Re: Conlangs in History

Steg Belsky wrote:
> The first Pern book i read was _Dragonsdawn_, which is first
> chronologically but was written later than the first Pern books
Yeah, that was my first book too.  I wish I'd read
Dragonflight/Dragonquest/White Dragon first, since part of the charm of
Dragonsdawn is things like "Oh, so that's where the name Benden came
from!"  :-)

> never having to wonder "what the heck is 'agenothree'?"
I wonder - is that /edZnoThri/ or /edZEnoTri/?  And why didn't they just
use the shorter "Nitric" for "Nitric acid"?  Of course, if they had
stuck with a corruption of HNO3, it seems that it would've been
corrupted further, after thousands of years, perhaps down to something
like /edZTri/ or /edZTi/.

Also, altho this is more concultural, I love the practice of combined
names.  Children are sometimes named by combining part of the father's
name and part of the mother's name, so that Alemi and Kitrin had Aleki
and Kitral, and two other children who they didn't follow that custom
with.  And the custom of shortening Dragonriders' names, like Felessan
-> F'lessan, Rangul -> R'gul, or sometimes more drastic as Fallarnan ->
F'lar.

It's classified as sci-fi, but there really isn't that much sci-fi in
it, especially not in the early novels, before she went into details
about where the Dragons came from and the like.

--
"Their bodies did not age, but they became afeared of everything and
anything.  For partaking in any activity at all could threaten their
precious and ageless bodies! ... Their victory over death was a hollow
one."
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