PREVIEW: SymNES II

[Swissempire]

Origin Location: 2
Societal Name: Arozi
Language Family: Proto-Asonic
Descent Rights: Patrilineal
Inheritance Rights: Patrilineal
Climate Distribution: Tropical/subtropical savanna near bodies of water

If more info become needed I will most likely just update this post.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Origin Location: #1
Societal Name: Nengal
Language Family: TBD (Proto-Ialian?)
Descent Rights: Patrilineal
Inheritance Rights: Absolute primogeniture
Climate Distribution: Large areas of temperate forest, spread to neighboring savannahs and deserts. Riverine where possible, but generally well inland.

 

[JosefStalinator]

Origin Location: 1
Societal Name: Bessariondze
Language Family: Proto-Ialian
Descent Rights: Patrilineal, based on physical/military strength.
Inheritance Rights: Patrilineal, based partly on age, mostly on skill in battle. Semisalic Gavelkind: Generally, inheritance is divided among ALL male heirs evenly or in a staggered fashion (titles such as King would go to the eldest/strongest).
Climate Distribution: Coastal or temperate grasslands/forests, preferably in the southernmost bits.


On Proto-Ialian: It reminds me too much of "Italian", but apparently everyone has already latched onto it. I'd prefer a different name though.

And for those choosing "merit-based", I assume you realize that the only real merits in this society are those who are able to rule most effectively through force and strength, and conquer the most territory the most quickly (IE Before their ruler dies).

 

[Fuschia]

And for those choosing "merit-based", I assume you realize that the only real merits in this society are those who are able to rule most effectively through force and strength, and conquer the most territory the most quickly (IE Before their ruler dies).

It would take a long time to explain what I mean by merit-based. Each village of the Alarcheans (which is their word for Balance, the highest law to which all must bend) is ruled by a single person, who decides several things. Most importantly, he decides who shall be assigned which job, and these jobs are assigned for your entire life. When it comes to inheritance, he decides who gets what when a person dies, which is what I mean by merit-based.

Also, societies are not necessarily militaristic nor expansionist at this time. My people are generally peaceful farmers who only move far outside of their villages when a leader decides that someone within the village is worthy of becoming a leader, at which point the older leader moves on to develop a new village in another area. Just because many societies were historically militaristic and expansionist does not mean all of them were, nor that we should be sticking strictly to real history, as that would make this NES essentially pointless.

I think that, for the languages, we might do well to come up with certain base words for each family. Mostly for the really common stuff: I, you, he/she/it, the, and, various forms of to be, the first few numbers, sheep, cow, horse, that sort of thing.

Not to detract from Fuschia, but I think that these should be decided by the threadgoers.

That may be interesting, but it would, most likely, simply turn into a quagmire. I suppose there is no harm in trying, but I doubt anyone will be capable of reaching a consensus when it comes to words. Besides, deciding these things universally seems historically a poor choice as, while many words in one language are based off those in another language, I cannot think of any languages that borrowed their entire set of basic words from another language, let alone an entire set.

Also, when I offered to develop a language it was more for a language for others to develop their language based upon, much like Latin or Chinese, not something that would be part of the language's of other societies and this, I think, is much closer to the way actual language developed. I may be wrong, as I am not a linguist, but I can't seem to think of any more plausible method at the moment.

 

[North King]

That may be interesting, but it would, most likely, simply turn into a quagmire. I suppose there is no harm in trying, but I doubt anyone will be capable of reaching a consensus when it comes to words. Besides, deciding these things universally seems historically a poor choice as, while many words in one language are based off those in another language, I cannot think of any languages that borrowed their entire set of basic words from another language, let alone an entire set.

Wrong on both counts. Firstly, NESers come to a consensus far more often than you might think. Secondly, what exactly do you think Proto-Indo-European was? Pretty much the ancestral tongue of most European and Indic languages. The words weren't quite passed down to the "daughter languages", obviously, but there's pretty clear evidence that a lot of root words evolved from the same source.

 

[Fuschia]

Wrong on both counts. Firstly, NESers come to a consensus far more often than you might think. Secondly, what exactly do you think Proto-Indo-European was? Pretty much the ancestral tongue of most European and Indic languages. The words weren't quite passed down to the "daughter languages", obviously, but there's pretty clear evidence that a lot of root words evolved from the same source.

You are completely correct in saying that Proto-Indo-European was that. However, what I gather from the fact that it is language family rather than language is that we don't all speak the same language. Obviously, I'm not Symphony, so I don't know, but I am fairly sure that we are just beyond the proto language and, obviously, it makes little sense for the new languages to carry on all the base words from the old one, as they would be basically the same language.

As for consensus, I have no idea how long it will take. But you can't predict the future any better than I can and, as I said, there is no harm in trying.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

Origin Location: #2
Societal Name: Shaituhu
Language Family: Proto-Asonic
Descent Rights: Matrilineal, organized within clans.
Inheritance Rights: Upon the death of the head of the household, property will revert to the clan as a whole and be redistributed by the group of clan shamans.
Climate Distribution: Rivers in deserts/floodplains (similar to OTL Tigris or Euphrates or Nile)



Note on Language
If any of you are in need of a large list of random words that obey certain constraints, I recommend this site.

For those of you interested in linguistics or phonetics, the language I created contains a,e,i,u as vowels (for maximal seperation), as well as ai and au as diphthongs. Nasal variants of all these vowels exist, but only after nasal consonants. It contains the velar and alveolar stops, nasals, and fricatives, and makes a phonemic voicing distinction in all of these cases, except for the velar fricative, where the voiced and unvoiced variants are in free variation, and the nasals, which obviously must be voiced. It also contains the unvoiced glottal stop and fricative (though the glottal stop is absent from the orthography). The only permitted consonant combinations are an unvoiced stop + s, a voiced stop/nasal + z, and a stop or fricative + h.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about:
Vowels:
a
e
i
u
ai
au

Consonants:
t
d
k
g
n
ng
s
z
x
h

Double Consonants:
ts
dz
ks
gz
nz
ngz
xs
th
dh
kh
gh
xh
zh
sh

All syllables must begin with some form of consonant and end with some form of vowel.

 

[LittleBoots]

EDIT: Was typing all this up when a horde of linguists posted before me. Oh well, I add whatever help I can to fighting the good fight.

nor that we should be sticking strictly to real history

But we should use it to check against absurdities. It is the only case-study we have.

but I doubt anyone will be capable of reaching a consensus when it comes to words.

A consensus is unnecessary when we are blessed with good suggestions and Symphony's ultimate decision

Besides, deciding these things universally seems historically a poor choice as, while many words in one language are based off those in another language, I cannot think of any languages that borrowed their entire set of basic words from another language,

Latin: ego, tu / me, te / nos, vos
Italian: io, tu / mi, ti / noi, voi
Spanish: yo, tu / me, te / nosotros, vosotros
French: je, tu / me, moi, to, toi / nous, vous

Latin: mater / pater
Greek: meiteir / pateir (its an eta, not epsilon-iota, but I'm being lazy)

Latin: cornu (horn) / tyrannus / magna / prius / cum- / quinque
Greek: cera (horn) / tyrannos / mega / protos / sun- / pente

(Note: Quinque and pente are from the same IE root. For some reason, apparently Latin words tend toward q's while Greek tends towards p's, t's, and d's). While some can be chalked up to later borrowing, I am going to have to disagree with you, if I understand you right. An examination of Sanskrit alongside Greek and Latin would show many similarities in roots traceable back to the so-called Indo-European language. Some of these words aren't even basic, like horn or tyrant.

If you are starting with a relatively small group of peoples, it is likely their language will be very similar, only diverging after long periods of separation (not complete separation - see Romance languages) or contact with other languages.

Also, Romance languages are all, more or less, degenerate* versions of Latin, and so borrow almost everything from it. (*not morally... well, maybe not morally )

If I'm misunderstanding something, let me know, but I don't think coming up with some root words is a bad idea at all. Of course, these can and will eventually be diverged from to the point of unrecognizability, just not yet.

One final suggestion: don't let "to be" have a regular conjugation. I haven't yet seen one that is.

Random Samplings of "to be" verbs

Greek: eimi, ei, esti, esmen, este, eisi, ein, eistha, ein...
Latin: esse, sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt
English: be, is, are, was, were
Spanish: ser, soy, eres, es, somos, esteis, son, estar

 

[Chandrasekhar]

On Proto-Ialian: It reminds me too much of "Italian", but apparently everyone has already latched onto it. I'd prefer a different name though.

Incidentally, I also have this complaint.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Also, societies are not necessarily militaristic nor expansionist at this time. My people are generally peaceful farmers who only move far outside of their villages when a leader decides that someone within the village is worthy of becoming a leader, at which point the older leader moves on to develop a new village in another area. Just because many societies were historically militaristic and expansionist does not mean all of them were, nor that we should be sticking strictly to real history, as that would make this NES essentially pointless.

To use Sumer as an analog for this game in terms of what was going on Between 6000 and 3000 BCE, I have posted a bit of my research as regards writing. But you should note that by 4000 BCE (the start of our game) the older hunter gathering clans had been displaced by settlements that already had the need to "keep accounts" for trade or taxes by citizens. this is not to say that sumeria was a completely peaceful place, but it does say that it was peaceful enough that a complex economic system based on surplus goods was in place for more than 1000 years before writing was developed.

Within this game it should be possible for our tribes to get as far and that by by the end of the first update something comparable to Sumer exist.

Spoiler :

Around 8000 BCE the hunter gatherers of the near East began to domesticate plants and animals with sufficient skill to change their lifestyle from one of migration to fixed villages. Wheat and barley were the main crops, cattle and sheep the important animals. Increases in food led to larger populations and changes in the way people organized their lives. Egalitarian hunter gatherer groups gave way to rank oriented villages where the headman collected and distributed the surplus resources. Simple tokens appear in the archaeological record and give evidence of the increasing complexity of economic life and the expansion of their way of counting to include concrete counting. “Accounting” was added to the repertoire of skills used by “educated” citizens. Simple tokens for the everyday products of an agricultural way of life were used to track payments and accounts.

As society become more complex new tokens were added to represent more types of goods and services. Villages became towns and small cities. Around 4000 BCE the cities of southern Mesopotamia reorganized themselves into city states built around temple bureaucracies and economic control of the surplus goods produced by the growing non agricultural workforce. Around 3700 BCE we find complex tokens strung together on cords or sealed in clay balls. These security measures were attempts to produce tamper free records. The clay envelopes were sometimes marked on the outside with the impressions of the tokens found on the inside. That way you didn’t have to break the envelope to know what was inside. Personal seals often authenticated the contents.

By 3500 BCE, the clay envelopes were being replaced by simple tablets with impressions of tokens. At this stage the rules of concrete counting prevailed; tablets accounting for “three jars of oil” were written as “one jar of oil” and “one jar of oil” and “one jar of oil.” The increased demand placed on temple and bureaucratic accounting taxed the ability of the token system to keep up. Then around 3100 BCE in the city of Uruk in Sumeria, someone invented numerals. They separated the “how many” from the “of what.” They invented abstract counting. Initially, an impressed mark counted the “how many” and an incised pictograph indicated the “of what.” These beginning number forms were based on the old impressions of tokens for measures of grain and number of animals. The Sumerians developed and used both base 6 and base 10 counting systems.

Once numbers and objects were separated, pictographs could be used to express far more than accounting transactions and objects. Pictographs took a phonetic path and soon names were added, quickly followed by the whole spectrum of ideas. The full transition to abstract counting and writing took several centuries, but like all good ideas it spread quickly and changed as it spread. From abstract counting we got mathematics. The Sumerians gave us Cuneiform, the art of writing on soft clay with a reed stylus, which became the dominant writing in the Middle East for the next 2000 years.

Important Terms

Egalitarian Society – Individuals receive a share of common resources equal to status in group.
Rank Society – Collection and distribution of resources by head man
State – Collection and redistribution of resources by central authority. Dependent upon industry, large surpluses of basic goods like grain and cattle, taxes, bureaucracy, coercion of workforce. Uses accounting, tribute, seals of approval, control by scribes (knowledge, education). Rise of monumental temple architecture.
Hunter Gatherer – Egalitarian Paleolithic society
Agricultural – Sedentary society based on crops and domesticated animals.
Tallies – Simple counting (the addition of one more unit of something) that shows up in Paleolithic finds as notches in a stick or bone.
Concrete counting – One to one correspondence. A token that represents “one jar of oil” or “one measure of grain” illustrates this concept. In modern society “twins” and “quartet” are examples of concrete counting.
Abstract counting – Numbers separated from objects. “Twoness” is independent of any particular object and may be associated with many items and used mathematically. 2+4 = 6, but twins cannot be added to quartets.
Computation – using numbers to count objects
Accounting – tracking economic transactions
Simple tokens – unadorned clay objects in simple shapes
Complex tokens – complex shaped clay objects or those incised with lines or designs
Impressed marking – when an object is pushed into clay to replicate its shape.
Incised marking – when an object is drawn over a clay surface to make a mark.

 

[Fuschia]

Incidentally, I also have this complaint.

I also had it, although only for a few seconds. Then I realized it doesn't really matter as, certainly, many words in this NES will be similar to real-life words because of the lack of interesting sounding letter combinations.

Note on Language
If any of you are in need of a large list of random words that obey certain constraints, I recommend this site.

For those of you interested in linguistics or phonetics, the language I created contains a,e,i,u as vowels (for maximal seperation), as well as ai and au as diphthongs. Nasal variants of all these vowels exist, but only after nasal consonants. It contains the velar and alveolar stops, nasals, and fricatives, and makes a phonemic voicing distinction in all of these cases, except for the velar fricative, where the voiced and unvoiced variants are in free variation, and the nasals, which obviously must be voiced. It also contains the unvoiced glottal stop and fricative (though the glottal stop is absent from the orthography). The only permitted consonant combinations are an unvoiced stop + s, a voiced stop/nasal + z, and a stop or fricative + h.

Several things. First of all, I tend to prefer more interesting languages; for instance, I tend to omit some consonants, or mix them, and do the same with vowels as well. Adding other mouth noises always makes it interesting as well, such as tongue clicking and such.

Also, while random words are always good, I tend to make my languages constructive, basing more complicated words on the more basic words that they come from. Using this method, you do not really need all that many words at all, and they always seem to sound better when you make them yourself. Like food.

Anyways, this isn't really criticism, I suppose. In fact, looking over what I just said, I basically told you what I do rather than saying anything about what you do. Unluckily, I'm too lazy to switch it, and you might get something useful out of it, so here goes.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

I also had it, although only for a few seconds. Then I realized it doesn't really matter as, certainly, many words in this NES will be similar to real-life words because of the lack of interesting sounding letter combinations.



Several things. First of all, I tend to prefer more interesting languages; for instance, I tend to omit some consonants, or mix them, and do the same with vowels as well. Adding other mouth noises always makes it interesting as well, such as tongue clicking and such.

Also, while random words are always good, I tend to make my languages constructive, basing more complicated words on the more basic words that they come from. Using this method, you do not really need all that many words at all, and they always seem to sound better when you make them yourself. Like food.

Anyways, this isn't really criticism, I suppose. In fact, looking over what I just said, I basically told you what I do rather than saying anything about what you do. Unluckily, I'm too lazy to switch it, and you might get something useful out of it, so here goes.

I did omit consonants--note there's no p/b/r/l... And the major reason for not adding some exotic ones is that I don't want to have to figure out how to insert IPA character into Firefox.

In terms of words, I agree that it's best to come up with them yourself. If I have the time, I'll do that. But I'll probably randomly generate the roots and then come up with some morphology and syntax to add more complex meaning. Maybe I'll go for something like the Arabic pattern.

Anyway, this was just something I whipped up in 10 minutes so that I wouldn't have to come up with a culture name myself. Given a starting word, I will now proceed to construct a system around it.

 

[Fuschia]

I did omit consonants--note there's no p/b/r/l... And the major reason for not adding some exotic ones is that I don't want to have to figure out how to insert IPA character into Firefox.

In terms of words, I agree that it's best to come up with them yourself. If I have the time, I'll do that. But I'll probably randomly generate the roots and then come up with some morphology and syntax to add more complex meaning. Maybe I'll go for something like the Arabic pattern.

Anyway, this was just something I whipped up in 10 minutes so that I wouldn't have to come up with a culture name myself. Given a starting word, I will now proceed to construct a system around it.

If I have time I might do something similar tomorrow, although it will all be on paper and difficult to put on the computer, so it may be some time before I will figure out how to put it up here. Anyways, from what I got there will be plenty of time to develop languages and such, as Symphony has yet to post an actual starting date. At least, that is what I hope, because it usually takes me a long time to actually complete a language project.

Also, pronunciation guidelines are nice, but what about the flow and feel of the language? That is at least as important, so remember to do something with that. Accents and such are important so that languages will be truly different from one another. And, by accent, I mean something like British, not which syllable you put emphasis on.

 

[JosefStalinator]

My only hesitation with generating a proto-language is that I would feel I am sort of subverting all the other players in the cradle with my own arbitrary choices .

Though if anyone else wants to do the basics, I suppose we can all just give approval and then generate our own words based on that. Some things I'd like to see given their proto-roots (I can just do it, but it seems like some of you know more about linguistics than I ):

Spoiler Roots Needed :

King/Chief/Leader
Man
Woman
Moon 1
Moon 2
Sun
Earth (our planet)
Tree
Water
Horse
Sheep (Not sure which animals we have to domesticate)
Cattle
Chicken
Corn
Warrior
Wheat (? Maybe we should wait on the various resources first)
Green
Red
Blue
White
Black
Eye
Arm
Foot
Leg
Head
Group (A collection of people)
Thing/It (An "it" word, or generic "thing")
Basic Numbers
God(s)
Day
Night
Pronouns
Basic verbs: (To be being the most paramount, as previously mentioned)
Fight
Grow
Die
Live

And much, much more, add to the list and remove silly/anachronistic ones please

 

[~Darkening~]

The most obvious mising elements of your list would be more important verbs Josef- as LB mentioned, 'to be' being incrediably important, and pronouns. For the record, I'm butting in for input on origin two, through I won't be starting with it. For the list, I would suggest the following be removed: Horse, Sheep, (in general, the animals and crops), and the colors. I would add in the verb 'to be', pronouns, and maybe a few words for 'man', 'woman', 'family' etc.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

Can anyone find a list of the 100 or so most common words in English? If we strip out the function words and just keep the content words, that would seem like a good start for common roots.

Here's something similar to what I have in mind--the word list for Basic English. Obviously 850 words is a bit much, unless someone wants to write a random root generator.

Note that whoever comes up with roots shouldn't bother to give vowels, as they change incredibly often from language to language. Just list a 3 or 4 consonant sequence. (Something like the Arabic root system is what I have in mind.) Then we can do fun things like apply sound changes to our languages to come up with the equivalent roots.

 

[LightFang]

I know nothing 'bout linguistics. I'll just steal somebody's language. =D

-----

Origin Location: #2
Societal Name: Ajashi
Language Family: Proto-Asonic
Descent Rights: Matrilineal.
Inheritance Rights: Upon death of the head of the household, property is given to the "strongest", decided upon by a council.
Climate Distribution: Savanna, grasslands

Something like that, I guess.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

I know nothing 'bout linguistics. I'll just steal somebody's language. =D

-----

Origin Location: #2
Societal Name: Ajashi
Language Family: Proto-Asonic
Descent Rights: Matrilineal.
Inheritance Rights: Upon death of the head of the household, property is given to the "strongest", decided upon by a council.
Climate Distribution: Savanna, grasslands

Something like that, I guess.

I sense strong similarities between your society and mine (matrilinearity, property given out by council after someone's death). Perhaps they only recently split?

 

[JosefStalinator]

The most obvious mising elements of your list would be more important verbs Josef- as LB mentioned, 'to be' being incrediably important, and pronouns. For the record, I'm butting in for input on origin two, through I won't be starting with it. For the list, I would suggest the following be removed: Horse, Sheep, (in general, the animals and crops), and the colors. I would add in the verb 'to be', pronouns, and maybe a few words for 'man', 'woman', 'family' etc.

I wrote it rather quickly, I was just hoping someone would adapt it and get the ball rolling on a nice list . Never intended it to be anywhere near complete.

@Jalapeño Dude: Really with omissions of anachronistic words (like chemical, station, hospital etc) or unnecessary words (complex, substance, tray) the list is a lot shorter. Dunno where you'd find a random root generator though .

EDIT: I suppose a random name generator could be adapted... this one here generates random short names, which could be modified a bit and purged of bad ones. http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/fnames.cgi?d=checked&f=1

 

[Thlayli]

@Dark: I'm pretty sure das came up with Proto-Asonic, not me.

If anyone has a better suggestion for Origin 1, go ahead. Hopefully it can be better than just a random jumble of letters, though.