This is an entry from a list of projects I hope to some day finish. Return to the backburnered projects index.

What is it? A series of linked short stories about the starship Pausanias (named after the ancient geographer), a ship on a mission of research and peace, not unlike the sort of missions undertaken in other well-known cultural touchstones. Unfortunately for the crew of the Pausanias, one of the key magical technologies present in that other touchstone is something which is intractably difficult if not impossible to build in an appropriately general way: namely, automated translation.

Consequently, the plots of these stories would tend to get tripped up in the real-world difficulties of language and translation. These stories would explicitly delve into the vagaries and nuances of language that tend to get ignored when they appear in popular science fiction stories: considerations of dialect and language change and pragmatics and various other ways that language intersects with people and culture. Language is messy and multifaceted and strange and wonderful, and the stories should reflect that.

As an important side-note: I explicitly don't want this to be a work that prominently features conlangs as a major focus. There's a specific kind of science fiction and fantasy—obviously deeply inspired by the languages that J.R.R. Tolkien featured in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—that features fictional but fully-developed languages prominently, and while I'm not inherently opposed to that as a practice, I'm not terribly interested in writing that kind of story myself. I don't want a reader to have to trudge through paragraphs of what to them are nonsense syllables to get to the story. Instead, I want the story to be about people and how their languages interact with who they are, and that might mean including a word or two of a fictional language, but it doesn't mean building an entire grammatical edifice to serve the half-dozen words which appear in one of the stories.

My plan was to write a handful of these and release them on a regular cadence before collecting them together. I've still got notes about the characters and the setting, and the biggest reason I've put it on the backburner is that I've been working on other fiction projects. Some day, I might start serializing the relevant stories on this very blog!

Why write it? Not surprisingly, given my own background in linguistics, many of my favorite science fiction stories are about language in some respect, like Samuel Delany's Babel-17 or Ted Chiang's Story of your Life or China Miéville's Embasssytown. It's not surprising that I'd want to try my hand at language-related science fiction.

It's surprisingly common for science fiction to gesture at language as an area of focus without actually delving deep into it. Star Trek is an obvious example here: they even once hired the linguist Mark Okrand to fill out grammatical details of the Klingon language, but with a few exceptions (like the famous episode Darmok in Star Trek: The Next Generation) they tend to gloss over language as a concern in most episodes. A perhaps more egregious example is the Stargate franchise: the premise of the movie Stargate was that a group of humans on the other side of a galaxy-spanning wormhole spoke an unfamiliar language, and it took a linguist to discern that it was descended from the Egyptian language as spoken on earth. When they used that movie as the basis for a related television series, they quickly dispensed with most of that premise: instead, the linguist character is really only present for deciphering mysterious ancient texts, since every planet they visit seems to be populated by English-speakers instead.

So as a person who cares deeply about language, I've always wanted to take the space opera format and use it to investigate language in the exact way that traditional space operas don't. I'd try to play in the space between works like Embassytown—which often focus on wild science-fiction premises about language—and Star Trek—which largely gloss over it. That is to say: I don't plan to write stories about the very limits of what language might be, like Story of your Life and Babel-17 did, nor do I want language to take the sidelines like it does in traditional space operas: rather, I want to reflect the ways that languages as we know them in the real world can be wild by transposing them to a fantastic setting, taking the space opera format and using it to grapple with the many things that real-world languages do. To put it pithily: why do the Klingons have only one language, to say nothing of dialect? Why have we never heard a Klingon code-switch? And after a generation of close contact with other languages, how does Klingon change¹?

From another direction, one thing I've always found appealing—especially as a person who usually struggles with writing long-form prose—is the idea of writing explicitly episodic fiction, like short stories on a theme. To some degree, that's the same thing I'm doing in writing these backburner-project posts: forcing myself to work in small chunks on a schedule. It's also worth noting that historically serials have been a very common format for fiction even though they've fallen out of fashion a little bit. Doing a short serial—maybe six or eight parts, in total—would be a fun way of telling these stories, especially so that they don't necessarily outstay their welcome.

Why the name? This title is a working title, one I will dispense with as soon as I come up with a better one. Still, this working title is because the project is inspired by space opera like Star Trek, and it would at times involve both morphology and syntax, although those are admittedly a much smaller part of the focus than other aspects of language.

#backburner #fiction

Ižtreyan meals are communal, taken at large, circular tables, ornately inlaid with brightly colored tiles or stone or metal fragments, that serve as the centerpieces of ižtreyan homes and feature prominently in the back-rooms of ižtreyan workplaces. An ižtreyan meal will involve a handful of main dishes and several smaller side dishes that are shared by everyone, heaped onto individual plates or bowls.

Certain dishes show up as sides at every meal, ubiquitous small plates called talots: these are considered obligatory to the degree that meal size and formality is characterized by the number of talotsa present, with a two-talotsa meal being considered the bare minimum for any meal, while a ten-talotsa meal is a veritable feast. (An ižtrey would never serve a meal with only one talots: in fact, the idiom “a one-talots meal” is used among ižtreya to connote a thing that is completely and unacceptably lacking or unfinished.)

A characteristic talots, known well even outside ižtreyan cities, is rask, which is a variety of tiny, walnut-sized bread, baked quickly in large quantities and served in large bowls with a dusting of salt, usually made of a combination of wheat and buckwheat flour and—less often—chopped nuts. Others include tsalšak, or wafers of dried cucumber softened and served in a tangy yoghurt-based sauce, reželdo, or chopped salted sardines or herring, and gelbrekhi, or fried vegetables in a buckwheat-honey batter.

Among the small bites are the large dishes. A meal with one or two people will likely have one large dish, but when eating as a family, a community, or a workplace, people will often serve several to even dozens of central dishes. Ižtreyan meals often include meats in flavorful sauces and various baked goods. Centerpiece dishes like this include:

• žyotsuldo: a roasted savory pie with a buckwheat crust, usually sprinkled with some small pieces cheese shortly before being removed from the oven. A žyotsuldo can be filled with just about anything, but popular choices include beets, marinated beef, or chopped mushrooms. (It's rather uncommon for ižtreyan cities to have stalls for street food or other casual-and-easy-to-acquire foods—it would run contrary to the camaraderie of a proper five-talotsa meal, an ižtrey might tell you!—but when such stalls exist, they often sell an easy-to-carry variation on žyotsuldo.)
• yadash, a roasted, creamed soup of a central flavor (often beets, but sometimes peppers or rhubarb) and a backing, milder flavor (potatoes or yams): this is served with a drizzle of honey and a thick dusting of black pepper, and sometimes a buckwheat flatbread called kyaczut.
• lyubešku ikhab (or other lyubešk dishes): ikhab is a generic word for red meat, and lyubešk is a style of cooking that involves a slow braise in wine with dried berries and raw grain kernels, usually barley. Over the course of the braise, the grains and berries puff up with the wine and meat juices, and the meat takes on a characteristic pink color. It's possible to lyubešk-cook poultry (lyubešk trabšo) or some vegetables like thicker, meatier mushrooms (lyubešk rabsin), but the lyubešk style is usually associated with red meats.

Tir-Bhahat is a collection of fragments of fantastic world-building. You can read more about it here.

#fiction #tirbhahat

At first glance, the queder's conventions for naming are remarkably simpler than most of the other peoples. In general, a quede will have two names: in order, a given name chosen by the parents at birth, and a surname taken from the surname of one of their parents. Which parent's surname is taken will vary based on local custom: in some places, a quede will take the surname of a parent of the same gender; in another, the surname of a parent of a different gender; yet in others, the surname of the parent in whose ancestral home they live; yet in others, the oldest of the parents. The queder rarely change their names, and certainly don't bother changing their names for marriage (although it's not unheard of for a quede to move to another village and adopt a new name to accompany their new life!)

Sadly, the story of quede names is nonetheless complicated by the fact that they have, when compared to most folk, remarkably few given names: the most common two dozen names account for the vast majority of queder. It's not uncommon to walk into a place of work and find four laborers there all named Étun. Indeed, shared names are so common that some parents give the same name to multiple children. The river-town of Elascín was home to a locally famous quede, a book-binder named Pégno Telbasci, who had five sons—all five of them also named Pégno Telbasci!

The queder deal with this remarkable state of affairs by compensating with a truly stunning number of ways of building nick-names. In our hypothetical work-place featuring four queder named Étun, all of them likely have their names registered in local ledgers as Étun but nonetheless are known by some specific variation on the name. There are a number of ways of constructing such variations:

• Every name has its short forms, usually created by dropping the final syllable: thus Étun might be called Étt, Yanna called Yan, a Pégno called Pénn.
• Among those names which are longer than two syllables, one could drop the final syllable (as in Adrisc for Adrisci or Demel for Demela), but might also drop the middle vowel (as in Asci or Demma) or sometimes even the initial syllable (as in Drisci or Mela.)
• Adjectives, especially simple adjectives like liga 'little', adora 'big', cilla 'tall', isca 'fat', or reggia 'cheerful', can be combined with the name: a quede named Adrisci may be called Liga-Adrisci or Isca-Adrisci to distinguish her from the other Adriscis. Many of these adjectives no longer carry a strong meaning when used to create nicknames, and certainly none of these are considered negative in any particular way! (That's not to say no quede would refer to another via a pejorative name, but the queder consider it remarkably bad luck to coin a negative nickname that gains any kind of usage!)
• Various endings can be used to create stock diminutives or pet names, often replacing a final consonant if it exists: -ye, -tta, and -pan are the most common, to the degree than Étuye is sometimes used as a generic name for a given unspecified quede! Still others exist: -en, -an, -gni, -ra, and -qua are all well-attested, and a dozen others might be gathered in any given quede settlement.
• Some endings, over time, are even added on top of yet other endings: you're as likely to meet an Étuyetta as you are an Étuttaye.
• Longer compounds are somewhat less common, but by no means unheard of, especially those made with ta 'of'. They may reference an occupation, as in Yanna-ta-Rescar “Yanna-of-Arms” or Yanna-ta-Gieso “Yanna-of-Fish”, or they may reference a place of birth or living, as in Yanna-ta-Ciama “Yanna-of-the-Woods” or Yanna-ta-Dar “Yanna-of-the-Bay”. These usually appear with a shortened form of the name, as well: indeed, Pénn-ta-Dar is a figure of local legend among the quede towns of the tallgrass plains in the north.

Consequently, despite a wealth of Étuns and Pegnos and Yannas and Adriscis in the official ledgers, a given quede might not know anyone in their home-town by the same name: one of them may be Liga-Étun, another Étunni, another Étuye, and another Étt-ta-Quami, or one of any of dozens of other variations, and no-one would dream of mistaking one Étun for another.

Tir-Bhahat is a collection of fragments of fantastic world-building. You can read more about it here.

#fiction #tirbhahat

When you ask someone who has only ever heard second-hand stories of the rešêk about their cities, they might begin by telling you of their reputed skill with stone- and metal-working, of the deep mines of Thabatnûk or the shimmering canals of liquid silver in the workshops of Rustân Phebašerga Kafthesdut the God-Smith. When you ask someone who has spent time with the rešek, however, they will often talk first about the food. The rešêk are amazing farmers, capable of growing hearty vegetables and succulent fruits even in rocky, sandy soil, and they are equally capable of turning those plants into spectacular, mouth-watering dishes.

Rešk food is heavy in vegetables and grains, but also in seafood: the latter may come as a surprise to many who have not visited the subterranean or semi-subterranean reški cities, but many swimming creatures adapt readily to subterranean life and then can be farmed in controlled underground lakes and canals. On the other hand, larger animals like cattle or swine are hard to raise in most of the areas where reški live, and such meats are a rare treat for the rešek. Beef and pork, when they are available, are often preserved through drying or curing and then used in small portions. Such meats rarely serve as a centerpiece dish on their own, and when they do, they are often used in place of goat, a meat which is easier to come by in the rugged environments where the reški often life.

Reški cuisine involves many preservation strategies, including drying, fermenting, and pickling. Many reški meals involve jams and jellies both savory and sweet, pickled pieces of vegetables, fruits, and meats, and pungent fermented mixtures of vegetables and fruits. The most famous reški preserve is called thûrbuk: a mashed and fermented paste made from mushrooms, peppers, and various spices. Thûrbuk is by far the most common condiment in reški meals, and you're likely to see a jar of it on almost every reški table. The reški predilection for fermentation extends to their beverages, which include both high-alcohol distillates like nakhat—-a grain alcohol aged in hand-hewn granite vessels, sometimes referred to as 'stone-aged whiskey' by other peoples—-as well as everyday drinks like the fizzy fermented fruit juices called suthur, which are also sometimes colloquially called 'small wines' (despite the fact that they are weak enough that they're effectively non-alcoholic!)

Reški cuisine also prominently features a thick, paddle-shaped variety of bread called kegran, which is baked in hot stone ovens and has a crusty exterior with a soft, airy interior. A loaf of kegran is all but guaranteed at almost every meal, regardless of time or setting. Its shape is circular but with a long protrusion called the ašbetik ('pan-handle') which is sometimes used for handling the loaf itself, as it cooks more qiuckly than the rest of the loaf and is usually positioned pointing towards the baker as the loaf bakes. In some places, a rešk will avoid eating this handle-shaped part: as the ašbetik ends up crunchier than the rest of the loaf, it was seen as less desirable, and only those who could not afford a proper meal would stoop to eating it. Despite this cultural association, some reški still prize the ašbetik for its crunchy savoriness, especially when paired with heaping spoonfuls of thûrbuk.

Some other common reški dishes include:

• Hethun, which is a salty broth made by a week-long boiling of certain kinds of stones with dustings of moss, which together impart a mineral flavor and a mild saltiness to the resulting liquid. A bottle of hethun is often kept on-hand as a refreshing drink during hard labor, but it also serves as a base for many other dishes.
• Bâkutand, which is a salad of spiced fermented root vegetables, usually potatoes and radishes, served cold with a drizzle of nut oil.
• Dushâmpek, which is animal skin (usually chicken or salmon) wrapped around sticks of cucumber (or, more rarely, carrot), fried, and served with a generous drizzle of thûrbuk. You will find at least one seller of dushâmpek at almost every marketplace, if not two or three.
• Uphasdît, which is marinated sliced fish (often trout, but sometimes salmon) and mushrooms, left overnight with chilis and spices and then sautéed quickly in a hot pan, usually eaten on top of torn chunks of a loaf of kegran.

Tir-Bhahat is a collection of fragments of fantastic world-building. You can read more about it here.

#fiction #tirbhahat

Something I've considered writing for a very long time is a system-agnostic, largely setting-agnostic tabletop sourcebook that's just descriptions of fantastic cultures and peoples, intended as fragments that could inspire new, interesting worlds instead of prescribing a specific concrete world. I've had scattered notes on this for a while, but I've now decided to start putting pieces of it out into the world in the form of blog posts instead of waiting until it's “complete”. These posts will all be small pieces of pure fantasy worldbuilding, not tied to any particular story or game, describing some small part of the cultures of fantastic peoples in a fantastic world. My current working title for this project is Tir-Bhahat, so these posts can be all read under the #tir-bhahat tag.

I also want to give the story of why I was inspired to do this, because this is a very old idea of mine: its origins come from my high school days, and arose from the collision of three things:

• An awkward, poorly-planned, terribly-run Dungeons and Dragons 3E campaign I put together for my high school friends
• My budding interest in natural languages and high-school habit of buying cheap grammars and phrasebooks for languages I had no intention of ever speaking fluently
• My lifelong penchant for worldbuilding and constructing languages

One thing I discovered as I was reading the Dungeons and Dragons player's handbook was that I was really dissatisfied with fantasy naming. The Dungeons and Dragons books had a set of suggested names for each kind of fantastic humanoid—-elves, dwarves, halflings, and so forth—-and these names felt by and large uninterestingly English-like in phonology. They differed from each other mostly in terms of consonant distribution: that is to say, a Dwarvish name would have more k's and g's, while an Elvish one would have more l's and q's, but you'd rarely find other major differences in terms of the kinds of consonants and vowels that would show up, or overall shape of the words. And beyond that, while you could usually distinguish an Elvish name from a Dwarvish one—-possibly because they were all Tolkien pastiche, anyway—-you'd have a much harder time distinguishing a Gnomish name from a Halfling name, because they all read so similarly.

I immediately set out to rectify this. I sat down with a set of natural-language inspirations for each fantasy language, and then came up with phonologies and tendences, and then wrote programs so that I could generate names that adhered to those phonologies. My intention was that a player who had played in my games for long enough could, from just the impression and sound of a name, tell what sort of person it belonged to, in the same way that an English-speaker who speaks no other languages can nonetheless often tell a German name from a Hindi name from a Mandarin name.

Many of these phonologies were based loosely on real languages, often chosen somewhat arbitrarily. For example, the language of the gnomes, I decided, had a deeply Slavic flavor to it, resulting in Gnomish names like Ussybneča Kadrey Ažbardzo, while the language of the halflings was loosely based on Romance languages, resulting in Halfling names like Pégno Telbasci. Importantly to me, none of these efforts were intended to be constructed languages like Tolkien's Elvish languages: they didn't feature grammars or vocabularies, but instead were just guidelines about how words should look and sound. I did eventually write up phonologies for every major language mentioned in the Dungeons and Dragons books I had at the time.

Over time, though, the scope of this project got larger as I realized my dissatisfaction about the sounds of fantasy languages extended to other aspects of fantasy cultures such as food. What do fantasy peoples eat? Many of those sourcebooks would tell you that Elves eat fruits and probably a nourishing cracker-like bread, while dwarves eat mushrooms and drink ale, and halflings eat lots of bread. But when you look at real-world cultures, you find cuisines which are much deeper and more varied. You might find a dish of noodles and mushrooms in Italian cuisine as well as in Chinese cuisine, but even then, those dishes will surface with wildly different composition, flavor, and focus. Compared to the richness and variety of foods that appear in the real world, the fantasy standby of “elves eat fruits” feels remarkably simplistic and boring.

Since then, this idea has been on my mind sporadically, so I've accumulated a lot of notes on possibilities for fantastic languages and names and foods and clothing and family structure and cities. However, despite having considered doing so on a number of occasions, I've never taken all these notes—-some of the oldest dating back more than a decade—-and turned them into a cohesive whole.

Consequently, my plan is now to start polishing them piece-by-piece, with no particular focus or order, and start posting these scattered notes as blog posts instead. The current drafts are no longer deeply tied to Dungeons and Dragons, or any specific fantasy world. They make some cursory efforts to be compatible with existing fantasy cliché—-stipulating that dwarves live underground, for example—-but also try to avoid the worst and most problematic parts of fantasy cliché, such as the concept of intelligent, sentient beings who are “always chaotic evil”. These posts are exercises in world-building for its own sake, vignettes of fantastic cultures that ideally should be simultaneously grounded and yet fantastic.

#fiction #tirbhahat