Re: First thoughts on Ayeri calendar system

Quoting Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...>:

> listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0411a&L=conlang&P=27327
> No criticism yet?!
>

I think this is the first time I can help anyone with anything on this list,
and only then because it isn't really a conlang question.  I don't really have
any direct criticism, because a fantasy planet can be entirely of your own
devising, however a few points to keep in mind that I didn't see mentioned at
all:

Having two moons instead of one will do very, very strange things to the tides
of your planet, if it has water.  When the moons align there will be
incredibly severe high and low tides which would likely be cataclysmic, so
some sort of interesting ecological system would no doubt evolve at the
shorelines to take advantage of this.  The two moons would also do strange
things to the currents in the oceans.  If you want to develop a realistic
world then you should calculate not only the moons distances and their
periods, but also their masses and the effect each individually would have on
the oceans.

As far as eclipses are concerned, again, it's your world so whatever you
think's reasonably _is_ reasonable, but keep in mind that the moons to not
orbit on a flat plane.  Like planets, moons orbit on almost circular ellipses
which are slightly askew from a flat plane, i.e. their orbit is tilted.  This
is why not all eclipses on Earth are full eclipses.  Most eclipses are partial
eclipses, and sometimes even though the moon will be between the sun and the
Earth (in the case of a lunar eclipse), it will be so far ascended or
descended that it will be above or below the sun rather than in front of it,
so no eclipse occurs.

Basically, there are a number of factors that you may want to consider,
several of which I'm almost certainly forgetting.  As far as actual criticism
though... I don't feel like anyone can really criticize a fictional planets
calender since there aren't really any aspects of a calender that would mark
it as better or worse, atleast as far as I know.

Sorry about the loose format of the message and run-on sentences.