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Again, let's digress a little from the Vikings. Berenice has recently become interested in Kharassukhum idioms and… found quite a few interesting things in it! Today we will tell you about them.

The Kharassukhum dwarves, of course, did not build huge cities on the mountains, between the mountains and within them, of course, not throughout their history. At first they lived as the most ordinary mountain sedentary tribe: they grew barley, herded goats and sheep, and were engaged in all sorts of related trades. Later, they had a very rapid technological, industrial and scientific development, due to which they were able to quickly and efficiently build both on the surface and inside the mountains.

This, of course, is a completely different story. It is important that due to a radical change in lifestyle at a certain stage, their idioms also underwent serious changes. But the old one remained as well! Let's show you examples of both.

- the word "goat" among the Kharassukhum people was never used as an insult. And not used. On the contrary, there are expressions like: “smart as a goat”, “fast as a goat”, “brisk as ...” I think you understand;

- a few sayings and a bunch of different folk signs associated with the once main culture - barley. “This barley when the juniper blossoms”, “the oriole is more expensive than the barley grain of the chick” and all sorts of others;

- "two people cannot pull a bull / ram for one egg." A classic saying that has become a worldwide hit. In a more cultivated version, there is a "tail" and not "eggs", but the original looks exactly like that;

- newer ones: “crush tuff with a sledgehammer” - an analogue of our “shoot sparrows from a cannon”. Tuff is a light and brittle porous rock, and using a sledgehammer to process it is clearly too much;

- "sharp / prickly like an electric spark." The first proverb related to electricity in the whole world. Perhaps, of course, the Khvenvants also had similar ones, but they are unknown to us;

- finally - "slippery as an oil slick." Beautiful, but you are unlikely to be happy if someone says this to you.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit crazy for our entire team. For a bunch of different reasons; for the most part, however, they were good.

So we were not surprised even once when our old friend Acherus looked at our light yesterday. I honestly hoped that at least this time the conversation would not go as usual, but ... alas. After the standard two cups of coffee, we just started bombarding him with questions; he, however, answered them with pleasure. Or so it seemed to me.

We mainly talked about the leisure of dragars - those of them who preferred their original body to a human one. After all, judge for yourself: if you are a huge half-bird, half-reptile twenty meters long, what can you do in your free time?

The first thing Acherus told us was that the abundance of our leisure activities compared to the Dragars was one of the main reasons why many Dragars decided to change their bodies.

Acherus called flying the first and main type of leisure. According to him, this is a favorite pastime of almost all dragars - to fly (or swim in the water as an option) for hours without thinking about anything at all. In the last century, however, this has become more difficult. Due to the development of aviation for the most part.

My second favorite activity is word games. Mystery of the Sphinx Nonsense; he, as Acherus said, was no match for anyone he knew. Dragars can play with elves, humans, gearts, and dwarves; they can also, of course, with other dragars. And maybe even with themselves, if there is no one nearby.

Many are also involved in science. We all remember the semi-legendary Areg, who was (reputedly) the first to invent a relatively safe way to transmigrate a dragar into a human body. And we, alas, do not know about many others: rarely any of them wrote down any of their developments. At least due to the fact that often there was nothing to write on.

But these three points, in fact, exhaust almost everything that dragars can do. And given that they are increasingly losing their favorite pastime - flying - the trend looms not the most pleasant. Sooner or later, it may happen that they all change their bodies to human ones.

Or maybe not. How to know!

Continuation of the same Lavinavian notes, this time again about magic. And here we will not talk about some kind of classical fortune-telling and similar things, but about a slightly different aspect.

The author of the notes mentions people who were called logasynir/logadœtr - "sons / daughters of fire" (or its personification Logi), as well as surtsovinir - "opponents of Surt." How were they different? Those who owned various types of magic, involving the involvement of fire in one form or another.

Now, of course, it is difficult to find a person who could not magically set fire to a bunch of dry sticks or leaves - in fact, this is the simplest everyday magic, which is not even somehow ashamed to own. At the same time, it was somewhat different; and men capable of producing such a banal trick inspired both respect and fear in others.

But of course surtsovinir far from just lighting fires here and there. They - those of them who had a higher skill - were highly valued in battle as well. And, by the way, not only men, but also women! There is not much evidence for this, but there is. Because judge for yourself: what difference does it make what gender a person is, if he knows how to masterfully fry enemies with fireballs?

Jokes are jokes, of course, but the point was also that surtsovinir were, in fact, a separate "caste", if you can call it that. Their magical knowledge was often inherited, but they also took students willingly. Another thing is that rarely anyone wanted to go to study with them.

And their naming "opponents of Surt" is due to the fact that when Ragnarok comes and Surt cuts down Yggdrasil, it is the "fiery magicians" who will first oppose him. Then their white firehviteldr) will clash with black fire (svarteldr) Surt and thus mark the beginning of the destruction of the world.

We continue our Viking theme. As you may remember, the author of all the things that we have been publishing lately has also written decently enough about the differences between the various Lavinavian tribes. By and large, it is clear that they are quite small, but there are also a few interesting things there. Let's talk about them now.

Number one. The biggest language difference: "they [in the east] speak rak, and we [in the West] say rǫk". This is a well-known phenomenon: in the Western Lavinavian languages, a u-umlaut occurred, which translated a V ǫ before u/v in the next syllable, but not in the east. This happened a long time ago, somewhere in the second century AD, and the author, of course, mentions this.

Number two. About blood feudbloðshefnd). It seems to be not too significant, but quite an interesting difference: in the east, only male relatives could avenge the dead. In the West, both men and women could take revenge; moreover, women who preferred revenge to vire were very respected. And, accordingly, they rarely remained widows if they avenged their murdered husbands.

Number three, last one for today. In the west, men (in the context of the most popular hairstyle) usually shaved only the temples and the upper part of the neck, and in the east, the back of the head as well.

Today in Imarbia (as well as some Imarbo-speaking countries) is celebrated Dia del Ilusionista, Magician's Day. Now it is not much different from a bunch of similar professional holidays, but just a couple of centuries ago in Imarbia it was customary to organize grandiose festivals on this day. What is its feature?

To do this, let's turn to the history of its occurrence. At the end of the 18th century, a certain peasant lived in the city of Segovia, whose name was Adan Domingo Jacinto Gasset y Cortes (named after A. Adan Domingo Jacinto Gasset y Cortes). By main occupation, he was a scientist engaged in the study of magic, and in addition to this, he also had a hobby - illusionism. He became known as a man who combined tricks with real magic; of course, he was far from the first such enthusiast, but his tricks were distinguished by a special grace and scope. Probably due to his professional knowledge.

One of his signature tricks was pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Nonsense, you say; but the fact is that there was no secret pocket in the hat, or anything else like that. Instead, Adan Gasset y Cortes created a whole mechanism to literally teleport a rabbit from a cage backstage into a hat when he put his hand into it.

Adam was ruined by his craving for grandiosity. Rabbits were not enough for him; all his life he dreamed of doing the same trick with a person. But he was also a noble person, and therefore he experienced the installation first of all on himself.

What happened next, no one knows for sure. The most popular hypothesis is that the sorcery he set up did not work properly due to interference; but the fact remains: right before the eyes of an audience of at least a thousand people, he entered a huge cylinder and ... disappeared. And no one ever heard of him again.

Who knows - maybe he really planned it all? Did he run away somewhere far away and with the money he earned (and the sums there were huge) he lived comfortably until old age?

Nobody knows, of course. But since then, every year, on the fifth Sich - on the day of his disappearance - a lot of people around the globe celebrate this very holiday - Magician's Day.

The same promised post with a comparison of scripts. We turned to Be-Reshit 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and now we will show how this phrase looks in six different languages. Three of them are Glinnar, the other three are sources for the corresponding spellings.

(do not be afraid of scary icons from the MFA, the decoding will be at the end)

1. "Ar ealbhach-shar a iftha Ierthíal ar ailèn edh ar fháhàdh"- classic clay.
2. "I dtús báire chruthaigh Dia neamh agus talamh' is modern Loreland.

The most significant difference is the pronunciation th, dh, sh and fh in these two spellings. In Lorland it is /h/, /ɣ/, /h/ and zero sound (yes, not a very rich set), and in Glynarya it is /θ/, /ð/, /ʃ/ and /ʍ/. The first two sounded the same in Middle Lorland, and the last two are purely Glynarian adaptations. Well, the vowels are different. But in general, the continuity, I think, is visible.

3. "Cû'r eilvacho iwtha Rhaethws ar oilenwy ad ar fothadwy”- Llaehsky (alas, already dead).
4. "Yn y dechreuad creodd Duw y nefoedd a'r ddaear"- Botian.

Here the differences are much smaller. Main three:
- to convey /ð/, Llaeh orthography uses a digraph dh, and Botian - dd;
- to convey /v/ and /f/, Llaeh orthography uses letters v and f, while the Botian uses f and ff respectively.
Otherwise, everything is more or less the same, except for some minimal differences in vowels.

5. "Cu'r oalvac'heu an iñfsha Irshil ar eilenoa ad ar feushadoa"- North Glinnarsky.
6. "Er penn-kentañ e krouas Doue an neñvoù hag an douar"- duat.

Here, too, everything is about the same. Differences:
– duat uses k to transfer /k/, and North Glinnar - c;
— North Glinnar has a digraph g'h to convey /ɣ/, while the duat uses c'h to transmit /x/ and /ɣ/ at the same time;
— North Glinnar has a digraph sh, whose pronunciation varies from [s̠] to [ɧ]. Duat has a digraph zh with both similar and slightly different functions.
And the vowels, suddenly, do not differ at all. Unless, of course, I confuse anything.

Decryption:
/h/ - h in english home
/ɣ/ — hg in rec. boohgalter; or G V ГLord
/θ/ — th in english thin
/ð/ — th in english the
/ʃ/ - sh in english she
/ʍ/ - wh in english which
/v/ - rec. V
/f/ - rec. f
/k/ - rec. To
/x/ - rec. X
/s̠/ — s in foul stads
/ɧ/ is a very strange thing like /ʃ/ and /h/ at the same time