Re: Website update

On Tuesday, November 6, 2001, at 02:06 , Kala Tunu wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote :
>
> On Sunday, November 4, 2001, at 01:35 , Kala Tunu wrote:
>
> Don't be ashamed--not everyone has time, and not everyone
> has the know-how
> *and* time to do funky things with stylesheets and
> javascript and
> what-have-you.  (My sister regularly puts me to shame, and
> then complains
> that her server doesn't give her MySQL, to which I can only
> meep
> uncomprehendingly.)
> ----------------------------------
> MySQL?
> um... may I meep too?
>
It's some sort of database query language.  I swear to God I don't know
anything beyond that.  *She* swears it's easy, but I don't believe her.
'Course, the last time I had to do anything more difficult than hand-coded
HTML/PHP was, oh, that graphing calculator "guess a number from 1-100 in 3
tries" game I programmed...

> The pronunciation guide gives a lot of "may also be
> pronounced as," which
> leads me to wonder what the *initial* pronunciation is.  I'm
>
> -----------------------------------
> Tunu <c> is not a "may also be pronounced" but merely a "may
> be pronounced as either..."
> So it's pronounced either /ts/, /dz/, /tS/ or /dZ/. Tunu
> consonants are defined contrastively to each other.
>
Oh, I see.  Would it be possible to change the phrasing so this is clear?

> I'm sorry that I can't ASCIwhatever. I'd say Tunu <c> is an
> uvulalveodentopalatofricative on Mondays.
>
ROTFL!

> -----------------------------------
> All in all, I found your grammar/teach-yourself pages quite
> thorough for a
> work in progress, and easy to read.  :-)  This is a conlang
> I wouldn't
> mind picking up in my free time, if indeed I ever have free
> time again.
> ----------------------------------
> That's very kind of you. This being said, I'd prefer you to
> write more Czevraqis stuff in your website. It's fun to
> read.
>
<blush>  Thank you.  One of these days I *am* going to find my
(handwritten) notes and get more of the teach-yourself pages up...that's
almost more fun than creating the conlang.  (Well, I guess that's why I'm
a teacher.)

> I would never "learn" a conlang myself. I like to read them
> aloud and get a feeling of them.
>
:-)  Many conlangs aren't complete enough to *be* learned...mine certainly
aren't.

> But it's true too that when they're well documented I
> definitely learn the little is there. Unfortunately the most
> detailed ones like Vedurian happen to be highly irregular
> and difficult. As for the easy bit: I made Tunu because I
> wanted a private lang as free as possible from all the
> hopeless exceptions, mindboggling rules and other
> kimari-monku that I had to overcome in the natlangs I
> learned. It's a private easiest lang to relax from the
> foreign natlangs I have to use to make a living. But I know
> that what's easy for me is hell for other people.
>
:-)  That's a great idea, though.  I've occasionally toyed with creating a
personal conlang for whatever purposes but I always seem to veer off into
these random concepts in semantics/morphology.  (I'm rather conservative
phonologically.  My idea of "novel" is to try a toneconlang someday.  Oh
well.)

> ----------------------------------------
> One non-conlang-related reservation I have is that the
> grammar page
> renders (for me--I'm using the Opera beta for Mac OS X, I'll
> have to check
> it on some other browsers and Windows, etc.) with
> forest-green headers and
> some olive green text on a sky-blue background, which I find
> slightly hard
> on my eyes.  Perhaps changing it to dark blue like the rest
> of the text
> might make it easier to read.  Either that, or you might
> consider changing
> the background to white, which is (again) easier for most
> people to read.
> ---------------------------------
> But...but...but you're putting down the only creative touch
> in my page! Boohoohoo!
>
Oh...<looking around frantically for a handkerchief>

> I tried blue and green because my former white background
> page looked so boring that I couldn't stand it anymore.
> And also because some conlang pages I like (like Asiteya and
> Verdurian) are blue or green.
>
Well, you can still use color, it's a question of how (as my sister likes
to say).  You could try emulating the Asiteya and Verdurian pages in terms
of style.  At least you're experimenting; I stick with the "boring" black
text on white (with a few random blue-toned pegasus graphics here and
there) because it's easiest on my eyes and easier to print.  (The website
for the play-by-email roleplaying campaign I co-GM is gorgeous, but the
fact that it's pale grey-lavender text on a midnight-blue background makes
it horrendous for printing out pages for easy reference.)

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.