Tag Archive | reiassan

Lexember Day 6: plurals, also, treaties

Dec6

clare_dragonfly asked for “…writing stuff. And legal stuff,” specifically regarding Edally: The Missing Treaty.

I already have words for writing: zhiezhet, book, turnie, and words for history that I need to reconsider.

Telyen “story”, and telnyet is “truth-known.”

Pause for plurals, because I really need to figure those out, or, as we say in the conlang business, make some shit up.

We’re going to make the goat plural: pazit, and the dyohd, an obnoxious rodent.

One goat: Pazit

Two goats: Pazitte

A herd of goats: Pazitbe

An unknown plural of goats: Pazitne

One rodent: Dyohd

Two rodents: Dyohdtye

A family/nest of rodents: Dyohdbye

An unknown plural of rodents: Dyohdnye

There! Now we can make stories plural, telyenne!

The Calenyena word for a treaty is Gaaneg, from gaaven (obsolete), bound, and geg, rope.

The Bitrani word for treaty is Meniano, from meni, to think over, to consider.

Incidentally, Coffee is a loan-word to both languages, coming from the prot-Arran fega. The Bitrani call it Vegia; the Calenyena call it
vegie.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1018814.html. You can comment here or there.

Lexember Day 5: Underwear and Vests, Linen and Buttons

Dec5

kelkyag asked: “You have existing clothing words — are they all gathered up somewhere? Are there gaps in that to fill? Words for underwear and buttons and hats along with tunics and stuff?”

Some!

Quoting myself:

The basic unit of Calenyen clothing is the kiparrie. This, like “kimono”, is a generic term, with any number of specific terms depending on shape, length of hem and sleeve, purpose, cut of collar, etc…

It is worn down to the knees over full pants (tozhyu) or a full skirt (kanzhyu).

The kiparri is worn in layers, starting, usually, with what I commonly translate as “linens.”

The word in Calenyena doesn’t actually come from their word for linen, betbet or even their word for flax, betyier.

(Betbet itself is sometimes said to come from the word betyier and sometimes from the sound the wet stalks make when, after retting, the stalks were beaten against rocks to reveal the fibers).

No, the word for under-clothes comes from the word lur, meaning smooth, easy: from kiprat-lur to kiplur and eventually down to kur.

Under-clothes are fastened by ties or laces, from geg, rope, gegyup.

They are usually heavily decorated with bentyek, art-with-a-needle, embroidery, around the hems and cuffs, and sometimes along the seams as well.

The outermost layer is usually a vest, kiprat, which you might recognize from above. The modern vests are long, reaching to mid-hip, unlike their namesakes, which often fell only to the bottom of the ribs; the modern vest is made of woven wool, linen, or some combination, where the original kiprat were made of felted wool.

This is held closed with fancy buttons, reddakak, from kak, push (non-fancy buttons, purely for function, are dakak. A person who makes buttons is a Diedreddakak, and is considered a skilled craftsperson.

And if we have left our model in only their linens and vest, well, at least their linens are soft, and we can put in the middle layers on another day.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1018025.html. You can comment here or there.

Lexember day Four: Parts of the House

Dec4

ankewehner asked for parts of a house, and I’m beginning to realize there are quite a few of those. Here’s a beginning:

Okay, let’s start with house, which I originally covered in “Home and Tent, Goat and Saddle.”

House: pepok, from petepok, “stone tent.” (-pok sounds like -poke)

See here for images of words.

Door: Gaaret (rhymes with ferret) from gaat, to pass through. A Gaatet is a pass-through, an entryway with no door in it. A Gyaat is a crawl-space entry.

Walls come from tent-blankets, geten-peten, with a modifier for “stone”, -pok, and thus getok. (This is specifically a house wall of stone).

The Calenyen did not come up with a word for floor, simply using dez, ground. After a while this was modified with -ok, but in Reiassan, stone ground is most of the continent. The current usage is dem, from dezem, indoor-ground.

Floor as in story comes from an archaic word for box stolen from the prot-Arrans. Their word began as fillijai, which became Liezhai.

“Second floor” began as liezhai-lok, next-floor, and many people still use that usage. And from there you end up with liezhai-zaa, up-floor, and liezhai-tan, sky floor.

Man, I would pay to have someone draw me Richard-Scary-like diagrams of this stuff. 🙂

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1017033.html. You can comment here or there.

Lexember Day One: Rabbits

Dec3

clare_dragonfly asked for the Calenyen word for bunnies. So:

Lexember Day 3:

Bunnies, it must be bunnies♪

They have three variants on the rabbit on Reiassan:

The Kaler, a domesticated fur rabbit, small and generally friendly. Their fur comes in a wide variety of naturally-occurring colors and is well known to be good for baby clothes and underclothes.

The Zhyoobie, the wild version, which is about the size of a squirrel, eats plants one wants to keep, and nobody has yet made a Peter Rabbit book about. It’s known to make its nest in the remnants of other animals’ nests, and generally leaves a mess of wherever it nests.

The Natiel, a large hare, sometimes domesticated but often wild. These are the biggest of the rabbits, brought over by the Bitrani settlers, and named by them (nateo), but they do not thrive in the warm climates of southern Reiassan and have mostly migrated north.

This is not the first time I’ve shamelessly named things in Calenyen for people, as much as the language allows. The Zhyoobie and the Natiel are named after people I know/have known in other parts of my life.

Lots of days left to go! Stop in and give me something to word about!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1016518.html. You can comment here or there.

It’s Lexember! Yay~

Dec2

As per 2012 (not sure what happened in ’13 and ’14), I’m doing Lexember again!

What’s lexember? It’s a month to build the lexicon of your conlang! Specifically with everyday objects.

I already have some saddles,
goats and tents
kinfe and sword
eating tools
meals
art and needle-art
Plunder!
Waste
Colors, posers, and fakes
Dairy
Fire
Kids (and kids)
history

So! What words should I create for this year?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1015543.html. You can comment here or there.

The Robes and the Office, a piece of fic regarding Edally Academy

Nov11

Written about Empress Otyeriotanerio, Enrie’s great-great-great grandmother, who is mentioned in Edally Academy: The Missing Treaty. Or, at least, her robes are.

Otyerio tched at the piled layers of her formal robes. “I will not miss these. Robes are lovely. But when we’ve allowed them to become tents and shackles all in one,” she shook her head. “We’ve gone too far.”

She let her gaze trail over her gathered sons and grandsons. “I’d suggest one of you put your foot down. When it’s decided which foot will be be doing the putting.”

They shifted, some uncomfortably, some impatiently. Seven of them. Seven left who could qualify to take her throne. Her youngest son cleared his throat.

“Mother, you don’t know that this is your last festival. You could be with us for many years to come.”

“Oh, Edrinon, and disappoint Antonnon and Acadadar? They’re already sick of waiting for an old woman to die. And besides.” She looked in the long mirror at herself. Her braids, gone from silver to white in the last couple years, trailed in two simple plaits to her thighs. Her face was etched with too many years of debating and arguing, too many years of stomping her foot and standing patiently through festivals and parades. “There is a time to be done. And there hasn’t been a good battle in so long… in so long none of you were born when last I got to swing a sword at someone.”

“It’s a time of peace, Mother.”

She noted that, while Edrinon was still trying to talk her into staying alive longer, Antonnon and Acadadar were in no way trying to disavow their ambition. Good for them. You had to want the throne, or it would devour you.

“It’s a time of peace,” Empress Otyeriotanerio agreed. She held still while her maid slid on the first layer of her festival garments over the soft embroidered under-tunic. “And that means it’s time for a Peace Emperor, and time for the War Empress to get a well-deserved rest.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1008487.html. You can comment here or there.

Into Lannamer: the final (I hope) rewrite of a novel 10+ years in the making

Nov1

The war is over. Rin wants to go home. But if she doesn’t take the recalcitrant, difficult Girey with her, he’ll either be dead, the center of a rebellion neither nation can handle right now, or both.

Girey just wants to go home, too. But chained to the back of Rin’s goat, he’s finding himself going in exactly the wrong direction.

This is going to be a long journey!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/994734.html. You can comment here or there.

Notes on Rin and her place in the royalty of Calenta

Oct24

Rin is the fourth? in line for her grandfather’s throne. Some of those before her in line have recused themselves – not interested in leadership, focused on a calling in the priesthood, interested in romance with someone who didn’t want to be in a leadership position, or not interested in creating heirs for one reason or another. Many have died. Her grandfather is quite old, and has outlived handfuls of his heirs.

More than half of the royal heirs went into the army. Calenta has a heavily meritocratic society – their rulers were originally war-chiefs of nomadic tribes – and earning a high position in the Army is one way to prove your merit. However, it’s also a good way to die, especially with an active war boiling on the front.

When Rin left to study healing, she was fourteenth in line. When she left for the army she was ninth in line. Her cousin Elen was three behind her and now is one behind her.

Her mother recused herself long ago. Her mother is a scholar and prefers her books to people.

Probably –> recusing yourself is acceptable (being removed from the inheritance is not, is considered very shameful, and it /does/ happen), but it is a one-way street. You can’t decide to un-recuse yourself.

While I decided to get rid of the immensely complicated inheritance system I’d originally thought of, it still flips genders. I.e., since the Emperor is male, his heir WILL be female, his daughter or a granddaughter THROUGH a daughter, or, if one suitable cannot be found, from his mother’s or grandmother’s line.

This has made Rin’s uncle, who needs a name (though he might have one in an earlier draft), exceedingly cranky.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/997133.html. You can comment here or there.

So I’ve been playing with paper dolls (Reiassan fashion…)

Oct23

layering.png

And I made up a bunch of them to fit This paper doll to see if I could get the layering down.

…there really should be at least one more skirt layer…

This is Rin-Era, someone working in a middle-status job, like a city bureaucrat and –I just realized I didn’t check the buttoning side–

Oh, good. they all button to the right hip. Even if there’s a sort of excessive amount of decorative buttoning.

I tell you, button-maker has to be a high-status job in Reiassan.

Edited to add: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/photo/album/3134?page=1 the whole scrapbook!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/996608.html. You can comment here or there.