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.