so for Indonesian, where tense is so context based.
• "Bonus dihitung dan diberikan secara harian."
•  I realized I've been doing a similar sort of thing with things that could be singular or plural. I think in this case it is plural. Honestly, I've gotten pretty bad at marking plurals in english sometimes, it just doesn't seem important anymore.
• "Saya raba seluruh bagian tubuh yang sensitif"
• This is the second translation that I think it pulled from a porn site. I'm translating these as unerotically as possible. "I groped all the sensitive body parts".
• "Apa sih penyebab tubuh kita bisa merasakan gatal?"
• I don't get many translations that use particles like "sih". Kind of hard to translate, but not too bad overall, though I did a pretty liberal translation on this one.
• "Cara menghilangkan jerawat yang aman adalah secara tradisional."
• I'm looking at this one and seeing reasonable translations. First I thought it would be "a safe and traditional way to remove acne", but then I noticed the adalah. The best translation would probably be "A safe way to remove acne is traditionally" and play on the fact that English does allow (I think) adverbs in the predicate like that.
• "Tak pernah secuilpun kudengar kabar tentang dirinya."
• Who even uses language like this? I guess I should try to preserve the formality of it. Trying to decide if I change the word order or preserve it for poetic sake.
• "Kamu wonderwoman, yang membuatku ngerasa jadi superman"
• I don't want the context on this one. Hopefully it's a song or a poem.

Other random translation note. -nya and dia are really difficult because I never know if to translate them to he or she, or if a straight singular they is best. I NEED CONTEXT TO TRANSLATE. Google's advice? "If you feel you need more context (like gender or formality), go ahead and translate as best you can". This is why Google Translate (and all machine translations) suck. Machines can't understand the context and pragmatics of a statement.

Well that's enough for tonight. Translation is a really fun exercise.

Symmetrical Voice in Toúījāb Kīkxot

So I read an article about the Totoli language of Sulawesi today (For reference it is "Symmetrical Voice and Applicative Alternations: Evidence from Totoli" by Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Sonja Riesberg). Interesting stuff, mostly focusing on how Totoli has significant features of both symmetrical voice languages (its own typology) and Philippine-type languages (a relative of the symmetrical voice languages of course). Some things I liked included the authors getting slightly annoyed with Philippinists (for assuming everything is like Philippine languages, I guess) and the general overall topic. I'm always looking for info about obscure languages of Indonesia. My general feeling is that it is really hard to find such info, especially online. A lot of the examples used seemed pretty natural to me as an Indonesian speaker, so I guess I do understand this applicative suffixes after all :p. I was interested that the benefactive/instrumental suffix (-kan in indonesian, -an in Totoli, for the actor voice) can have a iterative function...which is a function of the locative suffix (-i in both languages) in Indonesian. Or maybe I don't, as I didn't quite get what exactly their conclusion that there was a locative voice in opposition to an undergoer voice with a goal applicative suffix meant, though the proposal seemed reasonable enough.

Anyway, this reminded me a lot of Toúījāb Kīkxot and how it came to have the typology it has. When I was learning Indonesian I thought the voicing system of Indonesian (which I later learned is called symmetrical voice) was cool and a feature I didn't see often, if ever in conglangs (sure, austronesian alignment appears lots, but Indonesian is pretty much ignored by everyone so yeah). I also decided I wanted to do something with triconsonantal roots (but had no knowledge of Arabic at the time and no access into any materials, so we get what wonderful mess we have), but that's not super relevant right now.

Now, with my Indonesian grammar book (The Sneddon one, I highly recommend it), I saw that suffixes like -i and -kan could do cool things with objects and marking arguments. I didn't quite get it at the time (let alone know that these are called applicatives) but I decided that Toúījāb Kīkxot should have them too. Originally there were 2-3 (locative, "benefactive" and an optional patient), later I added a third instrumental/causative. They were pretty much as classic applicative suffixes, as far as I can tell, marking the role of the direct object (often raising the transitivity of the verb, requiring a change of verb form) or the subject in the undergoer voice. I'll cover what they actually do in another post, since the benefactive form is especially confusing, but that's how they came about. It's one part of the language I am really proud of, as it gives a very different flavor than English and can do some pretty cool things. Plus it really helps with focus and showing what is most important in a sentence.

Dialectal variation among the Speakers of Toúījāb Kīkxot: Part 1

Just some thoughts I had earlier.

So I've always wanted Toúījāb Kīkxot to have dialects, because it is supposed to be a somewhat natural language and also because that's a thing I haven't really explored before. Well, I haven't actually documented or really even thought up what dialectal variation there would be yet, but I was thinking about it more today.

What I was realizing is that culturally, the Úīkmo Kīkxot consider Toúījāb Kīkxot to be a sacred language, the language of God (Kīkxo) himself. Now this isn't unusual, but then I remembered that I wanted their religion to have a sizeable history and that even the first revelations would be given in Toúījāb Kīkxot. What this does is give the language itself a long history, putting it in a similar situation as Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, really.

So the conclusion that I came to was that Toúījāb Kīkxot continues to be the liturgical and literary language of the Úīkmo Kīkxot. It also is the lingua franca of the region, but like MSA no one really speaks its natively. There are more conservative dialects than others, but none are exactly the same as the original Toúījāb Kīkxot as it was first understood. Like with Arabic, pretty much everyone considers themselves to simply be speaking dialects of Toúījāb Kīkxot, even when the differences are enough that two varieties aren't mutually intelligible. The dialects are, in general, more open to loanwords than the standard, though still

Toúījāb Kīkxot is written with a logographic system and the standard continues to dominate the written word, so dialects are very rarely written out. In my transliterations, I respect these by leaving the roots and inflections intact and follow them as they would be used in the standard. However, I will occasionally refer to a dialect and in those cases, all assimilation and sound changes will be written out to give a better feel of the differences between dialects and the standard.

Well, hopefully this all works out.

Murder: The semantics of killing people

Last night I got in a debate about ethics. But one interesting thing that our debate briefly looked at the word murder (context: At one point, I was arguing that when you use the word murder in debate of course murder is evil, because our language encodes said value judgement in the word itself, he was saying that murder is evil, but because killing is evil).  I don't quite remember how to do these semantic things but the word murder in english looks something like this:

Murder

=death

[+caused]

[+intentional]
[+bad]

Or in other words, murder is a form of death which was caused by another person, intentionally, and is bad. If we negate the intentional, it becomes a different word in english, manslaughter. Remove the bad and it becomes something like justified killing or self-defense or just plain killing. If it isn't caused by another person/thing, it isn't a cut into the field of killing itself, just part of the larger space of dying. In english, we represent a lot of these different semantic divisions lexically, but after the debate I started thinking, how do I do this in my own languages. Which ones make semantic divisions we don't? Are said division more morphological/derivational in nature or lexical? So let's take a look at what I have so far and what visions I have for said languages, and go from there!

Ǩüttǩarrą Roś:

So there's actually two drafts of this language and in the first draft (must be from like 6 or 8 years ago, wow), I actually have a discussion of this issue. I haven't reapplied it to the second draft yet (though I probably will), but clearly how I wanted to divided the roots was animate vs inanimate, with english translations sort of like this:

category	human	non human
end a life	kill	kill
kill for the sake of resource harvesting	manhunt	hunt
no reason	murder	slaughter
self-defense or honor	avenge	slay

That was more difficult than it should be and now the html is even more or a mess. Anyway, my point is that the primary division here between "humans" and "non-humans". Volition isn't really considered, though intent is. It reflects a cultural idea that using something is better than not using something and that the ends justify the means.

In the current draft, I have one root so far related to this: pëntov "to die". Presumably this lines up with with the human form of death. Pënsočov is "to kill" lit "to cause to die". I'm guessing this is the neutral "kill". As for the others, there currently is no way to express intent, but conidering this is meant to be a constructed language, it falls within reason that the constructor would create roots for each row. By analogy the base root would mean "to die", and then a causative lets it fill space on this table. This leaves me with up to seven more roots to create, as I want to maintain the human/non-human split.

Osogkum:

This language does not have any roots at all yet relating to death or killing. So I'll look at the more theoretical approach of how I'd derive words from a hypothetical root. Osogkum has two grammatical functions that are relevant to this discussion, I feel: a volitive mood and a causative voice. The volative mood in this case marks a verb as explicitly intentional, or it could mean that the subject wants to do the verb (yay ambiguity, though I think that a desire is more likely in certain aspects/voices and volition in others, like the perfective. But ambiguity sill remains). The causative voice raises the valency of the verb marking the new subject as causing the old subject (now marked as the indirect object) to do the verb to the object. But I think that this is almost entirely for constructions like "He made her read the book" in Osogkum. So I feel that the split between death and killing would be separate roots (and using the causative would mark the separation between the subject and the cause of the object's death, as opposed to the use "to kill"). Then volition (either desire or intentionality) can be expressed, so the difference between murder and manslaughter would be morphological in nature. I think that's how this will work in this language.

The Tundra Afrit language:

Barely has a phonology and smatterings of morphology. I don't even have a name for it yet.  So we'll skip it for now

Toúījāb Kīkxot:

So so far I have one root relating to death PJP. As often works, the change in transitivity makes this a causative so āpjāp "to die" becomes pījūp "to kill". Judging from their culture and the general feel of the language, I think that most differentiation in volition and value judgements will come from modifiers, compounds and reduplication (I think I already have the intensitive translated as "murder" and pījūp-pujip should translate to "manslaughter") or even syntax. That being said, I do feel a specific root meaning "to die a martyr/to martyr someone" is probably in order, as that seems like the sort of thing this language would have. And it probably would fall in class 1 (human) instead of class 3 (inanimate).

Nounwise, it is very easy to express the difference between dying and killing, and compounding should work to cut up the semantic space.

The sea people's language:

I really need to derive a name for this. Anyway, I have a root, gepom, which means things relating to dying. Because of the way this language works gepok would have some meaning like "dead", gepor would mean "to die", and the conjugated for would mean "to kill". As far as volition and the like goes, I feel like would have a lot to do with the choice of verb form, noun case and syntax. I think that manslaughter would probably be represented in a sort of sentence like "Dies X[absolutive], Kills Y[nominative] X[absolutive]", while murder would be simple "Kills Y[nominative] X[absolutive]" Active-stative languages are weird. An intentional death would most likely have X in the nominative, after all. I really don't know man. That's part of why I started other projects and keep hopping between languages while skipping this. I'll get back to it one day. The nouns, staying a very seperate class from verbs would probably cover the concepts separately and use loans as needed to further differentiate them. I can totally see the Sea People's borrowing the Kikxot word pajpo (lit. killing) to mean "murder" in our sense.

The mountain people's language.

Also needs a name. It has separate words for "to die" mẽwĩẽ and "to kill" ẽmẽtõ. There is a grammatical causative, but I doubt it applies in this case. I think it has more to do with adjectives or other things. I dunno. At the very least the ideas are lexically different here. The differences in volition are really easily expressed in this languages using verbal particles, but for the nouns (I just now realized that I've been ignoring nouns, which is a big part in the semantic differences of english death verbs. Oh well, I'll try to add a bit) it is probably a bit trickier. Verbs and nouns convert a lot, then a construction using pũ (I swear the language isn't entirely nasal!) could make such distinctions. So for example ẽmẽtõ would mean "killing" but ẽmẽtõ pũ "desire" (lit. killing's desire) would mean "murder" and ẽmẽtõ pũ "accident" (lit. killing's accident) would mean "manslaughter". Of course, in actual spoken language, people might just try to make the verb the core of the sentence instead of a noun.

And that's my first actual language post.  What a big step! Most probably won't be this involved, but hey, semantics is fun.

Musing as I get things started

As I establish this, there's a couple things on my mind.

1) Do I scrub this of all PII? Obviously right now a stumble uponer could get my name and uni real easy. They can also know a smattering of the places I've lived and people who know me. Does this really matter? No, since there will be few stumble uponers, but I'm paranoid nonetheless.

2) I have lots of ling stuff, in a variety of nbs and word docs. What gets on here and what not? Probs, I'll just straight jump in the conworld blogging, and over time make fuller profile for each lang. Confusing, but this is mostly a catharticize so whatevs. Of course, I also need to decide if I upload the raw prof-doc ref-grams I use on my comp or keep them inwraps.

3) Do I keep playing the Englang as I do these or are is the angle too large on these abbvs and new words? It funs me though  

Introduction

As the title of my blog suggests, this is yet another conglang blog. It might have other stuff too, but the core focus will be conglanging, worldbuilding and lingustics, my window to the world. 

A little about myself.  I've been interested in linguistics for years and started my first conlang in middle school. It's been one hobby where I've really enjoyed myself, but the problem is, it's a real obscure one (though BYU has a conglang club now!) and one that's hard to talk to people about. For a while, I had someone who I could talk linguistics with and it was great. Now that I don't, I really miss it, so I decided to make a blog where I could do that, if even to a digital wall. </dark humor>

So where do I see this going? I'll document my own languages. I'll talk about the processes that go into making them and why I choose to do things. I'll make little observations. And I'll notice things in the real languages around me.  It should be cool.