Re: Back!

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999 20:37:44 +0200, Irina Rempt-Drijfhout
<ira@...> wrote:

>Eek, it looks as if I'm defending myself or my inventions, but most
>of this thread seems to assume that a culture *should* be on "a
>planet" or at least have some connection with Earth. If Valdyas is in
>an alternate universe, I don't know where the gates are (except for
>the little one in my imagination).
You're right, there's no reason to limit ourselves to one reality. Since
most of our languages tend to have phonemes able to be spoken by humans,
it's natural to assume an Earth-like setting, but it doesn't have to be
based on the Earth we know of, and for those who are willing to put the
extra effort into designing languages without human phonologies (like
Rikchik), even an Earth-like setting is unnecessarily limiting.

Strictly speaking, my own worlds aren't entirely based on the Earth we =
know
of, since there are a few fundamental differences like the nature of
gravity and the luminiferous ether. So it might seem pointless to go to =
the
trouble to find real star data; if I include a double star by mistake,
perhaps it's NOT a double star in the alternate universe!

>Of course the surroundings have influence on the language. But where
>*exactly* it is doesn't make a difference. Does it for us, except
>those of us who are astronomers (or science fiction writers for that
>matter ;-) ?
It's more of an influence on the concultures than the language, but I
brought it up mainly for the question of star names in other languages. I
still haven't really addressed how Tirelat handles proper names. In the
case of countries of the world, cities, personal names, and so on, it =
makes
sense to borrow, but what about continents, rivers, mountains? I'd like =
to
come up with Tirelat names for the stars, planets, and constellations, =
but
I'm not sure how to approach it. I guess part of the problem is that
Tirelat doesn't have a conculture to go with it. I can't just "ask" a
native of Tirevor what they call the bright stars.

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin