Arcanum Paterfamilias/Estvarya: Ishvaran Glossary -- Introduction & Orthography

[whips_n_dozers]

Arcanum Paterfamilias & Estvarya -- Ishvaran Glossary: Introduction and Orthography
Authors: mfelizandy & fractured_chaos
Graphics: fractured_chaos
Rating: For the Glossary, Everyone -- For the Story, Teen
Category: Written for the 2010 FMA Big Bang Challenge.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen

Comments

It's not prying

[mfelizandy]

I'm so happy you're interested and commented on the Glossary! I don't take it as prying, I'm flattered.

To answer your question--if something sounds suspiciously like a theme or plot from the Judeo-Christian tradition, that's because that's where the outline (or in one notable case coming up later on, an entire quote almost word for word) came from. We're borrowing generic "Middle Eastern" details, too, to help highlight the distinctions between Amestrian culture and Ishvarun culture. There are motifs from other religious, legendary, and mythical traditions in the mix, too. The hero Saza is something of a portmanteau of wandering-hero myths, and the weaver-woman story is a riff on the theme of hospitality that shows up in cultural traditions all over the world. I don't know whether it will make it into Arcanum or Estvarya, but I've got the outlines of the Ishvarun creation story laid out. It's tailored to explain some things about the Ishvarun and how they live to the likes of Roy Mustang and readers alike, rather than following a specific pattern.

The words themselves are the result of running English words through Google Translate in various languages, then taking bits of this word and other bits of that one and mashing them until they "sound right" to my mental ear. (I almost always start with Albanian, then look at Basque, Hindi, Malay, and Thai, as those provide lots of good syllables pretty consistently.) The language structure, what there is of it, is the result of my undergraduate linguistics degree and a lot of struggling to keep my German "der/die/das" articles straight.

Thanks so much for commenting on the Glossary! It's nice to know people are perusing it!