#sumii

[emry-stars-art]

@anon-lemon with this ask and the resulting one shot: I also think freshwater merDrew is pretty hehe, the fish I based him off of is a peacock bass (maybe specifically royal peacock bass? With the more blue fin idk) but more dramatic. Like so:

(This is him in perfect nice lighting under shallow water probably but shh he’s beautiful)

Reference pictures I used under the cut

I love mixing and matching references. Idc what I heard growing up, life CAN be a buffet and I CAN a pick my favorite parts to mash together sometimes 😌

[zakuroaoyama]

Malenia Blade of Miquela

pencil drawing, watercolor and sumi ink over paper.

18 x 29 cm

[jimmyislangin]

Numbers - Sumii

Hi, back after a looong hiatus. Next up on my list is discussing the two numerical systems I’ve fleshed out so far. First up, Sumii.

So I’ve already talked a bit about Sumii’s system in the Sign Language video: Sumii uses an octal rather than decimal system; they have 5 fingers per hand, but the thumbs are used differently so that one can count up to 32 (octal 40) on the hands. Numbers are written like so (octal numbers are in parentheses):

Let’s break this down:

-0-8 are pretty straightforward. Note that 0 is only used as a numeral on its own; it is not used as a digit in larger numbers. I suppose an in-universe explanation is that the writing system was made before the discovery of 0 as a number :P -Multiples of 8, 64, 512, and 4096 use a small horizontal line to indicate how many. More than 4x, and another numeral is written to the right, connected with a tie bar. -Each digit to the left indicates a higher multiple of 8.

Ordinal numbers take the suffix -pe, causing two sound changes: numbers ending in /n/ become /m/, and min and its multiples lose the /n/.

[scintillasofbeomgyu]

send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart 🍓 (sending this back to you because you're a sweetheart ✨)

uwu sumi best girl 😔🥺✨

[sumiilanguage]

Word of the Day: Kam

Meaning: Great, mighty

“Ayo vanimpo kam i diipe laksam tola patut.”

“We thank the mighty leaders of the village every day.”

[sumiilanguage]

Gender and Sexuality

This is actually going to retcon a few things I’ve said about gender, but eh. I like it better this way. (not a language post really, but I felt it was needed to round out the culture.)

The Sumii people generally recognize three genders, but it’s not unheard of for someone’s identity to fall outside this gender trinary. Two of them are close to what we’d recognize as “male” (tema) and “female” (temi). The third, temen, is basically just “third gender” (in fact, the very word comes from the words for “person” and “three.”) It is not an agender or polygender identity. They normally use the het pronoun, and are treated as a sort of gender neutral category.

Sumii culture doesn’t really have gender roles, aside from some items of clothing being worn normally by men or women (not as a strict rule however, and temen people do not follow any sort of clothing restriction) and the Tsarehi almost always being female (again not always the case – in some villages it is considered an archaic rule, and you see men or temen in the role, and others consider temen the only ones fit to be Tsarehi).

Gender is not assigned at birth. All children are considered non-gendered until they’re able to grasp the concept, at which point they’re allowed to choose what fits best for them. However, this doesn’t mean people don’t get an idea in their heads what gender the child is – some do end up calling a child “little sister/brother” or giving them a more gendered name or pronouns based on their anatomy. And speaking of anatomy… I’m not going to go into too much detail at the moment what their genitalia is like, but there is, for lack of better terms, one that is considered “male” and one that is “female,” and many that we would call “intersex.” Intersex people are much more common here than they are among humans. Most end up falling into the temen category, but some do identify as men or women.

As for sexuality, they have the same range as we do – people who love different genders, the same gender, multiple genders, or aren’t interested in anyone. There are no specific words for each one, and in fact they aren’t considered separate identities at all. For the Sumii, love really is just love. Polyamory is also pretty common. In fact, you’d probably just as often see a family with three parents as you would two!

[sumiilanguage]

Verbs Again

I need to dump some more out of the word list. But hey, they’re kind of necessary, aren’t they?

Ene - To breathe (en - breath) Hasaa - To lead Iavi - To force* Iti - To jump Ksara - To fight (ksanom - a fight) Lada - To try Oji - To cause* (oji is also the noun form of cause) Saati - To visit Sadaa - To take Selaa - To add Yunsono - To threaten (yunson - threat, mesono - threatening)

Cannot be interchanged as in English. “iavi” is to intend something to happen and make it happen through your actions, while “oji” is passive - one event causes another to happen with no intent.  

[sumiilanguage]

Some more environment/biome words

Kalyaam - Lava Maipue - Spring, well, pool (Maipue i paral - tide pool) Orid - Cave Palot - Mud Payat - Land, continent Payatip - Shore, coast, beach Uetutip - Cliff

And one more that might come in handy when describing an environment:

Sarikenyek - Map