Alkor-Léxime

A Tolkien Collection, at last!

2009-10-16T21:21:00.006-03:00

Last Wednesday I was walking to the University as always as I decided to go through the square, what I found then filled my heart and my soul with joy. It was the Book Feria! I forgot then about going any further and stopped to watch what could I found in there...

In the same spot where last year I bought The Lord of the Rings books I found the full Tolkien Library collection with all his books, or at least 28. I couldn't do anything but watch then because I had no money with me, but that night I called my mother to send me my savings.

I got up early the next day and walked all the way to the bank to take my savings and then, across the street to the square. I bought 13 of the 15 books of the collection which I had not, the Iliad and Odyssey, and a Mythology Encyclopaedia.

Here I show you the collection and the front of "J.R.R. Tolkien, a biography".

Ongoing Projects

2009-10-16T20:58:00.003-03:00

Well, I've been without Internet for some time...

In the past months I started the admission course to start the Proffessor of Spanish and Literature next year. Now with 2 of 3 subjects aproved.

I've also joined the "Seminario de Retórica y Análisis Lingüístico en la Antigua Roma" (Rethoric and Linguistic Analysis on Classic Rome Seminary) which I really enjoyed. I discovered I really like Rhetoric so I've started to read many books, mainly for a monography to aprove the seminary, about it from Aristotles, Plato, etc.

Many projects arose since then: first of all there's the monography about "Historic Evolution of Rhetoric - Marco Tulio Ciceron" where I'm investigating about the concepts that Cicero found from Aristotles and how he developed his Oratory (instead of Rethoric).

Another project is "Perceptio Latina as a conception of the Human Mens" where I analyse how from the Perceptio, as Romans understood it, could one analyse the composition of the Mind+Soul (Mens). There I pretend to expose some dreams where one can analyse the reasoning of the Mind about the events that are inside the same Mind.

I've been working on these and in some others, hopefully on paper, and started to write them on PC some days ago but, oh! disaster! I deleted accidentally the folder and seems there's no way to retrieve them :(.

Tales of Egypt

2009-06-04T14:55:00.010-03:00

This is the subject I was dedicated on for the last days, A Tale in the Desert; and what a tale!

It all started on after Monday noon when I was looking for a MMORPG to play on my Ubuntu and found that there was this game so I downloaded it. Later on that evening when I was free again I installed it an had a look at it.

At first I noticed it was not like the MMORPGs I've already played since you don't create an account and into it your characters but a character instead. When the game finaly started it was everything so blury that I said, with respect to Linux game developers, "this is another Linux game!". I was completely wrong as I learnt later, and I'm very happy for it.

In one word, Amazing! It's like Sims with RPG features to say something. You start as an Ancient Egypt person with no skills, knowledges, items... nothing, and you have to obtain your citizenship by gathering resources (as slates, grass, sand, mud), learning skills (like Flax Procesing) and building tools and machinery (like Brick Rack).

As you progress you get the oportunity to train in several subjects: Arquitechture, Art and Music, Human Body, Leadership, Harmony, Worship and Thought. every subject allows you to learn new things. You also get the opportunity to build your own house to place tools and store things.

It was difficult to understand in the begining, but hopefully I had a question that changed it upside down: «Does anyone has some flax to spare?». I saw many people come and go but I did not talk to them thinking they were on they own. One of them answered: «We have some good flax seeds if you want».

His name was TheMazeEcho and he was terribly nice to ask me to join his guild ParadisePlains. They are an amazing group of people who help each other whatever happens. With them I got to know pretty much of the game.

Tragedy came last night while I was making happily some Rope after having finished my new house (since the first one I built was placed on a sandhill and was away from many resources: wood, mud, water, good soil... everything except sand). An information window appeared: «The 24 hours trial has ended. You must initiate the Billing Process to continue playing»

I was shocked since I thought from the begining it was free. At first I got into panic but then I sat down on sand and decided to use my last 30 mins to say goodbye to my friends. Only one of them was logged in since they got to sleep. I composed a poem then for him to hear. If I have time I'll make a song from it.

A Tragedy

...Oh oh oh...
"easy comes and easy goes" they say
but they do not know,
it's an amazing day to play

Easy came to me
as the wind blows
but it got to my heart
so it's hard to let it go

A farewell and a smile is all I have left
«shame to see you go, Valko»
it's painful to be bounded to leave
but I'm glad to have learnt so much
and to have known so nice people...

Bye Bye Egypt...
Would've loved to live some more...
«Valko falls to the ground, a knife on it's chest.»
«Tears in heaven as he has no signs of life»

Arda's World Boat

2009-05-27T20:22:00.004-03:00

Looking for the Quenya word for air I found in a webpage it was vilya. Actually it is the name of the Ring of Air, the one kept by Elrond. Its root (vil-) forms also the element, vista. I then remembered this drawing made by Tolkien himself around 1916-1917 and published in The book of Lost Tales I.

He'd named many things, as you can see, but the more important ones are:
- I vene kemen: "The Shape of the World", "The World's Boat"
- Núme: West
- Oronto: East
- Tol Eressëa, Valinor
- Sil: the Moon
- Ûr: the Sun
- Vaitya, Ilwë, Vilna: «Vaitya is the darkness that covers the world from outside, but Ilwë is blue and bright and flows through the stars, and finally there's Vilna, which is gray, and in it birds fly safely.»

The Elements in Spanish, Latin, Koiné, Finnish and Quenya

2009-05-27T19:27:00.011-03:00

English	Spanish	Latin	Koiné	Finnish	Quenya
light	luz	lúmen	γημέρα	valo	cala
darkness	oscuridad	umbra	σκότος	pimeä	mornië
water	agua	aqua	υδρώ	vesi	nén
air	aire	aer	άερ	ilma	vista
fire	fuego	ignis	πύρ	tuli	úr
ground	tierra	terra	γαία	maa	kemen
ice	hielo	crystallus	ριγός	jää	helca
thunder	trueno	tonitrus	βροντή	ukkonen	*hundië

Here I brought the elements (the main four plus some more) in different languages... I had problems with Koiné (Ancient Greek) words because, although I'm studying it, I could not find a decent dictionary/lexicon easily. I added Finnish because I love it... I could deduce some words like maa and ilma from maailma (not atmosphere but world, ground + air). The Finnish word for fire (tuli) is a commonly used to explain pronunciation because if you don't get it well you can say tuuli (wind) or tulli (customs).

Quenya words were easy to remember, if you've read Tolkien's Silmarillion. Cala can be seen in Calacyria (Light pass); Kemen in Kementári (Queen of Soil, a goddess) and Helca in Helcaraxe (Grinding Ice).

The Quenya word for thunder is unknown. It appeared in some early texts (Ancient Kwenya) as the verb funda-. Knowing that words that started with «fu» evolved into «hu» it is deduced that it could be *hunda- in late compositions (Third Age Quenya). If this is right, its gerund would be *hundië, that can then express thunder as a noun.

--[ Edit ]--
I've edited some Koiné words following my Greek friend Talos' advice.

Houston, we have huge problem

2009-05-22T10:19:00.004-03:00

The first big problem of the story, and it's a big one!

This morning I started separating the many threads of the weft and setting dates for the different actions. Everything's ok until I realized Aran is born only 20 years before Katriel sails... Aran's an Elf so he should be 200 years old of more by that time. I started tracking the threads and found the chain of events that lead to it.

While I started writing this entry I found out a possible solution that was adding more ancestors to Nissë and prolonguing Katriel's sail. Solved that but oviously another arose (couldn't be so easy, don't you think?): with a 200 years added to Aran the chain of events will make them fall also on a sail of 200 years. That's ok for a sylph's lifespan but too much for the actual inexperience I want him to have when getting ashore.

I've just found that many wefts join on Aran/Kyra birth. If they were not twins... but I don't want to touch that... what to do? I think I'll spend the whole weekend trying to solve this.

The Start of a Story

2009-05-21T13:44:00.010-03:00

I woke up around 0600 this morning and started to think on bed... about all the stories I've sketched and how to put time to organize them (I have sketched many stories so it's sometimes difficult to remember what happened in my mind on the first ones). I want to write books of them but couldn't realize with which I'd start. I decided, not so convinced, for one called Katriel that I wrote more than 2 years ago when I was on secondary.

I stayed on bed a bit more, finished my praying, and after having breakfast I sat on the computer... What a terrible mistake! I could have ended surfing, or playing a game or something else! So I stood up again and sat on the filled-with-papers desk (that casually is the same where I eat and study)... well, I wasn't ON the table because it was filled up (and also because it would broke down, he he).

The fact is that there was another delay... -When will he put down to write?- you'd ask. I started by organizing the tables of the letters of Arkanah. Remember the language of Alkor-Léxime? I decided it's name would be Arkanah. Not Horigatze nor Volian but Arkanah. I leave you an scan if you're interested on how it's going.

The real writing came next... having charged enough energy I took the folder where I have the stories and started to look for Katriel's. The first thing that saw when I opened the folder was an sketched map I didn't know anything, the only thing I was sure was when I draw it because it was on a piece of paper on my Secondary folder. I looked it for a moment or two and voilà! It'll be the map of the island where Katriel lives!

So I took it and then came across some portraits featuring a human, an light elven and a dark elven families, and so I decided to add them to the Katriel story context. Finally I got to the actual Katriel at the end of the folder.

Wooo... I started to write background stories, draw genealogical trees, sketch diagrams for the narration, read many other papers to remember what those families did... I finally got a three pages narration diagram and I didn't even start! I have enough material in the first diagram for a single book and I has not even connected it with Katriel's that is isolated in a corner!

Well, to sum up I'll tell you that the story goes around the adventures of 7 characters:
- Katriel (of course), an orphan who was raised by a human family, that sails to discover who he is.
- Sorien (Unelma), a dark elf mercenary that generally accompanies as bodyguard and guide in the northern mountains.
- Nissë, a human lass who gets embroiled in the facts after following Katriel when he gets to the continent.
- Aran, a young light elf guy who is sent by his father the king as a messenger.
- Kyra, Aran's twin sister who travels with him.
- Hahn, a human cleric that gets an etiäinen from his old tutor who died.
- An angelic being that will help them with little but important things.

Well, I think that's all for today... Hope you like it...

Song of Ice and Fire

2009-05-20T22:09:00.004-03:00

I couldn't believe it! There's a book, or better to say a series of books, by George R.R. Martin called Song of Ice and Fire!

I'm being haunted since Christmas with the idea of a story called "The Land of Fire and Ice" since I got this dream, or series of dreams, with several characters appearing and later on it's relation with a story I was writing: "The Tree of Fire and Ice".

Now I discovered this and looking for some information I went up to the Spanish presentation of Game of Thrones, the first of the series:

(...) this saga is the best and more impressive work of mythological fantasy that has been written since Tolkien.

Could that be possible? Was my dream more than just an inspiration but also that story I was looking for reading that was comparable to The Middle Earth?

Philology Definition

2009-05-20T13:50:00.002-03:00

(Extracted from T.A. Shippey's The Road to Middle Earth, Chapter 1: Lit. and Lang.)

"Dictionary definitions are of no help. Although created by philologists (...) the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) has almost nothing to show. "Philology", says, is: 1. Love for the knowledge and literature; the study of literature in vast sense, including grammar, literature critic and interpretation (...). Actually out of place in common speech. Under the meaning 2, points out: likeness for chatting or discussion (in this an insulting meaning that reduces it to a mere chunk of logic, the opposite to the true philosophy); while 3 recuperates any field left aside by 1, saying that it's the study of the structure and evolution of the language; the science of language; linguistics. So, philology is as much as language as literature (...) but everything's so vague to prove utility. Jacob Grimm (probably the greatest of philologists) (...) didn't do it better defining it as the erudite study of languages and literature (specially the classical ones). (...) No other science is prouder, nobler, more controvertible than philology or less merciful against the mistake. This shows the expectations of the study rose. However, if the meaning of philology was unknown, it wouldn't have been of much help.

The fact doesn't get cleared with Holger Pederen in 1924: Philology is an study which duty consists in the interpretation of the literary facts through whom the spiritual life of a determined period has encountered its expression; because this leaves out why the term spiritual has been included and language, however, is absent. (...) In either case some British were very far from these thoughts. John Churton Collins (...) wrote in 1891:

This [referring to Philology] induces or confirms so often that peculiar inexpressibility and opacity, that singular roughness of feelings and absence of moral and intellectual vision, that has been in all epochs the characteristic of mere philologists (...), remembers so often the pleasant that, after hearing during hours the most brilliant conversation of Cicerón, did not see nor remembered nothing more than the wart on the nose of the great orator.

Opinions like this took place for a long time in Britain. Tolkien wrote in 1924: The Philology is treated in some barracks like if it was one of the things that the past war wanted to finish. I thought this was a joke but three years before the British Board of Education had edited a report, The Teaching of English in England, in which declared (...) that philology should not be taught to university students; that it was a science born in Germany, and that having contributed to the German arrogance it caused the burst of the First World War.

The Philology was the noblest of sciences; was literary; was linguistic; was German; talked about nose warts. (...)
Philology was born in 1786 when sir William Jones informed to the Bengal Society of Calcuta that Sanskrit was similar to Greek and Latin so much to be mere casualty, and that the three, with Germanic and Celt, had to be born from a common source that does not longer exists.
(...) The Philology reveals the genesis of those laws of speaking that grammar studies as a finished work.
(...) Daughter is shown in modern Hindustan as beti; however, there's a connection between both languages in the word dudh, milk. Long ago, as it seems, a word like the Sanskrit duhitar meant the little milk tank; but the task was appointed so often to the daughters, that the job and the relative mixed up. This opens ours eyes to a little fact of the poetic and shepherds life of the primitive Aryans said Max Mullër, whose conferences (...) startled not only the cult world of 1860 but also the high society of London. (...) It did not only talk about words; it also talked about people.
But somehow at the end of the XIX century things started to mess up."

Tolkien itself explains what happened with the Alegory of the Man and the Tower in the next chapter (Philologic traps):

A man inherited a field in which there was a bunch of old stones, part of an older construction. Some of these stones had been used to build the house where he lived, near their parents' old house. With the rest he edified a tower. But when his friends came they discovered (without bothering going up the stairs) that those stones had belonged to an older building. Then they pulled the tower down, with no little effort, looking for drawings, hidden inscriptions... They all said (after doing so): "¡What a disastrous state they have!" and even it was heard the descendants of the man whisper, although it would have been expected they understood why he had done it: "¡He is an strange person! ¿Why he used the stones to build that absurd tower? ¿Why didn't he fixed the old house? He has no sense of proportion". And yet, from the top of that tower, the man could have watched the sea.

This is a part of a book I'm reading, The Road to Middle Earth. It explains which were the inspirations of J.R.R. Tolkien when writing, starting with the definition of Philology, his profession, to explain every single comment on the plot of the Lord of the Rings and their sources. It's very interesting. I have to add that it might differ from the English book as I had to summarise the whole extract and translate because I have the Spanish version.

Hope you liked it...

Alkor-Léxime writing

2009-05-20T01:09:00.009-03:00

I've been working on the writing of "Alkor-Léxime"...

I started by making some tables of the character mappings of two fonts I wanted to use: SIL Greek and Tengwar Annatar. The first contains Greek characters and the second, if you're not familiarized with LotR, the font used in the One Ring.

Well, at last, after trying a lot I got what I wanted...

The idea is simple. Vowels are written with tehtar over the tengwar the same way as in elvish, three points for "a", one for "i", an accent for "e", and a strong greek spirit for "o". The "u" would get a soft spirit (although I didn't think about the "y" tehtar yet), and of course if there's no tengwar to place the tehtar on a long holder (the first j like tengwar) appears. The combined second tengwar is "lk" and the long line at the end of the word is an "r".

The second word, léxime, starts with a trick: the elvish "l" with the "e" as an accent and a hook at the bottom to note the "double e". Yes! the accent in "léxime" states that it's actually "leexime". Now the next combined tengwar is a "ks": a "k" with a hook for the "s". Finally the elvish "m" with an "e" tehtar. Easy don't you think?

Do you like it? If you want you can download this font and more in Dan Smith's web page. I'll post more information about elvish languages and writing later.

The meaning

2009-05-19T22:07:00.004-03:00

You should be wondering what is the meaning of Alkor-Léxime...

Well, first of all I have to tell you a bit about me... I'm very interested in reading and writing fantastic literature and languages. I have to admit I'm not very fond on blogs and that the two or three times I tried I abandoned them but I'm hoping I can start with the right foot now.

I got inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien as a philologist and so I wanted to start also developing a language. I made this blog to tell you about the development of my language. But that would be a little boring (for you as well as for me) so I will be writing about the stories I write and those I read, and also my inspirations or curious facts.

Well, I think that's all. Hope you enjoy reading... Ahh, wait... I forgot to tell you what does it mean... Alkor means Literature and Lexime, Fantastic.

I've switched the meanings of both words so now the noun for Literature goes better with Quenya layout, and because léxime sounds more like an adjective for me now. The word for «fantastic literature» is also «Alkoriléxim».