Jumping down rabbit holes with conlangs and concultures

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LinguistCat
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Jumping down rabbit holes with conlangs and concultures

Post by LinguistCat »

Has anyone else started a project with simple goals, but due to your own perfectionism and outside factors beyond your control, it becomes a big, complex mess?

In my case, I'm writing a story about cat spirits in Japan collectively known as kaibyou. I figured that at least in some instances, they would want to talk among themselves without being easily understood by humans, but I still wanted it related to Japanese in-world. I looked into the folklore and kaibyou (specifically nekomata which seemed to be the oldest variant) seem to come from a Chinese folklore creature called senri 仙狸, or a leopard cat that gained spiritual power. So it would make sense that kaibyou came to Japan from China.

So now I have pre-kaibyou which were probably Old Chinese speaking senri, coming over to Japan with early Sino-Japanese contact, and learning or developing a language from Old Japanese or even a Proto-Japonic equivalent. I do not know much of anything about any variant of Chinese let alone Old or Middle Chinese. I had already been working out what phonology I wanted Old Japanese in this universe should have, since we don't know the exact phonemes that would have been used but we have some ideas about what they might have been. But now I feel like I need to look into Old Chinese, decide what the most probable phonology for it was, decide how cat people/spirits might change that, send some of those cats over to ancient Japan, decide how they might pick up Old Japanese (with phonology and such that I've already decided), have them actively choose to keep their variant separate even if new kaibyou could learn Japanese of the time fluently, and have the cat-Japanese evolve on its own until the time of the story.

I don't even NEED the language for the story, I just thought it would be a fun side project to my writing. And I know I could handwave things and most folks wouldn't care, but I would care because I'm just like that. I'm not even really looking for suggestions on how to simplify things (I also wouldn't be opposed), but I'd like to hear what other folks have done that led to more research or work than they first expected, as you found more things that factored into your project.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Jumping down rabbit holes with conlangs and concultures

Post by eldin raigmore »

LinguistCat wrote: 25 Apr 2019 20:39 Has anyone else started a project with simple goals, but due to your own perfectionism and outside factors beyond your control, it becomes a big, complex mess?
Oh, yes. Except each of “perfectionism” and “outside my control” might be overly-generous, to apply to me.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: Jumping down rabbit holes with conlangs and concultures

Post by Lambuzhao »

My conlangs were chronospatially-based on either (1) post-apocalyptic Earth or (2) some space colony/colonies.


They kind of wound up generations later out the other side of their respective rabbit-holes.

Over the years, I have relooked at them, looked at possible Proto-Langs for the more a priori gaggle, regularized sound changes for sisterlangs and daughter-langs.

But anymore, I just don't have time to even write more than a paragraph, a footnote, that would have become an entire rabbit-hole years ago.

Also, then I have Jon Pertwee-itis. By that I mean, as Mr. Pertwee's 3rd Doctor was marooned pretty much in 1960s-early 1970s Britain, I prefer to dawdle in the "Golden Age" of Tirga, while, technically, I ought to have progressed forward with my conworld mebbe 10,000 Çarak years in Tirgan history.

Mebbe I went backwards thru the rabbit-hole??
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elemtilas
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Re: Jumping down rabbit holes with conlangs and concultures

Post by elemtilas »

Lambuzhao wrote: 29 Apr 2019 16:39Mebbe I went backwards thru the rabbit-hole??
Hmm.

I can honestly say I have never even once jumped down the rabbit hole.
Curlyjimsam
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Re: Jumping down rabbit holes with conlangs and concultures

Post by Curlyjimsam »

When I create a world specifically as a setting for a work of fiction, I tend to find myself distracted by irrelevant details sooner or later. I have, for example, a 2000-year royal genealogy and a fairly detailed conlang sketch for one novel series that are unlikely to ever find their way into the stories themselves in any form.
The Man in the Blackened House, a conworld-based serialised web-novel
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