#notasami

[dhagrow]

here's an overview on the development of the dalassan calendar, the main calendar used on notasami.

first we need to go back 3000 years. in the mountains south of xesfar were the namar people, who, in 250 years, after conquering the city of dalassa, will form one of the largest and most influential empires in the history of notasami. just to be clear, 'namar' refers to the ethnic group, 'namak' is their language, 'dalassa' would become their largest city, and 'dalassan' refers to the empire run from that city. think 'latin' vs 'roman' for simplicity's sake.

the traditional namar calendar was based solely on the moon. they recognised six phases of the moon; not considering quarters true phases but rather just a borderline between gibbous and crescent. the full moon was particularly revered and a minor celebration was held to coincide with it. this naturally lead to the development of months, starting on the full moon, lasting 27 or 28 days. the number of days per month and the pattern of lengths of months was never fixed, it was always directly determined from the moon. there were 14 months in a year.

months were in reality seen as countdowns until the next full moon; giving a 'date' in ancient namak had you say how far out from the next full moon you were, unless the full moon was indeed that day, where you would say which full moon in the year it was. so here we can see that days were numbered backwards; the 2nd day of the month was actually the 27th/26th, and the name of the first day of the month quickly became synonymous with the name of the month, though since days were counted backwards, the name actually applied backwards; meaning the first month of the year was called 'the second full moon'. its confusing if i try to explain it but trust me it makes perfect sense

so, after the namar founded the dalassan empire, this calendar soon proved to be inefficient, disliked, and downright annoying to work with. this was due to two main factors.

the namar were usually mostly pastoral, occasionally also raiding nearby groups, slowly transitioning to agriculture just before the formation of dalassa. a lunar calendar is not well suited to agriculture since it does not account for seasons. for a society just becoming agricultural this isn't much of a problem, but when they start a massive empire with a huge economy dependent on agriculture, it's not good.

the dalassan empire was huge. lots of different ethnic groups were subsumed under it, and the dalassans were notable for letting them continue their practices, culture, and speaking their own languages. however, lots of these cultures had festivals and rituals that depended on seasons and specific times of the year. this is problematic when administration uses a lunar calendar where your festival days have to be calculated to different times every single year, like easter.

this problem was solved by turning the lunar calendar into a lunisolar one by dropping the second-to-last month every 9 years. (because, remember, the last month is technically a countdown to the first full moon, so it's not possible to remove it). the calendar was additionally standardised such that every month was 28 or 27 days in an alternating pattern. this was a good enough fix for ancient times but it kept getting improved over the next 500 years for increased accuracy. further additions included the dropping of a day twice every 9 years, adding a day every 27 years, and not dropping the second-to-last month every 720 years.

the dalassan calendar was developed just before the advent of bunapunism; which started in dalassa and eventually spread globally, and with it came the calendar. since this calendar was more or less "fixed" rather early on, this meant that it was spread more or less "finished" from the get go. some places still kept some minor differences and developed tiny quirks of their own, but consensus was pretty uniform throughout history and any kinks like that were eventually ironed out by or during the modern period. while religion was the best indicator of the spread of this calendar, it also spread albeit at a more limited pace based on trade, such as in yafu, where in some places the dalassan calendar was adopted centuries before bunapunism became widely practised. of course, later on, the calendar was exported to and/or imposed on the rest of the world by colonialism or globalisation in general, though many indigenous calendrical systems still survive, often limited just to liturgical practice.

a full "formal" description of the calendar as it currently stands is on my website

[dhagrow]

big website update!

my best-developed world, notasami, now has a page for each of its continents, with some basic info about their history and people, and a bunch of new maps! check it out:

also, an update to the systems page: more systems! lots of bodies to look at! moons! new images! spin the map over here:

[dhagrow]

description of the main religion in my conworld

the largest religion on notasami and probably the entire stellar neighbourhood is bunapunism. it's one of those really loose and vague religions that really challenge the definition of the word and you cant draw lines where it begins and ends and where things are more just culture. the word comes from the namak word ponapon meaning wanderer, based on the itinerant nature of its founder and its preachers. the general symbol of bunapunism is a(n often stylised) namak capital letter Z for the name of its founder. bunapunism is a very diverse range of philosophies and it contains a multitude of different beliefs and practices; often deeply influenced by the local spiritual beliefs and folklore of a given area. it generally revolves around the teachings of pubiti zapoho, who advocated a more personal relationship with spirituality than one focused on pure devotion to specific dieties.

the origin of bunapunism can be traced back to iron age meksu; when city states from the north of the large bay of meksu started establishing colonies and trading posts along the south, which was inhabited by several loose agrarian communities. a unique culture and belief system starts to emerge. some 500 years later, the northern coast is conquered by the quickly expanding dalassan empire. from here, a theologian-born-merchant pubiti zapoho starts wandering the empire, delivering sermons and teachings based on that aforementioned local belief systems. zapoho is considered to be somewhere between a prophet and an 'awakened teacher'; on his travels he is believed to have recieved revelations, witnessed visions, and on rare occasions even communed with specific dieties directly; though he is not (normally) believed to have committed any miracles or any supernatural feat.

with regards to dieties, there are a few general ones inherited from the katawan religion like lanugo, kefihema, and mixana, but local dieties and spiritual entities still have significant roles as bunapunism is very syncretic. the "church" as an institution is very open and loose. preachers try to lead a similar lifestyle to zapoho; taking up an itinerant, mendicant lifestyle with little to no possessions or wealth. owing to its looseness and diversity, bunapunism contains a variety of schools of thought with differing beliefs and practices, varying in terms of their esotericism or literalism in their approach to spirituality. nevertheless, several denominations of similar accepted theologies have emerged, for instance berumaki bunapunism, which leans more ascetic and isolationist in its preachers' practices, or kanma bunapunism, a relatively recent branch which stresses rationalism and pacifism in its adherents. in terms of written scripture, the canon concerns a minor account of travels written by zapoho himself, alongside a multitude of second and third hand accounts both contemporaneous and not, as well as several commentaries and assorted musings written by several significant preachers. what of these is considered valid exactly or even important varies between schools of thought, but the average preacher is not expected to have read much of this body of literature much less the average follower.

[dhagrow]

quick conlang showcase: anachek

here's a quick overview on anachek - alternatively here's a link to the full proper grammar! my first complete conlang grammar!

anachek is the most widespread language on notasami and a dominant language in the stellar neighbourhood overall. it originated from the xesfaran plateau in modern-day gutonim, and eventually spread all over the world.

anachek's phonology is somewhat simple, no special phonemes or anything, and syllables are all CVC. the writing system is special however. it's somewhere between an abugida and a syllabary, like ge'ez, but the main characters are VC instead of CV. this evolved from the waptokan abugida, specifically a style of writing in it that organised letters vertically in syllables.

the most notable aspect of the grammar is that the vast majority of verbs require one of three auxiliary verb to be used. different verbal senses are expressed using combinations of what auxiliary verb is used, whether the auxiliary verb is in the perfective or imperfective, and whether the main verb is a gerund or a participle. and also there's a special prefix that occurs in two specific situations. there are however some semantically simple verbs that don't need them in simple circumstances. this feature is common to the other xesfaran languages.

another notable feature is converbs. these are special non-finite verb forms that indicate what the relation of one verb is to the previous one in a sentence, or in other words, they're suffixes you put on verbs that mean things like "while", "in order to", "if", and "because of".

some other relative oddities include a strongly formal gender system; there are two genders that only depend on the last vowel of a noun instead of any semantic property, and that it distinguishes between pronominal and adnominal determinatives; meaning words like "this" and "that" are different depending on whether they modify a noun or if they're on their own. lexically there isn't much to say. anachek has been a relatively prestigious language in its area for hundreds of years so it was more doing the influencing than getting influenced by other languages.

[susiron]

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