Re: Conlang Calendars
| From: | Amanda Babcock <ababcock@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, April 27, 2004, 17:51 |
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On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 06:40:10PM -0500, Herman Miller wrote:
My merechi calendar, named terin alitano ("book of days"), can currently
be seen at http://www.quandary.org/cgi-bin/cal.cgi?date=1082740574&view=year .
Clicking on a date will show the Gregorian date, as well as the day
in the combinatorial Zyentinaz calendar (three simultaneous cycles of
three, eleven, and, I think, seventeen days).
The terin alitano is a non-astronomical ritual calendar, with 146 days.
Certain days are set aside to be festivals, *if* they fall during the
correct agricultural season, as determined by personal observation of
such key events as first snow, first frost, first flowers and first
leaves. Today would be the pefornim ("snowing") festival if it were
currently the season of snow where I am. Other days are more fixed:
the 13th and 17th of every month, the 1st and 20th of every month, the
10th and 11th of every month, and the dateless festivals of chembel
encheno and chembel pepicumno.
I don't keep track of this even though I have a cron job that emails
me every morning with what the date in this calendar is. Evidently I
missed celebrating a fushin (spring or fall) festival last Friday.
But I have a p'elatim ("leafing") festival in two days, and that's
definitely in season!
The 1/1/1 date for this calendar was the date of the first snow the
year my family moved to Maryland, when I was in 8th grade. 12/15/1985,
I think. (Runs calendar back 46 cycles...) Nope, 12/5. Back then
it only had 145 days, but I wanted another intercalary day. Didn't
discover my mistake until a few years later when I realized 146 goes
into 365 5/2 times exactly... only leap years save it from accidental
repetition.
The month and day names are meaningless, but the days of the four-day
week are associated with fire, earth/vegetation, wind, and water.
Unlike with the Western week, undated days in this calendar have no
day of the week, either.
The month names form a cycle where each starts with the final letter
of the previous... which is subject to English orthographical issues
("telch", pronounced /tElx/, begets halde /hAlde/ not chalde /xAlde/.
Now I want to look up the calendar written in the script that distinguished
between /x/ and /h/ to see how I handled that).
This is a great thread. Calendars are fun!
Amanda