Miscellaneous Stuff

This stuff is really for my own amusement.

Contructed Languages:

• Norze
• Savoyard

Other Stuff:

• Languages American Presidents Knew
• Chinese words written in Pīnyīn
• Slovak and Slovenian
• Order of books in the New Testament.

Some Painful Further Explanation

I have pages on languages I constructed myself. These languages are not intended to be spoken by anyone. They're just little exercises I do for myself. Some people do crossword puzzles. I do this. Even I can't really speak them! Originally the languages started out as a weird mix of stuff - completely made up words or mixes from all sorts of languages from all sorts of language families. Later they became quite controlled - that is, languages that I thought could be completely plausible.

The second oldest (maybe) is Norze. But I don't like that name! Maybe it should just be called Randyan or Randyese! It was originally kind of a Danish-Swedish thing complete with the letters ø and å and a suffixed definite article. Over time it has mutated into something more like Dutch with a lot of German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese mixed in. Ever so often some Russian or some other language ends up in it. When I speak it, the words are all mixed up. Sometimes 'car' is auto (German Auto) but more often it's kotsjê (Spanish coche). I don't think of it being spoken any particular place except maybe in the West Indies - the Swedes actually had some colonies there and the Danish had the American Virgin Islands. The Germans (well, Moravians) even settled (I think) in the Virgin Islands. The Duchy of Courland even briefly controlled Tobago.

There was an older language. I don't think it really had a name - I don't like naming my languages. Eventually I think it was Ohot or Öhötö. The names I give languages always sound dumb. It was supposedly spoken in Siberia and was vaguely Uralic/Ket/Yakut/Nivkh (etc...). They had their own autonomous oblast in Siberia (or were they in Kazakhstan?). The language mutated quite a bit. The main thing was that it had to have a lot of cases in its noun (and vowel harmony). I loved the idea of cases. I have no idea why. At one point I think I ended up with about 30 cases! It had its own alphabet but could be written in Cyrillic. At one point I had them as Muslim and the language written in Arabic characters. After the Soviet Union fell, this language kind of went bust too!

Here is Savoyard. It's spoken in the mythical Republic of Savoy, more or less in the Piedmont area of Italy and a little bit in southwestern France. The language originally started as a Romance language that still had grammatical cases. It was kind of like Romanian. It even had the letter ă and was originally called Bacău. Somewhere along the way it changed. I think I wanted it to become more realistic. The original language just didn't look right - very unbalanced somehow. There was a book about Romance languages by Mario Pei, I think, and that book had a description of the northern Italian dialects. That book and a few articles and references in books on Romance languages I've found here and there on Piedmontese is the basis of Savoyard. So Savoyard is kind of Piedmontese using western Romance orthography - qu before e or i as in French and not Italian ch, for example. There are differences between Savoyard and Piedmontese though. I've only just noticed how many after finding better descriptions of Piedmontese.

There is also Tekewan. It's the language of the Republic of Tekewa. Tekewa's flag is here. Originally Tekewan was a language isolate spoken on a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean more or less equidistant from India, Indonesia, the Maldives, and Australia. Now it's quite Polynesian and spoken on a group of islands vaguely near the Cook Islands. It's always had a kind of Indonesian/ Melanesian look to it - Tekewan is a Polynesian language that can have syllables end in a consonant. Tekewa is part of the Commonwealth and Tekewans are rabid rugby fans. They even have their own haka. I've never actually composed or performed a haka for them. The neighbors already wonder about me.

There are others that aren't very developed:

• Varenian - an Indo-European language that has it's own branch in the family like Greek, Armenian, or Albanian. It's spoken in the Balkans, though some speakers are in Turkey. Most are Varenian Orthodox though about 15-20% are Muslim.
• "Slavic" (no name) - a Slavic language spoken where Hungary is. I wanted to invent a language that would be a plausible language there. I guess it was going to be South Slavic but also pretty close to Slovak.
• "Gothic" - what Gothic would have become if hadn't become extinct. It would have spoken on the Black Sea coast from the mouth of the Danube to the Crimean Peninsula. I thought of its being a dying language with only a few thousand speakers in isolated villages spread out in this area and would be written in Cyrillic.

Here's a page with Chinese written in Pīnyīn with correct tone marks.

Polabian was the western most Slavic language spoken. It was spoken up to the 1750s, at the latest, not far from Hamburg in what was West Germany. Its closest relatives would be Polish and Kashubian, but the language has gone in such a radical direction that it's, well, wonderfully weird.

I've never found a Polabian revival movement like Cornish has. However, Vladislav Knoll, author of this page, comes the closest, I guess. He has an introductory paragraph in original Polabian. The pages are in Czech though there are Polish and German translations of some items. Knoll also has a Kashubian page. Much of Knoll's Polabian material is also found on Jens Ruge's page. Ruge's page is in German, not surprisingly.

Now, do Polabian letters actually work here? ă ĕ Why, yes they do!

Here's page for me to sort out Slovaks, Slovenians, and Slavs; and Russians and Rusyns; and, Sorbs and Serbs!

And here's another project: The order of books in the New Testament. I don't know why I find it so interesting.