Re: The Melting

Vyko, Sally!

Sally wrote:

> > the people who speak Rozhendi.
> That looks SO much like a Teonaht stative verb.  Rohhsendi:
"be pink, vulnerable."

Now that is a very interesting and delightful coincidence! :)

> Maybe you are feeling too vulnerable to your Rozhendi, and
have closed your ears to them.

And that is a truly interesting assessment of the situation!
Because I want so badly to hear them, I'm *desperate* to hear
them, yet I can't. I think I'll be ruminating over your comments
for a while tonight, Sally. :)

And interestingly, ruminate (in the sense of "think heavily over
something") is a verb for which I do know the Rozhendi word:
rispartha.

> That's so familiar!  Much of my early Teonaht was pulling the
words out of the air.  It has become much harder now that I have
so many words, and possibilities for compounds and affixes.

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! ;)

> Also, the word has to SOUND right to me. There has to be some
kind of semantic cathexis.

Totally; Rozhendi is the same way with me. And it's fascinating
to me, because I've never had this with any of my other language
projects, but so frustrating at the same time, because it means
I get so little accomplished!

>  perhaps because you care so MUCH about these people you won't
hear them speaking.

You know, I'm quite intrigued by this idea, but I can't quite
figure out how or why it should be so. I mean, it seems to me
that I should be very in tune with them, and thus able to hear
them, precisely because I care so much about them. And it is
because I care so much that I get so frustrated at not being
able to hear them.

> I understand from years of listening to all of you, that
"filling out the dictionary" is one of the most painful aspects
of conlanging.  Or the most
difficult.  Since we don't have the POLL NO 30 to remind us of
the painful aspects of conlanging, then I can only surmise.  But
it seems that the fun part is making up the structure.  Making
up the thousands of words needed for the language to "run" and
memorizing them is the onerous  part.  Is that generally right?

In my experience, yes. I can't speak for anyone else, obviously.

> You need a friend.  An ammanuensis.  A go-between.
I think you're right. The question is, how and where do I find
one? :)

> 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...

> 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? ;)

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.

> 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.
:)

> Ah ha ha ha !!!   I think there's a reason why we come to
conlanging and conworlding at the age of twelve.  Language
awakening, sexual awakening, an awakening to reason and politics
and structures, and sexy peoples.

Given the experiences so many of us have had with others not
understanding or tolerating our conlanging, I'm reminded of the
line in the X-Men movies (don't know if it works this way in the
comics too, I've never read them) about how mutation manifests
itself at puberty... ;)

But seriously, Sally, I really think you're on to something
there. It's really interesting, isn't it?

> My major change at age twelve, after two years of making baby
Teonean for my heaven cats, was to put the heaven cats in heaven
and turn the Teonim into young men I could fantasize about, all
in tight-fitting very audacious clothing: earrings in their
ears, their long hair braided with silver and copper thread.

I first started conlanging at 12 myself. Rather, I started
conlanging in the sixth grade, the school year during which I
turned twelve, though I no longer remember at exactly what point
during that year I started. I also don't remember what prompted
me to start conlanging, I just pulled out a notebook and started
creating a language. I do know it was inspired by Albanian; a
half-Albanian girl in my class brought an Albanian book into
school one day to show me -- I'd already been fascinated by
languages and alphabets for years -- and I was quite struck by
the look of it. I remember that I especially loved all the ë's.
And then I started creating my own language which was full of
ë's (Choba). But I have no clue what made me do that instead of
going to the library to look for books about Albanian, for
example. And getting back to your language awakening and sexual
awakening, I remember quite clearly that that was also the same
year that I started noticing breasts and girls' figures and so
on.

> Well, exactly!  Go look at my Teonaht city: The woman is
slumbering on a balcony above a metropolis that is both ancient
and modern, its streets too narrow for the car to be negotiating
way below.  There is the Teonaht that is emergent and here--kind
of retro, where people of the city take taxicabs, go to the open
market, ride on elevated trains, drive fifties style
automobiles, ride bicycles, dine in restaurants, have their
papers in order when they arrive or leave through the four main
"portals" to our world, look up at the great winged cats that
line the ramparts of the city (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. 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.

> 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.

> > 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.

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. The word for world is
dhunya, which is practically identical to the
Arabic/Turkish/Persian dunya. I've just assumed that the words I
found were *the* Rozhendi words for those concepts, period; it
never even occurred to me until now that they might be simply
*one* word for them.

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

>  The Teonim, on the other hand, are reserved and suspicious.
They are very warm amongst themselves, and while they crave
visitors, and
need them, and sometimes kidnap them to augment their bloodline,
they are paradoxically overproud of their heritage, and often
feel superior to us
Terrans...  They have very dramatic ways of expressing affection
and passion, but they try to keep their emotions hidden when
speaking with strangers.

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?

> I've abandoned and picked up Teonaht many times.  Once I left
it for almost eight years.

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.

> Not overly verbose.  Very interesting.  You need to follow
instincts.

You're not the first person to tell me that. :) I suppose I
should try to take it to heart.

> Good to hear from you, Thomas.
Likewise!

Firrimby,

Thomas

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