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Re: Tatari Faran and Flames

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Monday, November 15, 2004, 22:20
----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>

>> >Most of my time over the weekend was spent programming the lexicon >> >search engine, which is capable of full regular expression searches on >> >Tatari Faran orthography and definition bodies, can filter results by >> >entry category and word type. I hope y'all will enjoy it. :-) >> >> The only problem with it is that when I search for "man," meaning adult >> human male, it also gives me "woman" and "manage." You might want to >> fiddle >> with that a little. Fiddle a little, diddle diddle. > > Hmm. That's what the little note at the bottom of the page was trying > to say: if you wanted only "man" and not "woman" or "manage", you'd > type "\bman\b" in the search field. > > Or is that too obscure?
I guess I didn't see it.
> Should I make the regular expression search an > option, and default to a word-by-word search? I suppose the term > "regular expression" would be unfamiliar to non-programmer types.
It is to me, and word-by-word would be more useful.
>> Another question: why kill off Ebisedian entirely, such that you have a >> new >> language altogether? I rather like the name Ebisedian. Could it be >> salvaged in some way? > > Well, I'm unhappy with Ebisédian [@\bi"s@\:dj@n] mainly because some > of the features that got stuck into its foundations were put in out of > my ignorance of conlanging at the time. It's rather hard to fix it > without redesigning the whole thing from scratch. That has driven me > to make Tamahí, an Ebisédian descendent; but that unfortunately did > not get very far. So after some deliberation, I decided to port over > the "core" of Ebisédian (which in case people can't tell is the case > system which I love immensely :-P) and re-cast it in a Terran > language. Hence Fara, hence Tatari Faran. > > Nevertheless, Ebisédian refuses to die, and I think people > misunderstand me when I say that I'm moving on to Tatari Faran. What I > mean by that is simply that I will now be focusing my conlanging > energies on Tatari Faran rather than Ebisédian; but that doesn't mean > that I'm deleting all Ebisédian files and throwing them away forever. > As you can see for yourselves, Ebisédian is still alive and well in > the Ferochromon section of my website. A con-world almost 20 years in > making isn't going to disappear overnight. Ebisédian will certainly > make its appearance in a future relay, to the detriment of all other > participants and the chagrin of all onlookers, as well as the delight > of the volcanoes of Fara.
I thought, erroneously, that you had abandoned it; when you said you were inventing Tatari-Faran I assumed it was a replacement. Also, when you said that your vocabulary for T-F was limited, I wondered why you didn't import words from Ebisedian. I suppose it's because you have also restructured the phonology, or now because you want to keep T-F Terran.
>> I guess they'll never count you a connie caught between the wall and the >> Wyrlorf, Teoh! :)
(that was supposed to be "conie"--I just typed in my cat's name! :)
> Ahh, the delicious concultural questions this statement urges me to > ask! :-) Googling upon which, I have discovered your veritable tale of > Wyrlorf, with which I shall entertain myself in this otherwise dreary > afternoon of problems at work which are not entirely my own > responsibility. Ah, the joys of a software programming job.
AAAAAACK!!! I can't believe I posted that! It's unfinished, it's unrefined, it's full of errors and inconsistencies, the ending is still not revised! Don't read it! I'll take it off immediately. I think I posted it for a couple of friends and forgot about it. How do you give password admission to a website?
>> communally to each other is efficacious. So let's turn flames into >> furnaces >> of creation, and not flame for flaming's sake.
> The volcanoes of Fara, in which churn the molten rock that has created > the face of Fara---and indeed, 90% of the surface of the Earth, land > and ocean floor alike---roar in agreement. It is not a pleasant day > when they decide to let loose the deadly _karinaras_ [ka"4ina4as], the > pyroclastic flow (Fr. _nuees ardentes_), an incandescent mixture of > hot gas and hot volcanic debris travelling at speeds up to 160 km/h > that levels all things within its reach. Much preferred is the slow > eruption of basaltic lavas, or the spectacular lava fountains thereof, > the lava flows of which the _san muras_ (*) sculpt into their bizarre > but fascinating lava art.
Which I take to be an unusually good retort to a common listserv flame. :)
> (*) _san muras_: lit. "grey people", a term referring to the so-called > lava artists of Fara, who spend and risk their lives around erupting > volcanic vents, scooping up molten lava from active lava flows and > painting it onto their stone canvases, on which the lava solidifies > into indelible obsidian strokes. Covered with dust and ash, and > scorched by the intense heat of their environs, they truly are the > _san muras_, the grey people. But I digress.
:) Sally

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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>