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Sopih is a world of the same size and temperament as Earth. It has three major landmasses: Atonya in the western hemisphere and Tiptum in the east, and another little-explored continent occupying much of the southern hemisphere. (See Maps.) These lands are inhabited by humans much like us, speaking a cornucopia of languages, which are intertwined through their own historical relationships.
| The Three Continents | ||
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The historians of Aipura recognized three major cultural spheres of settled peoples and gave them names based on their relative geographic positions: Western Civilization, Eastern Civilization, and Central Civilization. Aipura is part of Central Civilization, and of course, they felt flattered in the superiority implied by their "central" position. But the recognition of three civilizations is justified because the nations of each of the civilizations have influenced each other mutually, and collectively forged a distinctive history - and indeed distinctive perceptions of history.
Eastern Civilization consists of the Conciliarity of Tepat
and its successors, the Swira Empire, the
city-states of Hamtum, and the Transformational
Peopleness of Muqali, and formerly the Milim
Empire - all of which occupy the middle latitudes of the continent
of Tiptum. Eastern Civilization developed an advanced calendar and
dates events from a fixed Year 0. Originally based on the supposed
date of creation, the Qom dynasty shifted Year 0 to its own
founding date. Complex societies first emerged in the dry, rocky
hills, where success depended on irrigation and other feats of
technology and social organization. Throughout history (until they
got conquered), Tepat became increasingly technologically and
magically sophisticated, and it seemed as if the stars were the
limit and life would keep getting better. All things would
eventually come within the grasp of mankind. History is progress.
Tiptum, the eastern continent,
with selected regions labeled in
Tepatic glyphs.
The Eastern languages are very diverse, but a few features are widely shared:
The Tepatites were an advanced civilization that flourished until they were conquered by nomadic warriors from the north speaking Swiric languages. Their old "empire" was a union of several states sharing the same general culture and political ideology.
Originally a small state in the Notoq highlands, they expanded
into a lowland feudal conglomeration, after overthrowing the
Milim, the previous overlords of the river basin. This
disintegrated, leading to hundreds of years of civil war known as
the Shattered Land. Tepat's philosophical tradition developed at
this time, spurred by the desire to restore order and prosperity
in the land, leading to a practical orientation toward politics,
economics, and ethics. Tepat was finally reunited under a
short-lived dictatorship by the Lord of Qom, Qathûq. Once Qom was
overthrown, society became dominated by the Lyup class
of scholars, dedicated to reason and the idea that social
perfection could be attained. They created a decentralized system
of government by councils known here called a conciliarity.
Classical Yuktepat was the unifying language,
written in a logographic script (Mwentepat). This
supremely reasonable language was isolating with rigid SVO
word-order, a largely self-segregating (CV)CVC morphology, and
phonological distinctions between content and function words.
Indeed, it was widely believed that the lack of inflection
constituted a superior linguistic design that made the Tepat think
more rationally than people who spoke languages with messy
conjugations.
TEPAT PEOPLE, HISTORY, and CULTURE
CLASSICAL YUKTEPAT GRAMMAR
(PDF)
I noticed that the PDF says that classifier phrases follow the nouns they count. Actually they precede the noun they count. This mistake and others will be corrected.
To the north of Tepat lived many nomadic or semi-nomadic nations. The earliest speakers of Swíra were one of these nomadic herders and mounted archers dominating the dry plains north of the Tepat civilization. Abiding by a warlike honor-obsessed ethos, and a religion of self-mortification and the mystical use of plants and potions, they were everything Tepat considered barbaric. Unfortunately, the Swira were soon to overrun Tepat and establish their hegemony over it.
The Old Swira language was formerly a robustly polysynthetic language. In essence, everything got sucked into the verb like a black hole. The Classical language represented an amalgam of Old Swira and related nomadic dialects with a heavy infusion of learned Tepatic vocabulary. The modern language has simplified its verb morphology, developed prepostitions from common gerunds, become more analytical, and become more consistently SVO, as they attempt to become "rational" like their predecessors.
OLD SWÍRA GRAMMAR (PDF)
Muqali was a backward mountainous kingdom in
Central Tiptum, southeast of Tepat. The most rigid of all the
societies of Tiptum, naturally it was doomed to violent overthrow.
It is best known for the chaotic revolution that replaced the
divine kingship with a radical dictatorship, the Transformation
Peopleness, led by the First Patriot - after which it became
backward again in new ways. This did little to change its
reputation as a nation of hillbillies.
|
Seal of the state of Tepat |
Seal of the state of Muqali |
On the East Coast of Tiptum, there are a number of coastal
valleys which are the homes of various city-states. Collectively
they are known as Amtom, which is simply from
the Yuktepat word Hamtum for "East Coast."
Mountain ranges pushed the bulk of the population down onto the
beaches. The unevenness of the land thankfully also afforded a
long coastline with lots of harbors. Naturally they turned to
fishing and shipping for the basis of their economy. Each
individual state felt secure in its nest of mountains. Unable to
conquer each other, they competed through trade. Amtom shared the
same optimism in progress as Tepat, but while Tepat came to
associate that with collective action, the Eastern states
associated it with capitalistic entrepreneurship. One of the major
economic powers of this region, along the northern reaches, is the
nation of Kotlinas, where Kotliseu
is spoken. Other links in this long coastal chain include Dakn,
Pahas, Kǝcǝ, and Nǝlotil.
KOTLISEU GRAMMAR (PDF)
Within the Eastern Civilization languages, the East-Coast cities form their own smaller sprachbund-within-a-sprachbund:
More information about the continent of Tiptum, on which Eastern
Civilization resides, can be found here: Tiptum.
Central Civilization, covering most of the Peninsula of Aipura
and the Isles of Triconya, claims the Tag, Rimant,
and Glindesan nations, the Artinaih
empire, and the fractured nations left in their wake. There were
several cultural centers of fluctuating importance, unlike Western
Civilization which was anchored in Čila or Eastern Civilization
which was anchored in Tepat.
Middle Civilization explains history through the dynastic cycle,
and dates events according to the duration of dynasties: the ebb
and flow of power from individual places and families. During the
long postlude to the Artinaicanu power, scholars codified a system
of "Five Ages," the ages of Tag, Rimant, Glindesa, Artinaih, and
finally their own, the "Dark Age."
The threat of chaos emanates from the natural world as well.
Although fertile, the region lies over the convergence of several
fault lines and in the path of many tropical storms and blizzards.
Being well-forested, most things are made out of wood, which
brings with it fire hazards. Things are frequently destroyed and
then rebuilt. This has encouraged a view of the physical world as
impermanent, and taken with the dynastic and epochal cycles, has
encouraged the view that everything recurs eternally. History is a
cycle.
Mankind holds a small and uncertain place in the world, and so
daily life retreated before the transcendence of art and religion.
Philosophy prioritized the more abstract domains of epistemology
and metaphysics.
| Wheels within wheels...
How does linguistics work in the concultures of Sopih? Read about it here. |
While Aipuran may refer simply to any language which is
spoken on the peninsula, the term Aipuric has a more specialized
meaning, referring to a particular language family which is widely
spoken on the peninsula. The family includes the language of the
Artinaican Empire, and is itself included in the larger Northeast
Atonic Family.
NOTES ON THE AIPURIC LANGUAGES (HTML)
The Obic languages are a family of languages spoken throughout the western parts of the Aipuran peninsula. They are all descended from Proto-Obic. Two of the major languages are Mazlobi and Arajan.
Arajan was the language of ancient Glindesa and an important
classical language. The ancient language was an agglutinative VSO
language with a case system split between animate and inanimate
nouns. Both noun classes were marked for case. Verbs differed
widely for how their arguments were marked, depending on whether
they were transitive, intransitive, experiencer verbs, verbs of
motion, and whether the subject was animate. Arajan has two modern
offshoots. The western variety is more conservative, while the
eastern branch has become genderless, accusative-aligned, and SVO.
ARAJAN GRAMMAR (coming)
| WARNING All information is subject to change. Even the name of the planet itself. The grammatical descriptions are presented "as is" and may contain incorrect or outdated information, or typos. (I have already noticed some, and will fix them, not that that promise should be construed as legally binding.) The author hereby disclaims all liability for confusion and / or distress resulting therefrom, including, but not limited to, loss of revenue, declarations of war upon conworlds and botched dates with people from concultures. Have a nice day! |
Western Civilization occupied the western parts of Atonya and comprised the Čila kingdom and its tributaries, such as Thotha and Ašake. Čila has had only one imperial line, so dynasties cannot serve as markers of historical periods. Individual reigns are used for dating officially. The satellite nations abide by their own ruling dynasties, as well as the reigns of Čila. In part, this approach makes sense in an area that experienced few cataclysmic events or shifts in dominance among contending powers: the central figure has always been Čila. Consequently Čila culture has always emphasized its own stability and tradition. History is continuity.
Features of Western Civilization languages:
Remčila is the language spoken by the people of
Čila. Since time immemorial the land has been under the rule
(sometimes merely nominal) of a line of Empresses who extend back
to their forebear, the fire god Čimbe. A conservative,
stratified society has imprinted the language with a strong
consciousness of rank. There are many speech registers and
honorific forms. Word order is determined by the "rank" of nouns
in a hierarchy. Verily it is said that Remčila is a language
designed to express social relationships.
REMČILA (PDF)
The version of Remčila presented
here is Remčila 2.0. It has changed considerably since the first
description I put online. For those interested in Renqila 1.0
(Pre-2010 - note the spelling difference), you can see it here.
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