reja’tan: method

September 12th, 2010

Example: Kisxan mi’la’itva reja Mitilek.
Kisxan 3S-PST-fail method Mitilek.
Kisxan failed in the same way Mitilek did.

This is one of the words, I did not want to search on my blog to make sure that I do not reduplicate an entry. reja is used very much. It is used without suffix quite often to mean ‘in the way of’. The example shows it used that way. Seeing that many derivations are not quite regular, this is occasionally required if the adverb/adjective has a completely different meaning than the noun. BTW: This is one of the very few times when I deprecated grammar: Originally, this was a suffix, but it seemed not within the spirit of rejistanian.

Reja’tan means method or algorithm. In the song it was used as reja’tan semek, ie: method/algorithm related to cooking, ie recipe. Some programming books use recipes to illustrate the concept of an algorithm, so it fits.


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Takeaya

September 12th, 2010

Glyph of the word 'takeaya'.

takeaya

  • (v.) to be ready, to be prepared
  • (adj.) ready, prepared
  • (n.) readiness, preparedness

Ai takeaya ia i iumi futupala?
“Are you ready for some football?”

Notes: The NFL season is upon us! Indeed, in ten hours, the first games will kick off (well, aside from the game on Thursday, but that was more of a preview). This may not mean much to those outside the United States, but here, it’s a big deal. The Super Bowl is an unofficial holiday, and I think it’s safe to say that football has overtaken baseball as the modern national pastime.

Every year I make preseason picks for the playoffs, so for fun, I thought I’d post them here. (It’s true there’s been one game, but I made these in an e-mail to Doug Ball before the season started, so they still count.) Here goes:

AFC

  • AFC East Champ: New York Jets
  • AFC North Champ: Baltimore Ravens
  • AFC South Champ: Indianapolis Colts
  • AFC West Champ: San Diego Chargers
  • AFC Wild Card 1: Cincinnati Bengals
  • AFC Wild Card 2: Houston Texans

NFC

  • NFC East Champ: Dallas Cowboys
  • NFC North Champ: Minnesota Vikings
  • NFC South Champ: New Orleans Saints
  • NFC West Champ: San Francisco 49ers
  • NFC Wild Card 1: Green Bay Packers
  • NFC Wild Card 2: New York Giants

Super Bowl Minnesota Vikings over the New York Jets

To be honest, I’m not feeling too good about the Vikings anymore. Favre looked terrible on Thursday. I can see flipping the Packers and Vikings in my predictions above and then see Packers or Saints in the Super Bowl. We’ll see, though.

Today’s word has a socio-historical origin. Take, of course, is a prefix, but Aya is just a name. The word is coined after a very famous Aya: An ancient Kamakawi chief. In battle and in deliberations she was always one step ahead of her adversaries, and so to be like her meant to be prepared—ready for anything—kind of the way that “maverick” in English came to characterize people who kind of steamroll ahead with their own ideas, no matter what anyone else thinks, for ill or ought.

Now, to finish off, here are some Sunday predictions (we’ll see how I do picking some Sunday games and the Monday Night game for the rest of the season):

Week 1

  • Atlanta 27 Pittsburgh 19
  • New York Giants 33 Carolina 23
  • Green Bay 45 Philadelphia 12
  • New York Jets 21 Baltimore 18
  • San Diego 37 Kansas City 14

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Occasional Word in Merechi: chèmbel

September 11th, 2010
chèmbel  ['XÈM BÈL ['xEmbEl] n. festival, holiday.


The two chèmbelet associated with the mërèchi ceremonial "year", the alíta, are the one-day chèmbel ènchënö ['XÈM BÈL ['ÈNXENO], or Festival of Half, which is inserted in the middle of the alíta, and the five day chèmbel pëpícümnö ['XÈM BÈL [PE 'PI CUM NO], or Festival of Dancing, which occurs in the space between alítat. During these festivals, time is considered to be outside of both the alíta and the current 20-day "month" (about which more tomorrow), and even the days of the 4- and 5-day mërèchi weeks are suspended.


Example:


'ETI AL] [SE 'LITY A] ['PO NXÈ] ['XÈM BÈLNO] [PE 'PI CUM NO]

étial sëlítya pónche chèmbelnö pëpícümnö: Today is the second day of the Festival of Dancing.

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Occasional Word in Merechi: chèmbel

September 11th, 2010
chèmbel  ['XÈM BÈL ['xEmbEl] n. festival, holiday.


The two chèmbelet associated with the mërèchi ceremonial "year", the alíta, are the one-day chèmbel ènchënö ['XÈM BÈL ['ÈNXENO], or Festival of Half, which is inserted in the middle of the alíta, and the five day chèmbel pëpícümnö ['XÈM BÈL [PE 'PI CUM NO], or Festival of Dancing, which occurs in the space between alítat. During these festivals, time is considered to be outside of both the alíta and the current 20-day "month" (about which more tomorrow), and even the days of the 4- and 5-day mërèchi weeks are suspended.


Example:


'ETI AL] [SE 'LITY A] ['PO NXÈ] ['XÈM BÈLNO] [PE 'PI CUM NO]

étial sëlítya pónche chèmbelnö pëpícümnö: Today is the second day of the Festival of Dancing.

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Occasional Word in Merechi: chèmbel

September 11th, 2010
chèmbel  ['XÈM BÈL ['xEmbEl] n. festival, holiday.


The two chèmbelet associated with the mërèchi ceremonial "year", the alíta, are the one-day chèmbel ènchënö ['XÈM BÈL ['ÈNXENO], or Festival of Half, which is inserted in the middle of the alíta, and the five day chèmbel pëpícümnö ['XÈM BÈL [PE 'PI CUM NO], or Festival of Dancing, which occurs in the space between alítat. During these festivals, time is considered to be outside of both the alíta and the current 20-day "month" (about which more tomorrow), and even the days of the 4- and 5-day mërèchi weeks are suspended.


Example:


'ETI AL] [SE 'LITY A] ['PO NXÈ] ['XÈM BÈLNO] [PE 'PI CUM NO]

étial sëlítya pónche chèmbelnö pëpícümnö: Today is the second day of the Festival of Dancing.

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Occasional Word in Merechi: chèmbel

September 11th, 2010
chèmbel  ['XÈM BÈL ['xEmbEl] n. festival, holiday.


The two chèmbelet associated with the mërèchi ceremonial "year", the alíta, are the one-day chèmbel ènchënö ['XÈM BÈL ['ÈNXENO], or Festival of Half, which is inserted in the middle of the alíta, and the five day chèmbel pëpícümnö ['XÈM BÈL [PE 'PI CUM NO], or Festival of Dancing, which occurs in the space between alítat. During these festivals, time is considered to be outside of both the alíta and the current 20-day "month" (about which more tomorrow), and even the days of the 4- and 5-day mërèchi weeks are suspended.


Example:


'ETI AL] [SE 'LITY A] ['PO NXÈ] ['XÈM BÈLNO] [PE 'PI CUM NO]

étial sëlítya pónche chèmbelnö pëpícümnö: Today is the second day of the Festival of Dancing.

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Po’u

September 11th, 2010

Glyph of the word 'po'u'.

po’u

  • (v.) to act, to do
  • (v.) to move, to go (as in, “It’s your turn! Go!”)
  • (n.) action, doing stuff

Po’u ia i toyuku noto.
“Do something cool.”

Notes: One of my favorite new bands, the Arcade Fire, came out with this cool new interactive video for their song “We Used to Wait” (from their new album The Suburbs). You can give it a try here. Basically it asks you for the address of the home you grew up in, and then uses Google-something-or-other to include images of the address you gave it in the video. (One might try out famous addresses to see what they look like!)

Anyway, at some other point in the video, they ask you to create a postcard to send to your young self. I couldn’t think of anything, so I came up with this:

Postcard from the Arcade Fire interactive video for 'We Used to Wait'.

I couldn’t think of a message to include, so I wrote, “Do something cool” (after all, who doesn’t want to do something cool?). Then I drew what I thought was a charming fishy, a little heart, and I tried to draw a rabbit, but I ran out of time (you only have so much time to fill out the postcard). Anyway, I thought it was cool, and thought others might enjoy giving it a whirl, if they haven’t already.

This iku is a standard ikunoala: a combination of the syllabic glyphs for po and hu. It’s a blue collar iku, if there ever was one.

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To write

September 11th, 2010
Bodúta ve kakiriben

The weekend has come about and I should take the time to introduce today's new sentence. It has a new word. In response to the pupil's question Teacher says We could write. The stem of the word is kirib-. It has the plural ending -en and the future marker ka-.

From these dialogues it seems to me that ghostian is selective about using the future tense. It prefers the unmarked present tense verb. Perhaps this may be the future action is continuing from the present moment. If the future tense is uncertain, or conditional, or in a subordinate clause then it will choose to mark it as future. It is an interesting detail to note.

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mji: four

September 10th, 2010

Example: Xe’lil kitivalha mji. (1S-have Kitivalha four: I have 4 Kitivalha)

This is the ObCl for a posting which mainly explains that I don’t have internet access atm. Kitivalha is the name of the newer Rejistanian currency. Its name refers to ‘leverage’ (kitival’tan)

EDIT: fixed a stupid error caused by the internetlessness and the fact that I had to post this in a hurry from a system, I do not own and cannot configure.


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Torn Tongue: Temporal Conjunctions

September 10th, 2010

In previous posts, we've discussed coordinating conjunctions and correlative conjunctions, plus subordinating conjunctions, conditional conjunctions, and oppositional conjunctions.  Today we finish with temporal conjunctions.  These are important not just because time is a big deal for Torn World in general, but because the Northern language has encoded some features especially for marking distorted time flows -- a key feature of that particular language.  The Northerners do not know exactly how or why their world got so messed up, but they have some historical hints and they can perceive a lot more of the damage and bizarre effects than Southerners can.  So they have special ways of talking about these things.


Temporal Conjunctions

Temporal conjunctions express relationships with time, in the flow or sequence of events.  Ancient ones formed the basis for the Northern sets, which are divided into those used for normal time and those used for distorted time.  The Southern ones are closer to the Ancient set.

Temporal conjunctions follow a certain pattern.  They begin with “l” or “r” and include a long vowel or diphthong near the beginning; they end with a short vowel.  EXCEPT: Ancient raath  for “during/while” is the same as the Oppositional “while” and follows those rules.  Southern changed the initial "r" to "rr" instead.  Northern also changed these words by substituting the temporal prefix “tra-” at the beginnings.

These are the temporal conjunctions for Ancient and Southern:

English .............................................. Ancient ..... Southern
after ................................................... raala ........... rraala
before ................................................ laime ........... laime
during/while (a period or an activity) ...... raath ........... rraath
since ................................................. raibu ........... rraibu
until ................................................... raaju ........... rraaju
when .................................................. liidu ............ liidu

These are the temporal conjunctions for Northern, showing the forms for normal and distorted time.

English ............................................... N-Normal ..... N-Distorted
after .................................................... truula ............. traala
before .................................................. truume ........... traime
during/while (a period or an activity) ........ truuth ............. traath
since ................................................... truubu ............ traibu 
until ..................................................... truuju ............. traaju
when .................................................... truudu ............ traadu

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