Re: Teach Yourself ... Shirahlat?

On Thu, 9 Aug 2001 04:23:06 -0700, SuomenkieliMaa <suomenkieli@...>
wrote:

>I like the analogy to Zelda, cute, hehe.  Although,
>wasn't that whole world of Zelda fantasy really cool?
>Gosh, I haven't played it in over a decade, but I do
>remember being intrigued by the cool little melodies
>and the graphics and all...  Anyhow, if Czirehlat is a
>personal language, how are the weasel-folk related?
>Do they communicate through you, sort of like a
>medium?  Or is it just that, for now, as you don't
>have a conculture defined yet, you label the language
>a personal one?
I wasn't thinking of the Zelda comment as an analogy. I've been stuck at
the end of Oracle of Seasons (one of the two new Game Boy Color Zelda
games) for days now. Ocarina of Time is one of my all-time favorite video
games. So a "Teach Yourself Czirehlat" book would end up having lots of
personal stuff like that.

The idea is that the weasel-folk exist as a little-known ethnic group in
the fictional "real world", like many of the other alternate-reality
concultures with their own languages. I want to keep Czirehlat as a
personal language, without a specific conculture to go with it. I never
gave the weasel-folk a specific language before, so they seemed like the
perfect candidate for a Tirelat-like language. (Specifically, I needed a
culture based in North America, one that would have a need for all the
specific words relating to North American wildlife.)

>Maybe you could embellish your description of the
>reason for such a custom of weasel masks in your book?
> Sounds quite fun, this one.  Maybe they could view
>the weasel as a diety or holly entity, like I believe
>the Indians sort of do with the elephant?  But, then
>you would need to explain why they take the weasels
>and use the heads/fur as masks?  (sounds a like
>risque', due to save-the-animal people)  You did say
>they would put on their human masks later, which
>suggests to me that the weasel-folk are neither human
>nor weasel.  What exactly would they be?
The weasel masks they wear aren't made of weasel fur! Maybe their use of
the phrase "human masks" is just an expression for going back to their
mundane lives -- or maybe there's something more to it....

>How many of the Tirelat langs have you formulated?
>I'm still trying my first...
There's really only the two so far -- Tirelat and Czirehlat -- but Tirelat
went through so many revisions that the original version doesn't look
anything like the current one. (Actually, Czirehlat is closer in some ways
to the old version of Tirelat than the new one, and I'm likely to restore
even more Old Tirelat features in Shirahlat.)

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