Re: CHAT: Bob's Introduction

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Robert Hailman wrote:
> > That's an interesting quote
>
> Yeah, I like it.  It was, incidentally, the inspiration for Asimov's
> story "Nightfall".
I can't say I've read it.
>
> > and a strange language.
>
> Thanks, I try to make it a bit "exotic", a few unusual features thrown
> in like case-agreement (wherein a word can have more than one case
> suffix, one suffix to agree with the head noun, and one to show its own
> use).  :-)  Wafsafíif means "of births", waf- = gender 6 plural, safí =
> birth, -i = plural, -f = genitive, watyánivaf = "in the year" wa- =
> gender 6 singular, tyáni = year, -v = locative, -af = genitive (to agree
> with the head noun wafsafíif), plal is a particle indicating apposition,
> derived ultimately from _pli sál_ = "which is"; 273 is the current year,
> thus it means "16[th day] of [the month of] Births in the year 273"
>
Tasty! I rue the day children have to learn Watakassí at school. I
haven't thought of any ways of making my language exotic, but it doesn't
correspond to English very much at all.

> > I see there's a culture behind it, that's always fun. What did you do
> > first, the language or the culture.
>
> The language, but there was from the beginning a vague notion of the
> culture.  I've also vaguely sketched out ancestral forms and related
> dialects, as well as experimenting around with descendants of it.  The
> language as described by me is Classical Watakassí, spoken around the
> year 1 in their calendar; specifically, it's the dialect used by the
> Prophetess, and the calendar counts from the Revelation.
>
I got lost in all the religion talk. I see what you're saying, though.
Smile & nod. :-)

> --
> "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men
> believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of
> the city of God!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
> 16 Wafsafíif watyánivaf plal 273
> ICQ: 18656696
> AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor