Re: Conlang Website

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> It *is* a neat idea. I have to join the club, though. The worldview in
> Chevraqis is so different I'd make Utter Hash of anything Biblical, and
> while God might forgive me, I wouldn't forgive myself.
Not having the vocabulary is such a 'purer' excuse :-)

I've not developed much of a culture around my lang, but there are a
few hints here and there.

I took the name from stories I have written, so they might shed some
light. In "The Clawmark", which I wrote when I was 16/17, the Gzarondar
Mountain is central to a lost civilisation, and inside its caverns lies a
strange mind-influencing force. The 'Tester' tests the strength of mind
of people wishing to venture into the caves, to discover if they are
strong enough to withstand the power, but since he is blind (a
necessity), his services are in fact optional. The legends of the people
describe the force in terms of a legendary giant eagle as it punctures
the flesh of its victim. Actually it's something of an analogy for human
sexuality, and there's no WAY that I'm going to explain where I got the
idea (let's just say I wrote the story to take my mind off certain
things, and also as a communicative measure).

In "The Cries of an Injured World", a project currently on hold, I
re-use the 'Gzarondar' to mean the planet that my hero, a wizard, comes
from, and the name of the wizard is the same as that of a lesser
character in 'The Clawmark'. There's not a lot of theology there apart
from the responsibilities of being a wizard, which are considerable.

In the language (not necessarily connected to either of the stories) the
culture is basically monotheist. The word for 'God' /roKi/ is a
contraction of a phrase meaning 'Master of Time' /rOno KOn ji/ and 'time'
is often used to mean Reality. For example the word for 'true' /ijIn/
means 'coming from time'. Also note that God is living gender, not
masculine or feminine. However, the language associates the past tense
with the masculine and the future tense with the feminine, which implies
a former association with a god and goddess. This implies that life on
earth is (or was) associated with the journey of sperm before conception,
which in turn implies that considerable emphasis on the afterlife should
be expected.

They would definately be the sort of people who would preserve old
legends for their social/allegorical value long after they had ceased to
be proper descriptions of religious belief.

If I were to develop a culture seriously, I would include elements from
my own faith, particularly those that are analogies or images that I find
useful as opposed to universal representations of Christianity. For
example I would develop a philosophy along the lines of the 'Game of
Signatures' as defined at web.netyp.com/member/dragon/god_signatures.htm,
possibly using the name 'Players' to denote a prominent religious
movement.

--
web.       | Here and there I like to preserve a few islands of sanity
netyp.com/ | within the vast sea of absurdity which is my mind.
member/    | After all, you can't survive as an eight foot tall
dragon     | flesh eating dragon if you've got no concept of reality.