A Wild Jasper Appears

The Chatters
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They were originally based off the Druzhina, mostly because I like the armour. My characters don’t wear plate armour, they wear lamellar. A typical Alendi legionnaire can fight mounted or dismounted, using a bow or spears. So that means a single soldier is four units rolled into one: a spearman, a heavy archer, a heavy cavalryman, or a heavy horse-archer.

This is what Vil looks like in his armour

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Except that because my world has more elephants, they are common in most armies, so you have Alendi legionnaires fighting alongside elephants. I guess that makes them resemble a Mughal army more than a medieval Russian army, but that’s purely convergent evolution.

I think they do eat it, especially ones made from mare’s milk.

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:rofl: ahhh

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Made today by the Mrow brothers:

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Aww cute. That you cooked together I mean.

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Yeah. I couldn’t put my nine-spice blend into it because one spice (coriander powder) was missing, so I had to settle with an eight-spice blend, and on top of that we didn’t have time to marinate the meat so the interior had no spice.

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I need to start working on Alendi, I think. I’m not sure how exactly to do that, so I’ll need ChatGPT’s help for that.

So far, I’ve naturally only come up with one phrase: “what is seen, happens not; and what happens, is not seen” is translated as “aj kamú ja, da aši ne; ar aj ašú ja, da kami ne.”

Here’s what ChatGPT wrote:

  • “Kak ti ja?” – “How are you?”
  • “Mi dobro ja” – “I’m well”
  • “Mi umor ja” – “I’m tired”
  • “Mi vidi tigra” – “I see a tiger”
  • “Mi znaj ne” – “I don’t know”
  • “Mi žel” – “I want”
  • “Aj brat’ mi ja” – “This is my sibling”
  • “Mi ti ljuba” – “I love you”
  • “Ti mitra mi ja” – “You are my friend”
  • “Morthaurú sarvam ja.” – “Change (Morthaur) is everything”
  • “Bhumi ja ne aj ja” – “The world is not what it seems”
  • “Aja, ab ašte” – “Come, but slowly”
  • “Ašte, brat’” – “Slowly, bro”
  • “Mi dharma sekyra ja” – “I am the axe of duty”
  • “Mi kaala ti” – “I am your death”

@LadyOfTheRiver Any thoughts on this?

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As someone with experience learning 5 languages (and two of them natively), you gotta learn linguistics.

You can’t rely on AI because it will then result in having to learn your own language from scratch. And even then… because AI hallucinates, you don’t even know if it makes sense or not.

The main thing I’ve learned through learning so many languages from scratch (literally one every 5 years of my life lol) is how a language works. You don’t make up the words first, you make up the syntax structure. For example - are you using cases or tenses? Is your word meaning influenced by tones (like Chinese), or is it like English, where the same word means different things depending on context? does formal you and informal you exist, like spanish, or is it like english, where it became obsolete over time?

also, the other thing that is HUGE is that language is influenced by culture. For example - Russians and Germans have different ways of describing time in the day.

  • German - very standardized sections of the day, each with a different name. this reflects the german obsession with rules, order, and precision.
  • Russians - we have morning, noon, evening, and night time. afternoon is called “after lunch”. the word simply doesn’t exist! and the word for “before noon but after morning” also doesn’t exist, unlike german. it’s simply “after breakfast”. This reflects the importance of food in russian culture. because food is so essential, and like a get together for the entire family to connect, it’s considered a universal time marker. which… this renders the word “afternoon” useless :joy: because everyone always knows when lunch is anyway!

when you have theset hings figured out, you have done 50% of the work already. then you can just make vocabulary, which then you have to have a spreadsheet for and remember lol.

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Idk how the other language you blended into Russian works, but Russian runs on cases, has a strict casual you vs formal you system, and is obsessed with using prefixes and suffixes to change the meaning of the word. in fact, you can actually stack 2-3 prefixes onto the word, and the average fluent russian will understand you perfectly.

russians also value efficiency, good education, saving face, and family (there’s no such thing as extended family in russia - all your relatives up to your grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins are called your immediate family). russian culture is a very collectivistic one, so ‘what people think’ is really important. personally I consider this very annoying, but I also love collectivistic culture for its natural aversion to loneliness. got a problem? you have a village at your side, and there’s definately someone in it who can fix it. it’s not even a question - if you say you’ll help and then try to weasel your way out of it (like in the uk, for example) you will be shunned. hard.

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Yeah, that’s the problem. I’m not smart enough to start a course in linguistics just yet.

But yeah, I get the idea: you have to get the culture down before you start with the language.

Well, time for another spreadsheet. Thanks for the inspiration!

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yeah, same. I’m thinking of using cases here too. Like that’s what I did with the one phrase I’m sure about: kamú means “to see”, and kami means “seen”; aši means “exists”, and ašú means “to exist”.

This is gonna be hard, it’ll take at least one year of my life.

The collectivism thing is also common in India (we have a specific word for ‘wife’s brother’ that doesn’t mean the same for husband’s brother, we have different words for uncle who’s older than your dad and uncle who’s younger, we have different words for maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather). That’s definitely gonna be an inspiration. I actually think this is how it is everywhere, and the USA is actually the weird one, being as individualistic and couple-obsessed as they are.

Fun fact: that’s actually gonna be a benefit for me when I emigrate. I said “I have a friend in Europe, he/she can help me”, my parents asked if he was a boy or girl (Bengali doesn’t have grammatical genders). I said boy, they said “good, ask him if you can move in with him.”

Had it been a girl, they’d have raised an eyebrow. But I got a free pass to move in with another boy because male-male comradeships are common here.

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yeah, whoooo! perfect.

you’re welcome :grin:

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:rofl: reminds me of the victorial era

you could kiss your wlw girlfriend on the lips and no one would bad an eye because “that’s just what best friends do!” :ragejoy:

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So far I’ve mainly been focusing on the characters (as in letters).

Like Serbian, Alendi has two different scripts: Runic and Carantic. Runic is mostly Cyrillic, meant to be carved into wood or stone, and Carantic was invented by this guy called Caranthir, meant to be written on paper, and it’s the Hellenic scripts (mostly). I will eventually replace them with their own scripts, but right now I’m working on figuring out how the scripts evolved over time.

At first, Runic was more common, but then the paper mill was invented (around the time that the Carantic script was created), and Carantic suddenly became the norm. This carried on for a while, until Runic was entirely phased out. But then in the year 1500 of the Second Age, mechanical typewriters were invented. By then, the Runic Script hadn’t been used for over 300 years, so naturally the first typewriters had Carantic characters.

Except… it was monospaced. Carantic intentionally has a flowery, flowing look to it, and variable spaces are part of the charm. But now that you had typewriters, it suddenly caused a massive riot: you guys are ruining our writing systems!

In the end, Runic was brought back, specifically as a language that could be written via typewriters. That’s also when lowercase runic was invented.

Here’s an example of what they look like:

  • Latin: aj kamú ja, da aši ne; ar aj ašú ja, da kami ne.
  • Carantic: αj cαμύ jα, δα αξι nε; αρ αj αξύ jα, δα cαμι nε.
  • Runic (carved): АЪ КАМÝ ЪА – ДA АШИ НE = АР АЪ АШÝ ЪА – ДA КАМИ НE
  • Runic (printed): аъ камý ъа, дa аши нe; ар аъ ашý ъа, дa ками нe

Yep, that’s basically what the inspiration is.

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I wont comment on anything else rn bc it’s good and makes sense. however, I will definitely comment on the perils of the cyrillic alphabet.

Peril 1: your Ъ usage makes absolutely no sense in any cyrilic language

Ъ and Ь don’t make a sound. they’re aren’t letters if we’re speaking practically. here’s their actual usage and function below.

  • Ь – this is used to make a letter make a soft sound. for example, let’s take the letter T. on its own, the letter makes a very hard sound. however, if you put it behind the T, it will make a sound that’s noticable more light and soft. Idk how to word this without using my voice so maybe look up a video for the actual sound difference once you’re done reading this.
  • Ъ – this sound has the opposite effect. If I put it after a letter, it makes it sound very hard, harsh, and severe.

grammatical rules aside, that’s the main jist of the two letters. they also have gramatical functions, like separating parts of a word or indicating gender, but that’s probably not relevant to you right at this moment. I can, and will, infodump about this on request (tho maybe not in writing because I can’t demonstrate sounds that way).

as per your conlang - АЪ this makes absolutely no fucking sense. A is a vowel, for starters, so it can’t ever be used with that sign. second, it doesn’t make a difference anyway, so it’s completely useless there and just confusing. it looks cool but that’s about where it ends… it’s kind of like a teen trying to be edgy by making really bad jokes :joy: :sob:

you’d be better off using a different letter.

third, there’s something else you need to know about cyrillic. it’s a whole separate topic, but i’ll summarize it here so you get it.

Peril 2: vowels come in pairs.

there are 10 vowels which come in pairs. for example, A and Я, which sound like A and YA. there’s more but you get the point. you still can’t put the hard sign next to them, but it’s probably helpful to know for future reference - depending on the sound you’re using, you need a different letter that represents it.

and the last one. your words need help too.

Peril 3: misjudging needed word length

your words are way too short. the average russian word is thrice as long as your longest one in in that sentence. if we exclude prepositions and participles (those short pesky one-letter words) we have an average length of about 12 characters, or two syllables, per word. however, to me that’s considred on the smaller side, because the more complicated common words are around 22 characters or 4 syllables.

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though I will say - this word actually works. I can read it and it means “to whom” in russian. keep it if you want that to be the meaning. the letter subs make sense and it looks like another mysterious slavic language.

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Ah, yes, about that: I’ve been trying to understand the difference between how hard signs and soft signs in Russian work for a while now, but it’s proving difficult. So that’s something I really want to look into. So any more help is appreciated, especially when I start learning Russian properly.

Right now I can only like half-read Cyrillic and know some basic words like спасибо or мой друг.

And once I learn the difference, I can implement the same in Alendi. For now, though, I’m using Ъ as a substitute for Y.

Now, onto Alendi:

Alendi has six vowels: A, E, I, O, U, and Y. I imagine their Runic variants can be А, Е, И, О, Y, Ъ, not because it’s faithful to its sources, but because it’s easier to carve. Actually, for the letter Y, I’m not sure whether to use Ъ, Ь or Ы. I’m just wondering what will be easier to carve. Or maybe I should get letters of my own.

Furthermore, they have accented variants: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý. They are sometimes there in Runic, but generally not present. Depending on the time period, the accent modifies the letter somehow (o = hotel, ó = hot), or tells the reader which part of the word to stress. Alendi usually has an alternating stress pattern, where every alternate syllable is stressed, so the accents control which part of the word is stressed.

There are also umlauts and ogoneks: (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ) or (ą, ę, į, ǫ, ų, y̨), the former adds a Y to the start, so you have YA, YE, YI, YO, YU and YY. And the latter add a nasal element to the end of the vowel.

Wow. I used that to mean ‘to see/perceive’.

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That’s the problem right there :rofl:

Please learn the alphabet. It will save you SUCH a headache lol

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That’s not a thing either, before you go too far with that one :joy:

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Also that’s an actual vowel, which makes it infinitely better by default.

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I’m thinking it should be in my setting. Or maybe I’ll pick some other symbols.

I need six vowels: A, E, I, O, U and Y.
And two semi-vowels: J and V. (V is spelt like W, and W is spelt like V)

There are also 24 consonants:

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