A Shirerithian language?

[Gman Russell]

I don't know which Nick I don't like more. The Nick who throws me out of Yardistan for not rebelling, or the Nick who yells at us for not having a complex enough language.

[Santelran Rottsaa]

I'm down with such a language. I'd learn it.

[Malliki Tosha]

"specifically voiceless sonorants such as the voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ]". Quote from the Wikipedia article on Welsh. Also, the IPA chart from 2005 tells me that the sign for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is /ɬ/.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Corey: And you'd be the only one. Seriously, people just don't use micronational conlangs to communicate in practise. They're there to look cool. Therefore the variant in point three applies. Bring on the weird whatever morphosyntax means! Just as long as it maintains the "I can imagine grandfather in a hammock between two palm trees smoking a pipe and speaking this language" quality that Yardistani has... uh... I don't know if it has that quality for anyone else, but that's what it always makes *me* think of

[Santelran Rottsaa]

Ari: hey, someone should seriously look into learning it. It'd be nice to not have to call upon Nick every time we need something, and instead have someone more available to turn to. Besides, I like languages. I don't have to speak it properly every day.

[Harvey Steffke]

Gunna level: I'm not interested in learning much of a conlanguage. I don't even know most of the words in my OWN conlanguage. I'd probably pick up a few commonly used words like "Kaiser" or "minister" but, beyond that, meh.

[Erik Mortis]

Toasters: I've heard Nick speak Yardistani. It sounds kinda cool.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Jess & Ryan: I think you're both pretty smart and dedicated, but conlanging well is really, really hard. As a basic example, if you don't understand the sort of thing Nick meant when he said "Voiceless alveolar lateral fricatives are not voiceless alveolar lateral approximants," you're going to have trouble making something presentable to serious conlangers. I don't trust myself in this matter - I have a lot of fun with Hyperborean, but it's nowhere near "professional" standards and I'd never claim it was. The only two people in Shireroth I'd trust with this are Nick and Bill, and I don't think Erik trusts Bill, so that leaves Nick.

Nick: I think it's pretty unlikely anyone will be speaking this aloud. Even if two Shirerithians learned enough of it to become sort of fluent, the two might never meet outside one or two ShireCons a decade. I also think it's unlikely that anyone will be writing long essays in it, so even sentence structure isn't top priority. If it's going to be for written titles and seals and flavor, I'd be most interested in cool orthography.

One of the things I really liked about Yardistani was all the x's and rb's and other weird consonants and digraphs and stuff. It made it really clear that this wasn't any of the languages people were familiar with. And one of the things that worries me is that the pan-Shirerithian language is so close to German or a Scandinavian language that people who wander in and don't speak those languages just assume it is German or Scandinavian and then we don't get any special Shirerithian flavor. Yardistani had such an unusual orthography that even if you didn't know a lot of languages you knew it was something you'd never seen before and be interested.

I'm also not such a fan of a German-Scandinavian base for one other reason, and that's that Shireroth isn't really German or Scandinavian. We've got two or three things, like Kaisers and forests and Hurmu, that could be from that area. But we've also got some things that make me think Latin - Praetor, Iudex, all those Latin god names like Mors. A few thinks make me think Indian - the reincarnation in Cedrism, god names like Anandja, the dharma wheel on the old Alexandretta flag. There's even a little Mexican flavor - Day of the Dead, spicy food, La Fiesta de la Boom. I sometimes try to explain Shireroth as "started out combination German/Latin/Hindu/Mexican, and then it got weird." And I like Yardistani as a symbol of Shireroth because it also kind of started out German/Latin/Spanish and then got weird.

Summary is that you're going to have your work cut out for you creating a Shirerithian language I like more than Yardistani, but as the creator of Yardistani I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and await your result expectantly.

[Ryan]

Oh, I'm certainly not pretending to be good at conlanging. I only have peripheral skills in that area, and became interested back when I learned Quenya in Menelmacar.

*waits for the mob with flamethrowers to pass at the mention of Menelmacar*

Ahem...

What I was intending to develop for Sarein was for my uses only and as a source reference to accompany stories I intend to write for Yardistan. Whether people choose to use it or not is their choice, and obviously it won't be a professional piece of work. But I enjoy doing it, just as you enjoy developing Hyperborean, and we keep our little developments to our respective areas. It's fun, and that's the beginning and end of it.

I'll leave the development of a real conlang to the true professionals. If Nick can do it, then more power to him!

I challenge you to get Nick AND Bill to work on it together.

[Erik Mortis]

Would never happen.

[Harvey Steffke]

I wouldn't say never. Bill can be deadly serious when he gets talking about this conlang stuff. Maybe they wouldn't want to work together, but I think if they could get over themselves and their pasts it could be an interesting meeting of the minds.

[Gryphon Avocatio]

Greg: I'm not complaining that the Language is not complex enough. I just think the proper balance needs to be struck.

Malliki: True, [ɬ] is a voiceless alveolar fricative. It's technically distinct from a "voiceless L", though.

It'd be nice to not have to call upon Nick every time we need something, and instead have someone more available to turn to.

It would be very nice. My goal will be to get the language into a shape so that I can pass it off to some other willing individual to maintain, and disappear back into the mists whence I appeared.

Scott: What I meant when I said that people should be able to pronounce it was simply that the language should avoid having a slew of words pronounced like, oh, [ɮkvaxps]. Would you like to never, under any circumstance, be able to tell people that you did some work in the Ministry of "Lhkvakhps"? Okay, a bit far-fetched. My point is that the words should be pronounceable without needing too work too much at it. As Ari said, you'd want to be able to imagine people speaking it, and that would be my aim. And given its proposed use, I wouldn't be aiming for anything more than a base functionality. An interesting orthography is largely separate from these issues, and certainly shouldn't mean that the language ought to be hard to use.

As far as a Germanic base goes, that's just the idea I had long ago. To be fair, any language I work out right now would be, at it's deepest core, have some basis in Germanic, because that's what I've been working on for the last year and a half and that's what I'm most knowledgeable about. That's not to say that you'd be able to tell. I think it would be quite boring or even a waste of time to simply take Swedish, change the vowels around and add some funny characters and call it a conlang. I'm going to integrate what I can from other languages, from Shirerothian culture, and from original ideas.

While we're sort of on the topic, I'm not really going to be the one utilizing this language in the long term, so I would enjoy consultation of the type that Scott has provided. Part of what is going to be difficult about a project like this is making sure that all the necessary terminology used around the nation meshes in a satisfying way.

As for working with Bill: I have nothing personal against Bill. In general, I have a distaste for working with other individuals, regardless of who they are. Judging from how I've seen Bill work historically, I think it would be best for all parties involved that we not interact over something like this.


Oh, and one more thing. I need a place to start organizing this stuff, where people can appropriately comment and contribute. How do I go about getting a subforum in the University for this sort of thing?

[Erik Mortis]

Grab one and claim it for yourself? oh.. I could do it.. but I'm not a minister... though I have the power..... oh.. dilemma...

[Erik Mortis]

http://shireroth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=195

HA! It already exists!

[Santelran Rottsaa]

I was about to say, I think you already have a whole subforum with your name on it

[Gryphon Avocatio]

It's like it was meant to be.

[Santelran Rottsaa]

*thinks which Kaiser was responsible*

Ayreon? Hasan? Anandja, maybe? I forget.

[Malliki Tosha]

Not me...

[Santelran Rottsaa]

I didn't think so. Most likely it was Ric.