Oops, Talking About Childhood Again

Four Archons got baby names over the last hour using a list of interesting syllables and a list of used syllables and patterns in the religion already. Wind has been named Rethwara, Force/Speed has been named Zulstaad, Fresh Water has been named Phreist, and Duality/Opposites has been named Laakin-Taakin.

That last one stands to be respelled the most. The brainstorm list went like this:

Lakhusak -> Lakindol -> Lakindolus -> Lakhindakh -> Lakindak -> Lakhinda -> Lakhindo -> Lakin-Dakin

I've decided I do like the notion of an evenly spelled, hyphenated name for the architect of extremes. There is a set of Mongolian names that have fascinated me for over a decade, Enebish and Terbish. From the current wikipedia article on Mongolian Names, under the category Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: 

"A distinctive type of Mongolian name that flourished in this period and is still common in the countryside is the avoidance name, designed to avert misfortune from the child: Nergüi “No Name”, Enebish “Not This”, Terbish "Not That"."

If I recall from somewhere else I'd read (over a decade ago now, so I may be mistaken) the names were "Not this one" and "Not that one" to keep bad spirits from harming or taking the vulnerable children. 

Anyway, it helped drum up the idea for Laakin-Taakin, at least in Jhordo-Sasni language sets, to mean "Near one-Far one." 

Phreist is going to share Its name with a major river in the world. Right now, the thought is either the river formed from all of the smaller rivers of the High Plains that merge and run down the Veltimakos Valley into an unnamed inland sea, or the one that ran from the Folsts (formerly out of an underground kingdom) and cut through Malidine, the one Burcumsy (still pending rename) is designed around. "The Phreist" will carry a similar weight to "The Ivid" either way.

Zulstaad sounds a lot like an old character I'd had in my childhood, a somewhat evil black dragon named Volstaad that had probably been based on the dragon with the dagger in its chest from Tomb Raider II (which is a really weird sentence, come to think, and I had to double check via google that I was remembering the cinematic from the right game) combined with the dragon in the chasm at the end of R.A. Salvatore's second book, Streams of Silver, which I think was named Shimmergloom? Dang, he was. I haven't read that book since sixth grade. Anyway, he was a very dragonly dragon of dragonly darkness that could talk and was kind of an important pet to the cast of baddies. I guess what I'm getting at is that he was a childhood relic that wasn't on the table for reuse at all, but I like that the suffix of his name got to resurface when I needed inspiration the most. Maybe Viscombris, the Possessed-Bone-Golem-Wearing-Armor general that commanded Volstaad, will make an appearance. I do need a name for the Archon of Bone. He certainly won't be the same character if he does.

[Edit: About ten minutes after hitting the Publish button, I've decided a perfect alpha name for bone archon will be Visco.]

Anyway. These names are in alpha. The whole world is in alpha. 

I've been playing a lot of Guild 3 at the moment. I've never played any of them, but a bundle of all the past iterations just went on sale, so I grabbed them, too. It's a weird game for me to be playing. It's like Sims Medieval had the fun parts sucked out of it and replaced with a business and economics simulator, and then had a little Fable humor dusted on it here and there. Business and economics have never been of interest to me, but after playing it a few times, it's got me begrudgingly hooked and I keep going back to it like the achievement whore I am. 

It's had me thinking about family dynamics in the old world, though, and how different family dynamics are across cultures even today. Marrying people in and out of families in the game reminded me a lot about the blog post I'd written years ago about the Atavan Caste System. I'd like to revisit that and see if anything needs improvement. I'm only just scratching the surface of Erihan's potential. That culture has gone through several major overhauls, and I've barely started on the current version, but it is a very family centered culture on top of being more matriarchal. The Jhordo-Sasni are also matriarchal but are less interested in family and more concerned with trades and ability. They've been in a fog of mystery for a good while. It's good to have something to look forward to working on, though.

Golboren - Verb Tense Reconstruction

So I learned from a Quora post that Turkish does not use the present perfect tense. Fascinated, I looked into other language groups and, if perfect tenses are missing, how they express specific timespans for actions and the events and the like. Turns out, there are many language groups without perfect tenses, and it does not limit their expression of specific thoughts and concepts.

This post is a great one that talks about varying tenses and functionality without them. Here is an excerpt from it:

"The following sentence, out of the blue, can be either past or present, through a quirk of verb morphology:
(7) When I put my books away, I set them on the shelf.
(7) can describe a past tendency, or a current one... out of the blue.  But you would hardly ever start a conversation with this sentence.   In a conversation, it would be more appropriate, but we would already have established if we were talking about the past or the present (or the future, using the present tense form!).  So in any realistic context, (7)'s ambiguity gets resolved immediately.  And that's the principle at work in tenseless languages."

I've hated the verb tenses in Golboren since I scrapped them together. The perfect ones, specifically, were awful. With the help of this new brain food, I've been motivated to now scrap the old perfect tense suffixes and refine the basic tense ones instead. Certain turns of phrase will now be developed to express ideas in an alternative way to the perfect tense.

Here is a verb sheet example of what the tenses looked like before. They were very confusing:

 Golboren
 English
 Present Active
 Ahonek
 Howls
 Present Passive
 Ahoneko
 is Howling
 Pres. Perfect
 Ahonesa
 has Howled
 Past
 Ahonok
 Howled
 Past Perfect
 Ahonosa
 had Howled
 Future
 Ahodo   
 will Howl
 Future Perfect
 Ahodosa
 will have Howled
 Misc.
 Ahoda 

 Ahon
 Howler 

 a/the Howl


They all looked a bit like one another, but too much so.  Here is an updated list of the tenses:


 Golboren
 English
 Present Active
 Ahonek
 Howls
 Past
 Ahonok
 Howled
 Future
 Ahonar   
 will Howl
 Misc.
 Ahoda 

 Ahodar
 Howler 

 a/the Howl

The Misc. section contains more possibilities than that depending on which verb is being profiled. Like the verb 'Dulga' which means 'Climb' may have -adai in its misc. section, which makes 'Dulgadai', 'Climbable.'

As of right now, I'm going back through all of the verbs I had on my Learn Golboren webpage and updating them to this new system. When I have more tone words developed, I will drop some examples of the perfectless system and how they specify things that we would use the perfect tenses for.

Addition to the Golboren Language

Alright, so I was shopping in Walmart, when, near the yogurt aisle, an epiphany hits me (because this is the kind of shit I think about when doing every day activities.) I was just sounding out random letter sounds and a lightbulb went off in my head. If languages/phonetics are not your thing, or this just gets boring, I have a one sentence summary at the end, so feel free to scroll down to the line that begins with "In short."

Phonetic/Grammar Summary

The Golboren language has two consonant grades: submissive and dominant. How this works is that each letter sound that is not a vowel is either weak or strong. Each weak letter has a stronger letter as its counterpart. When/why does this matter? The entire language works off of suffixes, and sometimes the suffix you have to plug into a certain word to mean what you need to mean creates a odd rhythm/sound or is just annoying to say.

Take Krig, for example:

Krig

This word means War in Golboren. K is the weak form of G (try saying these sounds out loud. You'll find K and G are pronounced with a very similar mouth formation.) Now, say you want to say something is war-born. Born of war. Or maybe you want to name your child Warborn. The -born suffix, predominantly used in names, is -uga, therefore:

Krig + -uga = Kriguga

But this sounds and looks strange. This is when strong and weak consonants come into play. Because -uga, with the g sound at its center, is considered a strong suffix, the base word will become weak. This results in the following word:

Krig + -uga = Krikuga

Now the base word is clearly distinguishable from its suffix. Now, see the comparison in the form of two example sentences, one with the correct word and one with the incorrect word.

Mut e mutal krikuga kuldut!
Mut e mutal kriguga kuldut!

Now, the full list of weak and strong couplings are as follows:  (strong on left, weak on right) (Also keep in mind that Goldboren do not use all of the letters/sounds we do.)

• B and P
• G and K
• D and T
• V and F
• Kh and H (Kh not used in English, aside from a scoffing noise)
• R and L
• M and N
• Z and S
• Zh and Sh (Zh not used in English. A hard vibrating buzz)
• Th and Th (Left: like in The, Right: Like in Thimble)

The Discovery

Near that yogurt wall, I'm mouthing sounds quietly to myself for ... well really, I don't have a reason. As I'm screwing with the sound of ch, like in church, a thought hits me like a slap in the face. If these others have a weak and strong form, then, what of Ch? "Oh my god," I thought, "It's J!"

Really. Say it aloud. For example, "Chew" and "Jew." J is the stronger form of Ch. What an overlooked little gem of phonetics!! So, because the ch is in use as a somewhat uncommon sound in conversational Golboren, I can begin to integrate J into the language! This opens the doors for so many intriguing possibilities!! I AM SO EXCITED!!

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In short, I added the letter J to their alphabet.  I'm gonna make new words with that letter.

Thank you for viewing the blog and caring enough to check out my little discovery. Genuinely, thank you very much! Without someone to read my works or take interest in my little posts like this, what am I? Nothing! :)

You go on now and you have you a fantastic, amazing day/night!!

~ Matthew Damaru Hammond~

2014

Long Hiatus, Current Efforts

I haven't posted here in about half a year, and it has been even longer since I posted anything to my DeviantArt account. I haven't did any serious art until recently in the time passing, but as always, I was crunching creative data in my head. I'm always working on something Drumlore related, even if it isn't a serious project. Its still my passion, as it will always be.

So, as of late, the Golboren language and culture (previously Golbåric/Golbåreh) has endured a small revision. The å character (which made a sound similar to 'oh') has been removed in favor of a standard o. Their accent will cause their o's to sound more like å, but that isn't important to the reader. Not important enough to approach in the stories anyway. When guides to learning Golboren emerge, I'll address it there.

I would also like to express my immense gratitude to all those who voted to settle the "Golboran vs. Golboren" debate!!

Racial migration and settlement prior to civilization developing has been slightly revised and is still being worked on. Here is a picture of the revised roots that was hastily drawn in microsoft paint when the idea first hit me. No, I'm not going to spend my day trying to explain the colors and intersection and origin points. I'll do that when I make a better, clearer image, I promise.

A short story draft has just recently been completed and will soon make its premier on Deviantart. (I'm awaiting feedback from my 'editors', e.g. the family I'm asking 'please read my story!') When printed, the first copy was around eight and a half pages long in decently small text, so I'm elated that I managed to stick to a project long enough to finish it and that it ended up not summarized and halfhearted. Anyway, the draft is titled The Troll Affair and will be about a young Orvodas Lu'khavi, who at the age of seven wandered away from his Uncle's ranch to find himself lost in the woods just before nightfall, and how he survives and encounter with the most fearsome beast in the wood: a troll. Here is the strange cover it will have on Deviantart:

Stay tuned in, as there is already another short story in the works (whose cover I still need to devise) that will be the first installment of quite a few, and it is already nearing completion. It follows Dugalan Koldroskaro, an elite scout and infiltrator for the Golboren, during his stay working an At'mavan plantation as a slave, and how he comes to befriend the most unlikely of people. To spice things up, here's a spoiler: The last installment will be his escape.

Also, I'll try to keep any lore developments that are of interest or enough substance documented on the drumlog, especially if they involve pictures. We all like pictures.

G'day!
~Matt H.