| Characters for Rod and Piston |
[May. 25th, 2012|10:25 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | notes, story | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Knoxville Starbucks | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | coffee'd | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Episode 223: Watching, Wandering & Wistful - The Clockwork Cabaret | ] |
Charthat, "Red", is a faTheyist monk from the huge monastic university at XX, and on an expedition to the XX Range, discovered a knowledge–monument which a slide of ice had exposed. It explained the working of several devices, including a double–acting piston bellows.
His foe, Sirat, is a sworn–virgin. "He" is born a girl in a village down the Nurro destroyed by beastmen raiders. She was brought to the sanctuary of the wizard Ethroklos, and trained by him to use magic and the sword. At the age of fifteen she took the vow of the sworn virgin, and has broken it only once. He can use the sword and the spear well, and leads combat infantry; he has taken magic treatments to increase his strength.
Charthat's ally, the monotheist Hilojat ("Mr Medicine") is actually named Thuuhat (The Gift), and is from the underground monotheist cell in the village of Favashar (Meadow Town) where his family worked on mathematics and monotheism in secret and were doctors (the women) and weavers (the men) in public. He is traveling as a doctor, attending faTheyist services and finding patients through temples, while secretly carrying memorized messages and hiding from the I'echulat, the Inquisition.
The esteemed Escharfs (Flowers) is a courtesan of high degree. She is going to enter a nunnery and receive some education.
There are others. |
|
|
| baths |
[May. 25th, 2012|09:15 am] |
Dream: I was 'on trial' at school while sitting, wearing a towel, in a huge bath with three others.
Concept: judicial baths. How to implement? Maybe it's best just to mention them? |
|
|
| plot: With Piston and Sword |
[May. 21st, 2012|10:02 pm] |
A monk flees across rooftops from a herd of crossbowmen and then from a swordsman whom he fights with a staff and knocks off the roof into a courtyard. He escapes from a guarded city by the aid of a courtesan who is making merit, as she says, and she distracts guards by allowing them to fondle her while he hides in her litter.
The monk has a device (a double-acting piston bellows? a rotary draft fan?) that is constructed from a plan on an ancient knowledge-monument and an evil scientist-wizard wants it; when he is under threat in a second place, a stranger, a monotheist helps him escape when the swordsman attacks and they flee together.
The two then flee on awesthsch with the wizard's men in pursuit. Hidden communities of monotheists, whose religion is illegal, help them, the monotheist saves them again by his understanding of the alien Teherrima, and then they flee into faVashala territory and the faThey monk must pretend to be someone else, but his monotheist friend is helping him in hopes of stealing the device. They cross the border into another land and agree to share the device, since one knows how to build it and the other knows the math that powers it.
The story ends with them vowing to go forward in their partnership. |
|
|
| Pendleton's |
[May. 19th, 2012|10:08 pm] |
Pendleton's has two large continents and shallow seas. Its reefs are stromatolites, as coral is not native. So. Stromatolite islands? |
|
|
| genocidal hobbits |
[May. 19th, 2012|10:05 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | story | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Buzz and Ned's | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | fed | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | KCRW ALL NEWS: World News featuring BBC, NPR and PRI - Aaa | ] |
Two men ride into the Shire. One is a King's Ranger. The other is an ageless Elf fading into a ghost.
The Shire is hugely expanded, by many "farthings", but has three or four ethnic groups: Harfoots, Stoors, Fallohides, and so on.
Shifting alliances, short–term gains- all tactics no strategy. If it's Rwanda then the Rohirrim must have favored one of the ethnic groups: the Fallohides, Merry's and Pippin's group. The Rohirrim are the French, the colonial power.
Hobbit rape gangs.
Tension builds.
Three episodes of violence, growing greater each time.
Sudanese Lost Boys''
>>>>>>>>Andy has a client who is mentally ill and was one of the Lost Boys and.....not sure what? Get his life story?????
Lakemen and the Dwarves: what is their role? Are they an alternative colonial power? War with Rohan over the vastly expanded Shire? The Lakemen are Britain.
Agents Provocateurs? Stirring trouble in the Shire?
The King's ranger and the elf go to investigate reports of this, and find genocide breaking out all round them.
Then what happens?
Elf and Ranger protect victims. Then they find out that the victims are themselves perpetrators: hardly innocent. The hobbit females are Iroquois-like torturers
Welsh border struggles: raids internally, until provoked by the English.
The knowledge that the Lakemen/English are manipulating them would slow down the massacres: but the rumors are false. The hero is forced into spreading lies in the service of peacekeeping. Wormtongue corrupted Theoden, Sauron corrupted Saruman.
Middle-Earth is not free of evil. The slippery slope of the corruption of an Elf. Hmmmmm.
The Elf finds that as he becomes more corrupt, he becomes more physically real. Does he long for this?
Unclear.
Or is another Dark Lord coming into being? An Elf is immortal. The most powerful Elves are equal almost to the Maiar. Elrond, Galadriel, Thingol, Feanor. Could an Elf remain in Middle–Earth by becoming evil and powerful?
"I shall become less, and leave Middle Earth/I shall become greater and become a Dark Lord?"
The Choice of Luthien: stay in Middle Earth or go to the Undying Lands.
The Shire is full of Lost Boys.....
He chooses to seek the undying lands? No! He chooses to stay and become the NEXT Dark Lord.
The UN/Gondor can try to stop him, but are unlikely to succeed. He becomes the next Dark Lord by recruiting armies of psycho hobbits.
The Ranger rides to Gondor. Gondor can do nothing.
The Joseph Kony of Middle Earth. |
|
|
| human endogenous retrovirus |
[May. 14th, 2012|04:51 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | notes, novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | nice | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Wanna Be Starting Something-Glee | ] |
So I was reading Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear, and he had a human endogenous retrovirus serving as a mcguffin to produce Homo superior. Hmmm.
On Pendleton's, I think that a HERV served as the adaptation mechanism to produce the durrick (neoanderthals), westh (oasts), Burrowers (molehobbits), and so on.
It might work... |
|
|
| Notes on The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence by Robert Boyd |
[May. 10th, 2012|10:53 am] |
p. 16: evidence of 1520s smallpox epidemic unearthed by Sarah Campbell
p. 45: berdache prophetess threatens the people with smallpox
p. 47: map of the spread of smallpox with times of outbreak. Excellent work
p. 65: slave women used as prostitutes by the Nootka, recorded in Cook's narrative
p. 69: journal of Alexander Henry records this also at Astor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Henry_(the_younger)
Henry, Alexander. The Journal of Alexander Henry The Younger 1799-1814, The Champlain Society, University of Toronto Press, 1988. ISBN 0-9693425-0-0
p. 71: Plateau nations seldom owned slaves (Modoc? Atsugewi?) and coastal tribes did.
Less prostitution and less VD, then, among them, and more among slavers
THESIS! Slaving Indians had worse VD epidemics?
Lots of VD among the Tsimshian and little among the Kwakiutl
p. 75: Sherburne Cook "Diseases of the Indians of Lower California in the Eighteenth Century", *California and Western Medicine* 43 (6) 432-4
"The Extent and Significance of Disease among the Indians of Baja California from 1697 to 1773", *Ibero-Americana*, Berkeley, 9
p. 93: spread of fever and ague into California
Barker, ed. *Letters of Dr John McLoughlin*, 1948, p. 208
Letters of John Work, held in Hudson's Bay Company archives, also in Oregon Historical Society, also published in *Washington Historical Quarterly* in 1(4) and 2(2), 3(3), and in
http://www.amazon.com/Fur-brigade-Bonaventura-California-expedition/dp/B0007EZ838/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336664942&sr=1-1
Also
http://www.amazon.com/The-Journal-of-John-Work/dp/B000GR1RV8/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336664964&sr=1-4
http://www.amazon.com/Letters-McLoughlin-Brown-Editior-Barker/dp/B003W05578/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336664749&sr=1-1
p. 132: Hudson's Bay trappers in Ca:
Nunis, Doyce. "Michel LaFramboise" in *The Mountain Men of the Fur Trade of the Far West*, Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1968
http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Men-Fur-Trade-West/dp/0870620207/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336664536&sr=1-1
Also Muzina, *Noticias de Nutka*
http://www.amazon.com/Noticias-De-Nutka-Ethnological-Monographs/dp/0295971037/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336664615&sr=1-1-fkmr0
Also: diary of a cattledrive in early California
http://www.amazon.com/California-In-1837-Containing-Coast/dp/1279023309/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336665088&sr=1-2
p.209: "Maritime hunter-gatherers"
Yesner, "Maritime Hunter-Gatherers: Environment and Prehistory", *Current Anthropology*, 21(6), p. 727
p. 214: Tlingit census also includes slave numbers. Can we find this for California? Anywhere?
It's by William Rae and the Hudson's Bay Company archives contain it; it was done in 1845. |
|
|
| Dialog with Bill Bridges |
[May. 8th, 2012|09:36 am] |
Ah. Mine too. But boss told me I'd "unofficially" be invited back next year..
how odd. i guess your black ops now..
history black ops the worst kind we can erase the idea that you ever existed |
|
|
| prayer |
[May. 6th, 2012|09:12 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | prayer | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | fed | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Supernova At The End Of The Universe - The Orb | ] |
Let me sink down like a stone, Lord, and rise up like new bread. |
|
|
| Teherrima |
[May. 4th, 2012|02:25 pm] |
Notes on the Teherrima.
by Jim Comer on Friday, 4 May 2012 at 14:24 ·
.
From the next-to-last decennial transmission of the Pendleton's colony, 3511CE:
The plasmodia identified by Keller and Hui in the water interstices of the crust are certainly living creatures, animated, self-motile, and capable of intelligent response to stimuli. When a tunnel complex converted from an old ice-vein mine expanded downward below Kingdancer Dome, there was an incident involving four of the complexes of plasmodium and a mass of hot groundwater and steam which they carried with them. The tunnels lost air integrity and three construction workers died, losing a large quantity of labor time and machinery. The complex was abandoned.
They mass 10^4 kg and are roughly the same volume in kl, with collected specimens showing a hugely complex neural capacity distributed throughout the body. Plasmodia is of course an Earth term, and alternative terminology was proposed, but the two most prominent writers on the topic made it standard. As far as we can tell:
1) These things are native to Pendleton's;
2) They evolved from chemoautotrophic films on the surface of earth and clay particles;\
3) They still metabolize stone and underground chemical and water sources
4) They flow through aquifers, dirt and porous rock by creating pressure differentials within their bodies and seek minerals and heat
5) They are highly intelligent and reproduce by sporulating; the heredity molecule isn't DNA
6) They don't like us
I'm not sure how any human society could share a world with these creatures if they were unrelentingly hostile, and after four centuries we can no longer leave this place easily. I also cannot see any realistic way to deal with them: even a bomb would simply scatter pieces of the thing and they would crawl back together. Perhaps as Pendleton's warms, they'll spend less time at the surface and more underground, which they seem to prefer; perhaps terraforming will prove dangerous to them. Regrettable, but no one here wants to halt the process on account of what are essentially giant slime molds.
Cynthia Ward-Wu, Fifty-Ninth, Bio, Morinaga Dome, Pendleton's
.
From the next-to-last decennial transmission of the Pendleton's colony, 3511CE:
The plasmodia identified by Keller and Hui in the water interstices of the crust are certainly living creatures, animated, self-motile, and capable of intelligent response to stimuli. When a tunnel complex converted from an old ice-vein mine expanded downward below Kingdancer Dome, there was an incident involving four of the complexes of plasmodium and a mass of hot groundwater and steam which they carried with them. The tunnels lost air integrity and three construction workers died, losing a large quantity of labor time and machinery. The complex was abandoned.
They mass 10^4 kg and are roughly the same volume in kl, with collected specimens showing a hugely complex neural capacity distributed throughout the body. Plasmodia is of course an Earth term, and alternative terminology was proposed, but the two most prominent writers on the topic made it standard. As far as we can tell:
1) These things are native to Pendleton's;
2) They evolved from chemoautotrophic films on the surface of earth and clay particles;\
3) They still metabolize stone and underground chemical and water sources
4) They flow through aquifers, dirt and porous rock by creating pressure differentials within their bodies and seek minerals and heat
5) They are highly intelligent and reproduce by sporulating; the heredity molecule isn't DNA
6) They don't like us
I'm not sure how any human society could share a world with these creatures if they were unrelentingly hostile, and after four centuries we can no longer leave this place easily. I also cannot see any realistic way to deal with them: even a bomb would simply scatter pieces of the thing and they would crawl back together. Perhaps as Pendleton's warms, they'll spend less time at the surface and more underground, which they seem to prefer; perhaps terraforming will prove dangerous to them. Regrettable, but no one here wants to halt the process on account of what are essentially giant slime molds.
Cynthia Ward-Wu, Fifty-Ninth, Bio, Morinaga Dome, Pendleton's |
|
|
| Plot |
[Apr. 30th, 2012|10:31 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | notes, novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | fine fine | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Episode 219: Travels, Tallies & Technical Difficulties - The Clockwork Cabaret | ] |
The monk has a device (a double-acting piston bellows? a rotary draft fan?) that is constructed from a plan on an ancient knowledge-monument and an evil scientist-wizard wants it; a monotheist helps him escape when a swordsman attacks and they flee together.
The story begins with a sword-and-staff fight on a rooftop; the two then flee on awesthsch with evil in pursuit. Hidden communities of monotheists help them, and then they flee into faVashala territory and the faThey monk must pretend to be someone else. Then more stuff happens. |
|
|
| Dandelions |
[Apr. 29th, 2012|05:15 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | family, me | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | silent | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | KCRW ECLECTIC 24: All Music Channel - Aaa | ] |
Grandma Keeton used to pick dandelions and make dandelion salad. Mom can't remember, now, whether it was raw or cooked.
I picked dock and dandelions tonight and am cooking them. Old family tradition.
:D |
|
|
| Some Assembly Required |
[Apr. 23rd, 2012|09:38 pm] |
Roach, amidst the four thieves, walked up to the building's wall. Other travelers were there as well. Merchants (surely) led the huge man-horses laden with packs of goods; a troop of armsmen swaggered in front of a richly dressed man leading a small boy. Four more man-horses, led by a servant in livery, carried a litter of bamboo whose curtains were drawn in the long afternoon sun. Behind came a man-horse pulling a light cart of bamboo with elaborately made wooden wheels. The baggage of the litter's inhabitant(s)?
Wind ruffled the boy's hair and cooled Roach; the litter's curtains flew aside and for a moment he saw a woman no longer young, painted and dressed with care, among cushions of striped cotton. Her eyes rested on him for a moment, and a half–smile came to her face; he had no idea what her makeup represented.
He walked to the gate and his escorts talked with the men in robes, carrying staves, who guarded it. He had no idea what they said, but the thieves were waved off and he was motioned inside. Likewise the litter was motioned to go (away? to another place?) and the servant nodded and led the docile beasts to somewhere...else. The rich noble (Roach looked back) left his child at the gate, where an old man with a shaven head came to tend him. The child cried. Roach followed a man in a robe into the complex of buildings. |
|
|
| Notes on the faKhormo |
[Apr. 2nd, 2012|09:15 am] |
-Use of iwesth as pack animals and mounts means:
*Lots and lots of food, inc beans, bread, mash, meat? Meat only for pregnant iwesthch and iwesthak trained for war? Yes.
*Iwesthak trained for war, wielding maces or clubs, fighting on command
*Lots of dangerous shit that is everywhere. Meaning cleanup crews of ramapithecus with aprons and buckets and shovels? Rama= Vemet/vemetth in Farash. The reemergance of ramapithecine/australopithecine body shapes; why?
*potty training for hominid servants? why not- chimps can be potty trained
*Iwesth mean warfare is going to be wildly different than it is on Earth!!!! Cavalry battles will be slower and hugely more clumsy; armor will make iwesth harder to hurt, but footmen with pikes won't be able to rout a charge if the horses have hands!!!!! Iwesth can also climb walls and mountains with their rider on their back, but only the best riders can use a bow. Crossbows are much more plausible, swords and axes. No one charges with a lance atop a bipedal mount.
-Long nights mean:
*endless cultivation of eucalypts and so on as fuelwoods
*extraction of soy/jatropha/pine oil for lamps
*electric lights?
*Cultivation of phosphorescent mushrooms by the sorceror-scientists; they sell a mycelium ready to fruit, providing x nights of light for those who need it--they grow on chinquapin/chestnut trees, so plausible.
--They also grow on waste and bioremediate (Panellus, spp) and so big jars of crud with mushrooms fruiting on top? Dried Panellus glow when rehydrated, so taking them along on trips would work, a kind of cold fire.
*Breeding fireflies?
*Streets of cities are patrolled by citizen soldiers?
*citizen army means that farmers are allotted land and can't lose it: this society can't let all its land fall into the hands of rich landowners and let farmers be enslaved(???)
*Mirrors are favorite possessions and houses are often set up to let natural light come in (and stay warm? How?)
*Glass: it exists, ok? How made? Lots of volcanic vents? No good for manufacture. More likely, they use charcoal/methane, and use the same for firing pots/making steel
-Feudalism/caste system
*Where are priests, and is this really Buddhism?
*It's likely going to mutate grotesquely as the worldbuilding goes on and on, if I know my own self
* Priests are counted as the equal of whoever speaks to them. Nobles treat them as nobles, peasants as peasants. How's that?
*It fits Buddhism. Sure.
*Relics
*Wandering holy men/women
*martial arts!!!!!
*Hero falls in with monks and becomes a sort of protector/source of info??? He learns from them also
*This was not intentional. Really. |
|
|
| Heart Sutra in Farash |
[Apr. 1st, 2012|09:37 am] |
A few seconds agoJim Comer
Zhathvat O'as
The Heart Sutra
Chovam Evezhugothoshveret fuththozhathavahat vagardhdhada Khusshe'athafat Zha'athvat asachip
At that time Avalokitshvara/KwanYin the Boddhisattva performed the profound Sutra of the Great Enlightenment.
Khus echantha efelthesh shepannap.
He illuminated the five bundles.
Fra eviyathar basarthakap
And he saw that they were empty.
Fra e'aschat fratha'ananet shasandokarap
And he crossed over all pain and suffering.
O S'haherofat! Thwek ka'afa viyahosafaip; Kafa thwe'ak viyahosafaip.
O Shariputra! Form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form.
Thwek ka'afa ahepatab; kafa thwe'ak ahepatab, fra me'asath, ha'arash, the'adal me'anam, ehepatab
Form is emptiness; emptiness is form, so are feeling, cognition, origin and consciousness.
O S'haherofat! Ithermat igu'asgu iviyahosafaip. Iviyamesanamap fra ivoyafasasap.
O Shariputra! All dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not born and do not die.
Iiyatosorkop fra iviyabe'seltogap
They are not pure and not defiled.
Fra viohar viyisagfup viohar viyachasarthap.
And they neither increase nor decrease.
Fra kafa viyathwe'ak fraviyame'asath fraviyaha'arash fraviyakhafatsch fraviyathe'adal fraviya'i'o'alchom fraviyachu'ana fraviyaha'at fraviyaghe'aresh fraviyatsa'atat fraviya'e'ashkat fraviyaba'atharkh fraviyachwe'al fraviyachu'ana fraviyape'ahekth fraviyavo'ash fraviya'ithe'armet viyahepatab. Fraviyaka'archar o'elchomraviyathe'adal
Therefore in emptiness there is no form and no feeling and no formation and no consciousness and no eyes and no ears and no mouth and no speech and no body
and no mind and no sights and no sounds and no smells and no tastes and no objects of touch and no dharmas.
And there is no field of the eyes and no mind-consciousness.
Fraviyata'ayamat fraviyaviyathe'armat ahepatab.
And there is no knowledge and no ignorance.
Fraviyae'afo fraviyafa'ass fraviyazha'at e'efo fraviyazha'at fa'ess ahepatab.
And there is no old age and no death and no ending of old age and death.
Fraviyafe'ahar fraviyafe'alchesh fraviyafa'assa fraviyashe'alok fraviyaha'aresh fraviya'a'achit.
And there is no suffering and no accumulating and no extinction and no journey and no understanding and no attaining.
Frafichea viya'a'achit, fuththozhathavahat fe'arezhana fe'aremothara vipathatap fra'eshkat f'eththozhathavahat hepasthakap.
And because there is no attaining and the boddhisattva relies on the prajnaparamita and the mind of the Boddhisattva is as strong as a elephant-pig.
Frafichea viya'zhat ahepatab, viyakhupaliveri, la'ocho frafutholchom futhe'eshkat
And because there is no ceasing, there is no fear, and he leaves negative mind-seeing behind.
Zhananasch zhasatap.
Joy is the goal.
Idhai i'edede'igfu'eltha iyetoz izhasananaschap fe'arezhana fe'aremothara fra'i'visathatap.
All the Buddhas of the tens of thousands of years attain bliss and rely on the prajna paramita.
Fraferezhana feremothara ve'anatar e'eshgarkat frashe'egarhat frathegaremth fra'eshugogoa tasayamatad.
And know you that the prajna paramita is a spiritual mantra and a bright mantra and a royal mantra and the best mantra.
Tha'ananet zhasatap fravi'ayafuth ahesatap. Tirof venatar fe'arezhana fe'aremothara ghewhareshap.
It ends all suffering and it is not false. Therefore the mantra of prajna paramita was spoken.
Gheghepareshad tigarof.
Recite it in this way.
Gate, gate, parasamgate, bodhi, svahi.
Gone, gone, gone beyond recall. O what awakening! All Hail the Buddha! |
|
|
| Notes on Multi-Ring Impact Basins by Spudis |
[Mar. 30th, 2012|01:32 pm] |
P. 55: Large 1900km outer ring: sea island arc?
p. 57: volcanic vents/hot springs/geysers/mudpits in the land between the rings, from the cracks and fissures in the land.
p. 86: lots of basalt in maria, lots and lots and lots; ergo: Nurro has lots of basalt buildings and monuments
p.93: polygonal mesas in outer mountain rings. As many as seven rings are known around large basins. |
|
|
| Khormo History |
[Mar. 23rd, 2012|08:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | game, worldbuilding | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | down | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Episode 213: Wishing for Spring - The Clockwork Cabaret | ] |
The Khormo Nation and the Nurro Astrobleme
The Pendleton's colony was founded as a terraforming experiment when ramscoops capable of hauling large cargos were committed to the project on a thousand-year lease. Robot probes had mapped the system beforehand and Pendleton's was selected for its potential long-term stability once terraformed by bioengineered algae. After five centuries of terraforming and careful design of the biosphere, the colony was able to work through two generations of pantropy and the resulting world was born. Internal heat generated through tidal heating and expressed through vulcanism made the ecosphere viable in the long term, over megayears, and the long–lived red star shows little likelihood of trouble.
Unfortunately, the heavy bombardment era of the system was not over, and while significant threats in the form of moons and asteroids were early gotten rid of, the system is small and crowded. A series of impact after the colony left its domes led to the repeated rise and fall of civilizations, expressed as cycles. A civilization of the eleventh kiloyear, the Tzove, saw the nature of this problem by developing maniac archeology and started the intermittent practice of building museums and monuments designed to foil almost any potential disaster. It was these monuments, the tachthavthf in Farash, which enabled numerous future cultures to rise to prominence through ownership of them; wars were fought over them for millennia. The faKhormo were not entirely dependent on these items, but regardless did revere them.
At the time of writing, 1424 CR, which is at least two MY after the terraforming of Pendleton's, the Khormo are an agricultural nation living almost entirely within the mountain rings of Nurro's crater. The astrobleme was created less than five hundred thousand stanyears before present, in an event which ended the previous cycle of civilizations, typified by the industrial–feudal Arhabataran and the steam–driven ocean empire of the Chahaskaha. Its impact was almost perpendicular to Pendleton's surface, and as such it created a nearly perfect structure of rimwall mountains and a central peak complex. In Farash, the current language of the faKhormo, the mountains are called the Thanat (Stone) range (2km height), the Ferchu (Red) range (4km high), and the innermost circle of mountains, the eastern wall of which is called the Batharkh (the (Sun)sight, the Sunrise) range and the western wall the Chartha (the Sunclipse, Sunset) Range. The basalt–granite mix exposed by the impact soon cooled and is now a rich and fertile region save for the salt-swamp region by the central peak complex.
The faKhormo migrated down from the continent's central tidal–bulge mountains, from the Kheley–Malak valleys, into the mountain rings and eventually into the astrobleme itself. Soon afterwards, 211 CR, the Safalomakka extended their warlike and short–lived empire into the Nurro, and the faKhormo army was annihilated at Lanahakasa, by the Pillars of Hannaya. The nation, with its remnants of the previous non–Khormo tribes, acceded to subject status for several centuries. During this time, the Fathey missionaries converted nearly the whole population to their religion, and as a result, Farash became a written language, using the Naccar ideographs, which had originally been devised to write down Nichetheherikasat, a language of the Nahe-Tamafa family unrelated to Farash. Naccar is poorly suited to the sounds of the Farash language, unfortunately, and was replaced eventually by the Olchon linear abjad script.
By 425 CR, the Safalomakka nation had fallen amidst the Faricha dynasty of leaders' politicking and massive migration from the coasts to the east; the farside cultures of the sea islands between the Nearside and Farside continents were moving to lands beneath the glare of of Butros' World. By this point, the vast corpus of Fatheyist scriptures, the e'oscharelth, were translated into Farash using the clumsy Naccar syllabary. The huge invasion, combined with the strange disturbances of the Teherrima, disturbed the 'tween states west of the Godwall and east of the Nurro astrobleme's complex ringwall system, leading to the near abandonment of the Godwall cities and the encroachment of the posthuman species. A series of wars in the ringwall mountains crystallized the new nation and by 519 CR the faKhormo Protector, Talekk I, had been seated amidst the Lords of Parliament. In order to avoid favoring one of the numerous factions of the Lords, the Lords agreed to elect Protectors, as the Safalomakka and Gharutat Lords had done before.
The raising of vast plantations of millet and wheat and the provision of household gardens was sufficient to feed the population, and the domestic herds of meatape, horses, cattle, goats and oasts, along with orchards of fruit and nut trees, produced a nice surplus of oil and wine for export. Hand manufactures, governed by guilds, flourished under the Protector's rule. The Civil Wars of the era 965–981 caused loss of life from one end of the Nurro to the other, and caused the almost complete extinction of a series of noble houses.
FaKhormo society is divided into four classes historically. These are the iKhusverak, or nobles and priests, mostly military families as well as landowners; i'Emthemak, the merchants, iFerizhak, crafters, and iGhirabak, the peasant class, as well as the iRhuthok outcasts, descendents of the original natives of the Nurro. The mountain country is richer in iGhirabak and iKhusverak, while the rich cities of the chaNurro lowlands hold huge populations of i'Emthemak and iFerizhak.
The Fatheyist Religion
Fathey (originally faThey) is a religion originating in the fifth century before the Common Reckoning, founded by the Dhai, the Stone Man, a noble of the Nifallatsch who meditated and was enlightened by the Thermet, a manifestation of the Infinite. He preached noble truths: that life was suffering, and action was suffering; that suffering is caused by desire; that freedom from desire yields freedom from suffering, and that a Path exists to allow this. His followers formed the Fatheyist religion, and quickly converted large numbers of the Khormo people when a missionary named Theramet came and preached, even translating the e'Oshcharelth into Farash.
The Sharenghat, or order of monks and nuns, flourished and served as a means of conveying learning through the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Safalamo Protectors. I'esaharem, the monasteries and nunneries, hosted vast libraries and even taught topics ranging from philosophy to metalworking. Two such universities remain in the Nurro at the time of writing: one is at Verenthe, and one is at Vokherhe. Both host large teaching faculties, with specialists in numerous disciplines.
Money
The accepted units of money in the Protectorate, the coastal city–states, and the mountain tribes are beads, cowries and cloth. A cubit of beads, a chothio, is small change; a fanad, ten echothio, is worth more; large purchases are made with bheshol, ten fanad, with measured lengths of cloth, and with letters of credit. Gold, silver and gems are rarely used as cash. One possessing these items would use them as jewelry or contribute them to a temple. Using slaves or iwesth to carry one's cash is quite common owing to the bulkiness of the money system. When one knows a vendor, a running tab is the norm, with accounts being settled per golala or per year.
Some prices as of the time of writing include:
canoe: 8 cloths, 4 efanad
hire paddlers: six ebheshol and board
sheep: Two cloths
goat: one cloth
axe: five ebheshol
anvil: 20 cloths
spinning wheel: one cloth
horse: fifty cloths, five fine cloths
westh: ten cloths
wine: five to ten ebheshol
ale, 5l: one bheshol
dried fruit, kg: one bheshol
spice, 500g: three cloths
hog: two cloths
book, bark–paper: 20 cloths
cottage, for a year: five cloths
fine house and shop: 200 cloths/year
kg cheese or tofu: one cloth
salt fish: 1 chothio each
school, one year: 40-200 cloths depending on board
yoke: two cloths
12 eggs: two achothio
hen: 1 chothio
5lb grain: 1 chothio
bark cloth: 4 echothio
bark paper: 1 fanad
palm oil: 1 cloth
maize corn, 10kg: 1 fanad
hesthak–ivory, one tusk: 100 bheshol
slaveboy: 4 cloth, 5 efanad
slavegirl: 6 cloth
bloodmoney: 8 cloths
beef, 1kg: 10 echothio
ferry trip: 1 chothio
1 load vegetables: 5 chothio
cow: 5 fanad
120lb rice: 1 cloth
bull: 16 cloths
bunch of fruit: 1 fanad
milk delivery, per golala: 1 cloth
1 dozen bells: 2 efanad
1 iron hoe: 2 efanad
1 knife: 2 efanad
large fish: 3 echothio
1 kg small fish: 1 chothio
shrimp, 1 kg: .75 chothio
potatoes, 10-15: 1 chothio
beans, 1 kg: 1 chothio
sorghum cane, 2m: 1 chothio
butter, 1.5kg: I cloth
1 cord firewood: 1 chothio
cotton, 1kg: 6 echothio
fine gown: up to 200 cloths
shoes: 4 ebheshol
fine boots: 6 ebheshol
silk, per meter: 10 bheshol
mail: 100 cloths
cheap iron sword: 6 bheshol
fine sword: made to order, 5 cloths and up
daily wage, unskilled: 1 chothio
skilled wage: 3 echothio
tobacco, 5kg: 1 cloth |
|
|
| Sacred Text |
[Mar. 22nd, 2012|09:05 pm] |
Sacred Text
Fra Dhai Bha'aranas fa'ov khe'elathen Ra'eshofat ewhachuap.
At one time, the Buddha was dwelling in Vārāṇasī, at the Deer Park of Ṛṣipatana.
Fra Dhai cha'anthu eve'achet zhapathvat fra gheparesh.
And the Buddha spoke unto five monks and said.
Nik the'arvarthnn tha'enanet ahepatab.
This is the religious truth concerning the pain of the world.
Zhathvat cho'ivam ahe'iwhatab viyaghewharashap.
This scripture was not spoken in the time that was.
Hassarashap.
It is to be thought over[lit. sat on].
Achitnik a'abatharkh fra ha'arash fra fe'alomo fra she'athafat mepanamat.
Doing this gives birth to vision, wisdom, understanding, and enlightenment.
Nik zha'ethavat fe'elchesh tha'inanet ahepatab.
This is the scripture of the hoarding of the world's pain,
fra fa'essap tha'enanet ahepatab.
And it is of the end of suffering,
Fra fe'e'har khu'ol tha'onanet ahepatab
And it is of the path away from suffering,
Inik izhethavat viyachwewhal cho'ivam ihepatab
These sayings were not heard in the time before.
Ihassarashap.
They are to be thought over.
Achitnik a'abatharkh fra ha'arash fra fe'alomo fra she'athafat mepanamat.
Doing this gives birth to vision, wisdom, understanding, and enlightenment.
Atayamat ha'arash zha'ethavat tha'enanet shupahat.
To know the wisdom of the scripture of the world-pain is good.
Fra nik zhethavat viyachwewhal cho'ivam hepatab.
And this saying was not heard in the time before. |
|
|
| Conversation in Farash |
[Mar. 18th, 2012|08:21 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | coffee'd | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Barnes and Noble | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | fed | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Fununke Saya - Kasse Mady Diabate | ] |
I am angry and sad because someone in my sunday school class insulted me. Meanwhile, a conversation in Farash.
Conversation
Host: Gupankalag
I greet (you)
Visitor: Gupankalag
I greet you.
Visitor: Ahepatadfig KhusHeshovut?
Are you Mr Heshovut, the noble?
Host: Heshovut vechet ega'erok ahepatag; ahepatadfig?
I am the noble lord Heshovut, of the two carved stones (place name); who are you?
Visitor: EmthShunanat foleag
I am Mr Shunanat, the merchant.
Host: Shua, shua! Fa'afar ise'athepagakadfig?
Good, good! Do you deal in wool?
Visitor: Viyase'athepagakag, khus.
I do not deal in wool, noble.
Host: Ah! Emth, ichepat ise'athepagakadfig?
Ah! Merchant, do you deal in tools?
Visitor: Viya, viya, vhechet. Ichepat vosh ise'athepagakag.
No, no, noble lord. I deal a little in tools. (lit. “a finger”)
Host: Meufig se'athepagakad? Vepalal!
What do you deal (in)? I am confused!
Visitor: Tha'enen se'athepagakad, vhechat.
I deal in pain, noble lord.
Host: Tha'enenfig? Maayavudal, hemth! Fo'alcho se'a'apathegak ahepatadfig?
In pain? [obscenity], merchant! What kind of merchant are you?
Visitor: Se'apathegak ima'arthamp ahepatag.
I am a merchant of poppy [drugs; “I am a pharmacist”]
Host: Ima'arthamp dapamathad?
Have you poppies? (“Do you have any medicine?”)
Visitor:Ema'arthamp fra ehi'aloj ifo'elcho dapamathag; ma'ot?
I have poppies and medicine of multiple kinds [small enough to be counted]; why? [lit. “for what?”]
Host: Chupashag fra fepaharag.
I am sick and in pain. [lit. “I sicken and pain”]
Visitor:Ema'arthamp ese'assathegag
We shall deal in poppy. |
|
|
| Babel story in Farash |
[Mar. 17th, 2012|09:36 am] |
Translation
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Agheresh huathama ghewhareshab. Chovam ba'atharkh ishewhalok, fe'araka cha'engal Sha'ehanara yowhashorth fra i'ewhachuap. Fash ga'erok i'apaner fra ga'erok voganor ipapahekth fuff ighereshab. Garok pagarhekth ga'orok idawhamath fra halomathsh kha'ofor idawhamath.
Fra fash sha'erkth frava'ehat fash ka'aha azhapat fuff iguwhakag ku'o'u fole ti'ongat viyashepalok fuff ighewharesh. Kathe chawhartha fra sha'arkth frava'ahat ba'ortharkh, kha'enazch gufirwhakat.
Kathe “Khuliveri!” aghereshap fra Kathe “Khanazch ahapachwanat fra aghe'aresh ighepareshab, fra mat imepanamap, fra i'apanerap iviyazhapat” aghereshap.
Kathe, “Ichaparthag, fra i'o'ashchog vi'oya'ifa'lomop ivepalalag.” Fra Kathe hua'athama ti'angat avowharop, fra sha'erkth viyaguwhakhat. Fra “Babel” fowhalap ku'o'u Kathe o'ashcho ti'engat viyafawhalomab, fra Kathe ti'angat vowharop. |
|
|
| Farash |
[Mar. 17th, 2012|09:30 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | conlang, notes, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Boulevard Bread | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  pleased | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Urban Farming in Detroit; Water Wars; Thai Food for Breakfast - Podcast:Talk | ] |
Farash as it is Spoken
Farash (fa-RAASH) is the vernacular of large areas of the Khormo nation, and spoken by merchants, missionaries and scholars abroad. Farash developed from Old Woccofa, an intermontane vernacular, over the thousand years following the rise of the FaKormo people who migrated from the mountain plateaux around Kheley–Mahak, east of the Tidepeaks, into the basin of the Nurro astrobleme and the four mountain rings around it. Save for a remnant in the salt-swamp where the astrobleme is deepest, below the mouth of the Khestalo river, the previous population was absorbed through intermarriage. The Rhuthok language, spoken by these tribal groups, themselves descendents of the original recolonizers of the Nurro, provided a series of loanwords into Farash and other tongues; these words are recognizable owing to the click consonants and stretched vowels which they contain. Yeshon, Khanatha and Meje'er, the three languages closest to Farash, are also Woccofa–derived and together with the coastal dialects form the Yeshon–Farash language family.
Farash became a written language in the time of the Safalomo protectorate, with scholars of the Safalo using Farash for government proclamations and eventually the monks of Khoro-Balastey using the tongue for missionary work and transcribing the Fathey scriptures into the language. The Naddar syllabary was used, since the ancestral pictographic system of the Waca'hana mountains' intermontane peoples was itself unknown to the monks and lay preachers of the Fatheyist religion. Naddar is poorly suited to the sounds of the Farash language, however, and a series of linguistic reforms in the times of Hayu the First ended with the adoption of the present Olchon script. Olchon is the result of decades of linguistic reforms and has been almost universally adopted for the past five centuries; only scholars can read the older Naddar script at the present. The religious themselves no longer retain many Naddar manuscripts, most having been transliterated into Olchon owing to the efforts of the Fellenado brotherhood of scribes.
Pronunciation
Vowels are ah, eh, ee, oh, oo. Aspirated consonants are as in Hebrew or Greek. -ss- is a hissing s spoken by bending the tip of the tongue off the roof of the mouth. Doubled consonants are not doubled in length and ' is the glottal stop.
A few words, such as p!ataal (a kind of insect) and laat!or (the name of a medicinal herb) contain click consonants, made by releasing air from the mouth explosively while pronouncing the consonant. These are relics of the old Rhuthoy dialects; the Rhuthoy themselves sometimes still speak their old languages and sometimes do not. Loanwords from Rhuthoy also sometimes contain long vowels, such as the Vuuo'or, a river flowing in the Chartha mountains down into Lake Tannakar. These vowels are held twice as long as ordinary vowels and can be a bit tricky for new speakers. Unless indicated in writing, the long vowel is not two vowels separated by a stop, but a single long sound. Accent is on the penult unless otherwise indicated.
Farash is an agglutinative languages, with words becoming larger and larger as infixes, prefixes and suffixes are added to word roots. There is a four–part system of grammatical number: singular, dual, paucal and plural nouns. The word “efahach”, meaning alphabet, will do nicely as an example; it naturally has feminine gender, as do almost all nouns associated with language.
Fa'efahach: a literate person.
Afa'efehach: two literate people (dual)
Efa'efehach: A number of literate people small enough to be counted (paucal)
Ifa'efehach: Too many literate people to count. (plural)
Thes= cow; athes=two cows; ethes= paucal cows
Genders are masculine, representing males and things associated with men, feminine, representing women and things associated with women, sacred, representing animals and plants “with souls” (corresponding to animals with Earth–derived proteins and DNA) and profane (animals and plants without Earth–derived proteins or DNA, and thus, less commonly employed by humans).
Masculine nouns end in –at,th, –ap,–ab –ak, or –akh
achit: doings, do
afendip: loincloth
aharahanat: boddhisattva, ascended one
achmit: government, the Protectorate
alet: south
alegan: south province
althonat: skull
anch: arrow; metaphorically, purpose
av: give (not sacred)
baranayat: eclectic
bathat: sight, looking
belth: break, crack, explode, rupture
beongap: male lies
bohulot: fiddle
burret: father
cha'ar: bones; metaphorically, randomness, chance
chab: knot, tie
chehewerayat: divine one (borrowed from Yeshon)
chafat: spoon
chakunat: hominid used as pack animal
chalap: lock
chepat: tool
chet: armpit
chethath: swing; metaphorically, decide
chochanat: carpenter, woodworker
chohuthorat: psaltery, zither
chudhat: wrap
chushat: man-witch, wizard
damat: ownership
Dhai: the Stone One, the Savior
echurak: brother
eschat: blood, male heroism, injury, suffering
esho'or: near
Fa'efehechat: a masculine literate person, a literate man.
fachet: razor
fafathan: shaking sickness
faThey: the ones of the Dhai; religious, the converted
fav: pasture, meadow, grass
fehar: narrow mountain trail; metaphorically, pain
fenji: drugged resin, cannabis, drugs
feoshap: money, beads
fetat: allowing, permission
fethelak: same–sex love, Greek love
fthafet: holy monument, holy shrine to the saints
fuththozhathavahat: spirit of the Savior, one who is like the Savior, the Dhai
gan: province
gastgung: pants
gavat: holy beads, prayer beads
ghee: snow; metaphorically, to cover
ginanat: barley harvest
gintap: gold
gostinag: waist (male)
gukhat: building
henea: rope
hesthak: pig-like elephant beast
hetat: house
Hrakh, hrop: man
hun: small
hunop: dwarf, midget, one of the Burrowers
huthu: protect
ifur: valley, small canyon
ivorat: nasty monkey, dirty monkey
kerat: hat; metaphorically, what you avoid
kergig: barley
keveochat: neighbor man
kha'erc: kill
khat: foot
khav: wood
khavo'up: male servant
khelap: wild dog
khet: house
khethet: sword
kho: north
khogan: north province
kilat: male face
ksanak: axe
lachiat: die (gaming), chance
letheut: fight
maayavudal: an obscenity
manzhat: secretary, bureaucrat
meonad: barrelfull
nanat: uncle; metaphorically, mentor
peguk: evil
renat: hand (male)
rogerat: diamond
saechat: robes
saryesak: assembly, Parliament
se'athegak: merchant
sehem: knife
shachep: cloak
Shehat: the Sun, Davis' Star
shelok: traveller, pilgrim
shemenot: Fatheyist monk, brother
shenget: brotherhood of monks, monastery, congregation
shethafat: to be enlightened, to become a holy one
shor: weight, kilo
siras: open
sirat: lion cat; metaphorically, he who protects wealth or crops
sthivahat: reader, scholar
takhat: bow
tass: bring
teth: itch
thalet: boy
thaltham: rising smoke, rising dust
thanen: pain
thananat: world–pain, weltschmerz
thar: horn; metaphorically, fullness, plenty
thashvet: enemy, foe
thavesat: remnant, leftovers
thechat: button and loop fastener
themmat: drum
themth: "drummer", a royal title
thervav: holy law, holy rule
tholot: buttermilk, yogurt
thoruth: lark, songbird
thusat: friend, swear-brother
thuuhat: gift, ritual gift (Rhuthok loanword)
thwek: hammer; metaphorically, to shape, to craft
thwod: reed flute
tingat: Butros' World
tratakhat: crossbow
tsep: writing
vahat: Fatheyist temple, monastery building, church
vechet: noble lord
vijot: start, begin
vorak: commander, leader
vo'up: bearer
Vorau: planting barley; metaphorically, scattering, diaspora
vorhathat: exercise
Vuyetoz: new year (perihelion of Butros' World)
zhashafat: clandestinity, secrecy
zhathvat: holy writ, scripture, sutra
Feminine nouns always end in –th,–ch, –ph, –sh, or in a consonant cluster nearly unpronounceable by one not born to it. Note that adding a masculine or feminine ending to a name which doesn't have one is a clear means of indicating which gender a person is.
achitth: womens' doings
alch: bowels (of meat animal)
battha: genitals
batharkh: sight, seeing
beongth: female lies
chalt: bread; metaphorically, life, wealth
charelth: straw basket
charfetsh: lung
charsh: wheat
cheench: grapes
chovyath: weeping; metaphorically, deprivation, mourning
chuvat: continue
chush: a witch, magic-woman
chuthesh: teenager
damath: having, possession
echurth: sister
echul: hole; metaphorically, secrets
efo: granny, old woman
egg: tham
errafth: plums, prunes
escharfs: flower, metaphorically, blood
eweshch: yes
fafar: wool
fatsch: loaf
fav: ash
fechelathch: same-sex love, Sapphic love
felth: apple
fosherkt: harvest
foyvaash: expense, cost
gheresh: speak, speech (a language)
ghethenesh: writing
gorsh: sheep/goat; metaphorically, warmth, warm one
gostingth: waist (female)
hakarsh: gourd
harash: seat, sitting; metaphorically, wisdom
hat: mouth
shochamp: eating
hechoth: rag
hemeth: poetry, lyrical, musical
heshen: womb
hewarath: epic poetry
hirlch: cry
husharsh: pumpkin
keveorch: female neighbor
khadateshch: arrow
khafatsch: measure of dry goods, kilo; metaphorically, formation
khanshch: raisin
khanazch: the people, the nation
khanenash: roasted grain
kharosh: meditation, zazen
khavorf: female servant, handmaid
khedet: needle
khevents: moon, one of the moons
khol: cheek; metaphorically, grief
khorkh: dye, paint
khorvornasth: reading
khuskt: woman
kilarth: female face
mesath: passion, lust
nanash: aunt
ornth: cream
pehekth, pehekthsh: cook, cooking, taste
pekhatth: cedar, incense; metaphorically, worship
rahashch: demon spirit
renth: hand (female)
shafisks: sweet bread, pastry; metaphorically, desired
shahth: umbilicus; metaphorically, origin, beginning
sharkth: town, village
shashan: elbow; metaphorically, turning, change, drunkenness, intoxication
she'eth: grass
shemenosth: Fatheyist nun
shen: spleen
shengeshch: nunnery, assembly of nuns, congregation
sheratth: tears
shevortsch: congratulations, good work!
Tachthavthf: ancient knowledge-monument
tayamat: knowledge, sacred knowledge
telech: walnut
temesch: feast, celebration
teth: itch
thalf: radish
thegalft: help
thegumth: flour
thel: belly; metaphorically, good eating, gluttony, gourmandaise
thennor: pepper
thervarth: religious law, religious duty
thes: cow, cattlebeast (a bull is thesap)
thesonkt: girl, maiden
theshtra: custom, tradition
thevo: buttocks, lowborn, ill-born, vile
thusamf: sworn-sister, friend
thuthu: throat
vafur: down
var: hair
vararch: thornbush
vash: sheaf
vats: buck, ungelded westh
vegich: bamboo
vegat: pen
verekatth: love, opposite–sex love
vevuk: suck, milk
veyash: sheep, woolbeast
veyf: millet
viger: meditation (lit, unspeaking)
vikha'al: well-being
vosh: finger; metaphorically, a little of something, not much
vuth: vulva
westh: oast (huge hominid used for riding)
yachashan: daughter
yeshef: sweeping, broom
yoshorth: find
zhamithsch: to refine oneself, improve
zhananasch: cozy joy
zhannath: indecisive
Sacred gender is indicated by ending in a consonant. Profane words almost always end in a vowel.
Sacred:
ahayachat: certainty
al: bowels (wild animal)
aner: do, make
athesh: feet
banchat: knee
bavath: firetree, desc of geneered Eucalyptus
bheshol: unit of bead money equal to 10 fanad
bokok: arm
bo'obal: reed-flute
bulgu: feather; metaphorically, fancy writing, poetry, calligraphy
chanagal: uncivilized, “country”
charchay: to plow using awesth
chass: cough
chav: fish; metaphorically, between
chega: story
chehek: pickaxe
chenok: indigo-dyed cloth
chomabat: nurse, caretaker, nanny
chemon: milk curd
chok: soul
chorath: dance
chorkosh: rodent
choshme: karma, destiny
chothio: string of beads one cubit long
chothof: book
chuna: nose, smell
chushtayat: sorcery-science
chwel: hear
daraf: canal
deshfor: picture
Erratk: a tuber, Solanum
eshe'et: weakness
eshchat: back
eshkat: top of head
eshmole: peace
etham: neck
etheshchem: vague
eyenav: sleep
chush:sickness
fafal: wag, shake
fanad: ten chothio of beads, ten cubits
fass: death, to die
fath: sight
fe'a: measure, liter, quart
fecha: apology
fefa'an: dog-monkey
felatz: chicken
felchesh: hoard, treasure
felich: light a fire; metaphorically, to inherit, bequeath
fet: side, flank: metaphorically, party, faction
fevawa: welcome
felthesh: burden
ferseth: striped cloth, fine cloth
fole: name
forshov: eradication, extermination
ga'an: crow, black bird
garkan: frogfish, walking fish
garok: stone carved by humans, hewn stone
geriya: soon
gheloz: illness caused by sacred things, bacterial infection
ghosh: forget
ghuthet: edible meat
hiloj: medicine
hunchwe: bribe
ijam: call
je'ere: rather, somewhat
kakar: hike
Kar: walk
kawal: wagon
kawalov: ecliptic, skyroad
kelko: wing, fin; metaphorically, chance, luck
ken: heel
khaharoz: huge bearlike postdog
khalachun: furrow
khalchot: wild dog
khana: privy, latrine
kharash: plow
Kharchar: plowland, tilth
kharost: spade
kharthum: yoke
khah, khahat: you, thou
khat: word, to speak, say
khelathen: rabbitlike deer
kher: ox
kheth: rectum
khokhok: hunger
kholesh: glass
kholol: softness
khong: door
khul: away
kut: who, whom, who-ness, identity
laat!or: a medicinal herb, derived from Earthly Salvia (Rhuthok loanword); metaphorically, the wise, the worthy
lacho: behind
mash: nose, snot; metaphorically, curse, obscenity
mat: what, what-ness, substance
me'u: what
menam: birth
mif: tooth
molo: beloved
morchani: cloth woven on water-powered looms, unbleached stuffs
ne'as: selfishness
nyemet: steak, chop
olchom:eye
oshcho: language, speech
otham: doing, deed
p!ataal: a sort of insect (Rhuthok loanword)
shandokar: bridge
schan: kill
pash: tie, bind
shcal: overtake
shchel: face
shishar: crowd, group
sham: hair, fur
shenthot: document
tawalov: sky
tayamat: knowledge
teweo: salve, healing oil
thamat: bamboo
tharfer: court, holding court
thayek: prayer
thedal: awakening, consciousness
thefer: drive, send
thefwen: checked or plaid cloth, high value cloth
thelal: forget
thol: strike, hit
thonchur: bone
thek: finger
theno'ol: master, ruler, lord
thonthot: fool
tsak: stand
tsatsat: meat, flesh
tthatat: itch
tuggarth: breasts, udders
vadhdhada:canyon
valtar: nostril; metaphorically, to dismiss, snort, dislike
vashala: sun-worshipper, monotheist
ve'eri: merit, offerings at wats
vem: marriage
ven: drink
vesh: cat
vezertth: document, “passport”
vil: wine
vilch: jaw, jawbone; metaphorically, to bore, to tire
volegh: a weed
vor: full, fullness
voshur: saw
vuchol: force, coercion
vulth: rat
vunj: tube, pipe
yethos: head (of an Earthly animal)
zhalat: posthuman
Profane
aga'a:big
ali: time
bava: fire
char: late
chartha: sinking, going down (either sacred or profane can do this)
chata: short
cher: stone, uncut stone
chova: time
chovam: in the time during, during which
chul: liver, organs
churdi: morning
daze: that
denja: burial; metaphorically, silence
deza: this
echu: location, hereness, to dwell, live
Fa'aka: Purple, an inedible weed.
fach: loaf
falfel: ankle
fandog: mountain flat
faram: white
fassa: death of a profane thing, destruction of a profane feature of the planet.
Fecharch: shank
felomo: understand
feraka: meadow unplanted with Earth-type plants
ferchu: red
ferwe: response to thanks, “you're welcome”
feyu: salt
folcho: kind, category
foshek: now
futh: negative, bad, dis- or un- (infix)
gevam: part of something, during
gola: drink
golala: ten Pendleton's days, “seventy days”, “ten weeks”
gu: water
gugu: spring
gurra: waterfall
gusgu: clod of dirt; metaphorically, characteristic
guta: stream
hachwani: Reality, existence
hara: rain
hayanu: vision organ, eye (Teherrima)
hofathai: alien mind, spirit; metaphorically, to differ
huma: shortness
huthama: the world, Pendleton's
igfu: increase
jege: throw
june: thanks
kaha: void, emptiness
kaigu: saltpan, dead sea pan
kama'al: fear
Kathe: the Infinite, the Eternal
kegaru: cold
kehey: bark
kerpath: lung
kha'alto: weather
kharalt: rainstorm
khavok: peak
khay: please
khuliveri: caution! Look out!, for fear of
khunkale: day, 140-hr period
ksos: mountain, hill
ku'u: cause
matheazu: balance
matta: black
norona: rainbow
reok: like, as
sha: material, stuff, made of, constructed of (as an infix in a noun)
shando: river
She'a: quickness
she'em: evening
shenna: light
shorro: wetness, dew, mist
Shua: good
Teherrima: aliens, nonhominid toolmakers
Thana: stone
tharra: speck, grain, particle
thav: horn
theherin: raft of skins
therong: skin bag
thurru: hole
torko: filth
ulthi: show, display
va'ara: west
varancha: clouds
velal: confusion
veodan: mountain slopes
viohar: neither/nor
viya: no, not, un-
vor: plant, sow
wela: fall
zhat: stop
Numbers are profane:
one: hoka
two: eltha
three: oscha
four: weltha
five: chanthu
six: moggontho
seven: delu; deludelu
eight: elthemfo
nine: hangu
ten: tharmu
one hundred: dede
Note that any large number is usually constructed with exponents, expressed by the particle igfu, and the particles -fra and -lish-, plus and minus, thus:
dede'igfu'eltha: ten thousand.
twenty-nine: oscha'igfu'oschafra'eitha.
five hundred twenty-one: elthemfo'igfu'oschalisheltha
At first glance this number system may seem cumbersome, but faKhormo use it easily.
All humans and hominids are sacred, of course, and all Teherimma are profane. Machines, devices, and artifacts are sacred or profane depending on who made them. All natural features of the planet (prehuman features, that is, such as mountains and impact structures) are profane.
Cases
Farash has four cases: the subjective, the objective, the possessive, and the instrumental.
The subjective is the basic form of all nouns and indicates the subject of the sentence and the object of the copula. Usually nouns, when first given, are given in the subjective.
Thulm: tree
The objective indicates the direct or indirect object of the verb. It is created by infixing vowel “a” with the vowel of the noun.
pa'osag thualm: I love the tree
The possessive case indicates ownership, association, relation. It is indicated by infixing the vowel “e” with the vowel of the noun.
Karog thuelm: the tree of Karog, Karog's tree
The instrumental case is used when something is used to do something else. It is indicated by infixing “o” with the vowel of the noun.
Lexfos: rag, washcloth, kerchief
be'elt:wash
be'eltag leoxfos: I washed with the handkerchief
and:
be'eltag Kaarog leoxfos: I washed Karog with the handkerchief.
Vocative form of names: The vocative is not a separate “case” in Farash, as it applies solely to the names of humans, spirits and other beings. When emphatically addressing another, aspirating the initial consonant of the word indicates the vocative.
O Kharog! Hi, Karog!
O Ghontalck! Hi, Gontalck (female gender)
And so on.
Vocatives are used for social equals (of one's own class). For one of another caste, honorifics are used in polite speech.
These are prefixed to the name or other word describing a person; they aren't mandatory.
Khus- denotes nobles, warriors and priests
Gupankalag KhusDhateesch: I greet noble Mrs Dateesch
Emth- denotes merchants and such, bourgeois.
Gupankalad EmthMhataharat: You greet Mr Matar, the merchant.
Fer- denotes crafters and artisans
Gussankalab FerHrufurat: He/she will greet Mr Rufurat, the artisan
Ghir- means a peasant
Guwhankalag GhirGhontagth: I greeted Mrs Gontag, the peasant.
When speaking to Rhuthuok, no honorifics are necessary, but speaking to these people as an equal is an act of great courtesy. Rhuthuok married into FaKhormo families are usually treated as faKhormo of their spouse's class.
As for foreigners, assume that their occupation equals their class.
Verbs are formed by adding the verb infixes to a noun root. Thus, a verb always is formed from a noun. Verbal infixes are:
–pa–: Present tense
–wha–: Past tense
–ssa–:
tense
–sa–: undetermined tense (that is, the time in which the action occurred is not known or irrelevant)
Infinitives add a long vowel at the beginning of the verb.
Person is indicated by suffixes, as in Earth's Latin:
First person: -ag
Second person: -ad
Third person: –ap/ab
Et, “be”, E'et (to be) becomes a verb as so:
Ahet: to be
Ahepatag: I am
Ehepatad: you two are
Gunkale, “day”, is the root for the commonly used verb ahgunkale, “to greet” (someone)
gupankalag: I greet (anyone)
agupankalag khuenkale: We two greet the day
egupankalag Zhaemiyarsch: We, paucal, greet Mrs Zhamiya (female ending)
igupankalag Raetelalat: We, plural, greet Mr Ratelala (male ending)
gupankalad Saefun: You (alone) greet Safun (whose gender is not relevant)
agupankalad Koerak: You two greet Korak
egupankalad Naetarlsh: You, who may be counted, greet Mrs/Lady Natar
igupankalad Zhaehanat: You, who are innumerable, greet Mr. Zhahan
gupankalap Noerunat: He greets Mr Norun
agupankalap Se'enathanch: the two of them greet Mrs Senatha
egupankalap ethe'esonkt: the number of them, who can be counted, greeted the maidens, who are likewise able to be counted.
igupankalap athe'esonkt: the innumerable horde of them greeted the two maidens.
Guwhankalag: I greeted, .
And so on.
Lok, “eat”, is so:
Ahlok: to eat
Ahlokag: I eat
Ahlokad: you two eat
elokad: you paucal eat
ilokad: you plural eat
falokap: the one eats
alokap: the two eat
elokap: the paucal eat
ilokap: the plural eat
KhusVhuhunthat GhirTaehalargsch emoggontho'igfu'eltha fepa'oshopad
Mr Vhuhunth, a lord, paid Mrs Tahalarg, a peasant, thirty–six coins.
Etc.
Thus thakh, “elected leader, president, prime minister”, is made into a verb:
pathakhag: I am leader.
whathakhad: You were the leader.
ssathakhap: He will be the president/prime minister.
whathakhatk: She was the leader.
pathakhag: We two are presidents.
Essathakhad: You all are the leaders
Isathakhap: These gentlemen lead (in some undetermined time).
Os, “Heart” is conjugated
Ahos: to heart someone, to love/hate them in one's heart
pa'osag: I love
pa'osad: you love
pa'osat: he/she loves.
Marthamp, “poppy”, would be conjugated in more or less this way:
Ahmarthamp: to poppy someone, to drug them
pamarthampag: I drug
pamarthampad: you drug, you give (someone) poppy
pamarthampat: he/she gives poppy
Apamarthampag: we poppy (someone)
Epamarthampag: We enough to be counted drug (someone)
Ipamarthampag: We, an innumerable horde, give poppy
Whamarthampag: I gave drugs, I poppied
Awhamarthampag: we two poppied, we two gave drugs
Ewhamarthampag: We (a number) poppied
Whamarthampad: You alone poppied.
Awhamarthampad: You two poppied, gave drugs
Ewhamarthampad: You (a number) poppied, medicated
Iwhamarthampad: You, a horde without number, poppied, gave drugs
Samarthampab: He drugs (time unknown/undetermined)
And so on.
Hechar, “horse”, is conjugated in mostly the same way.
Hepacharag: I ride, I go on horseback
Ahepacharag: We two ride
Ehepacharag: We, paucal, ride
Ihepacharag: We, plural, ride
Hepacharad: You (sing) ride
Ahepacharad: You two ride
Ehepacharad: You, paucal, ride
Ihepacharad: You, plural, ride
Hepacharabch: She rides
Hepacharap: he rides
Ahepacharap: The two men ride
Ehepacharap: Some men ride
Ihepacharap: many men ride
Hewhacharag: I rode
And so on.
Including -fir- indicates that the action is perfect (completed).
Hefirwhacharad: You had ridden.
Hefirssacharag: I will have ridden
And so on.
Questions
The suffix -fig indicates a question and is usually added at the end of the verb.
Pa'osadfig Goerakth. You love Gorakth, don't you?
Imperative
Imperative verb forms are almost always formed in Farash by doubling the first syllable of the conjugated verb. Thus:
Gugupankalad Mu'aranschth.
You must greet Mrs Muran.
E'achu sheshepannad!
Shine the light here!
Ga'arkan folshok ebubulot!
Now play [a song called] “The Frogfish”!
Viyajejepage'ad!
Don't throw [it]!
Emotional affixes
A noteworthy feature of the Farash verb is the use of color affixes to indicate the emotion with which a person or animal performs any action.
Ferchu, “red”, when prefixed to a verb, means that the action is angry; go, “blue”, means that the action is
Adjectives
Adjectives are words which modify nouns. As might be expected, adjectives have gender, number and case, but are derived from noun roots, as most Farash words are.
Positive adjectives are derived from any noun root by adding the infix go. Thus:
Khunat: man/human
Khunatsk: woman/human
Khugonat: mannish, manlike
Khugonbatsk: feminine, womanly, girlish
thus:
khutsk khugonat: the manlike woman (sacred transvestite, sworn–virgin)
Khop khugonatbatsk: the womanlike man (berdache, sacred transvestite)
Chu: Water
chugo: watery,wet
Ichugo: many waters
Comparative adjectives use the infix gogo
Hegogochar: more horseish
Khugogonbatsk: more womanly
Nogogorunen: more rainbowish
shugogoa: better
Superlative adjectives use the infix gan.
Thus:
shugana: best
Heganchar: most horsely
kegangaru: coldest
moganlo: most beloved
Noganrunen: most rainbowish
Absolute adjectives use the infix -gar–.
Fagarash: deathlike, deadly, mortal
shugara: well
And so on.
Adjectives come before the noun in cases of adjectives expressing beauty/ugliness, age, number, goodness/badness, and size. In other cases, adjectives come after the noun.
Thus:
hax: the dog.
refurm: beans
saph: soup, broth
saph refugon: bean soup
Isaph irefugon: a vast amount of bean soup, a lake of bean soup
yunichos: bad
Yunichogos hax: bad dog
a'ynuichogos hax: two bad dogs
e'yunichogos hax: many bad dogs
i'yunichogos hax: bad dogs who cannot be counted
sholm: rot (sacred)
shogolm: rotten
erratk shogolm: rotten potato
fa'erratk fasholgolm: a single rotten potato
a'erratk a'shogolm: two rotten potatoes
e'erratk e'shogolm: some rotten potatoes
i'erratk i'shogolm: a vast amount of rotten potatoes
Adverbs
The adverbial infix goes at the end of a word, immediately before the gendered ending. Adverbs characterize a verb, modifying the action of the verb. Adverbs are usually not subject to pluralization and it would sound odd to most faFarash to pluralize such a word. Adverbs are also normally not affected by the case system.
Adverb status (English “gaily”, “merrily”, “sunwise”) is indicated by ku in most Farash words; loanwords sometimes keep their own system.
Thus:
Hechakuar: Horse-ishly, horsely, in the manner of a horse
Thakuakh: Kingly, lordly
Efehakuach: literately, in the manner of a scholar, a scribe
thuuhakuat: gift-ishly, in the manner of a ritual gift
Ejupane ikhuas thuuhakuat: They thanked the nobles in the manner of a ritual gift, a potlatch.
Lahukat tiangat fehakuach khowharvornasth.
Lahukat [name] spoke of Butros' World in the manner of a scribe.
Relative Clauses
The beginning of a relative clause is signaled by *fash*.
The end of the clause is signaled by *fuff*.
Thus.
The man, *fash* who knew Farash, *fash* which is a difficult language *fuff* *fuff* translated the document, *fash* which was hard to read *fuff*.
Pronouns
When pronouns are needed (which isn't often, given the circumstances), they are:
ono: I
na, nap: he
ne, nech: she
ni, nik: the sacred
no: the profane
Translation
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Agheresh huathama ghewhareshab. Chovam ba'atharkh ishewhalok, fe'araka cha'engal Sha'ehanara yowhashorth fra i'ewhachuap. Fash ga'erok i'apaner fra ga'erok voganor ipapahekth fuff ighereshab. Garok pagarhekth ga'orok idawhamath fra halomathsh kha'ofor idawhamath.
Fra fash sha'erkth frava'ehat fash ka'aha azhapat fuff iguwhakag ku'o'u fole ti'ongat viyashepalok fuff ighewharesh. Kathe chawhartha fra sha'arkth frava'ahat ba'ortharkh, kha'enazch gufirwhakat.
Kathe “Khuliveri!” aghereshap fra Kathe “Khanazch ahapachwanat fra aghe'aresh ighepareshab, fra mat imepanamap, fra i'apanerap iviyazhapat” aghereshap.
Kathe, “Ichaparthag, fra i'o'ashchog vi'oya'ifa'lomop ivepalalag.” Fra Kathe hua'athama ti'angat avowharop, fra sha'erkth viyaguwhakhat. Fra “Babel” fowhalap ku'o'u Kathe o'ashcho ti'engat viyafawhalomab, fra Kathe ti'angat vowharop.
Conversation
Host: Gupankalag
I greet (you)
Visitor: Gupankalag
I greet you.
Visitor: Ahepatadfig KhusHeshovut?
Are you Mr Heshovut, the noble?
Host: Heshovut vechet ega'erok ahepatag; ahepatadfig?
I am the noble lord Heshovut, of the two carved stones (place name); who are you?
Visitor: EmthShunanat foleag
I am Mr Shunanat, the merchant.
Host: Shua, shua! Fa'afar ise'athepagakadfig?
Good, good! Do you deal in wool?
Visitor: Viyase'athepagakag, khus.
I do not deal in wool, noble.
Host: Ah! Emth, ichepat ise'athepagakadfig?
Ah! Merchant, do you deal in tools?
Visitor: Viya, viya, vhechet. Ichepat vosh ise'athepagakag.
No, no, noble lord. I deal a little in tools. (lit. “a finger”)
Host: Meufig se'athepagakad? Vepalal!
What do you deal (in)? I am confused!
Visitor: Tha'enen se'athepagakad, vhechat.
I deal in pain, noble lord.
Host: Tha'enenfig? Maayavudal, hemth! Fo'alcho se'a'apathegak ahepatadfig?
In pain? [obscenity], merchant! What kind of merchant are you?
Visitor: Se'apathegak ima'arthamp ahepatag.
I am a merchant of poppy [drugs; “I am a pharmacist”]
Host: Ima'arthamp dapamathad?
Have you poppies? (“Do you have any medicine?”)
Visitor:Ema'arthamp fra ehi'aloj ifo'elcho dapamathag; ma'ot?
I have poppies and medicine of multiple kinds [small enough to be counted]; why? [lit. “for what?”]
Host: Chupashag fra fepaharag.
I am sick and in pain. [lit. “I sicken and pain”]
Visitor:Ema'arthamp ese'assathegag
We shall deal in poppy.
Sacred Text
Fra Dhai Bha'aranas fa'ov khe'elathen Ra'eshofat ewhachuap.
At one time, the Buddha was dwelling in Vārāṇasī, at the Deer Park of Ṛṣipatana.
Fra Dhai cha'anthu eve'achet zhapathvat fra gheparesh.
And the Buddha spoke unto five monks and said.
Nik the'arvarthnn tha'enanet ahepatab.
This is the religious truth concerning the pain of the world.
Zhathvat cho'ivam ahe'iwhatab viyaghewharashap.
This scripture was not spoken in the time that was.
Hassarashap.
It is to be thought over[lit. sat on].
Achitnik a'abatharkh fra ha'arash fra fe'alomo fra she'athafat mepanamat.
Doing this gives birth to vision, wisdom, understanding, and enlightenment.
Nik zha'ethavat fe'elchesh tha'inanet ahepatab.
This is the scripture of the hoarding of the world's pain,
fra fa'essap tha'enanet ahepatab.
And it is of the end of suffering,
Fra fe'e'har khu'ol tha'onanet ahepatab
And it is of the path away from suffering,
Inik izhethavat viyachwewhal cho'ivam ihepatab
These sayings were not heard in the time before.
Ihassarashap.
They are to be thought over.
Achitnik a'abatharkh fra ha'arash fra fe'alomo fra she'athafat mepanamat.
Doing this gives birth to vision, wisdom, understanding, and enlightenment.
Atayamat ha'arash zha'ethavat tha'enanet shupahat.
To know the wisdom of the scripture of the world-pain is good.
Fra nik zhethavat viyachwewhal cho'ivam hepatab.
And this saying was not heard in the time before.
Zhathvat O'as
The Heart Sutra
Chovam Evezhugothoshveret fuththozhathavahat vagardhdhada Khusshe'athafat Zha'athvat asachip
At that time Avalokitshvara/KwanYin the Boddhisattva performed the profound Sutra of the Great Enlightenment.
Khus echantha efelthesh shepannap.
He illuminated the five bundles.
Fra eviyathar basarthakap
And he saw that they were empty.
Fra e'aschat fratha'ananet shasandokarap
And he crossed over all pain and suffering.
O S'haherofat! Thwek ka'afa viyahosafaip; Kafa thwe'ak viyahosafaip.
O Shariputra! Form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form.
Thwek ka'afa ahepatab; kafa thwe'ak ahepatab, fra me'asath, ha'arash, the'adal me'anam, ehepatab
Form is emptiness; emptiness is form, so are feeling, cognition, origin and consciousness.
O S'haherofat! Ithermat igu'asgu iviyahosafaip. Iviyamesanamap fra ivoyafasasap.
O Shariputra! All dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not born and do not die.
Iiyatosorkop fra iviyabe'seltogap
They are not pure and not defiled.
Fra viohar viyisagfup viohar viyachasarthap.
And they neither increase nor decrease.
Fra kafa viyathwe'ak fraviyame'asath fraviyaha'arash fraviyakhafatsch fraviyathe'adal fraviya'i'o'alchom fraviyachu'ana fraviyaha'at fraviyaghe'aresh fraviyatsa'atat fraviya'e'ashkat fraviyaba'atharkh fraviyachwe'al fraviyachu'ana fraviyape'ahekth fraviyavo'ash fraviya'ithe'armet viyahepatab. Fraviyaka'archar o'elchom fraviyathe'adal
Therefore in emptiness there is no form and no feeling and no formation and no consciousness and no eyes and no ears and no mouth and no speech and no body
and no mind and no sights and no sounds and no smells and no tastes and no objects of touch and no dharmas.
And there is no field of the eyes and no mind-consciousness.
Fraviyata'ayamat fraviyaviyathe'armat ahepatab.
And there is no knowledge and no ignorance.
Fraviyae'afo fraviyafa'ass fraviyazha'at e'efo fraviyazha'at fa'ess ahepatab.
And there is no old age and no death and no ending of old age and death.
Fraviyafe'ahar fraviyafe'alchesh fraviyafa'assa fraviyashe'alok fraviyaha'aresh fraviya'a'achit.
And there is no suffering and no accumulating and no extinction and no journey and no understanding and no attaining. |
|
|
| pad thai recipe |
[Mar. 16th, 2012|07:51 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | recipe, recipes | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | popcorny | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Episode 211: Circus Days Are Here Again… - The Clockwork Cabaret | ] |
From Jenna
Step 1: Boil noodles, drain, rinse, set aside.
Step 2: Open super-firm sprouted tofu, drain, pat with a paper towel to get rid of excess water, slice into cubes/strips of your choice, roll in corn starch and salt, pan fry in coconut oil, set aside.
Step 3: Saute vegetables of your choice. I chose onions, bok choi, and carrots. Scoot veggies to the side and cook two eggs in the same skillet. Mix together.
Step 4: Add noodles and stir quickly. Let the veg and noodles simmer while you mix the following sauce: 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup hot water (stir stir stir); lime juice, sweet hot pepper sauce, and grated garlic to taste. Pour this sauce over the noodles and veggies. Add the tofu.
Step 5: Eat up! |
|
|
| More Farash |
[Feb. 18th, 2012|09:42 pm] |
Farash as it is Spoken
Farash (fa-RAASH) is the vernacular of large areas of the Khormo nation, and spoken by merchants, missionaries and scholars abroad. Farash developed from Old Woccofa, an intermontane vernacular, over the thousand years following the rise of the FaKormo people who migrated from the mountain plateaux around Kheley–Mahak, east of the Tidepeaks, into the basin of the Nurro astrobleme and the four mountain rings around it. Save for a remnant in the salt-swamp where the astrobleme is deepest, below the mouth of the Khestalo river, the previous population was absorbed through intermarriage. The Rhuthok language, spoken by these tribal groups, themselves descendents of the original recolonizers of the Nurro, provided a series of loanwords into Farash and other tongues; these words are recognizable owing to the click consonants and stretched vowels which they contain. Yeshon, Khanatha and Meje'er, the three languages closest to Farash, are also Woccofa–derived and together with the coastal dialects form the Yeshon–Farash language family.
Farash became a written language in the time of the Safalomo protectorate, with scholars of the Safalo using Farash for government proclamations and eventually the monks of Khoro-Balastey using the tongue for missionary work and transcribing the Fathey scriptures into the language. The Naddar syllabary was used, since the ancestral pictographic system of the Waca'hana mountains' intermontane peoples was itself unknown to the monks and lay preachers of the Fatheyist religion. Naddar is poorly suited to the sounds of the Farash language, however, and a series of linguistic reforms in the times of Hayu the First ended with the adoption of the present Olchon script. Olchon is the result of decades of linguistic reforms and has been almost universally adopted for the past five centuries; only scholars can read the older Naddar script at the present. The religious themselves no longer retain many Naddar manuscripts, most having been transliterated into Olchon owing to the efforts of the Fellenado brotherhood of scribes.
Pronunciation
Vowels are ah, eh, ee, oh, oo. Aspirated consonants are as in Hebrew or Greek. -ss- is a hissing s spoken by bending the tip of the tongue off the roof of the mouth. Doubled consonants are not doubled in length and ' is the glottal stop.
A few words, such as p!ataal (a kind of insect) and laat!or (the name of a medicinal herb) contain click consonants, made by releasing air from the mouth explosively while pronouncing the consonant. These are relics of the old Rhuthoy dialects; the Rhuthoy themselves sometimes still speak their old languages and sometimes do not. Loanwords from Rhuthoy also sometimes contain long vowels, such as the Vuuo'or, a river flowing in the Chartha mountains down into Lake Tannakar. These vowels are held twice as long as ordinary vowels and can be a bit tricky for new speakers. Unless indicated in writing, the long vowel is not two vowels separated by a stop, but a single long sound. Accent is on the penult unless otherwise indicated.
Farash is an agglutinative languages, with words becoming larger and larger as infixes, prefixes and suffixes are added to word roots. There is a four–part system of grammatical number: singular, dual, paucal and plural nouns. The word “efahach”, meaning alphabet, will do nicely as an example; it naturally has feminine gender, as do almost all nouns associated with language.
Fa'efahach: a literate person.
Afa'efehach: two literate people (dual)
Efa'efehach: A number of literate people small enough to be counted (paucal)
Ifa'efehach: Too many literate people to count. (plural)
Thes= cow; athes=two cows; ethes= paucal cows
Genders are masculine, representing males and things associated with men, feminine, representing women and things associated with women, sacred, representing animals and plants “with souls” (corresponding to animals with Earth–derived proteins and DNA) and profane (animals and plants without Earth–derived proteins or DNA, and thus, less commonly employed by humans).
Masculine nouns end in –at,th, –ap,–ab –ak, or –akh
achit: doings, do
aharahanat: boddhisattva, ascended one
achmit: government, the Protectorate
anch: arrow
av: give (not sacred)
baranayat: eclectic
bathat: sight, looking
belth: break, crack, explode, rupture
beongap: male lies
chab: knot, tie
chehewerayat: divine one (borrowed from Yeshon)
chafat: spoon
chakunat: hominid used as pack animal
chalap: lock
chepat: tool
chethath: swing
chochanat: carpenter, woodworker
chudhat: wrap
chushat: man-witch, wizard
damat: ownership
Dhai: the Stone One, the Savior
echurak: brother
esho'or: near
Fa'efehechat: a masculine literate person, a literate man.
fachet: razor
fafathan: shaking sickness
fehar: narrow mountain trail
feoshap: money, beads
fetat: allowing, permission
fethelak: same–sex love, Greek love
fthafet: holy monument, holy shrine to the saints
fuththozhathavahat: spirit of the Savior, one who is like the Savior, the Dhai
gastgung: pants
gavat: holy beads, prayer beads
ginanat: barley harvest
gintap: gold
gostinag: waist (male)
gukhat: building
henea: rope
hesthak: pig-like elephant beast
hetat: house
Hrakh, hrop: man
huthu: protect
ivorat: nasty monkey, dirty monkey
kerat: hat
kergig: barley
keveochat: neighbor man
khat: foot
khav: wood
khavo'up: male servant
khelap: wild dog
khet: house
khethet: sword
kilat: male face
ksanak: axe
lachiat: die (gaming)
letheut: fight
maayavudal: an obscenity
manzhat: secretary, bureaucrat
nanat: uncle
peguk: evil
renat: hand (male)
saechat: robes
saryesak: assembly, Parliament
se'athegak: merchant
sehem: knife
shachep: cloak
Shehat: the Sun, Davis' Star
shelok: traveller
shemenot: Fatheyist monk, brother
shenget: brotherhood of monks, monastery, congregation
shethafat: to be enlightened, to become a holy one
shor: weight, kilo
siras: open
sirat: lion cat
takhat: bow
tass: bring
teth: itch
thalet: boy
thanen: pain
thananat: world–pain, weltschmerz
thashvet: enemy, foe
thavesat: remnant, leftovers
thechat: button and loop fastener
themmat: drum
themth: "drummer", a royal title
thervav: holy law, holy rule
thoruth: lark, songbird
thusat: friend, swear-brother
thuuhat: gift, ritual gift (Rhuthok loanword)
thwek: hammer
thwod: reed flute
tingat: Butros' World
tratakhat: crossbow
tsep: writing
vechet: noble lord
vorak: commander, leader
vo'up: bearer
Vorau: planting barley
vorhathat: exercise
Vuyetoz: new year (perihelion of Butros' World)
zhashafat: clandestinity, secrecy
zhathvat: holy writ, scripture, sutra
Feminine nouns always end in –th,–ch, –ph, –sh, or in a consonant cluster nearly unpronounceable by one not born to it. Note that adding a masculine or feminine ending to a name which doesn't have one is a clear means of indicating which gender a person is.
achitth: womens' doings
alch: bowels (of meat animal)
battha: genitals
batharkh: sight, seeing
beongth: female lies
chalt: bread
charelth: straw basket
charsh: wheat
cheench: grapes
chovyath: weeping
chush: a witch, magic-woman
chuthesh: teenager
damath: having, possession
echurth: sister
echul: hole
efo: granny, old woman
egg: tham
errafth: plums, prunes
escharfs: flower
eweshch: yes
fafar: wool
fatsch: loaf
fav: ash
fechelathch: same-sex love, Sapphic love
felth: apple
fosherkt: harvest
foyvaash: expense, cost
gheresh: speak, speech (a language)
ghethenesh: writing
gorsh: sheep/goat
gostingth: waist (female)
hakarsh: gourd
harash: seat, sitting
shochamp: eating
hechoth: rag
hemeth: poetry, lyrical, musical
hewarath: epic poetry
hirlch: cry
husharsh: pumpkin
keveorch: female neighbor
khadateshch: arrow
khanshch: raisin
khanaztch: the people, the nation
khanenash: roasted grain
kharosh: meditation, zazen
khavorf: female servant, handmaid
khevents: moon, one of the moons
khol: cheek
khorkh: dye, paint
khorvornasth: reading
khuskt: woman
kilarth: female face
mesath: passion, lust
nanash: aunt
ornth: cream
pehekth, pehekthsh: cook, cooking
pekhatth: cedar, incense; metaphorically, worship
rahashch: demon spirit
renth: hand (female)
shafisks: sweet bread, pastry; metaphorically, desired
sharkth: town, village
she'eth: grass
shemenosth: Fatheyist nun
shengeshch: nunnery, assembly of nuns, congregation
sheratth: tears
shevortsch: congratulations, good work!
tayamat: knowledge, sacred knowledge
telech: walnut
temesch: feast, celebration
teth: itch
thalf: radish
thegalft: help
thegumth: flour
thervarth: religious law, religious duty
thes: cow, cattlebeast (a bull is thesap)
thesonkt: girl, maiden
theshtra: custom, tradition
thusamf: sworn-sister, friend
thuthu: throat
vafur: down
var: hair
vararch: thornbush
vash: sheaf
vats: buck, ungelded westh
vegich: bamboo
vegat: pen
verekatth: love, opposite–sex love
vevuk: suck, milk
veyash: sheep, woolbeast
veyf: millet
vikha'al: well-being
vosh: finger
vuth: vulva
westh: oast (huge hominid used for riding)
yachashan: daughter
yeshef: sweeping, broom
zhananasch: cozy joy
zhannath: indecisive
Sacred gender is indicated by ending in a consonant. Profane words almost always end in a vowel.
Sacred:
ahayachat: certainty
al: bowels (wild animal)
aner: do, make
athesh: feet
banchat: knee
bokok: arm
chanagal: uncivilized, “country”
charchay: to plow using awesth
chass: cough
chav: fish
chega: story
chehek: pickaxe
chemon: milk curd
chok: soul
chorath: dance
chorkosh: rodent
choshme: karma, destiny
chothof: book
chuna: nose, smell
chushtayat: sorcery-science
chwel: pain
daraf: canal
deshfor: picture
Erratk: a tuber, Solanum
eshe'et: weakness
eshchat: back
eshkat: top of head
eshmole: peace
etham: neck
etheshchem: vague
eyenav: sleep
chush:sickness
fafal: wag, shake
fass: death, to die
fath: sight
fe'a: measure, liter, quart
fecha: apology
fefa'an: dog-monkey
felatz: chicken
felchesh: hoard, treasure
felich: light a fire; metaphorically, to inherit, bequeath
fevawa: welcome
felthesh: burden
fole: name
forshov: eradication, extermination
ga'an: crow, black bird
garkan: frogfish, walking fish
garok: stone carved by humans, hewn stone
geriya: soon
gheloz: illness caused by sacred things, bacterial infection
ghosh: forget
ghuthet: edible meat
hiloj: medicine
ijam: call
je'ere: rather, somewhat
kakar: hike
Kar: walk
kawal: wagon
khaharoz: huge bearlike postdog
khalachun: furrow
khalchot: wild dog
khana: privy, latrine
kharash: plow
Kharchar: plowland, tilth
kharost: spade
kharthum: yoke
khah, khahat: you, thou
khat: word
khelathen: rabbitlike deer
kher: ox
kheth: rectum
khokhok: hunger
kholesh: glass
kholol: softness
khong: door
kut: who, whom, who-ness, identity
laat!or: a medicinal herb, derived from Earthly Salvia (Rhuthok loanword)
lacho: behind
mat: what, what-ness, substance
me'u: what
menam: birth
mif: tooth
molo: beloved
ne'as: selfishness
nyemet: steak, chop
olchom:eye
oshcho: language, speech
otham: doing, deed
p!ataal: a sort of insect (Rhuthok loanword)
schan: kill
pash: tie, bind
shcal: overtake
shchel: face
shishar: crowd, group
sham: hair, fur
tayamat: knowledge
teweo: salve, healing oil
thamat: bamboo
tharfer: court, holding court
thayek: prayer
thedal: awakening
thefer: drive, send
thelal: forget
thol: strike, hit
thonchur: bone
thek: finger
tsak: stand
tsatsat: meat, flesh
tthatat: itch
tuggarth: breasts, udders
vadhdhada:canyon
vashala: sun-worshipper, monotheist
ve'eri: merit, offerings at wats
vem: marriage
ven: drink
vesh: cat
vezertth: document, “passport”
vil: wine
volegh: a weed
vor: full, fullness
voshur: saw
vuchol: force, coercion
vulth: rat
vunj: tube, pipe
yethos: head (of an Earthly animal)
zhalat: posthuman
Profane
aga'a:big
ali: time
bava: fire
char: late
chartha: sinking, going down (either sacred or profane can do this)
chata: short
cher: stone, uncut stone
chova: time
churdi: morning
denja: burial
echu: location, hereness
Fa'aka: Purple, an inedible weed.
fach: loaf
fandog: mountain flat
faram: white
fassa: death of a profane thing, destruction of a profane feature of the planet.
Fecharch: shank
felomo: understand
feraka: meadow unplanted with Earth-type plants
ferchu: red
ferwe: response to thanks, “you're welcome”
feyu: salt
folcho: kind, category
foshek: now
futh: negative, bad, dis- or un- (infix)
gevam: part of something
gola: drink
golala: ten Pendleton's days, “seventy days”, “ten weeks”
gu: water
gugu: spring
gurra: waterfall
gusgu: clod of dirt
guta: stream
hachwani: Reality, existence
hara: rain
hayanu: vision organ, eye (Teherrima)
hofathai: alien mind, spirit
huma: shortness
huthama: the world, Pendleton's
jege: throw
june: thanks
kaha: void, emptiness
kaigu: saltpan, dead sea pan
kama'al: fear
Kathe: the Infinite, the Eternal
kegaru: cold
kehey: bark
kerpath: lung
kha'alto: weather
kharalt: rainstorm
khavok: peak
khay: please
khuliveri: caution! Look out!
khunkale: day, 140-hr period
ksos: mountain, hill
ku'u: cause
matheazu: balance
matta: black
norona: rainbow
reok: like, as
sha: material, stuff, made of, constructed of (as an infix in a noun)
shando: river
She'a: quickness
she'em: evening
shenna: light
shorro: wetness, dew, mist
Shua: good
Teherrima: aliens, nonhominid toolmakers
Thana: stone
tharra: speck, grain, particle
thav: horn
theherin: raft of skins
therong: skin bag
thurru: hole
torko: filth
ulthi: show, display
va'ara: west
varancha: clouds
veodan: mountain slopes
viya: no, not, un-
wela: fall
zhat: stop
Numbers are profane:
one: hoka
two: eltha
three: oscha
four: weltha
five: chanthu
six: moggontho
seven: delu; deludelu
eight: elthemfo
nine: hangu
ten: tharmu
one hundred: dede
Note that any large number is usually constructed with exponents, expressed by the particle igfu, and the particles -fra and -lish-, plus and minus, thus:
dede'igfu'eltha: ten thousand.
twenty-nine: oscha'igfu'oschafra'eitha.
five hundred twenty-one: elthemfo'igfu'oschalisheltha
At first glance this number system may seem cumbersome, but faKhormo use it easily.
All humans and hominids are sacred, of course, and all Teherimma are profane. Machines, devices, and artifacts are sacred or profane depending on who made them. All natural features of the planet (prehuman features, that is, such as mountains and impact structures) are profane.
Cases
Farash has four cases: the subjective, the objective, the possessive, and the instrumental.
The subjective is the basic form of all nouns and indicates the subject of the sentence and the object of the copula. Usually nouns, when first given, are given in the subjective.
Thulm: tree
The objective indicates the direct or indirect object of the verb. It is created by infixing vowel “a” with the vowel of the noun.
pa'osag thualm: I love the tree
The possessive case indicates ownership, association, relation. It is indicated by infixing the vowel “e” with the vowel of the noun.
Karog thuelm: the tree of Karog, Karog's tree
The instrumental case is used when something is used to do something else. It is indicated by infixing “o” with the vowel of the noun.
Lexfos: rag, washcloth, kerchief
be'elt:wash
be'eltag leoxfos: I washed with the handkerchief
and:
be'eltag Kaarog leoxfos: I washed Karog with the handkerchief.
Vocative form of names: The vocative is not a separate “case” in Farash, as it applies solely to the names of humans, spirits and other beings. When emphatically addressing another, aspirating the initial consonant of the word indicates the vocative.
O Kharog! Hi, Karog!
O Ghontalck! Hi, Gontalck (female gender)
And so on.
Vocatives are used for social equals (of one's own class). For one of another caste, honorifics are used in polite speech.
These are prefixed to the name or other word describing a person; they aren't mandatory.
Khus- denotes nobles, warriors and priests
Gupankalag KhusDhateesch: I greet noble Mrs Dateesch
Emth- denotes merchants and such, bourgeois.
Gupankalad EmthMhataharat: You greet Mr Matar, the merchant.
Fer- denotes crafters and artisans
Gussankalab FerHrufurat: He/she will greet Mr Rufurat, the artisan
Ghir- means a peasant
Guwhankalag GhirGhontagth: I greeted Mrs Gontag, the peasant.
When speaking to Rhuthuok, no honorifics are necessary, but speaking to these people as an equal is an act of great courtesy. Rhuthuok married into FaKhormo families are usually treated as faKhormo of their spouse's class.
As for foreigners, assume that their occupation equals their class.
Verbs are formed by adding the verb infixes to a noun root. Thus, a verb always is formed from a noun. Verbal infixes are:
–pa–: Present tense
–wha–: Past tense
–ssa–: Future tense
–sa–: undetermined tense (that is, the time in which the action occurred is not known or irrelevant)
Infinitives add a long vowel at the beginning of the verb.
Person is indicated by suffixes, as in Earth's Latin:
First person: -ag
Second person: -ad
Third person: –ap/ab
Et, “be”, becomes a verb as so:
Ahet: to be
Ahapetag: I am
Ahapetad: you two are
Gunkale, “day”, is the root for the commonly used verb ahgunkale, “to greet” (someone)
gupankalag: I greet (anyone)
agupankalag khuenkale: We two greet the day
egupankalag Zhaemiyarsch: We, paucal, greet Mrs Zhamiya (female ending)
igupankalag Raetelalat: We, plural, greet Mr Ratelala (male ending)
gupankalad Saefun: You (alone) greet Safun (whose gender is not relevant)
agupankalad Koerak: You two greet Korak
egupankalad Naetarlsh: You, who may be counted, greet Mrs/Lady Natar
igupankalad Zhaehanat: You, who are innumerable, greet Mr. Zhahan
gupankalap Noerunat: He greets Mr Norun
agupankalap Se'enathanch: the two of them greet Mrs Senatha
egupankalap ethe'esonkt: the number of them, who can be counted, greeted the maidens, who are likewise able to be counted.
igupankalap athe'esonkt: the innumerable horde of them greeted the two maidens.
Guwhankalag: I greeted, .
And so on.
Lok, “eat”, is so:
Ahlok: to eat
Ahlokag: I eat
Ahlokad: you two eat
elokad: you paucal eat
ilokad: you plural eat
falokap: the one eats
alokap: the two eat
elokap: the paucal eat
ilokap: the plural eat
KhusVhuhunthat GhirTaehalargsch emoggontho'igfu'eltha fepa'oshopad
Mr Vhuhunth, a lord, paid Mrs Tahalarg, a peasant, thirty–six coins.
Etc.
Thus thakh, “elected leader, president, prime minister”, is made into a verb:
pathakhag: I am leader.
whathakhad: You were the leader.
ssathakhap: He will be the president/prime minister.
whathakhatk: She was the leader.
pathakhag: We two are presidents.
Essathakhad: You all are the leaders
Isathakhap: These gentlemen lead (in some undetermined time).
Os, “Heart” is conjugated
Ahos: to heart someone, to love/hate them in one's heart
pa'osag: I love
pa'osad: you love
pa'osat: he/she loves.
Marthamp, “poppy”, would be conjugated in more or less this way:
Ahmarthamp: to poppy someone, to drug them
pamarthampag: I drug
pamarthampad: you drug, you give (someone) poppy
pamarthampat: he/she gives poppy
Apamarthampag: we poppy (someone)
Epamarthampag: We enough to be counted drug (someone)
Ipamarthampag: We, an innumerable horde, give poppy
Whamarthampag: I gave drugs, I poppied
Awhamarthampag: we two poppied, we two gave drugs
Ewhamarthampag: We (a number) poppied
Whamarthampad: You alone poppied.
Awhamarthampad: You two poppied, gave drugs
Ewhamarthampad: You (a number) poppied, medicated
Iwhamarthampad: You, a horde without number, poppied, gave drugs
Samarthampab: He drugs (time unknown/undetermined)
And so on.
Hechar, “horse”, is conjugated in mostly the same way.
Hepacharag: I ride, I go on horseback
Ahepacharag: We two ride
Ehepacharag: We, paucal, ride
Ihepacharag: We, plural, ride
Hepacharad: You (sing) ride
Ahepacharad: You two ride
Ehepacharad: You, paucal, ride
Ihepacharad: You, plural, ride
Hepacharabch: She rides
Hepacharap: he rides
Ahepacharap: The two men ride
Ehepacharap: Some men ride
Ihepacharap: many men ride
Hewhacharag: I rode
And so on.
Including -fir- indicates that the action is perfect (completed).
Hefirwhacharad: You had ridden.
Hefirssacharag: I will have ridden
And so on.
Questions
The suffix -fig indicates a question and is usually added at the end of the word.
Pa'osadfig Goerakth. You love Gorakth, don't you?
Adjectives
Adjectives are words which modify nouns. As might be expected, adjectives have gender, number and case, but are derived from noun roots, as most Farash words are.
Positive adjectives are derived from any noun root by adding the infix go. Thus:
Khunat: man/human
Khunatsk: woman/human
Khugonat: mannish, manlike
Khugonbatsk: feminine, womanly, girlish
thus:
khutsk khugonat: the manlike woman (sacred transvestite, sworn–virgin)
Khop khugonatbatsk: the womanlike man (berdache, sacred transvestite)
Chu: Water
chugo: watery,wet
Ichugo: many waters
Comparative adjectives use the infix gogo
Hegogochar: more horseish
Khugogonbatsk: more womanly
Nogogorunen: more rainbowish
shugogoa: better
Superlative adjectives use the infix gan.
Thus:
shugana: best
Heganchar: most horsely
kegangaru: coldest
moganlo: most beloved
Noganrunen: most rainbowish
Absolute adjectives use the infix -gar–.
Fagarash: deathlike, deadly, mortal
shugara: well
And so on.
Adjectives come before the noun in cases of adjectives expressing beauty/ugliness, age, number, goodness/badness, and size. In other cases, adjectives come after the noun.
Thus:
hax: the dog.
refurm: beans
saph: soup, broth
saph refugon: bean soup
Isaph irefugon: a vast amount of bean soup, a lake of bean soup
yunichos: bad
Yunichogos hax: bad dog
a'ynuichogos hax: two bad dogs
e'yunichogos hax: many bad dogs
i'yunichogos hax: bad dogs who cannot be counted
sholm: rot (sacred)
shogolm: rotten
erratk shogolm: rotten potato
fa'erratk fasholgolm: a single rotten potato
a'erratk a'shogolm: two rotten potatoes
e'erratk e'shogolm: some rotten potatoes
i'erratk i'shogolm: a vast amount of rotten potatoes
Adverbs
The adverbial infix goes at the end of a word, immediately before the gendered ending. Adverbs characterize a verb, modifying the action of the verb. Adverbs are usually not subject to pluralization and it would sound odd to most faFarash to pluralize such a word. Adverbs are also normally not affected by the case system.
Adverb status (English “gaily”, “merrily”, “sunwise”) is indicated by ku in most Farash words; loanwords sometimes keep their own system.
Thus:
Hechakuar: Horse-ishly, horsely, in the manner of a horse
Thakuakh: Kingly, lordly
Efehakuach: literately, in the manner of a scholar, a scribe
thuuhakuat: gift-ishly, in the manner of a ritual gift
Ejupane ikhuas thuuhakuat: They thanked the nobles in the manner of a ritual gift, a potlatch.
Lahukat tiangat fehakuach khowharvornasth.
Lahukat [name] spoke of Butros' World in the manner of a scribe.
Relative Clauses
The beginning of a relative clause is signaled by *fash*.
The end of the clause is signaled by *fuff*.
Thus.
The man, *fash* who knew Farash, *fash* which is a difficult language *fuff* *fuff* translated the document, *fash* which was hard to read *fuff*.
Pronouns
When pronouns are needed (which isn't often, given the circumstances), they are:
ono: I
na, nap: he
ne, nech: she
ni, nik: the sacred
no: the profane |
|
|
| Farash words |
[Feb. 14th, 2012|04:54 pm] |
hrop: man
khuskt: woman
thesonkt: girl, maiden |
|
|
| Farash |
[Feb. 6th, 2012|01:49 pm] |
Thank you= ju ne |
|
|
| More Farash |
[Feb. 5th, 2012|08:47 am] |
Farash (fa-RAASH) is the vernacular of large areas of the Khormo nation, and spoken by merchants, missionaries and scholars abroad. Farash developed from Old Woccofa, an intermontane vernacular, over the thousand years following the rise of the FaKormo people who migrated from the mountain plateaux around Kheley–Mahak into the basin of the Nurro astrobleme and the mountain rings around it. Save for a remnant in the salt-swamp where the astrobleme is deepest, below the mouth of the Khestalo river, the previous population was absorbed through intermarriage.
Farash became a written language in the time of the Safalomo protectorate, with scholars of the Safalo using Farash for government proclamations and eventually the monks of Khoro-Balastey using the tongue for missionary work and transcribing the Fathey scriptures into the language. The Naddar alphabet was used, since the ancestral pictographic system of the Waca'hana mountains' intermontane peoples was itself unknown to the monks and lay preachers of the Fatheyist religion. Naddar is poorly suited to the sounds of the Farash language, however, and a series of linguistic reforms in the times of Hayu the First ended with the adoption of the present Olchon script. Olchon is the result of decades of linguistic reforms and has been almost universally adopted for the past five centuries; only scholars can read the older Naddar script at the present. The religious themselves no longer retain many Naddar manuscripts, most having been transliterated into Olchon owing to the efforts of the Fellenado brotherhood of scribes.
Farash is an agglutinative languages, with words becoming larger and larger as infixes, prefixes and suffixes are added to word roots. There is a four–part system of grammatical number: singular, dual, paucal and plural nouns. The word “efahach”, meaning alphabet, will do nicely as an example; it naturally has feminine gender, as do almost all nouns associated with language.
Fa'efahach: a literate person.
Afa'efehach: two literate people (dual)
Efa'efehach: A number of literate people small enough to be counted (paucal)
Ifa'efehach: Too many literate people to count. (plural)
Thes= cow; athes=two cows; ethes= paucal cows
Genders are masculine, representing males and things associated with men, feminine, representing women and things associated with women, sacred, representing animals and plants “with souls” (corresponding to animals with Earth–derived proteins and DNA) and profane (animals and plants without Earth–derived proteins or DNA, and thus, less commonly employed by humans).
Masculine nouns end in –at,th, –ap,–ab –ak, or –akh
Fa'efehechat: a masculine literate person, a literate man.
hrakh: man
westh: oast (huge hominid used for riding)
chab: knot, tie
belth: break, crack, explode, rupture
sirat: lion cat
thoruth: lark, songbird
chethath: swing
chafat: spoon
thwek: hammer
chalap: lock
themmat: drum
themth: "drummer", a royal title
thechat: button and loop fastener
hesthak: pig-like elephant beast
Feminine nouns always end in –ch, –ph, –sh, or in a consonant cluster nearly unpronounceable by one not born to it. Note that adding a masculine or feminine ending to a name which doesn't have one is a clear means of indicating which gender a person is.
harash: seat, sitting
khuskt: woman
charsh: wheat
veyf: millet
chalt: bread
charelth: straw basket
escharfs: flower
thesonkt: girl, maiden
thes: cow, cattlebeast (a bull is thesap)
errafth: plums, prunes
telech: walnut
hirlch: cry
gorsh: sheep/goat
cheench: grapes
husharsh: pumpkin
hakarsh: gourd
thalf: radish
sheeth: grass
Sacred gender is indicated by ending in a consonant. Profane words almost always end in a vowel.
Erratk: a tuber, Solanum. Sacred
fass: death
yethos: head (of an Earthly animal)
Fa'aka: Purple, an inedible weed. Profane, of course.
fassa: death of a profane thing, destruction of a profane feature of the planet.
chartha: sinking, going down (either sacred or profane can do this)
shenna: light
gu: water
gurra: waterfall
guta: stream
gugu: spring
kaigu: saltpan, dead sea pan
gola: drink
norona: rainbow
ali: time
khunkale: day
Numbers are profane:
one: hoka
two: eltha
three: oscha
four: weltha
five: chanthu
six: moggontho
seven: delu; deludelu
eight: elthemfo
nine: hangu
ten: tharmu
one hundred: dede
Note that any large number is usually constructed with exponents, expressed by the particle igfu, and the particles -fra and -lish-, plus and minus, thus:
dede'igfu'eltha: ten thousand.
twenty-nine: oscha'igfu'oschafra'eitha.
five hundred twenty-one: elthemfo'igfu'oschalisheltha
At first glance this number system may seem cumbersome, but faFarash use it easily.
All humans and hominids are sacred, of course, and all Teherimma are profane. Machines, devices, and artifacts are sacred or profane depending on who made them. All natural features of the planet (prehuman features, that is, such as mountains and impact structures) are profane.
Cases
Farash has four cases: the subjective, the objective, the possessive, and the instrumental.
The subjective is the basic form of all nouns and indicates the subject of the sentence and the object of the copula. Usually nouns, when first given, are given in the subjective.
Thulm: tree
The objective indicates the direct or indirect object of the verb. It is created by infixing vowel “a” with the vowel of the noun.
pa'osag thualm: I love the tree
The possessive case indicates ownership, association, relation. It is indicated by infixing the vowel “e” with the vowel of the noun.
Karog thuelm: the tree of Karog, Karog's tree
The instrumental case is used when something is used to do something else. It is indicated by infixing “o” with the vowel of the noun.
Lexfos: rag, washcloth, kerchief
be'elt:wash
be'eltag leoxfos: I washed with the handkerchief
and:
be'eltag Kaarog leoxfos: I washed Karog with the handkerchief.
Vocative form of names: The vocative is not a separate “case” in Farash, as it applies solely to the names of humans, spirits and other beings. When emphatically addressing another, aspirating the initial consonant of the word indicates the vocative.
O Kharog! Hi, Karog!
O Ghontalck! Hi, Gontalck (female gender)
And so on.
Verbs are formed by adding the verb infixes to a noun root. Thus, a verb always is formed from a noun. Verbal infixes are:
–pa–: Present tense
–wha–: Past tense
–ssa–: Future tense
–sa–: undetermined tense (that is, the time in which the action occurred is not known or irrelevant)
Infinitives add a long vowel at the beginning of the verb.
Person is indicated by suffixes, as in Earth's Latin:
First person: -ag
Second person: -ad
Third person: –ap/ab
Et, “be”, becomes a verb as so:
Ahet: to be
Ahapetag: I am
Ahapetad: you two are
Gunkale, “day”, is the root for the commonly used verb ahgunkale, “to greet” (someone)
gupankalag: I greet (anyone)
agupankalag khuenkale: We two greet the day
egupankalag Zhaemiyarsch: We, paucal, greet Mrs Zhamiya (female ending)
igupankalag Raetelalat: We, plural, greet Mr Ratelala (male ending)
gupankalad Saefun: You (alone) greet Safun (whose gender is not relevant)
agupankalad Koerak: You two greet Korak
egupankalad Naetarlsh: You, who may be counted, greet Mrs/Lady Natar
igupankalad Zhaehanat: You, who are innumerable, greet Mr. Zhahan
gupankalap Noerunat: He greets Mr Norun
agupankalap Se'enathanch: the two of them greet Mrs Senatha
egupankalap ethe'esonkt: the number of them, who can be counted, greeted the maidens, who are likewise able to be counted.
igupankalap athe'esonkt: the innumerable horde of them greeted the two maidens.
Guwhankalag: I greet.
And so on.
Lok, “eat”, is so:
Ahlok: to eat
Ahlokag: I eat
Ahlokad: you two eat
elokad: you paucal eat
ilokad: you plural eat
falokap: the one eats
alokap: the two eat
elokap: the paucal eat
ilokap: the plural eat
Etc.
Thus thakh, “elected leader, president, prime minister”, is made into a verb:
pathakhag: I am leader.
whathakhad: You were the leader.
ssathakhap: He will be the president/prime minister.
whathakhatk: She was the leader.
pathakhag: We two are presidents.
Essathakhad: You all are the leaders
Isathakhap: These gentlemen lead (in some undetermined time).
Os, “Heart” is conjugated
Ahos: to heart someone, to love/hate them in one's heart
pa'osag: I love
pa'osad: you love
pa'osat: he/she loves.
Marthamp, “poppy”, would be conjugated in more or less this way:
Ahmarthamp: to poppy someone, to drug them
pamarthampag: I drug
pamarthampad: you drug, you give (someone) poppy
pamarthampat: he/she gives poppy
Apamarthampag: we poppy (someone)
Epamarthampag: We enough to be counted drug (someone)
Ipamarthampag: We, an innumerable horde, give poppy
Whamarthampag: I gave drugs, I poppied
Awhamarthampag: we two poppied, we two gave drugs
Ewhamarthampag: We (a number) poppied
Whamarthampad: You alone poppied.
Awhamarthampad: You two poppied, gave drugs
Ewhamarthampad: You (a number) poppied, medicated
Iwhamarthampad: You, a horde without number, poppied, gave drugs
Samarthampab: He drugs (time unknown/undetermined)
And so on.
Hechar, “horse”, is conjugated in mostly the same way.
Hepacharag: I ride, I go on horseback
Ahepacharag: We two ride
Ehepacharag: We, paucal, ride
Ihepacharag: We, plural, ride
Hepacharad: You (sing) ride
Ahepacharad: You two ride
Ehepacharad: You, paucal, ride
Ihepacharad: You, plural, ride
Hepacharabch: She rides
Hepacharap: he rides
Ahepacharap: The two men ride
Ehepacharap: Some men ride
Ihepacharap: many men ride
Hewhacharag: I rode
And so on.
Adjectives
Adjectives are words which modify nouns. As might be expected, adjectives have gender, number and case, but are derived from noun roots, as most Farash words are.
Positive adjectives are derived from any noun root by adding the infix go. Thus:
Khunat: man/human
Khunatsk: woman/human
Khugonat: mannish, manlike
Khugonbatsk: feminine, womanly, girlish
khutsk khugonat: the manlike woman (sacred transvestite, sworn–virgin)
Khop khugonatbatsk: the womanlike man (berdache, sacred transvestite)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/world/europe/25virgins.html?ref=albania
Chu: Water
chugo: waterish
Ichugo: many waters
Comparative adjectives use the infix gogo
Hegogochar: more horseish
Khugogonbatsk: more womanly
Nogogorunen: more rainbowish
Superlative adjectives use the infix gan.
Thus:
Heganchar: most horsely
Noganrunen: most rainbowish
And so on.
Adjectives come before the noun in cases of adjectives expressing beauty/ugliness, age, number, goodness/badness, and size. In other cases, adjectives come after the noun.
Thus:
hax: the dog.
refurm: beans
saph: soup, broth
saph refugon: bean soup
Isaph irefugon: a vast amount of bean soup, a lake of bean soup
yunichos: bad
Yunichogos hax: bad dog
a'ynuichogos hax: two bad dogs
e'yunichogos hax: many bad dogs
i'yunichogos hax: bad dogs who cannot be counted
sholm: rot (sacred)
shogolm: rotten
erratk shogolm: rotten potato
fa'erratk fasholgolm: a single rotten potato
a'erratk a'shogolm: two rotten potatoes
e'erratk e'shogolm: some rotten potatoes
i'erratk i'shogolm: a vast amount of rotten potatoes
Adverbs
The adverbial infix goes at the end of a word, immediately before the gendered ending. Adverbs characterize a verb, modifying the action of the verb. Adverbs are usually not subject to pluralization and it would sound odd to most faFarash to pluralize such a word. Adverbs are also normally not affected by the case system.
Adverb status (English “gaily”, “merrily”, “sunwise”) is indicated by ku in most Farash words; loanwords sometimes keep their own system.
Thus:
Hechakuar: Horse-ishly, horsely, in the manner of a horse
Thakuakh: Kingly, lordly
Efehakuach: literately, in the manner of a scholar, a scribe
Relative Clauses
The beginning of a relative clause is signaled by *fash*.
The end of the clause is signaled by *fuff*.
Thus.
The man, *fash* who knew Farash, *fash* which is a difficult language *fuff* *fuff* translated the document, *fash* which was hard to read *fuff*. |
|
|
| Relative clauses in Farash |
[Feb. 3rd, 2012|12:39 pm] |
The beginning of a relative clause is signaled by *fash*.
The end of the clause is signaled by *fuff*.
Thus.
The man, *fash* who knew Farash, *fash* which is a difficult language *fuff* *fuff* translated the document, *fash* which was hard to read *fuff*. |
|
|
| more Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 30th, 2012|10:05 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | sortahome | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | yah | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | If God Made You - Five For Fighting | ] |
He walked onward to the towers, grateful for self–adjusting boots. As he got closer there were signs of human adjustment of the landscape: coppiced and pollarded trees and cane, and an earthen dam showing signs of frequent rebuilding. There were no...toolmarks. No sign of machine extrusion, no abandoned garbage. Who were these....people?
They were ahead, in a field of new green–black shoots dark in the red sun's glow. There was no sign of gender that he could see: no breasts, and the pubic hair showed no genitalia. An elder, grey-haired, walked between workers who crawled along the rows of plants. Weeding? Spacing the seedlings? He didn't know; save for historical reenactments, food on Earth was grown in aeroponic towers. These were primitives indeed. He called out a greeting.
They came at him from hiding, from a stand of tall half-grass. He parried a blow with his cane staff, reversed, slammed one across its pale forehead with the butt. They were naked, of no gender he could recognize,and unlike the workers, looked heavily muscled and long–legged. Two flanked him, nostrils flared: they had long low foreheads and haircuts that, in a bizarre moment, looked chewed to him. A spearpoint cut his shirt and grazed his ribs. He parried, clotheslined one, tripped another. Why hadn't they sent him armed?
Because (he was running, them bleeding behind him) he had expected to do research, not to fight identical (triplets?) warriors in some sort of trashed deep–future world. He fled to a stand of cane atop a hill and used his medical kit. Seal wounds, apply anbio, bandage. Check. He looked for pursuit, saw none. Rest, then.
He woke, and doctored himself again. Now what? Well, he had to find out what was going on. So. Watch with mag.
Work crews came and went. They ate as they worked, chewing extra shoots. They were neither guarded nor punished. Elders watched, sometimes corrected, sometimes caressed or embraced the workers. No one talked that he could see. Were they telepaths? Telepathy was supposed to be impossible. Smoke rose from the towers, but what went on inside them he did not know. If his guess was right, the city consisted of a series of towers that surrounded a central huge pit. The fields were incredibly productive, or there was another food source: no human society (he consulted the worldnet) lived off an acreage this small without high–tech food factories.
It was all brilliant; he had studied for a semester with a Khono'tam farmer and seen the inevitability of ak-chin farming. This worked the same way: the dam diverted water onto the fields, and the (wheat? Corn?) was laid out to catch the low, red sun. Each field grew more than one crop and the weeds fed the farmers. The warriors.
He still hurt.
The warriors fed off the–
Who was that?
Farmers were going in after a shift. A someone–something, hairy and dirty, emerged from a stand of seed–bearing bushes and slipped in among them. |
|
|
| More Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 29th, 2012|10:30 pm] |
He didn't know. So he walked fast in the cold. He was, he noted, running out of ration bars, even eating them slow as he could, and chewing the cane pith in between. He could, he knew, try hunting. He had been trained in it: Earth's nature parks had enough of some animals sometimes, and he had been allowed to kill birds and deer before. Next time he saw a tasty–looking animal he'd give it a try. On his next rest stop he whittled a spear point onto a shaft of bamboo–stuff. Maybe that would do?
As the slow sunrise was beginning (his own language said “sunsight”) with the lamplike glow off the snow–caked rimwall above him, he spotted a woven nest, two birds in its mouth. They took slow flight, and he speared one, gutted it, and hung it from his pack, until he could find a safe outcrop on which to camp.
There was not as much of the concrete (near him) but he managed a sleep break, roast bird and fire, on a huge house-sized boulder where two stream beds met. Each had a tiny trickle at the bottom. Was it the dry season? What did “dry season” mean here? Now?
He rose from a nap and went on down the streambed. Slowly, klick by klick, the bamboo mixed with other plants. He was leaving a life zone. He passed the time reviewing what he knew about this place.
Hot Jupiters had been known since the first exoplanets were found. Though Earth's own system had none, they were plentiful elsewhere. The hottest, the roasters, were mostly interesting for science probes. Cooler giant worlds had clouds of metallic vapor (ouch!) and tended to make the existence of earthlike worlds near them impossible; the coldest were shrouded in cryogenic clouds and their moons were ice worlds. But in between was Butros, whose clouds were water in an atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and whose world–sized moons held atmospheres and, now, oceans. How long would the terraforming hold? Well. He walked down a streambed in shirtsleeves, having eaten the meat this world afforded. It wasn't going to fail all at once, surely. He had more immediate concerns. Rolling down around him, the hills were yielding to a broad open grassland. The stream, which he somehow didn't feel a need to name, wound in slow loops as he walked through grass, startling birds like huge finches, the green cane clinging to the tongues of hill-crest above him, and on one loop, by an oxbow pond, he saw a herd of huge deer–hamster–rats. Were they edible? Well, why shouldn't they be? He resolved to give them a try, next herd he saw.
On across the golden plain, vapor rising in the long dawn from foggy hollows and flowers opening in the sun. He shucked his jacket in the heat and his cap, not fearing sunburn from the cool red star.
In the distance: plots of something growing, and a set of irregular towers with smoke rising. Was this civilization? Were these “humans”?
He could think of one way to find out. |
|
|
| More Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 28th, 2012|10:51 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | homentarily | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  good | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Episode 206: As Dreams Go By - The Clockwork Cabaret | ] |
And woke, and spent time on his workpad, and braved the bitterly cold cavemouth, gaping at the infinite–blue night sky, Butros' disc and the discs of Glebe, Ngobi, Davis, and Marin, as the 'net's searcher told him the other visible moons were named. Of course, Butros had a few dozen more, but these were either small enough to be moving stars, or hidden behind Butros or behind the horizon of Pendleton's. He tired of the light show–in–a–refrigerator and went back into the smoky cave. He wondered whether the animals of this planet–moon feared fire, or feared the human shape. He resolved not to rely on this potential advantage. Was there any hope of getting home?
He couldn't think of one. Well. He would make the best of it, then. Find the light on the distant mountains. Find the farmers in the riverbasins. Find someone that he could talk to. What had happened here?
A scenario unfolded in his mind. Humans rose to a high civilization on a terraformed Pendleton's. They bioneered the world into a garden. As future–proofing, they created an ideal food crop (the sugary cane). And civilization fell. Humans survived, forted up in the huge canebrakes, but lost the need or wish to use tools or language. There was no need in an endless forest of their one perfect food. Essentially they were great human koalas, losing brainpower by the eon as they froze into the panda niche. And any change in climate or even the introduction of a new predator would exterminate them, wouldn't it?
He didn't know. He was surely not even of the same species as them. He ate some more cane: it was lightly fermented. Heh. Was life an endless bacchanalia for the panda people? Or were they fearful of what walked in the dark?
After endless watching slow shadows at the cavemouth, his fire banked to almost nothing to save fuel, he slept deeply and long. He woke in freezing chill. He was going to have to find a more comfortable place to spend the coming....all the nights of this world, as long as he lived.
Dawn came slowly, but he was already on the move, down a creekbed in blue shadow. He moved fast in the cold, glad for a cap he'd packed because of the tendency of domes to be chilly. Frost crunched under his boots: summer and winter compacted into a week. Was there a greater cycle as well? Butros' orbit was about two old Earth years; he couldn't recall the eccentricity of the orbit, but a rest stop let him check his workpad: about nine percent. So there would be a small and a great season. Very different, but this was one of the most Earthlike worlds. What was Earth like now? Were there even humans there? |
|
|
| More Lords of the Worlds |
[Jan. 27th, 2012|10:33 pm] |
Some Assembly Required, cot'd
Onward to the stand of cane on a bluff he'd picked as his blind. He watched for hours as wave-motion showed animals' movement in the swishing cane; wind roared down the great slope lit by snow glittering in coppery sun. The gildy-bronze sunset glow cast one set of shadow and Butros' gibbousness pocked with moonshadows another as he saw them lope into the glade and begin to pile shoots round them. A fort-nest for the night? Some of the pale–furred human–bears wove beds of cane, while others heaped the shoots in accessible stacks. As fodder for the dark? It did make sense. His vision enhancement let him see smaller ones (children?) running around and mothers (mothers?) grabbing them, let him see clouds gathering upslope. He wondered about night storms. He decided to try contact ere full dark. Nobody wanted strangers sneaking up on them in the night. Down, then, with his staff and a streambed's stones to make his strides quieter.
He reached the glade, and realized that the shoots were tall; he couldn't see all the panda people at once. He tried his contact scheme: on a dry hollow cane, he tapped two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, two, three-
A face looked at him and he jumped. It was an older...male? Grey speckled its golden fur, and its skin showed wrinkles. He smiled. It didn't. He repeated his prime–number message. It showed no comprehension and disappeared into the dim twilight canebrake. Roars and cries. He began to worry. They were perhaps not interested in-
Older males appeared on three sides of him, growling. Each carried a heavy cane stick in one hand–paw. The thumb had survived, he noted pointlessly. He took the hint. And ran. They chased him, but when he monkeyed up a vine–caked face of clay, they stopped at the base, howling and beating their clubs on nearby stems of cane.
In a crack of clay, he made his fire again and then clambered down, in Butros' light, for dry cane to serve as fuel. The panda people were gone, and his vision gear showed him thirty-seven degree heaps of bodies in their night–nests. Well. What to make of that?
There were two conclusions.
One. They didn't like him, or didn't like math, or for some reason had a problem with strangers.
Two. They were dumb as rocks.
Onward to the stand of cane on a bluff he'd picked as his blind. He watched for hours as wave-motion showed animals' movement in the swishing cane; wind roared down the great slope lit by snow glittering in coppery sun. The gildy-bronze sunset glow cast one set of shadow and Butros' gibbousness pocked with moonshadows another as he saw them lope into the glade and begin to pile shoots round them. A fort-nest for the night? Some of the pale–furred human–bears wove beds of cane, while others heaped the shoots in accessible stacks. As fodder for the dark? It did make sense. His vision enhancement let him see smaller ones (children?) running around and mothers (mothers?) grabbing them, let him see clouds gathering upslope. He wondered about night storms. He decided to try contact ere full dark. Nobody wanted strangers sneaking up on them in the night. Down, then, with his staff and a streambed's stones to make his strides quieter.
He reached the glade, and realized that the shoots were tall; he couldn't see all the panda people at once. He tried his contact scheme: on a dry hollow cane, he tapped two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, two, three-
A face looked at him and he jumped. It was an older...male? Grey speckled its golden fur, and its skin showed wrinkles. He smiled. It didn't. He repeated his prime–number message. It showed no comprehension and disappeared into the dim twilight canebrake. Roars and cries. He began to worry. They were perhaps not interested in-
Older males appeared on three sides of him, growling. Each carried a heavy cane stick in one hand–paw. The thumb had survived, he noted pointlessly. He took the hint. And ran. They chased him, but when he monkeyed up a vine–caked face of clay, they stopped at the base, howling and beating their clubs on nearby stems of cane.
In a crack of clay, he made his fire again and then clambered down, in Butros' light, for dry cane to serve as fuel. The panda people were gone, and his vision gear showed him thirty-seven degree heaps of bodies in their night–nests. Well. What to make of that?
There were two conclusions.
One. They didn't like him, or didn't like math, or for some reason had a problem with strangers.
Two. They were dumb as rocks.
He huddled, jacket drawn over him, as the irregular small cave filled with smoke and he dozed, woke, dozed.
He huddled, jacket drawn over him, as the irregular small cave filled with smoke and he dozed, woke, dozed. What was he supposed to do, if the Pendleton's colony were extinct, their descendents reduced to human pandas with too little brain, Winnie–the–Poopingly, to comprehend a series of primes? Was he supposed to stay here, atop a ruined city, and teach them how to count, to speak, to build a tactransmitter? He couldn't see how. Machinery was millennia off for these bamboo–chewers, if it could ever happen at all.
He shook his head. The river-valley farms, the glinting light atop distant peaks, spoke of a civilization somewhere on this forsaken moon, in this lost future. He gave the sky a look: at least the stars weren't all reddened by time.
He would march down the mountains to the great river below, and find what Sumeria or Brasilia grew on its banks. Farmer, priest, mechanic, computer programmer: they could learn to speak to him, he to them. He could live here.
As soon as it was light again. He slept. |
|
|
| More Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 26th, 2012|10:06 pm] |
He sat (ignoring bugs) and thought. How would he find the panda people?
How to make contact, Contact? Smoke signals? Wigwag flags? He shook his head, thinking that he was likely the only one in this solar system who knew what wigwag flags were; they were invisible beyond arms' reach in the thick cane anyhow.
Shout at them? They didn't speak his language if they weren't his species! Written messages were out even assuming (unlikely) that these cane–chewers could read. Draw the Pythagorean theorem? On what?
He settled on prime numbers. No natural process could generate them and no species on a dozen worlds made them for any reason but mathematical. He was then (after a nap and some cane, washed down with ration bar), forced to figure out how to find them. Well, as the sage Lecter had said, ask oneself of any thing. What does it do?
They ate bamboo, slept and procreated. It was overwhelmingly likely that they slept the long night through, with breaks for bamboo; they would do so in a glade of new shoots so as not to travel in the dark. Even bright as Butros and the other moons would be in the dark, he doubted that travel by night was much fun, and near dawn it would be cold indeed. Could he make fire? Maybe dried cane and a laser cutter?
He climbed the concrete outcropping and mapped everything he could see.
He quartered the whole area, drawing it in his mind. There were two small pools, each fed by the same stream. There were low ridges running down from the wonderwall peaks to the plain; there were five visible crests of ancient crumbling concrete. He saw fourteen chewed–down patches of once–shoots; he saw three patches of fresh, blacky green in the slow, slow sunset. As Glebe's Star kissed the icy mountain horizon, he descended and strode down and up arroyos to reach the nearest shoots.
Nothing. No bite marks, no fresh dung, and a nest of disturbed birds, pigeons goose–sized, who fled cackling and gobbling and shrieking in brainless avian fury. He bushwhacked across a rolling rise and down a slope of crumbled old plate glass gone half to sand, and found the second field of green shoots, a long oval stretching down and down broken by huge chunks of ceramet, and found nests of ant–bee–whatsits. No panda people. Nothing. But buzzing bugs.
The dark deepened, and he had to stop and eat ration bars, ere he slowly advanced into the green mess of shoots walling in a long creek rapids. Silent, he waited, the long habit of patience with him, ere he saw the movement of a dun–buff back, heard gas escape as the man/woman/thing let go, waited silent and still as the family, tribe, band ate and ate and ate until dark made foraging futile, made a great huddle with children innermost, slept in each others' arms. Laser made a fire of dry cane in a boulder's lee, driving out furred snakes, and he himself slept wrapped in his coat, canes stacked as a shelter for him. |
|
|
| Lords of the Worlds: Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 25th, 2012|09:44 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home for now | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | Almondy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Ii. Variations - Guiomar Novaes | ] |
Eventually it occurred to him that he needed to find shelter for the....night? How long was the day here? He pulled information out: somehow it hadn't mattered en route to the domes and dinner and soft beds of the colony. Well. Pendleton's orbited Butros in about a week. Seventy-two hours of daylight, seventy-two of dark, some dawn and dusk time and a spectacular eclipse. Of course, the “night” would be awfully well–lit, with the huge globe of Butros filling the sky. He clambered down from the heights of the concrete lookout and reentered the cane jungle. The dung he found convinced him of the existence of some huge plant–eating beast. Cane shoots had been broken off and chewed, and someone, some group of someones, somethings, had gobbled out a large glade. Was this how the cane jungle renewed itself? The damp mat of rhizomes hardly seemed amenable to fire or the plow.
He followed the chain of groves and the mess of crushed and snapped canestalks made by the..big things. They moved across and up and down slopes, but always seemed to zoom in on regions of lots of fresh green sweet shoots. The result was that the cane was kept from becoming a huge impenetrable mass: birds and insects moved in the wake of the whatever–herd and ate dung and the chewed–up shoots and probed into broken cane for the bugs and grubs it contained. He noted snapped canes filled with water and wondered what lived in the water. Mosquitos? Had they brought mosquitoes to a colony world? What was the punishment for that?
He stopped once, in the lee of a giant slab of concrete, to nap, and afternoon deepened as he stalked, not knowing why, after the only large animals he had seen on this transformed not–Pendleton's. Sun flashed between canes onto a clearing, and a face looked at him. At a cry, him frozen, great shapes bounded into swaying cane. Roach tried to process what he had seen. The body had been a sort of lemurish gorilla–bear, the pale golden coat matching the mature canestalks. The paws had had four digits and a thumb, not the six of a panda (panda?). The dugs indicated female sex, if the creatures here bore any resemblance to ancestors on Earth. But the face had frozen him, because, uncomprehending as its expression had been, its brows, eyes and great mouth were recognizable. And human.
He investigated the vacated clearing. Well. If these were humans, they could hardly compete with the ones he knew. There were places where they'd sat, places where they'd slept. The glade had been made by eating huge numbers of shoots and smashing canes flat with their huge dun-tan-gold furred shapes. He tried a bench-cum-bed of canes: nice and comfortable. Remnants of a meal of shoots were scattered everywhere. Clothes or tools seemed unneeded. |
|
|
| more on Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 23rd, 2012|09:40 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home, for now | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | quiet | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | My Body's A Zombie For You - Dead Man's Bones | ] |
After a great deal more wandering he found bones, fresher ones, and a tunnel. Robbers? He didn't know. He tried the tunnel. It led to a larger excavation and then to wind and darkness. He crawled up into heat and dust, into reddish sunlight and into a forest of what sounded and looked like waving, clattering reed. The reed blew cheerfully in a hot breeze, as he dusted himself off and made sure he'd left nothing in the tunnel unwittingly. (He hadn't).
The reed was a cross between bamboo and some sort of sugarcane or sorghum: young shoots were starchy–sweet, old canes pithy and half-hollow. He cut one of the latter for a walking stick and some of the former for an experiment: would the food of this world nourish him? He had no testing equipment save his own digestion. But he had very little in the way of rations: he had expected Pendleton's food tanks to feed him.
After a casual lick and waiting some time did him no harm, he tried more. It was a bit like a yam or mesquite. Not bad. He could see nothing, however, owing to the profusion of the cane around him. He hiked where it looked as though seasonal water had made routes through the densely packed stalks, and sometimes rested in clearings where something (what?) had eaten shoots down to the root. Insects buzzed in the heat. He was hiking down water courses, standard find-civilization tactic. Off to his left, he saw a grey mass free of the everlasting cane. Outcropping of rock? He pushed, cut and swore his way through the stalks and leaves to what was surely a huge block of the....
Concrete. It was a rock outcropping of concrete. Maybe a building once, but it had eroded into the squarish semblance of a natural boulder–hill. Vines snaked across its surface. Would it give him a better view?
He had been chosen for this mission partly because he wanted to go and partly because most of the others with his skills were more than ninety stanyears old. He could climb a rock outcropping, surely. He had a feeling that it wasn't the last hassle on this trip. (He was right.)
Hand there, foot here, and he went up, avoiding the flimsy–looking vine for handholds. His attention on the concrete “rock” face before him, he missed what was above him until–
He reached a crest, a long open ridge broken by crumbled places where the concrete had cracked and let roots inside, and he let himself look at what surrounded him. And forgot, for a moment, that he itched and that he was dusty and sweaty.
The jungle of reed stretched, waving grassily, down a huge slope punctuated by waterways snaking and branching and merging, away from great snowcapped peaks above him, like the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, in a line. Blue in the distance, they seemed to curve away from him; the most distant peaks were visible only by their snowcaps. Below, down where the reed jungle parted into fingers following waterways and then ended, was a buff–colored plain cut with rivers and (He used the viewer on magnify) hints of rectangle–shaped green along the rivers. Fields?
People?
In the distance, corrected for atmo distortion, were some other long mountain chains. Closer by, one showed an oval curve, with a huge single peak framed in the arc. Impact craters: no one born after the invention of the telescope failed to recognize them. Was he on another such rimwall mountain chain? Possible, of course. And possible that people (people?) didn't live on mountain chains. And on that chain, distant: a flash of light. The sun off a window? A signal? A laser?
He didn't know. But the sky...
It was impossible. The sky was pale blue flecked with clouds. Near the horizon was a sun, like Earth's, too bright to look into, but its light had seemed redder. And midsky, a thing his eyes took a while to make out, a half circle of swirls and bands and a huge, off–centered dark spot. It was, he was sure, a watercloud gas giant. Near it was another small crescent: an inner moon.
Pendleton's orbited Butros' World, a water–cloud gas giant.
Pendleton's was its fourth moon.
Pendleton's was a cryogenic world whose life, outside domes, consisted of pools of sometimes-frozen rhodopsin bacteria, photosynthesizing like mad to make an atmosphere while humans pumped methane into the “air” to heat the world up.
This was Pendleton's World. But it wasn't Pendleton's now.
He had trekked, somehow, deep, deep into the future of this world.
Now what was he supposed to do?
Roach meets panda-posthumans and predators.
He climbs and sees the world and system he is in: a water–cloud Jovian with Pendleton's orbiting it as one of a pair of shepherd moons: the other moon is also inhabited and comes very close at times.
He sees, from the top of a rock, the crater-mountain-wall landscape, and a flash of light in the distance. He journeys toward the light.
He meets hive-humans. He masks his scent with emissions from a mimetic predator to enter the nest. He finds the breeders, the warriors, the workers who harvest food, the tech-ers who repair pumps and dig siphons by rote. He finds no one who can talk to him, since they "talk" only to one another about work: human language reduced to a series of signals.
He proceeds down across a lowland plains toward the distant light, guided by his system's internal compass.
He meets a river-valley civilization. |
|
|
| Plans- Some Assembly Required |
[Jan. 23rd, 2012|07:25 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | novel, writing | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home, for now | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | fed | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Episode 172: Oh my, it’s Mister Moneyload! - The Clockwork Cabaret | ] |
Roach meets panda-posthumans and predators.
He climbs and sees the world and system he is in: a water–cloud Jovian with Pendleton's orbiting it as one of a pair of shepherd moons: the other moon is also inhabited and comes very close at times.
He sees, from the top of a rock, the crater-mountain-wall landscape, and a flash of light in the distance. He journeys toward the light.
He meets hive-humans. He masks his scent with emissions from a mimetic predator to enter the nest. He finds the breeders, the warriors, the workers who harvest food, the tech-ers who repair pumps and dig siphons by rote. He finds no one who can talk to him, since they "talk" only to one another about work: human language reduced to a series of signals.
He proceeds down across a lowland plains toward the distant light, guided by his system's internal compass.
He meets a river-valley civilization. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
jcomer2001's journal
tired
geeky
busy
stressed
calm
hungry