Re: Survey(?) of ConLangs' Calendars and Colors and Kinterms

Tom Chappell wrote:

>What kind of calendar does your conlang and/or conculture include?
>
Oh goodness, a conculturing post... let's do this for Nrit.

There are two parallel calendars in the Nrit calendar, "masculine" and
"feminine", after the 12 gods and 18 goddesses that make up the months.
If I recall correctly, the masculine calendar is associated with the
cycle of constellations, and so with the solar year, while the feminine
calendar is linked to ecclesiastical feast days.

Each calendar has its own Aztec-style naming schema for individual days/

>What set of monomorphemic color terms does your conlang and/or conculture include?
>
>
Ooh, lots.

Nrit distinguishes four types of colour terms -

Colours are flat, opaque colors. This category is the largest in terms
of monomorphemic members.

Tinctures are the "colors" of naturally-occuring things, and so they
generally are very context-sensitive; the tincture àànnàd,
"ocean-colored" (this word seems related to a mystery àànn- morpheme in
many other ocean-related words (such as the àànnàndhi water dragon), but
in modern Nrit it cannot be analysed), can mean English "dark with
golden sparks, speckled white, indigo, wine-dark, aquamarine", or any of
various other things depending on the time of day, current weather, and
prevailing climate. They are favored in poetry for the delicate shadings
of subtext they can create by varying the context they are interpreted
with. This category is poor in monomorphemes, but has its own morphology
for coining new tincture terms.

Jewels are the colours of translucent things and metals (Some metals,
such as silver and copper, are grouped with the tinctures because they
cover a broader range). This category includes such things as
"heat-haze", "smoky", and "blurred" as well as more literally jewellike
colours such as ruby.

The final category, lights, covers conditions of illumination; the most
basic light terms mean "sunrise", "brightness", and "night". The
appearances of opal and diamond are also lights, though the "opal" term
is losing favor, being replaced by "sunrise" in most cases. This is
actually the second-largest colour category, to underline the idea that
the Nrit culture is very visually-oriented.

----

I haven't thought about Nrit kin-terms yet, but it is strongly likely
that the system outlines a basic set of relationships, and then has
open-ended derivational processes for non-basic ones, plus some specific
terms for special places in the kinship tree---like, children may adopt
an unlimited number of adult "mentors" who serve as additional parents;
these mentor-parents have a special term, but kin relations radiating
out from them are not distinct from blood-kin relation.

--
The "Million Style Manual" is a set of sixty-four jade stones marked
with pieces of Chinese characters. It expresses the kung fu of the void,
as taught by P'an Ku's axe.

Shreyas Sampat
http://njyar.blogspot.com