Re: Informants, Issytra, The Gospel of Bastet

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 03:34:27PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> OOh, I didn't see this original post!
The joys and pains of the conlanger's Good Friend, the Delete Button.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arthaey Angosii" <arthaey@...>
[snip]
> > What this all boils down to is many of you have informants, and I want one
> > too.  :P  Seriously(?) though, does people have other, erm, "methods" of
> > learning/discovering their conlangs, besides the informant-route?
>
> Issytra (not the goddess, but an elderly scholar named for the goddess)
> is my "amanuensis"; she does all my "translating" for me in Conlang
> Relay Games.  Therefore if she gets something wrong, I can blame it on
> her.  <G>
Ah, yes, I remember her well from my browsing through the archives of past
Relays. I believe she was the inspiration for my Ebisedian informant's
hardheaded linguistic pedantry. :-)

As I used to relate, my Ebisedian informant was at one time completely
illiterate in Roman letters (as far as Ebisedian orthography was
concerned, anyway), and he would give me these plaques inscribed with the
Relay translation in full _sanoki'_, which I had to then painstakingly
transcribe to Roman orthography which could be sent to the next person in
the Relay. This process usually takes some time, and is error-prone, as
reading that elaborate script called _sanoki'_ isn't exactly my piece of
cake. Hence, the Relay Torch moved a bit slower when it came to me, and
the result has silly things like spelling mistakes. :-P

Nowadays, after persistence and insistence, my dear informant has finally
picked up the Roman transcription of Ebisedian, and is therefore able to
produce translations which I can send directly. Nevertheless, he is still
not very competent in Roman letters, and sometimes gets them wrong. (So I
still have an excuse for spelling mistakes in Relays. :-P)

And on bad days, he switches into literal-Ebisedian mode, where he reads
foreign texts with Ebisedian grammar or writes English "translations" in
Ebisedian word order, resulting in completely incomprehensible gibberish.
I still have to reprimand him for that ...

> Arais Aijjy is my seventeenth century commentator, who comments on the old
> pagan holy books in Teonaht.
Ah, nice concept. Reminds me of one Esani [?&"sani] the Wise (whose name,
incidentally, means "Mr Wise"), some of whose writings I have obtained via
my Ebisedian informant:
        http://quickfur.yi.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/Esani-1.pdf
        (Analysis mine, with help from my informant.)

[snip]
> David "The Grey Wizard" Bell speaks of himself as a kind of
> anthropologist/linguist who has uncovered the language of Amman-Iar on the
> basis of some old manuscripts he found in Amman.
[snip]

And I alternately play the role of Earthling blessed with an Ebisedian
informant, or adventurer who somehow finds himself dumped on some
_kacoo'ri_ ("landmass") somewhere in the Ferochromon, and encountering
real, live Ebisedi. :-)


T

--
Ph.D. = Permanent head Damage

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