I finally got around to starting PGtE! I've been scrolling your tag (congrats on having good Bard opinions) and several months ago you mentioned setting The Girl Who Climbed the Tower to music and, uh, I noticed that it scans pretty well to The Wellerman and I need to not be the only person who knows this. (Soon will the emp'ress come / to bring us fire and storm and blood / one day when the climbin' is done / she'll take her Name and go)
Thanks, I hate it!
Or properly, I will never be able to unsee that. And now really wish I could sing at all/didn't hate the sound of my own voice.
But glad you're enjoying it! And welcome to the correct-opinions-about-Bard club!
aniakarah /a.ni.a.ka.rɑ/
noun
lineage melody
meditations/chants passed down a lineage
Ahsoka didn’t know what to expect of the Rebellion’s golden boy, their fledgling Jedi. When she heard his last name for the first time, her hope had been grand, her fear even more potent.
Luke Skywalker has his father’s strength in the Force, Obi-Wan’s unparalleled control and Master Yoda’s mischievous smile.
Ahsoka is glad to have met him, even if some of his endless questions make her heart ache for a home she hasn’t been to in over two decades. Teaching him, however, remains a joy. Ahsoka doesn’t consider herself much of a Jedi - and isn’t it telling that she is not denying her heritage anymore?
“Have you tried other styles of meditation besides what Master Yoda taught you?” Ahsoka asks when Luke stands up on his feet again.
“No, not really, why?”
She recalls what he has been taught by the rest of their lineage and smiles at the thought of what she gets to pass down. “Okay, come over here and listen well then. This is something special my Master was taught by his, I was taught by him and you now also get to learn…”
gostaks replied to your post: I am turning 24 soon and I can't help but freak...
My favorite fannish person ever is the 70+ woman who sometimes shows up to sacred harp singings wearing her homemade betan survey vest. There is no such thing as too old for fandom.
does the fragment of the marble have gross spray paint on it (as shown in picture)? how did the god get the fragment? do other gods have fragments or the ability to get them? has anyone in my town heard of a fragment like this before?
The fragment is clean.
The god was made with the fragment inside of it.
The god’s siblings both had fragments like this.
No one in the town has heard of a fragment like this before, and they will not hear you if you try to explain it to them.
gostaks replied to your post “anyone want to talk about fandom things? i feel like lately i’ve just...”
not to switch up the serious mood, but I just read His Majesty's Dragon and I've spent the last several days stuck on the idea of a temeraire college au where temeraire is still a dragon and has to attend classes by sticking his head through a window
fuck
yes
he also wears a million lanyards because they’re shiny
Laurence is his assigned note-taker and ends up getting math tutoring from him
gostaks replied to your post “Sexuality/Fandom Discourse goes here, I think? I'm in a fandom where...”
also? it's fic! It's for *your* enjoyment. If that means writing M/F, or self-indulgent AUs, or your favorite trope over and over, then go for it! Write stories that you enjoy writing, and the rest will follow
Absolutely true! I just often find arguments that I’m allowed to be self indulgent fall flat/don’t feel convincing, so I like to phrase things from an external rather than internal perspective.
But, like, “because it’s neat!” is literally the underlying motivation of all fanfiction and probably all art. It’s a good motivation!
Uerah foh a'ain jaka naki sedorem (ueraah? uera'ah? I'm trying :D) Anyway, I would like to request Dai Bandu swear words. Also, how does one do politeness in DB? Please/thank you, respect to an elder or teacher, stuff like that. This is a very cool project!
Uera’ah foh a’ain jaka naki sedoremak.
(I want to say bad words).
Agisti! You did a wonderful job with the translation. We hope it was fun figuring it out. Just for you, we’ve come up with a couple swear words. This was harder than we thought it would be because of how heavily coded swear words are!
yhua’ythun (n.): lit. “without thought”, a bit like “idiot” or “dumbass”
imtonbrei (adj.): lit. “not wholesome”, meaning something along the lines of “upsetting to the Force”, “disturbing”
imwan (n.): “not learning”, derived from imwanyth “not learner”. Given how much the Jedi value learning, this is a pretty bad insult. “Oafy-Wan” in Dai Bendu likely would have been “Obi-Imwan”
xahx (n.): a bit like “ah, hell”, “urgh, shit”, lesser curses
sydehv (n.): this is the “fuck!!!” you yell
For politeness, we got our respectful greeting jesara. Otherwise, politeness is coded more into vocabulary than grammar. For some more casual words (created just for you, thanks for reminding us to finally tackle those!), look below:
taweju: please
metiv: sorry, like “sorry, I failed the test”
tiv: sorry, like “sorry”. Abbreviation from “metiv”, more casual, every day things like accidentally bumping into someone
heleo: sorry, like “sorry for hurting you”, apologizing for hurt you’ve dealt when you have to beg for forgiveness
The question I'm trying to ask, and I can drop it if this is getting too annoying, is "what is dai bendu?" Is it the spoken language? Is it the spoken + written language? Is it any language spoken by a jedi that is designed to be comprehensible to other jedi?
If I asked a Jedi 'is that wookie/signed language user/other person who isn't using spoken humanoid DB speaking Dai Bendu', how would they answer?
There are times when I'd argue that the signed mode and spoken mode of a language are the same language—toki pona sign language, for instance, uses the same vocabulary and grammar as spoken or written toki pona. That's an intentional part of the design of the language. And like, I think that's neat? I'm definitely not expecting you to con a signed language or anything, but I think it's an interesting philosophical direction to go if you felt like exploring.
@gostaks
What is Dai Bendu is a question that becomes more and more difficult to answer the deeper you start to dig exactly because of the points you raise here. Sign languages we have on Earth might be associated with a language/region, but they are still their own languages. Trying to figure out a sign language that spans species which are all so diverse is incredibly difficult and probably breaks human capabilities of imagination. Legends says that there were 9.057 sign languages in 17 ABY which, given the size of the galaxy, honestly almost seems like a low number given that there are 138-300 sign languages already just on our planet. Going by that number, the galaxy would only have 65-30 planets, which is obviously not the case.
But, to return to your original question - what is Dai Bendu?
To answer this question it would perhaps be easier to explain what motivated us to create Dai Bendu. Seeing that there is Mando’a and Sith and Basic - which is basically English, but obviously meant to be its own language of which English is just the translation in a tolkienesque manner - we wondered why the Jedi, who are such an old and rich culture, didn’t have their own language?
Language is tied to culture. You can’t really have a (natural) language that is not tied to cultural concepts. Even conlangs are tied to a culture of sorts, either the one of the people you are inventing your conlang for or, subconsciously, your own. When you build a conlang, you have to constantly reflect how much of your own worldview you might subconsciously add to it.
So yes, Dai Bendu is a spoken and written (though we are still working on that) language, but it is also an expression of Jedi Culture. We are trying to incorporate as much of Jedi philosophy into it as we can. Our lack of an overt genitive case, to represent the idea of non-attachment/possession is an example of that. The choice of a case-based language at all was chosen to reflect a sense of fluidity.
The latter part is, of course, what makes this whole concept a little tricky. The Jedi are, at their very core, a community that strives for peace and harmony, understanding and acceptance. This means that in reality, Dai Bendu as a language, meaning a representation of a communicative system, should not exclude anyone. In this case, the difference between language and communication is important. A language is an expression of communication. Communication can also be facial expressions, but facial expressions aren’t necessarily important or needed for a language.
There is, as of right now, not even a single human language that is accessible to all humans.
Trying to imagine a language that is capable of being accessible to all humans and all alien species as well is physically impossible.
So, from a meta perspective, Dai Bendu shouldn’t be called a “language,” but “communicative system of the Jedi” and include all communicative systems that are used internally within the Jedi Order. So your definition of “any language spoken by a Jedi that is designed to be comprehensible to other Jedi” would be correct. If there is a Jedi making use of their internal sign (of which, given the various species, there ought to be multiple), it would still be understood as Dai Bendu. Necessarily, those sign languages would also work based on the concepts behind Dai Bendu. None of us have enough knowledge on sign languages to decide whether copying the syntax/vocabulary of Dai Bendu exactly and transferring it into sign would be useful and not just make the sign language unnecessarily complicated.
Toki Pona was meant to simplify communication, so that would make it easier to adapt it to sign language. Dai Bendu, however, is not designed to simplify communication, as it is supposed to mirror a natural language (even if we are pretending that 35.000 years aren’t that much of a time difference because trying to accomodate for that is insane.)
All of these different ways of communication that would be needed for the Jedi though are too complex and numerous for us to delve into, so we’re focusing on what we are actually knowledgeable in: written/spoken languages; and leave the rest as a thought-experiment. So there are, in the language as we’re making it now, in-universe accessibility issues, the same way that there are accessibility issues in every other language that exists, natural or constructed. When they come up, the Jedi as a community would come together and work towards a solution to ensure everyone can communicate and is comfortable.
(Though, if someone wants to go ahead and create a Sign Language for SW, that would be the coolest thing ever.)
