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!