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The five-letter conlang Alpte is making for a record

There is an officially registered application to the “Guinness Book of Records” submitted by Ivan Karasev, the author of the Alpte language. In the PARI (BET) Agency registering this kind of records in Russia the application has been named “An artificial language with the least number of letters in the alphabet” – there are only 5, with the serial number 12.119.

A palindrome language Sunilinus has been invented

Sunilinus is an a posteriori type of generated language based on the palindrome principles. The name originates to the Latin unilingvus. The motto of Sunilinus is following: “A language is a mirror”, which in the English version sounds as “Langal isi moirriom”.

Bards are now singing in Arahau

And not just whatever, but the Russia Anthem. It was the bard Konstantin Belchansky who volunteered to sing in Arahau, while the honoured artist of Russia Aleksandr Kasiyanov made the guitar adaptation of the melody. The Arahau language, as Belchansky said, appeared to be so hideous, that he was afraid least he should be held liable for sneering at the official symbol of the country. The text was specially arranged for the bard, after having been split into blocks...

A language for mother-in-law

“Tafresopl”, dear readers! A Krasnodar citizen invented the shortest language in the world. 43-year-old Ivan Karasev is known as the author of a logic-taxonomic language Arahau - one of the most unusual and capacious artificial languages in the world. So far it is spoken by only several people. But, according to the author, project Arahau is postmodern and does not have aim to be learnt by a lot of people. It is more of a Krasnodar attraction. The work on Arahau started in 1995. From the very beginning Ivan considered it as a game – every letter got certain meaning. Heinlein’s theoryKrasnodar citizen is acquainted with famous artificial languages – Esperanto and Volapük, but he did not want to use them as a guideline. “lf you cannot learn a language, create your own one, – says Ivan Karasev. – I wanted to create a compact language that would be at most archaic, at the same time suitable for interpretation of present words and explaining the appearance of new ones”.

A theory of 1949 by American science-fictionist Robert Heinlein in his “Gulf” novel influenced the creation of Arahau. Really, if there is a stenography – shorthand and speed reading, why do not work out the ways of “speed speaking” and “speed thinking”? So adherents of the artificial language offer to compress our speech – up to separate sounds.

Arahau is know-how

Gleb Maltsev: “Arahau reminds me of guttural orc blasphemies from mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien” The 10th anniversary issue of Arahau magazine opens with an interview with Gleb Maltsev, a musician who won the “Face of Arahau” contest in 2011.An interview with Gleb Maltsev, creator and ideologist of Piĉismo, world’s first punk/hard core/crust/grinds/noise band propagandizing international planned languages. Voice & electric violin, electric sitar. Lives in Kaunas, Lithuania.– What to do you think about the widespread opinion “Art is always a provocation”? Considering the recent punk prayer of Pussy Riot “Virgin Mary, send away Mr.Putin”, was it really a creative work or all the sensation was just much ado about nothing?– At long last somebody asked the right person to answer! Everybody but punks have already had a comment on these sluts! Let’s begin with the fact that neither Mohawk nor dreadlocks, neither tattoos nor piercing have been found on any parts of their bodies. The only reason why they put on the balaklavas was that they had to hide their civil faces, and you wouldn’t find any their single at underground venues. Let’s give Madonna and Yoko Ono the privilege to admire this squeaking of mice and better take a good look at a KGB curator Marat Guelman who’s been lavishly sponsored by Kremlin or how Tolokno and Verzilova were kicked out of the art-group “Voyna” for betraying Shiitman-Volodarsky to the Kiev police; he’s got a prison sentence for simulating a sexual act in front of the Ukrainian parliament. All that indicates that the company is really putrid and provokes massive spasms of retching. The image of a punk isn’t so romantic as the image of a prince on a white horse; only a brainless schoolgirl might fall in love with it. The urge towards becoming a drunken stinking ruin is quite unexpected to find among the intelligent faithful mothers. It’s strange to see the respectable socialized women having such unusual priorities. Here’s the question, why did popular artists call themselves punk creeps while they actually weren’t, while they actually didn’t know the very foundations of this tribe. The answer is obvious: they did it in order to provoke repression against the left artistic young people (aka ‘neformaly’ in Russian). And they achieved their aim simultaneously promoting Mr. Dragon for a couple of million dollars, distracting the mass from the falsified elections, Krymsk tragedy and other tricky subjects for the Russia’s government. There was indeed a provocation, but it was stage-managed by the police and had some doubtful artistic value.

Arahau will wake Ctulhu

Arahau will wake Cthulhu Who can awaken the ancient monster sleeping deep in the ocean? It is possible that the great and terrible Cthulhu used to address his underwater audience in Arahau...

Is Arahau the key to the Mordor Black Speech?

The Black Speech of Mordor is one of the most mysterious languages composed by Tolkien for his trilogy “The Master of the Rings”. The primordial evil would speak the Mordor language...

Arahau reveals the secret meaning of names

As every letter is meaningful in Arahau, any word of any language may be contemplated through the prism of this conlang. For instance, Eduard ("Touch the ceiling with a hand"), David ("Leading a twig by him"), Satana (“he stops the man”), America (“man flies to the sky for the sake of the cross”), and putin meaning “he who turns an animal into a stump". Arahau is rather hard on the semantics of some names...

The flag and the coat of arms has been developed for Arahau

The flag is essentially a monogram combining A and R as the first two letters in the word arahau. A&R are two opposite elements of the world personified in consonant and vocal nature of the signs. Red is the colour of a human tongue. The very word Arahau may be treated as ara-hau "twin blood brotherhood" ("brothers in blood"). The coat of arms is in fact a stylish "а" with a human eye incrusted in it. The inscription USABLORALOPL means the quotation "A human being is the measure of all things", as the natural philosophy principle underlying Arahau.

Biblical texts are being translatedinto Arahau

“To know something as one knows “Ёttenge””. This is the way the famous Russian proverb may now sound, because the Lord’s Prayer – “Our Father” has been translated into Arahau, as well as a few extracts of the Old Testament.

Fictitious affinity of languages

Fictive propinquity of languages is studying structural and functional properties of languages (usually it is artificial, and as a rule a priori) compared with natural languages. Fictive propinquity of languages can be a priori (unwittingly) and a posteriori (deliberate). For example, A. Tolstoy in "Aelita" has used style of education of words are believed to be from the Nahuatl and Aramaic fund with Polynesian sound mounting of syllables. A. Belyayev was based on Nahuatl language, when describing "speech of Atlantes" in a work "The last man from Atlantis". Marc Okrand elected language of indigenous tribe mutsun in process construction of Klingon for the film "Star Trek". Frank Herbert used Sokotra dialect of Arabic for fiction language of his fantasy book "Dune". The book of S. Loginov "The God of dalayn about a hundred hands" was based on the Mongolian vocabulary.

The discovery of the facts of a priori relationship serves as an additional incentive to find a keys (seemingly lost forever) for ancient and non-deciphered languages of Mediterranean.

The African Koshchei

There is an Angolan fairy-tale “Animal Kings” with the commonly-known theme of the Russian fairy-tale “Ivan the Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf”. In particular, there is a characteristic motive of putting a series of things one into another, like in “matryoshka” whose innermost core is the death of a god, often associated with the evil element. However in another interpretation this deity is treated as the most ancient one, who got into a conflict with young gods. The deity of fertility usually identified with a serpent is being defeated by an idol of the new world – the pastoral idol of the so-called arid (desert and steppe) cultures. A vivid example is the legend with St. George on horseback hitting the Dragon. As well as the Egyptian Horus killing the Crocodile...

Caucasian substrate of the European myths

The style of the Elfish writing system (Tengwar) must have been borrowed by J.R.R. Tolkien, the father of “Master of the Rings” trilogy, from the Armenian writing creator Mesrop Mashtots. And the name of the white magician, the grandiloquent Sauron, can be traced back to Syrdon (the Ossetian Loki) of the Nart epic cycle. For that matter, the lyre (fandyr) invented by Syrdon made of the hand of his killed son bears a suspicious resemblance with the ancient Greek Pandora who let out a lot of illnesses and, as they say, the death itself from a kind of a box... Well, believe it or not, even the Greek Psyche has the Abkhazian-Adygean origin (it is in these languages that “Psehu” stands for “water”). Moreover, the Caucasian languages have helped to make it clear that the ancient word for bear in Balto-Slavic languages was Mishka (compare the Lithuanian miškas 'forest' and the Adygean myshyhe 'bear' - mez 'forest'; moz is the Chechen for 'honey'). Read more

Cthulhu is a Nivkh!

The motherland of the Great and Terrible Cthulhu is, undoubtedly, the Sea of Okhotsk: it was here that the most ancient language relics have survived – the Nivkh and the Itelmen languages. These languages are dramatically different from surrounding ones, most of all by forbidden incorporation of words with monstrous accumulation of consonants (the consonant index of the Itelmen language is 1,87, which is a language record), and there is an australoid mixin in the anthropological type of the local population (curly hair, enhanced hairiness and a darker complexion). Just try pronouncing some of Itelmen words: Kan’chpkh (teach him), spl (wind), chkpch (spoon), xkhlitkas (to starve)... The Itelmens worshipped the huge black raven Kumkhu (Kutkhu). In their language Kl’tkhunin’e’n means “The Darkest”, whereas in the Nivkh language Tkhulf stands for “Winter”.

We have all the reasons to believe that it is only with the help of the Nivkh and especially the Itelmen languages that we may hope to decode the under-water murmuring of Cthulhu.

Where at the Russian the Chechen roots from?

zov - (in Russian zvon: ringing) as - (Old Slavic az; I) moz - (myod; honey)k'ur - (kurit; smoke)buors - (proso; millet).In Batsbi dialect: dali - (dali; gave)yodu - (yeda; food)le - (ili; or)i - (i; and)dada - (deda; grandfather)e - (eto; this)obi - (obe; they)de - (den; day)

Incorporation in the Russian Language

To put it most simply, incorporation is the aspiration of morphemes to come together into one word. However, such an intricate complex must include a verb. As V. Plungian writes in his book “Why languages are so different”, incorporation is not characteristic of the Russian language and of the Indo-European languages on the whole. “In Russian compound words are mainly nouns and adjectives, but not verbs”, the author notes, “It is impossible to imagine a Russian word like “to steamtrain”, “to quickwalk”, “to handwash” (паровозить, быстроходить, рукомоить)”… But what can one do with such a wide-spread Russian word as “to mastermind” (руководить)? What is it but incorporation?

Reactive Reflection of Archaic

In the Armenian language in constructing scientific terminology the ancient dialect Grabar is used, the Indians use Sanskrit for the purpose, and the Ethiopians use Ge'ez... In the Chad language Hausa helicopter sounds as jirghin-sama-mayi-sawookan-oongoolyu, meaning literally “a bird able to dart down like a bomber”. The Chechen for electric guitar is tyok dechk pandora, for cell-phone it is kisnakh' lelo za' tukharg, and for extraterrestrial – turnenir byahkhhan tsabovzush humnash. The Lithuanian for pager is pronešimo gaviklas, the Irish for computer is ríomhaire, cosmic space in Slovakian is called vesmír. In the Hungarian language röplabda stands for volleyball, repülőtérfor airport, villany for electricity, fényképész for photography, hűtőszekrényfor refrigerator, gépocsi for car, sámítógép for computer. In Cherokee ditiyohihi means advocate (literally, “one who argues constantly and on purpose”), didaniyisgi stands for policeman (meaning “catches for good and all”). And how are such technogenic neologisms formed in initially artificial languages? In Arahau the question is solved fairly easily. The Arahau for UFO is Algamablor, Internet is Güropl, computer is geirg, starcraft is alfaber.

When the Universe was a Palindrome

Words of any modern language are essentially a palindrome ruined by the time, the most ancient code of life self-conservation found in the DNA structure. A human being, as a kind of a magic mirror reflecting the macrocosm, is a palindrome himself.

In times of the deepest archaic living beings used to have a higher type, radial symmetry. An example of that is a cherry blossom or a sea star. In the evolution process a language loses its eurhythmy irreversibly. Just another moment – and the atavistic remnants of the former harmony will disappear for good.

Branchial Cleft of Speech

In the time being, after the human embryo development had een studied, the evolution theory got another evidence in favour. At the initial stages a mammal embryo has observable branchial clefts that are lost later on. An embryo in a short period undergoes the evolution that had needed billions of years to turn marine growth into Homo sapiens. According to the Darwin evolution theory, earlier organisms are simpler in structure than later ones. If we consider languages as a kind of organisms (as in the so-called “social darwinism”), in the earliest epoch they should have contained the kind of sounds most easily assimilated by kids. As it is widely known, children most often have difficulties with sibilants and especially with [r]. See phonetic deviation in words “loshadka” for [lasatka] and “skameika” for [kameika].

Arahau has show similarity to the Basque

Arahau has shown similarity to the Basque language While there is a wide argument between people as to attribution of Basque to this or that language family – be it Caucasian, Indo-European or Berber-Libyan one, it looks like this most mysterious nation of Europe has found an artificial relative. Quite unexpectedly Basque has shown kinship with the recently generated Arahau language. In particular, there have been found over 20 coincidences of Basque words with those taken from Arahau.

A Farewell to the Indo-European Gods

The Arahau began to form in 1995, when the underlying principles of the new artificial language were formulated: agglutination and morphological monophonemity, polysynthetism, active structure, the phonemically-meaningful and etymologically-transparent nature of Grammar, the ultra-compactness of the speech flow. It is curious that the principles haven’t changed any too much in the 12 years. The initial conditions, as mathematicians put it when solving a differential equation, have remained stable. However, the Grammar itself has been improving gradually, and by the beginning of 2008 it was amended and updated.

The Andi Ancestral Home of the Basques

Arahau has exteriorized the kinship between the Basques and the Avar-Andi-Tsezic peoples... A strange thing, but after comparing the Basque Language with the generated Arahau conlang both the languages showed some parallels with the Nakh-Dagestan languages (including the Chechen Language). What makes it especially interesting is the fact that the matter under consideration is some of the least-studied peoples lost in the mountains of the North-Caucasus speaking the languages of the Andi-Tsez group. They have remained oral societies to these days. One of a special interest is the Godoberian Language (g’ibdil’i mitsi). Like Arahau it has quasi-tones, name-classes, only two persons in pronouns, abundant diphthongs and only one vowel to render the most ancient words... And at the beginning there was a queer likeness of the demonstrative pronouns haw in Godoberian and ho in Arahau.

RECORDING

Bard Konstantin Belchansky sings

"Arkhyz"

"White Elephant"

Songs on Arahau

"The national anthem of the Russian Federation"

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Bards are now singing in Arahau

A language for mother-in-law

Arahau is know-how

Bard Konstantin Belchansky sings