AMA about Haneko

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AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

Some basic information about Haneko, along with a small wordlist.

My previous posts:
Spoiler:
Micamo wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:However, as your nominalisers seem to be circumfixing and declined for case (if I'm reading the glosses at all correctly), could you give us more info on how they work? What is the negative nominaliser?
There are 4 basic nominalizers: The nominative nominalizer, the activity nominalizer, the associative nominalizer, and the negative nominalizer. The accusative nominalizer is a special case that will be discussed in a bit.

The nominative nominalizer suffix -ne has very similar semantics to the suffix -er or -or in english:

ayakane - One who sings, singer.

The activity nominalizer refers to the activity in general and is quite similar to the gerund -ing in english:

ayakari - Singing

The associative nominalizer -ho has no simple english equivalent: It's used to denote times, places, and instruments associated with the act.

ayakaho - The time we sing/The place we sing/The thing we use for singing. (Which meaning is intended must be inferred from context, and can occasionally be ambiguous)

The negative nominalizer -ni is a negated form of the activity nominalizer, and has special grammatical status:

ayakani - Not singing

Finite verbs in Haneko cannot be negated. Expressing a negated verb means using the negative nominalizer with it, and making it the complement of a copular clause:

itinira wako
iti-ni-ra w-a-ko
kill-NEG.NMLZ-SG.M.O 1s.A-be-WIT.REC
I didn't kill him.

Finite verb agreement in Haneko is hierarchical: Verbs only agree with either the agent or the patient argument, depending on which one is higher in the hierarchy of 1 > 2 > 3.

ewe wawa
ewe w-awa
2 1s.A-sense
I see you.

mawa ewe
m-awa ewe
1s.O-sense 2
You see me.

moko yawa
moko y-awa
3f 2.A-sense
You see her.

hawa moko
h-awa moko
2.O-sense 3f
She sees you.

moko awa ana
moko 0-awa ana
3f 1p.A-sense 1p
We see her.

If both arguments are third person, the verb takes a suffix that agrees with the gender (and number) of the agent:

neke awai
neke 0-awa-i
3m 3.A-sense-SG.F
She sees him.

moko awara
moko 0-awa-ra
3f 3.A-sense-SG.M
He sees her.

Intransitive verbs only take the P prefixes, never the A prefixes:

mayaka
m-ayaka
1s.P-sing
I am singing.

hayaka
h-ayaka
2.P-sing
You are singing.

ayakai
ayaka-i
sing-SG.F
She is singing.

The exception to this is verbs that are detransitivized with the reflexivizer t(i)-, which only take the A prefixes:

otimanotoriko
o-ti-mano-tori-ko
1s.A-REFL-arm-cut_off-REC.WIT
I cut off my arm.

Now, the standard nominalized verbs (even transitive ones) are just like intransitive verbs in that they normally only take the P prefixes, never the A prefixes:

ewe wa tomo itiri
ewe wa tomo iti-ri
2 ERG NAME kill-ACT.NMLZ
Your killing of Tomo.

Unless they take the reflexivizer morphology:

otitiho
o-ti-iti-ho
1s.A-REFL-kill-ASSOC.NMLZ
The place/time/instrument with which I will kill myself

Now, the accusative nominalizer i(n)- is a special case, for two reasons. First, it's a further derivation of a nominalized verb, not a nominalization morpheme in its own right, so it can occur with the activity nominalizer or the negative nominalizer. Second, like the reflexive, it causes the verb to take only the A prefixes:

hoki wiyamari
hoki w-i-yama-ri
evil 1s.A-ACC.NMLZ-make-ACT.NMLZ
The crimes I have committed (lit. "The evil I have made")
Am I right that the predicate always comes first in Haneko?
The basic constituent order in main clauses in Haneko is OVS:

koroko itika tomo
koroko iti-ko-a tomo
NAME kill-WIT.REC-SG.M NAME
Tomo killed Koroko.

The basic order in intransitive clauses is VS:

ayakai araya kore!
ayaka-i araya kore
sing-SG.F NAME beautiful
Araya is singing beautifully!

It's possible to front the subject in a transitive clause by marking it in ergative case, making the sentence SOV:

mikamo wa hiti hanako
mikamo wa hiti ha-na-ko
NAME ERG hug 2.O-AUX-WIT.REC
Micamo hugged you

(Intransitive subjects can still be fronted but don't require the ergative particle.)

The exception is in nominalized clauses, where SOV is the only order possible, and the agent (if any is present) of a transitive nominalized clause must have the ergative particle:

ewe wa mikamo hitiri
ewe wa mikamo hiti-ri
2 ERG NAME hug-ACT.NMLZ
Your hugging of Micamo
It would be great to see that Haneko thread revived. [:)]
Yeeeeah I'm not very good at getting threads written. A better way might be to just ask me questions about the lang and letting me answer them, I'm much better at doing that. Hmm...
Micamo wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:The Haneko agreement system is really fun! I guess there is rarely a need to use the first person pronoun since there will always be 1st person agreement if there is a 1s argument. But I'm guessing there is one for topicalisation, etc.?
It's used for topicalization, as well as for the agent in transitive nominalized clauses:

wi wa initiripe
wi wa in-iti-ri-pe
1s ERG ACC.NMLZ-kill-ACT.NMLZ-PST
The one I killed.
Just how pro-drop is Haneko? Could I just say mawa and leave it up to context who saw me?
Yes: The verb is the only obligatory element in the sentence.
What other kind of verb marking is there? TAM? I see what I believe are evidentials(?)
The complete verb template in Haneko is as follows:

AGREEMENT-REFL-CAUS-IN-ROOT-TENSE.NONWITNESS-DEPENDENT_ROOT-TENSE.WITNESS-MOOD=CLITICS

Haneko has "type 2" IN, where a closed class of obligatorially possessed nouns (mostly body part nouns) can be incorporated into the verb, interpreted as being possessed by the patient (or the agent, in the case of reflexive verbs).

Haneko also allows the incorporation of a small number of verb roots that give additional meaning to the verb in the "Dependent Root" slot. Some of these roots are currently in the process of grammaticalization to some degree:

hiti manakaki neke
hiti ma-na-kaki neke
hug 1s.O-AUX-come 3m
He is coming to hug me OR He will hug me.

Haneko has a simple evidential system with three terms: Witness, Nonwitness, and Hearsay. Witness and Nonwitness are expressed by the choice of tense morpheme in the past tense (note that this also changes the position of the tense marker). There are four tenses: Nonpast, Immediate Past (a few minutes ago), Recent Past (anything from a few minutes ago up to yesterday morning), and Remote Past (anything before that). (I'm thinking of dumping the immediate category.) The witness/nonwitness distinction is neutralized in the nonpast tense. Hearsay can be expressed by a clitic =hi which attaches to the end of the postverbal subject NP (if there is one) or to the end of the VP (if there isn't), in combination with the nonpast tense or a nonwitness tense.

ititokana tomohi
iti-toka-no-a tomo=hi
kill-go-NWIT.REC-SG.M NAME=HSY
Tomo went there and killed him/her/it, I heard

Moods are more up in the air: There's a dubitative affix -mo

awari ko enenomahi
awari ko ene-no-mo-a=hi
awari all eat_meat-NWIT.REC-DUB-SG.M=HSY
He allegedly ate all the awari meat. (A brightly colored bird like a large, flightless parrot, considered a delicacy).

And three imperative forms, venitive imperative (come here and do it!), allative imperative (go there and do it!), and stative imperative (do it!). Note that the 2nd-person agreement forms can't be used with the imperative forms:

hiti manake!
hiti ma-na-ke
hug 1s.O-AUX-STAT.IMP
Hug me!

hiti manami!
hiti ma-na-mi
hug 1s.O-AUX-VEN.IMP
Come here and hug me!

moko hiti nata!
moko hiti na-ta
3f hug AUX-ALL.IMP
Go there and hug her!

I'm not sure how I want to handle hortatives, or if I'll add any other mood affixes.
Miti ewe
You're killing me.
Correct!
Mahiti ewe.
You're hugging me.
(correct epenthetic vowel?)

(Or do I need to use the auxiliary na in the second example? If so, why?)
Yes, the correct version of this would be hiti mana ewe. The auxiliary is required for morphological reasons: Loaned verbs in Haneko are unable to take finite verb inflections directly and must have an auxiliary to bear the inflections for them. They can, however, take nominalization morphology without assistance. The Haneko verb hiti "hug" comes from Esseran siit "carry".
DesEsseintes wrote:Suggestion: Why don't you copy-paste the above into the Haneko thread, and I (and whoever else wants to) can continue asking you questions about the language there. Otherwise, we're sort of off-topic in this thread, aren't we? Besides, that would get all the info on Haneko in one place for reference. I was thinking of doing it myself, but I don't want to be presumptuous. [:|]
Done.
What do we know about Esseran?
A little: I basically make Esseran up as I go along when I want to explain something in Haneko as being an Esseran loan or arising due to Esseran influence. It's a VOS language with case prefixes and a topic-comment system. If anyone wants to know anything specific (I can provide translations and glosses but note that they're highly subject to change) I'd be happy to oblige.
Are all these langs spoken by humans? I remember reading somewhere that you're into Dragons.
Yes: Mithara used to be a dragonlanguage but now it's spoken by humans.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by DesEsseintes »

Micamo wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:Suggestion: Why don't you copy-paste the above into the Haneko thread, and I (and whoever else wants to) can continue asking you questions about the language there. Otherwise, we're sort of off-topic in this thread, aren't we? Besides, that would get all the info on Haneko in one place for reference. I was thinking of doing it myself, but I don't want to be presumptuous.
Done.
Yay!
AGREEMENT-REFL-CAUS-IN-ROOT-TENSE.NONWITNESS-DEPENDENT_ROOT-TENSE.WITNESS-MOOD=CLITICS

Where do the 3rd person markers -(r)a and -i go? I'm guessing after the mood slot? What are their allomorphs? The masculine seems to come in at least two forms.

What is nominal morphology like?

Off-topic: Do you still work on Agyonnar?
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

DesEsseintes wrote:Where do the 3rd person markers -(r)a and -i go? I'm guessing after the mood slot? What are their allomorphs? The masculine seems to come in at least two forms.
Uhh, yeah, after the mood slot. I sorta forgot about that: They tend to fuse with other affixes though, because morphophonology. As for their allomorphs (and how they fuse with other morphemes) the answer to that question is "Whatever I feel like at the time." I'm still playing around with different morphophonological rules for how the 3rd person markers work, so don't get upset if the way I construct them feels inconsistent.
What is nominal morphology like?
With the exception of verb nominalizations, minimal. The most significant nominal morphology is possession:

hara hinamatira
hara hinamati-ro-a
man soul-POSSD-SG.M
The soul of a man

mayibotero
ma-yibote-ro
1s.O-wife-POSSD
My wife

The order of possessive noun phrases is Possessor-Possessee, and the possessee takes the possessed suffix -ro and agreement markers that agree with the possessor: These are identical to the patient agreement affixes on verbs. In addition, there's a special "reflexive possessor" (identical to the reflexivizer morpheme on verbs) that indicates that the possessor is coreferent with the subject of the sentence:

tiyibotero watiyanaka
ti-yibote-ro wati-yana-ko-a
REFL-wife-POSSD attack-INCEP-REC.WIT-SG.M
He started beating his own wife

Some nouns (esp. body part nouns) are obligatorially possessed and cannot occur without being possessed: These nouns do not require the possessed suffix, but still take the agreement morphology:

kome matati
kome ma-tati
hurt 1s.O-head
My head hurts.

These nouns can take a depossessive suffix that allows them to be inalienably possessed, if such meaning is desired:

mareti
ma-reti
1s.O-milk
My milk (that came out of my breasts)

maretinino
ma-reti-nino
1s.O-milk-DEPOSS
My milk (that came out of something else, e.g. that I bought from a store)
Off-topic: Do you still work on Agyonnar?
Yes and no: Mithara is Agyonnar, after many, many layers of revision.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

roninbodhisattva wrote:How do reflexives work?
Much as how you'd expect: Reflexives allow an X0 to be coreferent with something that c-commands it, subject to locality conditions. Verbs and possessives can take reflexive morphology as shown above, but postpositions can also take reflexive morphology:

wati roha naka tiponaka
wati roha na-ko-a ti-po-naka
arrow shoot AUX-REC.WIT-SG.M REFL-LOC-ALL
He shot an arrow at himself.

While reflexive morphology is preferred, it's possible to forego it and use an anaphor tiwami instead:

wati roha naka tiwami ponaka
wati roha na-ko-a ti-wami po-naka
arrow shoot AUX-REC.WIT-SG.M REFL-body LOC-ALL
He shot an arrow at himself

Nominalized verbs (and adverbialized verbs) are actually within an embedded CP and count as a binding domain, restricting the interpretation of reflexive morphology when used in them:

#ewe wa titiri wepi!
ewe wa t-iti-ri w-epi
2 ERG REFL-kill-ACT.NMLZ 1s.A-order
I order you to kill me!
(OK: I order you to kill yourself!)

("I order you to kill me!" would be ewe wa mitiri wepi!)

Fun with homophony! "I order you to pull it out" is *also* ewe wa mitiri wepi

Is there anything I've forgotten or anything you'd like me to explain in more detail?
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by DesEsseintes »

On the Translations forum, Micamo wrote:inari
in-a-ri
ACC.NMLZ-be-ACT.NMLZ


Since the auxiliary na would take i- as the accusative nominaliser, wouldn't that also result in

inari
i-na-ri
ACC.NMLZ-AUX-ACT.NMLZ

Was this intentional?
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

DesEsseintes wrote:
On the Translations forum, Micamo wrote:inari
in-a-ri
ACC.NMLZ-be-ACT.NMLZ


Since the auxiliary na would take i- as the accusative nominaliser, wouldn't that also result in

inari
i-na-ri
ACC.NMLZ-AUX-ACT.NMLZ

Was this intentional?
Well, no, because nominalized verbs never need the auxiliary: An auxiliary-taking verb like hiti "hug" can take nominalization affixes directly:

hari ihitiri
hari i-hiti-ri
girl ACC.NMLZ-hug-ACT.NMLZ
The girl who was hugged

hari hiti onako
hari hiti o-na-ko
girl hug 1s.A-AUX-REC.WIT
I hugged the girl.

On its own, na means "exist." Which can't take the accusative nominalizer because it's intransitive. However there are still plenty of cases where the prefix system causes ambiguities, such as the aforementioned ewe wa mitiri wepi, either "I order you to pull it out!" OR "I order you to kill me!"
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by DesEsseintes »

A while ago in another thread, you spoke of the particle wato and its use when forming complement clauses (< right term?). Have you been working on any new examples with wato?
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

wato is what I call the cognitive postposition (glossed COG), and it has two uses.

First, it can wrap around the object of some verbs to change the meaning of the predicate:

atapo raponari ikaka
atapo rapona-ri ika-ko-a
door fix-ACT.NMLZ say-REC.WIT-SG.M
He said to fix the door.

atapo raponari wato ikaka
atapo rapona-ri wato ika-ko-a
door fix-ACT.NMLZ COG say-REC.WIT-SG.M
He explained how to fix the door.

Second, a postpositional phrase headed with wato can be used adverbially to mean "knowing X" or "in spite of X".

wetinake enika yibote yawari wato
wetinake eni-ko-a yibote yawa-ri wato
alcohol drink-REC.WIT-SG.M wife get_angry-ACT.NMLZ COG
He drank the alcohol knowing his wife would get angry.
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by DesEsseintes »

I'm curious how you deal with causatives (I love valency, as I may have mentioned before). How do you translate:

a) He broke his (own) arm.

b) I broke his arm.

c) I made him break his (own) arm.

d) I made him break his (=s.o. else's) arm
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

DesEsseintes wrote:I'm curious how you deal with causatives (I love valency, as I may have mentioned before). How do you translate:

a) He broke his (own) arm.

b) I broke his arm.

c) I made him break his (own) arm.

d) I made him break his (=s.o. else's) arm
Verbs are causativized by the suffix -po, which attaches directly to the verb stem. (Earlier I stated that the causativizer was a prefix; This has been changed.) Intransitive causativization is straightforward, but transitive causativization replaces the agent of the verb with the causer, leaves the DO unchanged, and demotes the causee to an oblique argument headed by the ergative postposition wa. Alternatively, you can instead causativize ka "do" and nominalize the transitive predicate as the object of ka.

baka timanonaka
baka ti-mano-na-ko-a
break REFL-arm-AUX-REC.WIT-SG.M
He broke his (own) arm

baka omanonako
baka o-mano-na-ko
break 1s.A-arm-AUX-REC.WIT
I broke his arm

timanobakari okapoko*
ti-mano-baka-ri o-ka-po-ko
REFL-arm-break-ACT.NMLZ 1s.A-do-CAUS-REC.WIT
I made him break his own arm ("I made him do the breaking of his own arm")

baka omanonapoko wa
baka o-mano-na-po-ko wa-0
break 1s.A-arm-AUX-CAUS-REC.WIT ERG-SG.M
I made him break his (someone else's) arm

*This one is required to use the nominalization strategy in order to keep the reflexive meaning of the lower predicate: baka otimanonapoko wa can only mean "I made him break my own arm."
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Prinsessa »

Could you show some ways that the culture ties into the language, what with expressions and idioms and semantics and stuff like that?
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Micamo »

Skógvur wrote:Could you show some ways that the culture ties into the language, what with expressions and idioms and semantics and stuff like that?
I don't have very much like that, but here's probably the most interesting thing I have along those lines: In the pre-contact form of Haneko, the word for "wife" was noko meaning "anus/vagina" (to specify you'd say "front noko" for vagina and "back noko" for anus, but usually the meaning is clear from context). Marriage existed in the pre-contact society but it had no ceremonies or rituals associated with it; A man and a woman would just start living together and then they would be considered married.

After the revolution ended and the Haneians were liberated, many of the practices of the esseran masters were imitated (while others were rejected): One of these esseran cultural traits to manifest in Haneian society is their ostentatious system of marriage, with marriages being arranged through complex negotiations between parents, and lavish weddings practiced to initiate the marriage. An artifact of this cultural transmission is that the word for "wife" changed: The proper word for "wife" is now yibote, loaned in from Esseran yǐɓɔ́ʊ̀t. To refer to a woman as your noko is now considered highly offensive and taboo (just as the pre-contact weddingless marriages are now taboo), equivalent to referring to her as your "slut" or your "bitch" in English.

...The ironic thing is Esseran yǐɓɔ́ʊ̀t actually does mean "vagina", and is used to mean "wife" in that language just as noko was in Pre-Contact Haneko.
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by DesEsseintes »

Micamo, you are bizarre at times. I mean that in a good way.

Is there a natlang precedent for referring to your wife as your "vagina"?
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Re: AMA about Haneko

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DesEsseintes wrote:Is there a natlang precedent for referring to your wife as your "vagina"?
Yes: I got the idea from Wari', where the word for "wife" is also used to mean "hole" (and can also mean "vagina", "mouth", or "anus" in certain contexts).
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by DesEsseintes »

Micamo wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:Is there a natlang precedent for referring to your wife as your "vagina"?
Yes: I got the idea from Wari', where the word for "wife" is also used to mean "hole" (and can also mean "vagina", "mouth", or "anus" in certain contexts).
How deliciously awful! [:)]
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Re: AMA about Haneko

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Last edited by k1234567890y on 01 May 2014 12:34, edited 1 time in total.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Prinsessa »

That is deliciously awful. The pre-contact culture changing a lot in this regard post-contact is neat. Why did Esseran speakers not fall victim to this change too? Is their language spoken too far away? Is it no longer spoken? Sorry if you've already said this in your thread.
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Re: AMA about Haneko

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Skógvur wrote:Why did Esseran speakers not fall victim to this change too? Is their language spoken too far away? Is it no longer spoken? Sorry if you've already said this in your thread.
Well, to explain this I need to give a con-history lesson. The Esseran influence on Haneian society (at least at first) was one of almost total domination: The Pre-Contact Haneian society, practically ceased to exist. Those that weren't captured and forced to work in the fields or in the factories, and weren't killed by Esseran raiders or the alien diseases the Esserans brought along, integrated with other Pakaran peoples nearby (who were also devastated by Esseran colonization, but were able to survive total destruction by fleeing further into the forest than the Esserans were willing or able to explore). And this situation lasted for over 500 years before the revolution, time during which Haneian cultural practices were highly suppressed; The only reason any pre-contact culture survived at all was because of the transmission of oral histories, which were fragmentary and inaccurate at the best of times. Since most of the slave population was Haneian the language resisted creolization, but the situation did cause heavy restructuring through contact.

Now, at the time of the revolution the ratio of Haneian slaves to Esseran colonists was over 9:1. When the colonists decided to pursue independence, they trained, armed, and recruited the slave population. ...Which promptly turned around and used their weapons and training to utterly destroy the colonists and resist subsequent attempts to regain control by the Emperor. They managed to keep the wheels of Esseran society turning (though abolishing slavery, obviously) and stayed a small, but industrious independent society for nearly a century.

300 years ago, this new Haneian civilization began to expand, first attacking and forcibly integrating (though not enslaving) the nearby Pakaran peoples, then by wiping out those remnants of Esseran colonists that had managed to survive, and then by bleeding out further and further into the continent. About 50 years into the expansion phase, the Haneian Emperor (who had seized power away from the semi-democratic system that had been in use before) decided to set his sights on taking the Esseran homeland. This was not an easy task, since the Esseran homeland was a large archipelago over 1000 miles away, and was one of the most powerful military forces in the world (and the most powerful naval force, period). After a long and extremely costly war (costing the Haneian Emperor his head during civilian riots over excessive taxes, even) that lasted over three decades, and through superior intelligence and adaptability, the Esseran empire was laid low.

Though victory was attained and the Haneian empire continued to expand over the three centuries that followed to the present, internally the Haneian civilization never recovered from the war; The current civil war is a direct consequence over the internal struggles of that war, but that's a story for another time. The important thing to note about the Esseran occupation that the Haneians contented themselves with controlling the Esseran homeland through placing high-level bureaucrats in key positions and collecting taxes; Esseran society is still mostly autonomous. The Emperor even still has his title and his place, even though he no longer holds any power. Though there is cultural transmission from Haneian to Esseran, it is microscopic compared to the transmission from Esseran to Haneian still lingering from the long centuries of enslavement and colonization.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Prinsessa
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Re: AMA about Haneko

Post by Prinsessa »

That's really, really nice. Not in terms of what actually happened, of course, but in terms of story-writing.
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