Overpowered Magic In Meiste I:

Lexember Post #1

Woo! Happy Lexember conlangers. I will be using Modern Ipol for this one. The first root is:

Sha-

Meaning: "rain, calm, sadness, weather"

Derived Words:

shar - rain

sharijv - electricity

sharna - "debbie-downer," a gloomy person

sham - calm, easygoing

iposharijv - telephone, smartphone

In a sentence:

Jir piner asisharis, stinirinen shrijfte?

LIT: day this-MASC PASS.V.rain.REF, V.go.FUT store?

"It's still raining today, are (you) (still) go(ing) (to) the store?"

Another OC Questionnaire

An open tag from @authorcoledipalo.

This time, I'm doing this with the four most integral Heroes: Izi, Hota, Tagif, and Lozef:

Would you team up with your worst enemy if it was your only option?

Izi: It depends on what, I think. I promised Vimir I would make the train tickets free, so I can't really team up with the train company to make that happen. But to save Meiste? Obviously if there's no better choice, I'd do anything to save our world.

Hota: Izi's too trusting. I make very few enemies, and I keep my closest friends near my chest. If I've decided I can't trust you, I will never decide to trust you again.

Lozef: Regrettably, I'm more like Izi on this one. I've had to swallow my pride twice and admit that I'm wrong in order to do what's right. That's what's most important, anyways.

Tagif: Hota's got the right idea. I pound my enemies into the dust!

What is your pet peeve?

Izi: Hota always tells me I don't handle people questioning my authority very well, and they're right about that.

Hota: Izi says I am such a good planner that I can't stand when there isn't a plan, mostly emphasizing that I'm not flexible enough sometimes. Izi's gung-ho attude is just as anxiety-inducing as it is refreshing.

Lozef: Ok, doing shit that pertains to me without asking first is my biggest pet peeve. It's usually pretty small-like Izi changing the windows in the chapel. I swapped them for a reason! Don't swap them back!

Tagif: I don't care about authority, I care about expertise. Like, you're going to explain to me how to to build a chestplate with bulit-in holographic computer screens? Nobody's done that, yet, but Hota and I have butted heads over political expertise.

If a monster asked you your worst nightmare what would you tell it and why?

Izi: Well, it's gotta be believable, but not something you're actually scared of, right? Otherwise the monster will terrify the living daylight out of you. So, I guess I would say something like beetles.

Hota: I think it depends on whether or not I know what this monster is capable of. If it's Tev? I'd be honest: the death of Izi-or Tagif or Lozef-would kill me mentally, I think. If it's an sort-of evil Meiste? Beetles.

Lozef: No point in lying to the damn thing, I can take it. Losing my magic is my biggest nightmare, and I grapple with how Dolgof and Pagjom must've felt every day. My second-biggest is if something happened to Tev.

Tagif: My biggest nightmare is if Heja'umak thinks I'm weird or something. I can live with that, but it would hurt a lot. I guess I'm fortunate that my biggest nightmare is just wondering if my crush likes me back?

Open tag for anyone interested!

things that happened to me when i was a woman in STEM:

an advisor humiliated me in front of an entire lab group because of a call I made in his place when he wouldn't reply to my e-mails for months

he later delegated part of my master's thesis work to a 19-year old male undergrad without my approval

a male scientist at a NASA conference looked me up and down and asked when i was graduating and if i was open to a job at his company. right before inquiring what my ethnicity was because i "looked exotic"

a random male member of the public began talking over me and my female advisor, an oceanographer with a pHD and decades of experience, saying he knew more about oceanography than us

things that have happened to me since becoming a man in STEM:

being asked consistently for advice on projects despite being completely new to a position

male colleagues approaching me to drop candid information regarding our partners / higher ups that I was not privy to before

lenience toward my work in a way I haven't experienced before. incredible understanding when I need to take time off to care for my family.

conference rooms go silent when I start talking. no side chatter. I get a baseline level of attention and focus from people that's very unfamiliar and genuinely difficult for me to wrap my head around.

like. yes some PI's will still be assholes regardless of the gender of their subordinates but, I've lived this transition. misogyny in STEM is killing women's careers, and trans men can and do experience male privilege.

hmm another cool Tagalog thing that isn't in modern English (to the extent of my knowledge, that is) - and which can be found in other languages too! - are gender neutral pronouns and words for people. this wasn't something I noticed until I started reading more and more English books, because I realized that a lot of these words have no direct equivalent in English.

the word siya, meaning he/she, singular. I wouldn't say it's an equivalent to the English gender neutral "them" as it is purely used as a singular pronoun.

anak, meaning son/daughter. For me the English translation "child" is not 100% accurate, since child could also mean a random kid that isn't your son and daughter, while anak quite literally means child as in offspring.

a few more familial terms like pamangkin (nephew/niece), bienan (parent-in-law), manugang (child-in-law).

and then there are ones like kapatid, sibling, and asawa, spouse, but I think these are more often used in casual conversation compared to their English equivalents.

and then we have the aspects of the language that were directly influenced by Spanish, so we have some gendered words in usage, hence the terms Filipino/Filipina. however, in these instances, people generally aren't very strict on using the "correct" gendered word when talking casually. really threw me for a loop when I started learning romance languages that had gendered nouns, lol. thank you for listening to my random rambling~

I swear these prompts always get me thinking about the most meta stuff.

Like, I don't think we talk enough about how the human brain is engineered for language acquisition? Most people will start developing the ability to process questions by the time they're 8 months old. They can't even speak by that point because their mouths are not fully developed enough.

Second language acquisition, like first language acquisition, requires thousands of hours of input, a thing many people in the U.S. may never get because of how much English is spoken here. Also, actually speaking a second language terrifies many adults into not using it at all.

All that to say, if I were an alien, dragging my human around, and they started speaking my language, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think, also, that an alien phonology would have sounds humans wouldn't be able to pronounce (duh, but I'm assuming their mouth shapes are different, which makes it literally impossible.) I feel like humans would have to approximate some alien sounds.

This post has become longer than I anticipated, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if a pet human acquired an alien language from thousands of hours of contact with it.

After feeding your pet human, you are shocked when it says “thank you” in your language.

Sunslammer is just too badass! All of these are amazing, but sunslammer takes possession of my body and makes me feel uplifted whenever I think about it.

Reorder the alphabet song to match with keyboards and other honestly shit ways to improve public education

Apparently boomer Democrats are having meltdowns over a gen-z progressive who is primarying an 80 year old Democrat because she "went on trans podcasts" and wore a Charizard kigurumi

Love my grandparents.... on the phone just now my papa was dead serious like “i just think it’s so terrible to kick your child out for being gay . This is a union family and the ONLY thing i’d ever kick any of you out for is crossing a picket line.” okay working class hero!