êto sîkîn nêôs hôn xe kôson hîskûnco ûn zomî ôfo ûn û yogô cênbô yê ni ûnhilun gonîso yê umo Ûnbêltô Êkô et Nucoto Cûtî Onô.
Many new developments in the realm of building this language and culture and a good chunk of it revolvees around Umberto Eco's concept of The Small World.
Small Updates
First, let's discuss the smaller changes that have been added recently to the site. The translation of The Wicked Prince was completed, various improvements were made to the phonology details around the site, a punctuation reference page has been added, and several word changes have been made.
Word Changes
cereal
Changed from lîsîk (Arabic رِزْق riziki, /rizik/, Afro-Asiatic family) to kûkmut (Cantonese 穀物 guk1 mat6, /kuk.mɐt̚/, Sino-Tibetan family) due to concerns with recognizability of transliteration and the need to increase Sino-Tibetan family representation.
rice
Removed the word for "rice", onomû (Telugu అన్నము annamu, /an̪n̪amu/, Dravidian family), because it is a kind of grain and is too specific for the language. We will revisit this when there is more work done on recipe translations.
sweet
The transliteration for "sweet" is from the English word /swit/ and to better match the use of /w/, the consonant-/w/ is removed and replaced with a vowel-/u/: sûît. Due to the tedency to glide consecutive vowels, this sounds much closer to the English source.
excess
The transliteration for "excess" was improved: odigon (Tamil அதிகம் atikam, /ad̪iɡam/, Dravidian family). Likely this was just missed from an earlier phonology change.
art
The transliteration for "art" was improved to reflect the phonetics better: kolowu (Sinhalese කලාව kalāwa, [kalaːwə], Indo-Iranian family). This could even be taken a step further by changing the first /o/ to a /ʌ/ which would force the second syllable to become stressed (helping to reinforce the long vowel /ː/), but we have not yet pulled the plug on this change. Reach out if you think this is appropriate.
reptile
The transliteration for "reptile" was improved to reflect the available phonemic information in the latin orthography (no phonetic pronunciation available): bûlûsî (Chichewa buluzi, Niger-Congo family). I suspect that this one was just missed from voicing shift from /p/ to /b/ that was done a long time ago ([d] and related phonetic sounds were going to /b/ to emphasize their voiced feature).
Preposition grammatical terminology
The thematic constituent markers were updated to reflect more accurate linguistic terminology.
- beneficiary/purpose → causal-final
- collaborator → comitative
- evidence → evidential
- experiencere/causee → causal-agentive
- agent/causer → agentive
- location/time → locative
- intermediate → intermediative
- instrument/means → instrumental
- manner/material → methodological
- source/origin → ablative
- counter-agent → oppositive
- direction/recipient → dative
- reason/cause → causal
- distance/duration → durative
tolerant
The pinyin page on Wikipedia indicates that the "r" in the pinyin kuānróng is realized as [ɻ] ~ [ʐ]. It also indicates that Taipai Mandarin speakers would pronounce it as [ɹ]. This tendency towards the approximants leads me to believe that this should use the /l/ in Hîsyêô instead of the /ʃ/: kûonlôn (Mandarin 寬容kuānróng, [kʰwan.ɻʊŋ], Sino-Tibetan family).
sighing
To describe the concept of "sighing" in a comfortable way is difficult in the current lexicon. This concept has a very distinct description involving a sound, a bodily action and air. It also has a multi-faceted set of deeper meanings and feelings associated with it: tôncoî (Thai ถอนใจ tɔ̌ɔn-jai, /tʰɔːn˩˩˦.t͡ɕaj˧/, Kra-Dai family).
rotten/corrupt
Both this concept and "sighing" above, were discovered as problems when translating The Wicked Prince. There is not a satisfactory way to describe this that doesn't overlaod other concepts. There does seem to be an overwhelming number of languages that combine the concepts of "rotten" and "corrupt" into one word and so we will do the same here: mîstu (Kanuri mìstə́, /mistə/, Nilo-Saharan family).
frequent
Another concept discovered during translation, this one was traditionally (Kokanu) done using the concepts "ongoing", "repeating", or "many times". However, there is significant difference between these concepts and "frequent". Also, if you integrate the concept of "recurring" and also use this adverbially to represent habitual mood, one can see the utility presented: ogogê (Kannada ಆಗಾಗ್ಗೆ āgāgge, /aː.gaː.gːe/, Dravidian family).
easy/simple & difficult/complex
Previously (from the Kokanu days), Hîsyêô had the same conjoined concept of "easy" with "simple" and "difficult" with "complex". But one set of concepts is about a challenge or task and the other is about a thought or a concept. In fact, a task can be "simple" but also be "difficult" and this distinction feels erased when you combine these concepts.
- simple/basic: fîectu (Albanian thjeshtë, /ˈθjɛʃtə/, Albania family)
- complex/complicated: fonfûk (Cantonese 繁複 faan4 fuk1, Sino-Tibetan family)
- easy/effortless: obunyun (Sora apəŋjəŋ, [apəŋjəŋ], Austro-Asiatic family)
- difficult/challenging: kutin (Hindi कठिन kaṭhin, [kə.ʈʰɪ̃n̪], Indo-Iranian family)
awkward & dexterous
A pair of opposing adjectives were added that were difficult to express with the existing lexicon.
- awkward/clumsy: sokol (Turkish sakar, Turkic family)
- dexterous/skillful: kîyô (Japonese きよう kiyō, [kʲijo̞ː], Japonic family)
violet
The source word for "violet", when transliterated, had the ending syllable of "xe" which conflicts with the subjective subordinate marker and could potentially lead to confusion and is also overly repetitive when spoken. Coincidentally, the new source word when transliterated is only a small vowel shift away but the problem is still eliminated and easy to clear up if needed: bonôxo (Urmia ܒܵܢܲܦ̮ܫܵܐ bānafšā, [bɑːnoːʃɑː], Afro-Asiatic family).
Discord Bot & Kennings
Unfortunately, the platform Glitch that we were using for the Discord bot and Kennings is shutting down on July 8th. A rewrite is coming that will also make the suite usable in the Matrix space and we are thinking about either Deno or Fly.io. Please reachout if you have any ideas or want to contribute.
The Small World
Now time for the big update that's been brewing for the past few months now as studies have continued around various topics related to semantics, pragmatics, and translation.
In Umberto Eco's book The Limits of Intepretation, he discusses the concept of small worlds to illustrate how the writer of a text creates an incomplete set of facts which are presented in the text. He says that:
[...] fictional worlds are parasitical worlds because, if alternative properties are not spelled out, we take for granted the properties holding in the real world (p. 75)
This property of fictional worlds also holds for fictional languages. By that, I mean all constructed languages—whether for fun or for a purpose. If the exact meaning of "pissed" is not explained, one might inadvertently use the wrong sense or might revert to their sense of that term from their native language. Not only that, writers often expect their readers to have a specific backgrounds to understand something critically and identify satire and allegory and this would be doubly difficult when intepretation requires translating into compounds more often than not (as it does in Hîsyêô). Fictional worlds within fictional languages could be considered the worst possible scenario for a model reader to derive proper understanding from a text.
If language is what a culture thinks (Boris Erasov, Yogendra Singh), and the culture of this language is incomplete, then the properties that aren't spelled out will be pulled from the cultures that the speakers have already. Unless you somehow can carefully select the speakers of your language or police their every expression, you will never have a true culture of your own but rather a parasitic franken-culture made up of the cultures of your speaker community. In fact, the very act of restrictive control in this manner is antithetical to this project as a whole.
Therefore, instead of an imperative and suppressive approach, the creators of Hîsyêô have determined that this language needs a culture of its own. One that is inspired by world religions and world philosophies. One that we can point to and showcase and demonstrate so that others might join us. If anyone feels the need to return to their culture of yore, they are more than welcome to do so in a myriad of other places; we want to keep our society as free from influence as possible. Anyone is welcome to leave the community and welcome to come back when they please as long as they maintain the social order, respect the religion, and embrace all fellow community members.
A New Religion
Since religion shapes cultural practices (and with the influence of Nietzsche and his desire for a fusional return to the Greek pantheon), a new polytheistic religion has been created which has an egalitarian system of morality, cultural scripts for personal and community development, a satisfying mythology of monumental proportions, and a kind of quixotic logic which both harnesses and emboldens the human spirit.
Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, Thou shalt make no graven image. -Schopenhauer, Religion: A Dialogue
This religion might seem provocative but without it, there is a spiritual and metaphysical gap in the fabric of the cultural worldview (and thus a gap in the language). It's a part of all societies and should be understood and harnessed for good instead of being despised, or continuing to follow antequarian religions that do not align with modern world views. If you've had negative experiences with religions in your native society or colonizer's society, please understand that this religion was purpose-built to be a reflection of the best traits of humanity. Hopefully you can find something to love here or at least see it as a positive allegory for the human condition.
A New Social Order
Alongside the religion, there is an effort to build a social order around the ideas of Participatory Economics and Parpolity. While we cannot put these ideas into direct practice at this time, we feel that language, religion and social order are deeply interconnected and the dark practices of greed and machiavellianism might infect the whole project if these cornerstones are ill-defined. We hope to some day implement a network of connected intentional communities that embody this social order and culture.
Publication & Next Steps
Over the last couple weeks, many discussions have been had and materials created. Today, this content is now available all across the site. It was important that there was a semblance of good content to begin this phase of the project so that the meaning and significance of the project could be illustrated in the expansiveness and depth available. More content is planned and will be coming as additional details are determined and written.
noyo xîwon xe monodo môî nîmû bi zelen hoî boxo yê nec nucoto yê hîskûnco Hîsyêô ze.