Re: The Melting

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Leigh" <thomas@...>

> Vyko, Sally!
Vyko, Htomas, traltan-jo! (hello and greetings!)  And anybody else... it
feels like we're having a public private conversation, but some of these
issues are I hope universal! [although I think people these days pick and
choose their threads out of necessity].

> > That looks SO much like a Teonaht stative verb.  Rohhsendi:
> "be pink, vulnerable."
>
> Now that is a very interesting and delightful coincidence! :)
It's pronounced a little differently:  imagine "roshenda," with an emphasis
on the penultimate syllable, and the final vowel a schwa sound.  Of course I
don't know how you pronounce Rozhendi.

> I think I'll be ruminating over your comments
> for a while tonight, Sally. :)
Let me know what you come up with.

> And interestingly, ruminate (in the sense of "think heavily over
> something") is a verb for which I do know the Rozhendi word:
> rispartha.
I love your words, Thomas.  They sound like words I'd make up.  Maybe that's
vanity speaking!  In Teonaht, that would be spelled rissparhta or
rissparhti.  Some of us have borrowed words from each other (I cite my
borrowings in the lexicon).  I borrowed smalik "skeleton" from Draseleq.
Maybe we could do some fruitful borrowings, because lately I've been making
up words that don't sound terribly beautiful or "apt" to me.  Especially the
ones made from compounds.

> All I can say is that if I have as much Rozhendi as you have
> Teonaht by the time I reach your age, I will be delighted beyond
> measure! ;)
:)  Well, I sometimes wonder how long I can go on doing this and stay sane.
It's still far from finished.

> And it is
> because I care so much that I get so frustrated at not being
> able to hear them.
>
> > You need a friend.  An ammanuensis.  A go-between.
>
> I think you're right. The question is, how and where do I find
> one? :)
You concentrate on her or him and imagine their face.  You ask them what a
word means and they tell you.  With some practice it will come naturally.  I
should use my Issytra more often.

> > We're all gonna die, and our languages will be incomplete!
>
> Oh, of course. No language can ever be complete. But my dream is
> to be able to speak Rozhendi at least fairly fluently by the
> time I shake this mortal coil...
Mine too!  I still stumble (kloika) in Teonaht.  Find that I'm missing a
basic word.  Like "carpet."

> > I'm fighting that, but I have to do major research for my
> promotion, plus finish a novel, plus live my life and attend to
> my students.
>
> So how do you manage? ;)
Not well.  I sit at the computer too long.  I feel compelled to partake in
email conversations (like this one!), as marvelous as that is. Conlanging
has an obsessive quality to it that can overwhelm me.  I wonder how many
other people feel the same.  I am taking a brief vacation this week which
will end Monday night, and then I have to put this away and work on other
things.  I might even have to go nomail.  This week I've worked on filling
out a long taxonomy of words for things of this world.  Amazing how many
gaps there are still.  My problem is in the hand placing of every item.  If
it goes in Teonaht English, then it must go in English Teonaht, something I
have only really started this week.  If it goes in either, then it must also
go in the Taxonomical list, a project I started last year that lists things
and notions--Hildegard style--in ordered groups starting with the body, the
household, the garden, the city, the law, medicine, the arts, etc.  It's
gotten out of hand. :)  Maybe I'll put it up when it's more filled out. [How
may other people do this?]  The yellowed pages dating back to '69 are
falling apart, so a transference is needed.  I have a (once) blank book that
I started filling out, but like everything I do that has no immediate
deadline, it is unfinished.  All of this is enormously time-consuming, and I
have other projects that are more urgent, although the urgency of this
project--especially since I discovered this list--is very pressing.  This is
the first time there has been an audience for a private project.

> Actually, I thought of you last weekend -- my wife and I
> performed at a Highland Games in Edinboro, PA, near Erie, and
> driving out route 90 we passed the exits for Rochester (or
> rather for the other route that takes you to Rochester) and I
> thought, "That's where Sally lives, too bad we can't stop for a
> visit." I would still love to meet one of these days, whether it
> be out there or over here or somewhere inbetween.
You must do that.  Remind me of where you live again, and how far away.  If
there are any other upstate New Yorkers, we should have a vlorya (party).

> > Ooooooh, yeah.  Many of my Teonim have "strange powers" and
> have made an art out of it.  Many of them, though, are
> hard-working, honest laborers. Shoemakers, farmers, masons,
> carpenters, tailors, fishmongers, policepeople.
>
> Wow -- I'm quite taken by the similarities between our peoples.
> :)
Well, they are like peoples all over the world.

[delightful stuff about puberty and conlanging snipped]

> > (that one scene in AI where the
> > lion-statues "wept tears" gave me a chill, a frisson of
> > recognition!).
>
> The film that did that for me was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
> Naboo City, with all its domes and columns -- it *was* a Rozhen
> city come to life.
How interesting!  I almost brought this up in my last email.  Your
description of the Rozhendi city reminded me of that scene.  I liked the
Phantom Menace almost entirely for its city and landscapes, and for the
clothes that the Queen of Naboo wore (and almost nothing else!).  THOSE
DRESSES!  They were very Teonaht, of the traditional style.  The old Teonaht
go in, as well, for elaborate face painting and mask wearing.  The
aristocrats, that is.  Some find this distasteful, especially since the
people of Rordaly do this.

> When I saw the movie, I think my jaw was
> quite literally hanging open. That's one of the reasons I love
> that film, even though so many other people dislike it. The
> Rozhen do not have spaceships or laser guns, of course, but
> minus those things the look and feel of that city is just
> completely Rozhen.
I understand completely.  It was wonderfully creative, and very baroque,
almost.

> > Then there is the Teonaht city of my childhood, full of round
> houses, green copper roofs, minarets and bugled announcements of
> the four "hours" of the day; flower sellers (flowers are sacred
> and nurseries abound), the spectacular gardens of the rich, the
> grandiose temples of the gods, priests in silver robes, the
> usual stuff of fantasy.  And of course fabulous landscapes
> dominated by mountains, waterfalls, and high mountain lakes. :)
>
> So how do these coexist for you? This is exactly the sort of
> thing I face with Rozhen culture: two seemingly contradictory
> worlds, which nevertheless I *know* coexist somehow, but I can't
> figure out how they connect.
In the way I described in my first post.  Over a period of time, and across
space.  The old city is oooooold, as are the customs.  But the Teonim have
aged with us, so there is a mixture of the old and the new.

> > > An Atlantic location might explain the otherwise
> inexplicable presence of loanwords (unless the similarity in
> form and meaning is somehow always entirely coincidental) from
> various European languages, whose presence might make sense in
> the speech of diaspora communities,
>
> > That's what I'm banking on in the formation of the Teonaht
> language.  Ykwa, for "horse," for instance.
I meant especially the notion of a diaspora; but the dispersed Teonaht are
ordered to regroup and go back.  They have to find their way back to the
island before it melts.  It will come back again, even soon, but its time
will have changed.

> You know, now that I think about it, I wonder if some of the
> vocab I've found is vocab from a diaspora dialect. The word for
> computer, for example, is thwelva, which seems to be a
> borrowing/mutation of the Icelandic tölva.
I like the initial consonant cluster "thw."

> What do you know, Sally, I think I've just had a major epiphany
> regarding Rozhendi and you helped me find it. Thank you!
Poy benda!

> Are there Teonim-human relationships, marriages, families? Once
> they get to know one of us, do they become more relaxed, less
> suspicious, more comfortable letting themselves express
> themselves natually (e.g. not hiding emotion or the eye-color
> response) with that person? Or are Teonim-human relations always
> reserved and formal?
Oh yes... I think they look upon marriages as miscegenous, but there are
plenty of them.  After all, they've inherit some of the traits of the
Slavic, African, and Asian peoples they've mingled with.  Back home,
whereever that is, there are some who have naturally mottled skin and
streaked hair, like a brindled shelty.  That gets passed to some humans.
It's called being "map" skinned--hedrirradnihs.  And there is a far higher
risk of albanism in Teonhea.  The guards in The Matrix Reloaded, the ones
with the dreadlocks and the British accents, reminded me of these,
especially with their dark glasses.  Dreadlocks is highly admired, but
albanism is feared, and associated with "strange powers."

> > I've abandoned and picked up Teonaht many times.  Once I left
> it for almost eight years.
(actually for more than that!!)

> That sounds like me with all of my languages. Of course, all but
> Rozhendi and my nacent "fun project" Burgenian no longer hold
> any particular aesthetic or linguistic appeal for me, but they
> are so much a part of me that I can't just give them up or set
> them aside completely. So they lie there for a while, and
> periodically I'll do something with them or play with them a
> little, then put them back down for a few years. :) But even
> when I was actively developing them, it was still always an
> on/off again thing.
Why not mix them with the Rozhendi world?  How would that propel your
imaginative processes?

> Firrimby,
You got it! :)


Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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