(no subject)

[strange_aeons]

Okay, so I took a break this weekend. I wrote 112 words on Friday, and none on Saturday or Sunday. I don't have a spectacular wordcount to report for Monday (it's still Monday, because I haven't been to sleep, and in fact don't plan to until tonight¹, so Tuesday effectively doesn't exist this week, which is fine with me, frankly), but I consider 1425 respectable, considering I wasn't intending to write anything today because I'm so damn tired. (I was just tweaking a few things. But you can guess where that always lands me. I wound up tearing out the latest scene, which was almost there but not quite working for me around the end, and rewriting it from the second paragraph on. It's much nicer now. I think I'm going to run the three most recent scenes by lilairen to see if they're as good, as stereotypy and as infodumpy, respectively, as I think they are.)

I've been pondering languages for the tri-sexed critters below; languages would be useful because they would enable me to give them a damn name. What I think I'm going to do is come up with the oldest remembered language from the most widespread language group, which seems fair. I suspect it will bear some resemblance to Sanskrit. It would be useful if I knew Sanskrit from a hole in the ground first, probably. I'm going to have to work on that. I'd like to come up with a structure for it that's orthogonal to the structure of most human languages, but I'm not coming up with anything — I keep coming back to trigger systems, except Tagalog and its ilk have already taken that one, the bastards. I've also been pondering what sort of sounds they can make with their longer palates and larger nasal passages. And thinking about their feet, though this has nothing to do with language.

Some highlights from the most recent few thousand words — not many, because most of the recent funny requires a lot of context.

Arunir put her hand on Sweeney's shoulder just before the elf began to boil over; Rook could just see it thinking about diving over the counter and doing something terribly graphic to the man on the other side. Instead it stared at the ceiling for a moment, lips pursed, and then it resorted to bribery.

"Shit," Sweeney said, and kept saying it for three or four syllables.

"In the past, it's been a useful thing for people of the sort who are known to want large quantities of numen around to keep these quantities around in objects designed for this purpose, rather than in, say, their bodies, which is dangerous for a number of reasons." Yeah, those were the infinitely long sentences he knew and loved. "You need to design the object for this purpose because otherwise the numen will just run out of it like water through a permeable membrane into an area of greater salinity."
Either that was hilarious, or Rook was tired and stressed.

"Now, you have to understand that this is like me looking at your DNA and a newt's and saying, 'Ah, yes, clearly they're related."

Asher and Logan are having a good wrestle, and all is right with my bit of world for the moment. Oh, nearly forgot to mention: you want to read Ursula Vernon's web comics, particularly Random Interludes. Yes, I'm obsessing a bit. But she's so funny.

¹ Because, as Darkhawk pointed out, my sleep cycle is mightily screwed up, and short of drugs — notable for not actually working last time — this is the only way of fixing it. And I don't like leaving her alone at midafternoon. God only knows what sort of trouble that woman might get into. It chills my blood just to think about it.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

The easiest way to tell Sanskrit from a hole in the ground is that Sanskrit is usually two-dimensional, whereas holes in the ground tend to be three-dimensional.

However, as your creatures' sexuality is three-dimensional rather than two, their version of Sanscrit may also be three-dimensional, making it somewhat more difficult to differentiate from a hole in the ground.

- Brooks, pondering possible proliferation of gendered adjective forms in said language.

[kiya]

You are a very silly man and I love you.

And I should sit down with my Sanskrit books and explain them to gtst at some point, oughtn't I? Not that I'm much more with it on the subject of Sanskrit than Squid is, I suspect, but I can talk a little about the soundstructure.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

In a sense, most languages are one-dimensional: they can only expand along one axis. (I have a character who thinks in a language that is hyperspatial. She's so much smarter than I am I'm really not qualified to play her.)

(I should note that my first reaction was not this dry response, but to say to Darkhawk, 'Very silly Brooks man.')

Actually, I think this language has four genders -- male, female, janitor, and neuter, this last referring to biploid entities and concepts/inanimate things that don't belong to one of the other three genders. I suspect the gender system of being more complicated and less arbitrary than it looks at a glance -- there's the neuter 'original' form which acquires nuance when inflected into one of the other genders, and these nuanced forms experience the inevitable semantic change until they mean wildly different things, while still being connected to the original word -- except that particular collection of sounds and symbols has changed semantically too.

Am I making any damn sense? You seem a useful person to blither at; you ask good questions.

The vocalist in this song, I think it's one of the Pink Floyd guys in collaboration with Ennio Morricone and somebody else, sounds irresistably like Kermit the Frog.

[kiya]

Nguh. Do you want me to babble at you in the direction of Sanskrit, or do you want to fake it?

(I am a bird of very little brain right now.)

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Actually, it would probably better (for my work ethic if nothing else) if I got off my ass and did the research myself. If that doesn't pan out -- say, if there isn't enough information to be had on Sanskrit on the web -- I'll pester you about it. Ideally when you are a brainéd bird.