Magic, Language
Pursuant to Keet's unicode symbol of the day, one thing I keep thinking Sofi needs is the incorporation of glyphs/ideograms for common ideas. Not just alchemical symbols but things like these:
& (et, and)
ā (ante, before)
c̄ (cum, with)
p̄ (post, after)
q̄ (quisque, every)
s̄ (sine, without)
@ (<unk.>, at)
Not every preposition, necessarily, but many common words would end up with formal inclusion in the language as documented shorthand.
Magic, Language
A large triangular yellow sign looms: "Warning: now entering an ontology zone" ;)
Magic, Language
@literorrery Prepositions are a weird scary beast, especially when you realize that not all languages have the same ones. It's ALMOST a closed set, but... not.
They're like colors, only... not.
Magic, Language
@literorrery They're colors only WORSE though. Because, okay, when you collapse 'green' and 'yellow', describing things is confusing.
But for instance, I'm pretty sure Irish Gaelic doesn't distinguish 'for' and 'to'; both are 'de'. And I can't event begin to imagine the subtle differences that causes in other ways.
Magic, Language
@literorrery Apologies, correction, 'do'; 'de' is 'of'
Magic, Language
@indi And some languages distinguish "motion towards" from "location" in their preposition space, and others don't (English uses "wards" or "to", others just use complete different words for the two classes, still others don't distinguish). It's a mess.
Magic, Language
@literorrery I have a semi-related problem that I've been poking at for a while, which is how I'd like to use my writing system for incantation work by assigning archetypal meanings to the glyphs. But then there's this scary question of 'how do I get good coverage?'
Magic, Language
@literorrery Even worse, I want the vowels to work as verbs. Since syllables are always (optional consonant)-(verb)-(optional consonant), that maps to SVO sentence construction pretty well.
But that means I have to choose a closed set of verbs. And I only get 10. o.o
Magic, Language
@indi You could make the vowels verb tenses. Or use dipthongs to broaden your space. That's a tricky one, though.
Magic, Language
@literorrery Well, it helps in that the glyph-as-word use is explicitly for incantations, meaning I can get away with them all being, for instance, present-tense-imperative. And also suggests a smaller set that is important for 'spellwork'.
It's still a tricky question though.
Magic, Language
@indi Definitely that narrows the focus, but it's still tricky. I appreciate the problem.
I actually went through a similar mapping exercise of metals to vowels and processes to consonants in a very early draft of Sofi. I ended up abandoning the idea, but I do have a "cycle of sounds" of sorts as a result. Interesting work but it didn't lead me where I wanted to go. I appreciate the effort you're putting into this!
Magic, Language
@indi Actually, they're pretty much colors. "Everyone has the same ones" until you realize that some languages don't have them and some have ones you aren't expecting.
Hence why I said explicitly "not every preposition" and I explicitly included "and." "And" is not a preposition; it's a conjunction! =n.n= **lights smoke-bomb, drops at feet, waits for smoke to dissipate, walks visibly to seat**