Whispers

Notes on a Friday

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 14:46:42 GMT

Work has been intense, but I’m heading in for a weeklong holiday, so just trying to make it through to tonight.

I’ve been formulating goals for the year, and stuff I want to deal with, but more on that in the days ahead when I’ve thought it through better.

And while I’m thinking of it, because I am.

Conlanging

So I was a flat failure at Lexember, which is new for me, but I’ve decided I’d like to actually see if I can bring Akachenti to a usable/finished ish state, even without building a proto-language because guys, I just want to write fiction, so I’m gonna try to stop worrying about perfection. (More like, unfinished things are starting to feel heavy.)

That said, I’ve started rereading my notes and realized something I should have all along. The unmarked stem is indicative and the marked stem I started with is inchoative. Simple as that.

So if you say abaga:, you’re saying, “I love,” with an indication that this is true in the past and the present. Aka, it’s true, factual, already happened. If you say, abaga:sha, you’re saying, “I love now,” or basically it’s true in the present but not the past.

I’ve looked at all kinds of aspects and tenses to explain why the unmarked is past/present without thinking about basic aspect. It’s indicative. It doesn’t really have tense at all. It can be used for past or present, even if you’re referring to something you did and completed before now, so long as you haven’t undone it since. They have a past discontinuous for that, which is actually just a specific negative or discontinuous prefix, e.g. vibaga:, or “I no longer love”. I’m guessing this originated from some word meaning “to stop or cease.”

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Lexember Wrap-Up: 44 New Akachenti Words

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 17:17:46 GMT

sinti • verb, to do something reckless and ill-advised

ndaji • verb, to fool, deceive, or trick someone

à- • prefix, else, as in àvì, elsewhen

ibas • noun, bread, charitable giving, alms

ra • auxiliary verb, negates main verb, e.g. ahuá ira, “we weren’t asked”; incorporated as -r-, negates incorporating verb or noun, e.g. obrugáshi, “he’s no lover to me”; ágrato, “you didn’t meet with me”

tagilit • noun, lit. “the small night, losing someone while they remain alive or happy, e.g. a breakup or falling out with someone, moving away and losing touch with someone, a drifting apart

ataglito • verb, to lose touch with or lose a relationship with someone, connotes a desired relationship or not intentionally initiating the break

kobi • noun, playing piece (in a game)

iharàsh • noun, buyer or purchaser in a transaction

iharáshi • verb, to be the designated trader or purchaser for another person, caravan, business, or organization, etc., implies being a representative of wealth

ishot • noun, money

ishotaget • payday, lit. “of money-night”

veste • adj., wet, lit. “bewatered”

idigàsh • noun, teller, speaker

aklotabanglo • verb, lit. “to blood-bury”, to cover up, to hide something

tagehlosi • adj. lit. “night-minded”, grieving, depressed

ibre’digàsh • noun, whisperer, informant, someone who tells secrets

abestigo • verb, to say in a hidden manner, to imply or intimate (for the hearer’s benefit), to threaten by implication or subtext

iklati • noun, paint

iklatàsh • noun, painter

ihlakosàsh • noun, a player currently participating in a game

soh • adjective, for a long time or having some history, of some years of age, e.g. asàsi soh, “I’ve missed you for a long time”

ieseb • noun, the core area or heart of a city, either the most important to its modern functioning or the original part of it that persists

vote • noun, north

votànta • to be northward (from something)

ikhus • noun, mountain

ikhusebet • noun, mountain range

shinungahe • resultative, (it’s) probably passed

anungo • verb, to pass, to go by

-gahe • suffix, probably, lit. “should true”

usàti • adjective, (of a person) holding too much unofficial power to wisely oppose

samekle • adj., polite and honorable

brekesamekle • adj., sympathetic but not in overt support

itos • def. noun, the rock, especially a large one; boulder

toste • adj., burdened

toset • 1. adj., heavy or difficult to carry or move; 2. adv., strenuous

(i)takoset • adj., administrative, clerical, bureaucratic

abaeshekho • verb, to study

ibirit • noun, story or level of a building; an upper story, balcony, or overlook

mashakhiet • adj., worshipful, reverential in a romantic or sexual context

itokh • [ itox ] • noun, the local trade

itakhet • [ itaxɛt ] • noun, trade with foreigners, the open market, exports

ichoto • [ itʃoto ] • noun, silk

angit • [ aŋit ] • noun, cave

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I'm kinda sorta existing again

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 21:41:13 GMT

But not taking on new commitments because apparently I have no idea when my truly horrible days will occur and they tend to spread a bit, wearing off a few days later.

That said, my grandfather is going to be getting medical bills soon for my grandmother and a kind person set up a gofundme to help defray expenses. That’s here.

Everyone in the house has had bills go up and I’m going to try and get a patreon going soon to hopefully cover the difference in cost my paycheck won’t cover and also get out the several hundred poems and stories I haven’t published yet. Apparently, I logged 438 poems in 2017 and so far 565 poems in 2018. I’ve also written more than 100 drabbles this year and a handful of short stories, so it’s past time to start collecting and publishing everything not really done up yet and making available what hasn’t even been posted. It’s a chunk of work, but even the difference of a hundred bucks a month would solve a major bill problem, so Patreon seems like the obvious solution. (Getting a better-paying job or a promotion right now isn’t really an option.)

That said, on a more funnish front, I’ve been eyeing some treats I never got written due to my life going south in a bad way that I might sit down and finish. Would anyone be interested in an anonymous AO3 collection, like Happy Belated Treatmas, with work reveals on New Years and author reveals a week later? There was some sort of collection like that a year or two or ago and I like the idea of treating people with a tiny (emphasis on tiny) bit of structure but no pressure since it’s a late treat and the recip isn’t technically waiting on it.

I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time watching World of Dance and The Voice because apparently I cannot brain while grieving and that’s about my level. But I’m in love with Charity and Andres and really, the creative advice is good for writers too if you pay attention.

And I’ve been conlanging again because of course the right kind of comfort is untangling how diphthongs fit into a vowel inventory in light of sound change and I decided somewhere along the way I couldn’t make a proto-language without knowing how the vowels changed over time (this is actually true) and that I couldn’t make related languages without making a proto-language (this is debatable but true if I want an even remotely good one) and most of all that I needed to flesh these languages out at all to write the stories where they appear (this is likely completely false). But whatever. I do seem to enjoy the exercise, and there are worse hobbies to have even if it’s an extraordinarily unproductive one for me, considering how much energy and time I have to put into it and how many people aren’t waiting on any finished product.

Hope everyone is doing better than I am right now. Love you all and thanks for all the well wishes you’ve sent, the good thoughts, and for being so kind about my lurking generally non-communicative state.

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Today

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 20:51:29 GMT

I really need to get my exchange fic written. Odds are not good.

Wrote a poem:

we are tired

of the heavy places,

the deep tirades,

required graces,

every word

you ever spoke

from the day

my eyes awoke

Conlanging

I am hopelessly not up to the challenges, but I did do some work today. First, a word:

akuint • [ a.kui̯nt ] • 1. to sing, 2. to chant (a prayer or traditional song, particularly in a religious or formal ceremony), 3. to appease one more powerful with words, prayer, or song — verb

Then also, I figured out that Akachenti’s tendency to promote proximate, animate persons up a level may have come from originally have a proximate/distal distinction in second and third person pronouns and the agreement markers having merged. I’m not sure yet, but it seems more plausible than just willy nilly deciding that proximate third persons are really second persons, etc.

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Notes for the Day

Fri, 28 Apr 2017 20:16:37 GMT

I’m hanging up my hat on running imzy.com/sff because no one’s reading and it’s a lot of work and a lot of time and I can rarely get enough backlog of published works to schedule more than a couple days in advance at most.

On conlanging, Akachenti has now been proven to have had palatalization. And I thought for sure the -a:sh and -a:ch constructions were related, they should have been, but now I’m really not sure. Semantically, it’s obvious and accentually definitely obvious, but phonologically they don’t actually seem to be. Gotta play with it some more, but between the mess of related copular stuff, the -i freestanding adjectival sentence construction, and all the agentive affix constructions, there’s been some serious language change relationships going on here.

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Today's Reading

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:29:56 GMT

1. Pitch Accent (Wikipedia)

2. Register (Wikipedia)

3. Issues in African Language Phonology by Larry M. Hyman and also here

4. Sign Language Phonology by Wendy Sandler

5. Bumped into a previous day’s reading again and want to make a note:

Templatic morphology as an emergent property: Roots and functional heads in Hebrew by Itamar Kastner

6. Dinka Language (Wikipedia)

7. Modern developments in the Dinka language by Hélène Fatima Idris

8. How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent by Larry M. Hyman

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