The CBB

Discworld joke, I believe, although I can't for the life of me remember the original context.

^^ If you try to please everybody, you're going to end up pleasing nobody. Write what you want to read, and there will probably be some form of audience for it. (assuming your goal is "to make stuff I enjoy and other people might enjoy too". If your goal is purely "get as large of an ...

Well, let's see, the Protheans in Mass Effect are somewhat buglike, aren't they? I should think most people relate just fine to Javik (although like most Mass Effect species, he's arguably just Sal's "human with a hat"). Certainly plenty of people have sympathy for the rachni, myself inclu...

They're sort of answers to two separate questions: "What do you do for a living?" "Oh, I'm retired." vs. "Do you still work for Llama Corp?" "No, I've retired." Like shimo says, "am retired" focuses more on the state (I am in the state of retirement ...

Started analyzing phonotactics/syllable structure for Old Tirina. The language is kind of a mess, so I'm trying to use what I already have to come up with a better understanding of its phonology and especially to do better word generation (especially if I'm going to be fleshing it out more). Right n...

I do the following: 1) Design the phonology, and a bit of morphology 2) Plug the phonemes and syllable structure into Awkwords 3) Copy and paste the results into an excel document (well, the OpenOffice equivalent), remove any duplicate words until I have a total list of around 20,000 to 30,000 mono...

I use a variety of methods, but because I prefer to create words with etymologies, I frequently use this method: First, I try to come up with a plausible etymology. I might look at Old Tirina/Old Azen for an appropriate root, but if I can't find any (or want to create a new root), I often look at Wi...

I can’t see a story much longer than about two pages being premised on a system that’s provably unstable. Or, maybe, I can’t see a saga-sized novel or series set in such a conculture. Whyever not? A society in upheaval and the middle of social/cultural change sounds like a fascinating place to set ...

I'd love to hear more about the specific species that make up e.g. mantrels and pintrels. I really like the idea of dragons, etc. being specifically designed by the AIs to keep people from advanced technology that must necessarily exist; you could get some interesting legends out of that about peopl...

The Hobbit was definitely written in English first--the famous story about its origin was that Tolkien was stupendously bored reading student papers one day, and on a blank sheet happened to write down "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit", without having any idea what a hobbit wa...

With regards to Tolkien--not that I've ever heard. The History of Middle-Earth books go into extensive detail about his drafts, and although I've only read The Return of Shadow and that several years ago, I don't recall a mention of him writing LotR in anything other than English.

I was able to click through the link. At any rate, this sounds quite interesting! An explicitly artificial world explains away a lot of "unrealistic" aspects (or at least removes them far enough away that they're easy to ignore). One question I have, what exactly is defined as "techno...

There's some nice complexity in there. I like that you'd be able to figure out much of a child's same-gender parent's name from the child's name. Definitely seems like a society that emphasizes family relationships and tracks them.

I've been thinking about incorporating something similar into Tirina naming practices. I guess they already do have private nicknames, but it's not quite the same thing. I'm sure I've spoken about the system before, but as it currently stands, a Tirina name has three parts: [given name] ni [ancestra...

Something to throw out there: if the gods objectively and uncontroversially exist--that is, if they routinely and obviously interact with and speak to people--then only worshipping twelve gods makes perfect sense; if you tried to worship someone else (or failed to worship one of the twelve), they co...

Çou que tu cret que jou lou comprandrê san lou-z avê vezut ? [su.ke.tyˈkʁɛt ke.ʑu.lu.kɔ̃m.pʁɑ̃ˈdʁɛː sɑ̃.lu.zəˈvɛː vəˈzyt] Do you think I'll understand it without having seen them? Yes solkaied. 2SG.MASC ready-MASC You'll be fine. Idfea Karinir fılam kaesmuranol. feline black-AN movie separate-INT-I...

Tremendousness, I believe. I couldn't begin to explain why, other than -ness is significantly more common for nominalization that -osity.

I wrote a whole bunch on family records when I was at work today, in lieu of doing work. It's fine. I read a couple of articles on koseki , the Japanese system for recording births/deaths/marriages/families. I realized that a similar system would fit very well in Sanmra, as a great deal of society r...

Do you mean the ones linked in the first post of this thread?

A lovely round number!