Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Who gets the human languages?

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Thursday, October 2, 2003, 1:42
I've been wondering for the last few years whether there are any humans in
the Azirian universe. At first, the answer was no: I really wanted to start
from scratch and create a new world. Then, for various reasons, I ended up
incorporating so many aspects of the old universe that it seemed like the
humans might as well be there. Sómeone had to speak the human languages,
after all. But I came to realize that it really didn't make sense for the
humans to be there. And fictional worlds without humans are relatively
uncommon. So a few days ago, I decided that there aren't any humans in the
Azirian reality after all.

So now I have to figure out what to do with all the human languages, at
least the ones I want to keep. After some consideration, I think maybe the
best choice is to give them to the various kinds of Mizarian rodent-people.
Nelya (one kind of "Elves") are the most similar to humans, superficially,
but their culture and technology aren't a good fit. They don't need words
for "plastic" and "spaceships", and they aren't adventurous explorers like
Humans and Mizarians. In spite of the fact that they're descended from
rats, the culture of the Zaik Mizarians is probably the closest to human in
the Azirian reality. But one big problem with this is the number systems.
Mizarians have 8 fingers (including the thumbs), but the human languages
have decimal systems for the numbers.

Another possibility is the raccoon people (Janarr). The number systems
wouldn't be a problem, since the Janarr have ten fingers, but I don't know
how well the cultural and technological words would come across. Without
any humans in the universe, maybe the Janarr would take their place to some
extent.

Other ten-fingered non-humans include Nikta and Neyasai, but the idea I
have for them is that their languages are quite different from human
languages. They tend to have lots of difficult-for-human sounds like clicks
and whistles, and their grammar tends to be more complicated than human
languages. I've only developed small parts of Nikta and Neyasai languages,
but I don't think I'd want them to adopt the human languages.

--
languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>---
hmiller (Herman Miller)   "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com  email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" /  there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

Replies

Dennis Paul Himes <himes@...>
Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>