{"id":583,"date":"2011-12-08T21:29:09","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T04:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/?p=583"},"modified":"2011-12-08T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T04:29:09","slug":"ay-ra-co-counting-in-barsoomian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/?p=583","title":{"rendered":"Ay, Ra, Co… Counting in Barsoomian!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned in my last blog post<\/a>, I’m really<\/em> hoping for some Barsoomian language in the upcoming John Carter<\/a> of Mars movie. In that post, I whined about the lack of any conlinguistical features in the movie promos thus far (and the presence of the Martian \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Decoder\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> and Martian Translator<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Well, I’ve decided to go back to the source material (i.e., the stories<\/a> of Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB)) and try my own hand at puzzling out some basic vocabulary and grammar. This has already been done (most astutely by Jeffrey Henning<\/a> and David Bruce Bozarth<\/a>), but I felt there was such a goldmine of opportunity that I couldn’t resist wading in.<\/p>\n

I’ve tried to stay as true to the vocabulary provided by ERB as possible, but, truthfully, there really isn’t a lot to go on since he didn’t define a lot of terms. I did take the word lists at Bozarth’s site and broke all the names, places, vocabulary, planets, etc., etc., down into their constituent syllables to get a feel for the sounds. I came up with 329 distinct syllables (and I’m not completely satisfied with them), with over 200 having either an initial stop or a fricative. I’m planning on several posts outlining my work on this. For the most part, it’s just a fun little conlang exercise. I am neither a linguist nor an ERB expert, but I think I can justify and\/or rationalize all my choices. Bear with me and enjoy the ride. This first post is going to “teach” you how to count from one to ten and beyond in Barsoomian:<\/p>\n

The Barsoomian<\/a> page at Langmaker.com<\/a> has a run-down of possible numbers, but Henning stays very cautious in his interpretation. I’m going to throw caution out the window and say, “Here is how to count in Barsoomian…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
ay<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
one<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ra<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
*two<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
co<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
*three<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
tor<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
four<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ja<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
*five<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
dan<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
*six<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ov<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
seven<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
bar<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
eight<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
en<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
*nine<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
tee<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
ten<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
(Using * in the traditional “this is an unattested form”)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Many of these will look identical to Langmaker.com<\/a> since we’re using the identical source material. Ay<\/em> is from Ay-mad<\/em> “first man”. Ov<\/em> is from the name of the hormad Teeaytan-ov<\/em> “synthetic man Eleven-hundred-seven”. On the other hand, I have filled in more holes. Let me explain why. As has been pointed out<\/a>, the bar<\/em> in Barsoom<\/em> (ERB’s name for Mars) means “eight”. We also have names for five planets, all ending in soom<\/em>. I posit that soom<\/em> means “a body of the solar system” and (at least) the planets (except Jupiter – more on that later) are simply Rasoom<\/em> “2nd planetary body (Mercury) (the Sun is *Ay-soom<\/em> “first body of the solar system”), Cosoom<\/em> “3rd body of the solar system”, Jasoom<\/em> “5th body of the solar system” (The moons get counted first!, so our Luna could be *Torsoom<\/em> since tor<\/em> is attested from Tor-dur-bar<\/em> “Four-million-eight”), and, and finally Barsoom<\/em> “8th solar body” (counting Cluros<\/em> “Deimos” and Thuria<\/em> “Phobos” as 6 and 7, respectively).<\/p>\n

So, that gets us a good ways to filling up the numbers. The hormad<\/em> names give us 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 100, and a million. The names Il-dur-en<\/em> and Dur-dan<\/em> give us pause. What to do with il<\/em>, en<\/em>, and dan<\/em>? My rationalization is that the final syllables in both Teeaytan-ov<\/em> and Tor-dur-bar<\/em> are single digits. Il<\/em> could conceivably be a single digit, but we do have teeay<\/em> “11” in Teeaytan-ov<\/em>. Therefore, purely by chance and with no other reason, I decided that en<\/em> and dan<\/em> should be 6 and 9 and simply took a 50\/50 chance and assigned them.<\/p>\n

Now, what do with il<\/em>? ERB gives us terms for 10 (tee<\/em>), 100 (tan<\/em>), 1,000 (dar<\/em>), 10,000 (mak<\/em> from umak<\/em> “a fighting force of 10,000” – compare to utan<\/em> “a fighting force of 100 soldiers”). So, we’re obviously dealing with some sort of base 10 system with names for pivotal numbers. So, what to do with il<\/em>? I decided (again, on a whim and flimsy rationalization) to assign il<\/em> a value of 50. I got the idea simply from Roman numeral L… il<\/em>, “L”? You be the judge. We can then continue our counting…<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
tee<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
ten<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
il<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
*fifty<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
tan<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
100<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
dar<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
1,000<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
mak<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
10,000<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
dur<\/em><\/center><\/td>\n
1,000,000<\/center><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We could then provide the current year in the language: ra-dar-teeay<\/em> “two-thousand-eleven”. A Zodangan or Heliumite may not understand it, but at least it’s internally logically consistent (for the most part).<\/p>\n

There you have it! The first installment of my interpretation of what Barsoomian may<\/em> be like! Stay tuned for more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned in my last blog post, I’m really hoping for some Barsoomian language in the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie. In that post, I whined about the lack of any conlinguistical features in the movie promos thus far (and the presence of the Martian \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Decoder\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Martian Translator.) Well, I’ve decided to go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[17,163,24],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conlanging","tag-barsoom","tag-conlanging","tag-erb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}