(C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by xinda »

Edit: whoops...wrong thread.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

xinda wrote:Is it possible to have "rounding" harmony?

For example, the underlying form might be: /suintɛnk/
The harmony would conform to the rounding of the first vowel in the word. This would also change coronals into retroflexes and labialize everything else, resulting in [ʂuyɳʈœŋkʷ]
Why the heck not?

But if you're asking whether any natlangs attest it;
see this pdf (or this pdf)
and this Wikipedia article
and this pdf
and this pdf
and maybe other stuff turned up by this search.

The answer is "yes".

There are also languages where consonants must harmonize with each other, and there are languages where vowels must harmonize with consonants or vice-versa.

See this search, for example.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Micamo »

Any good books I could read on etiquette and manners from a global, anthropological perspective? I can find tons of stuff about etiquette itself but it's all very much western-centric. Best I can find is stuff on Japan, China, and India but what I'm really curious about is such practices in smaller, tribal cultures. I can find tantalizing fragments but no far-reaching surveys.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Micamo wrote:Any good books I could read on etiquette and manners from a global, anthropological perspective? I can find tons of stuff about etiquette itself but it's all very much western-centric. Best I can find is stuff on Japan, China, and India but what I'm really curious about is such practices in smaller, tribal cultures. I can find tantalizing fragments but no far-reaching surveys.
I don't know of any.

If you look specifically for "business etiquette" you can find some.

And of course not all those you find are "western-centric".
There are guides to etiquette in Japan or China, written for those from the West; and guides to etiquette in Italy and America, written for those from Japan; and so on.

Most guides that would tell you what you want (if I know what you want) are guides to the etiquette of one culture written for people from a different culture. There are many guides for people from the same culture, but I'm guessing they assume you already know stuff you don't know, so their explanations may not really make you understand.

I really only did two searches:
this one
and
this one.

You could look up etiquette among non-human animals. There is such a thing; for instance, a non-alpha wolf should wait until the alpha is almost through eating and then check with the alpha whether it's OK for the non-alpha to start eating.

Among people, one thing that often happens is that the host quietly shows off to the guest by not denying any desire the host guesses the guest might have. This can extend as far as temporary sexual access to members of the host's household, depending on the culture.

Lots of etiquette is about who gets their choice; lots is about who gets to eat first; lots is about who gets the best. For instance in the New Testament it's said that masters usually eat first and servants begin eating only when the master is finished. OTOH in the Marines the lower the rank the earlier they eat; this is said to be the reason there's never been a mutiny in the Marines. Top-heavy armies often have a rule that no-one ever has to walk over any ground that a higher-ranking person hasn't walked over first.

Then there's etiquette about making sure one has permission or is welcome. In Botswana, as I understand it, when you want to talk to someone in a house, you clap your hands from their front walk and shout "Koo, koo!". Actually walking up to their door without having first been recognized is rude.

There's etiquette about who should have the easiest time, as well. A boat is easier to get in and out of if it's weighted down; so the higher-ranking, or the elderly, or the more delicate (e.g. pregnant women or women with babes-in-arms) should be the last on and the first off.

But whether or not the strong should look out for the weak varies. "Women and children first" is not universal.

And in Islamic culture if a man can save either only his mother or only his wife or child, he would be expected to save his mother first.

Western passengers on airplanes have to be told that they need to take care of their own oxygen masks first before worrying about those of their children and dependents.

And I don't know if that doesn't just do the opposite of what you want; it's hardly a global or far-reaching survey.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Micamo »

Yay! Thank you so much for all of your advice: It's certainly given me a lot more things to think about.
eldin raigmore wrote:This can extend as far as temporary sexual access to members of the host's household, depending on the culture.
Oh dear o.o
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Micamo wrote:Yay! Thank you so much for all of your advice: It's certainly given me a lot more things to think about.
That's very nice! Thanks for saying so.

BTW:
Even among non-humans, etiquette is often strongly influenced by sex (I mean by who's male and who's female, rather than by copulation).

Rats highly prize chocolate. Male rats are usually bigger and stronger and sometimes faster than female rats in good health. But if you drop a piece of chocolate into a bunch of rats, often it goes to the closest female, even if there are males closer to it.

If you set out bread for ducks, and a couple of them come along, the male will watch over the female while she eats. I don't know whether he eats at all; if he does, he waits until she's done. And she's well-camouflaged and he isn't; and he's usually bigger and stronger.

Unlike the rats, the female duck is probably pregnant and if her eggs aren't fertilized yet the male will probably be the one to do it, or if they are already fertilized he probably is the father.

Male dogs won't fight female dogs. And they're usually bigger and stronger (and uglier) than the females.

If a male bonobo has two pieces of fruit and a female sees them and wants one, she'll go offer sex to him; once they're done she'll just walk off with one of the pieces of fruit and he won't try to stop her. A lot like divorce American style, really.

Quails try to catch predators' eyes and lead them away from nests. Males will try to protect females and offspring; females will try to protect offspring.

Edit: :

Something I've noticed about human fathers. It may be cultural, or even familial; but it may (as I theorize) be more wide-spread than that.

A father will watch his wife feed their children without showing any sign that he's also interested in the food. (Based on my own experience, he himself isn't even aware he has any such interest.) Then, when the children are done eating, he'll suddenly have the munchies for their leftovers.

(I haven't observed the mothers acting the same way. I guess that's because they don't, but maybe it's just slipped my notice.)

I've theorized that this is the same thing as the "lower ranks eat first" in the Marines, except instinctual in the fathers and cultural in the upper-rank Marines.

By eating the leftovers the father finds out what quality the food the children are getting; what they aren't getting enough of, what they're getting too much of, what honestly does "taste funny", and so on.

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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Chagen »

I'm writing out a detailed outline of the country of Kron in the world Techaria.

What should I go over in this outline? I have these things planned (not in this order, but I will cover this):

Official Language
Population
Official Currency
Government
Main Industries
Geography
Religion
History
Basic Culture
Forsaking
Role in Revelations

The last two are specific to Full Auto, the story, itself.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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I'd dump the first five on that list. You're designing a living, breathing world here, not a bunch of statistics on a census report.

When you write, imagine the reader themselves has been dumped into Kron. What do they see? What do they hear and smell? What kinds of things should they expect to encounter? What kinds of encounters will surprise them? What kinds of encounters will they find familiar?
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I need to keep the Main Industories on that, though, as Kron's extreme focus on engineering and making Mechanical-Technology (called "Mechana-tech" for short) basically forms the utter cornerstone of their society and their culture.

Also, it affects their geography heavily, as I wrote here:

"The aftermath of revelations had a massive effect on the landscape, however. The entire country is covered in scrapped and destroyed metal from War Machines and other various things such as burnt-out cities. There are areas that are nothing but burned-out and destroyed scrap metal. The metals are so strong, however, that they are resilient and reliable as they were then were first mined from Gsckar. The Kron, therefore, build nearly everything out of this scrap, instead of remaking it. Therefore, Kron cities are truly strange, being literally nothing more than scrap metal hastily welded and bolted together to make what can only be described as massive shanty towns. Even the most populous cities in Kron are like this.

The Kron like this, however. They prefer reworking and fixing things rather than creating whole new things, so the whole style fits with them. In addition, the metals they recover are so strong that they can be used for this with no worry of collapsing. The Kron also like to carve out the interiors of old War Machines and use them as buildings—one of the most infamous of these is in the city of Taigc, which has in the direct center of it, a 3-mile-long aircraft carrier that is half-way stuck in the ground. It has been re-used as an office building, and is one of most notable things about Kron, being a national landmark."
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Post by Micamo »

That's fine, what I meant was doing things like saying "Their main export is corn" when you should instead talk about the massive corn fields covering the rolling hills of the countryside.
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Micamo wrote:That's fine, what I meant was doing things like saying "Their main export is corn" when you should instead talk about the massive corn fields covering the rolling hills of the countryside.
Heh, that wouldn't show up anyway.

There is almost no vegetation on Kron. All of the land is barren rock. Water must be imported from the water nation of Adari and food must be imported from the Land nation of Pazmat. Doesn't help that Pazmat and Kron have very strained relations due to past events.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Not the point. You say "Relationships are very strained." How so? Are Pazmat seen on Kron murdered on sight? Are the streets on pazmat lined with propaganda posters making Kron's political system look like the Supreme Soviet? Show, don't tell.
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Micamo wrote:Not the point. You say "Relationships are very strained." How so? Are Pazmat seen on Kron murdered on sight? Are the streets on pazmat lined with propaganda posters making Kron's political system look like the Supreme Soviet? Show, don't tell.
It would require explaining the entirenity of Revelations. Which would take some time.

But, a basic run-down is that the Paz, due to their ridiculous religiousity, ended up basically getting over 100 Trillion people on 3 different planets killed. And also got the entire world razed and burned until it was nothing but a smoking rock.

The Kron are still kind of pissed at this. They basically regard the Paz as idiot magic savants and utterly irresponsible religious crazies. Or, they used to. The relations are slowly building back, because the above case really wasn't the Paz's fault completely.
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Chagen wrote:... a basic run-down is that the Paz, due to their ridiculous religiousity, ended up basically getting over 100 Trillion people on 3 different planets killed.
Do you even know what kind of population density is that?
33 Trillion on one planet...

Let's assume an S=510 072 000 km²
New York density = 10 630 people/km²
S*NY density = 5 422 065 360 000 people

That gives your planets a population density of ~64 700 people/km² for the population of 33 trillion, if the entire world's surface, including the oceans, covered.

If the oceans aren't covered, then you'd have an assumed S = 153 021 600 km², where the density will be, what, 220 000 people/km² ?
You don't have a sense of scale.
And don't you go with "My planet is bigger!" because you will get quite a quick increase in Earthly "G"s
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Re: (C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... nseOfScale

But, more seriously, The Tech of Techaria and Old Earth allowed these massive populatiobs to exist.
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Re: (C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Thakowsaizmu »

Ugh... please not the TV tropes...
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Re: (C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Chagen wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... nseOfScale

But, more seriously, The Tech of Techaria and Old Earth allowed these massive populations to exist.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... heResearch

It's 220 people/m², Chagen.
Even your buildings will be tens of kilometers high and an unseperable blob that would easily collapse and be badly defended (that is, if you don't have boxes to live in and no manufacturing or farming whatsoever)
Even if you bypass that, where the fck would you get the resources to make such a city?
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Re: Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Darkgamma wrote:Do you even know what kind of population density is that?
33 Trillion on one planet...

Let's assume an S=510 072 000 km²
New York density = 10 630 people/km²
S*NY density = 5 422 065 360 000 people

That gives your planets a population density of ~64 700 people/km² for the population of 33 trillion, if the entire world's surface, including the oceans, covered.

If the oceans aren't covered, then you'd have an assumed S = 153 021 600 km², where the density will be, what, 220 000 people/km² ?
You don't have a sense of scale.
And don't you go with "My planet is bigger!" because you will get quite a quick increase in Earthly "G"s
It's even worse because I do believe he tried to justify his planets only having one language each by saying each of their surface areas is no larger than the UK.

And if you assume every individual gets a 50 ft. by 50 ft. apartment to live in, with ten-foot ceilings, you'd need buildings of a height of 97 miles to be able to store that kind of population density. Assuming an Earthlike planet that's literally higher than the stratosphere.
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Re: (C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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I'm amazed you gus didn't consider living underground as well as aboveground.

Or on the moon.

Or on artificial planets.

Or Battleships/Space Stations that orbited Earth.

Which were all used in Old Earth.
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Re: (C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Micamo »

Chagen wrote:I'm amazed you gus didn't consider living underground as well as aboveground.
At most the crust goes only 60 miles deep, unless you plan on having some people living in the mantle. And this is assuming an earthlike planet again: Yours are smaller, so the crust will be much smaller. Unless the places are geologically dead (likely considering their size) and you just hollow the whole thing out, that is. Still the gravity problem to deal with if you do that, though. As well as the fact that after Revelations and whatever technology they had to support that sort of thing was lost, the planets would have no structural integrity left.
Or on the moon.
Not all planets have moons, the size and number of which is proportional to the size of the planet. Earth's pretty much a freak for having one giant moon: Since your planets are smaller, it wouldn't be reasonable to assume there ARE any moons capable of supporting decent-sized colonies, let alone enough moons and large enough moons to support several such.
Or on artificial planets.

Or Battleships/Space Stations that orbited Earth.
Then it's not just "3 planets" is there?
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