It occurs to me that these might be useful for those of you who are interested...


Thandi

Phonemes:
/b/, /bh/, /p/, /ph/, /f/, /sh/, /zh/, /g/, /gh/, /l/, /L/, /lh/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /w/, /y/, /a/, /e/, /E/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /h/.



Lenadess

Phonemes:
/b/, /bh/, /p/, /ph/, /d/, /t/, /f/, /sh/, /s/, /zh/, /g/, /gh/, /l/, /L/, /lh/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /w/, /y/, /a/, /e/, /E/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /h/.



Aubre

Phonemes:
/b/, /p/, /k/, /g/, /d/, /t/, /f/, /th/, /TH/, /sh/, /ch/, /zh/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /h/.



Nangdi

Phonemes:
/b/, /bh/, /p/, /ph/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /kh/, /q/, /’/, /g/, /gh/, /w/, /l/, /r/, /R/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /th/, /TH/, /sh/, /a/, /ae/, /e/, /E/, /i/, /I/, /o/, /u/, /oy/, /h/; three tones -- high, low, and falling.

The Swadesh lists for the four languages in the new U.S. Corps of Linguists novel are now at my SFWA website. The link to the lists is at the end of the first Announcement, at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Announcements.html .
If you have comments or questions, just respond to this post.

The shawl pattern is now posted at http://community.livejournal.com/crochetcrochet/1138498.html .

1. I wanted to let you know that back in November I finished the core vocabulary lists for the four ET languages that some of you were interested in, but that I haven't been able to reach my SFWA webperson to get them posted at my website. I'm working on that problem and assume that it will be straightened out soon.


2. This is truly off-topic; still, I wanted to tell you about it. The past two winters I've had to wear extra layers of clothing to stay warm, and this winter has been cold enough that I've had no luck keeping the temperature in our house at the 70 degrees it takes for elderly-lady comfort. But this year, because I serendipitously stumbled over a pattern for a Magic Shawl, I've been comfortable without any need for extra layers, even with the house at only 68 degrees most of the time. I don't understand why this particular shawl is magically warm, but I can vouch for the fact that it is. So I'm going to post the pattern for that shawl at the crochetcrochet community page, in case any of you might want to make one for yourself. Once that's done, I'll post the link for the pattern here.

This, I can do without any help from my SFWA webperson.

This underground house of ours continues to amaze me. It was 18 degrees outside at six o'clock this morning when we got up. But inside our house -- despite the fact that we have no heat source in here at all at night -- it was 64 degrees. And when we turned on our electric space heater, it went up to 66 degrees in only twenty minutes.

All summer long, heat is stored in the earth and stone around our house and in its concrete walls; then when winter comes, that heat is released into our house. Because we had almost no real heat this past summer -- we had a plague of thunderstorms and gloom, day after day and night after night -- I wondered if it would be colder in here this winter than it usually is. But it hasn't turned out that way. The first day that we had to turn on the space heater didn't come along until October 23rd. And well into late November, I was able to open the house to the outdoors -- which means opening the front door and all the screened windows on the front porch -- for a few hours around noon almost every day.

I had always said that it would never get below 59 degrees in here, no matter how cold it got outside. Last year, in the January ice storm when we had a five-day power outage, I found out that that wasn't true. Ordinarily in the wintertime our lights are on all day long and late into the evening in all the rooms; ordinarily we use our oven -- which has electric ignition -- often for cooking. Ordinarily we have two tiny space heaters that we run in the bathroom and the room where our computers are when those rooms are in use. Ordinarily the thirty gallons of hot water in our water heater are giving off heat around the clock.

Our little generator -- the one we've now replaced with a much larger unit -- wasn't powerful enough to do all of that; it wasn't powerful enough to run the oven or the hot water heater at all. And it not only was 55 degrees in here every morning, it never got warmer than 56 degrees inside, even with the big space heater running. Still, there was nothing ordinary about that ice storm, with its three consecutive days and nights of nonstop sleet. It seems to me that for this house to have maintained 55/56 degrees through all that was pretty amazing.

And of course it works the other way round as well. The earth and stone and concrete walls store the winter's cold as well, and then release it into the house. We don't need our air conditioning until months after people living above ground have had to turn theirs on.

I can enthusiastically recommend living underground. Not that there aren't adjustments you have to make; there are. But an underground house is a marvelous device.

I am awake at 4a.m. because I packed a lot of boxes for the any-day-now move, and then I realised that my credit card had been on the table and now I couldn't find it...

Care to guess what I've been doing since then?

You are probably right.

I have it now so I'm off to catch some sleep before getting up for the vinyl-layers in a very few hours.