> 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
>