lemÌc. Lemizh grammar and dictionary

Date

[Philip Henry Gosse claims about Creation:] The principle of reason requires that no result be without a cause, and those causes require other causes, which are multiplied regressively; there are concrete vestiges of them all, but only those that are posterior to the Creation have really existed. There are glyptodont skeletons in the gorge of Luján, but glyptodonts never existed … Bertrand Russell has brought the thesis up to date … he theorises that the planet was created a few minutes ago, with a humanity that ‘remembers’ an illusory past.

(Jorge Luis Borges. La creación y P. H. Gosse)

Russell’s idea is inconsequent, of course. The world hasn’t been created yet, and God is still pondering how the world should look on the day of creation; and we are part of His thoughts.

Thinking again: maybe He forbears from creating the world. It seems to be working quite well without existing.

Sun calendar

The modern calendar divides the year (OtÌ.) into 52 weeks (djÌvf.) of 7 days (djÌt.) each, plus one or two additional days. The weekdays’ names are compounds with inherited names of gods such as djÌt xsrÌU. day-acc1 Venus-acc-ben2. ‘Venus’s daytime, the daytime for Venus’ djUtxsrÌ. day-ben-Venus-acc1.. The following nights are the analogous compounds with ytfÌ. ‘night’; and if really necessary, the 24-hour periods (midnight to midnight) can be expressed as compounds with krilmrÌj. ‘65536 Lemizh time units’.

The patron gods are the principal gods of the ancient Lemizh pantheon, the same after which the seven classical planets are named. The modern names of these gods (and their associated planets) are academic loans from Old Lemizh, which in some cases sound quite different from the inherited ones although they are cognates. The usual English translations of the weekdays’ names are based on the respective planets, which causes some inconsistency for the first day of the week. The Terrestrial day is the weekly holiday.

Interactive calendar
(on lunar years see below)
ly 3478SaSuMoTuWeThFr
lweekÇÆÄÁÅÂÃ
37th29 1630 1731 181 192 203 214 22
38th5 236 247 258 269 2710 2811 29
39th12 3013  114  215  316  417  518  6
40th19  720  821  922 1023 1124 1225 13
41st26 1427 1528 1629 1730 181 192 20
lunar year −2118, months 12 to 13
→ today

The links in the following table lead to the relevant entries in the dictionary.

Lemizh dayPatron god with symbolTranslation (planet)Our equivalent
djUtxmÌj.niftnÌj.Neptune/PoseidonÇUranian daySunday
djUtnÌt.djistnÌt.Saturn/KronosÆSaturnian dayMonday
djUtfrÌg.frekrÌf.Mars/AresÄMartian dayTuesday
djUtÌxk.OnkrÌt.Mercury/HermesÁMercurian dayWednesday
djUtxÌps.djeipysrÌd.Jupiter/ZeusÅJovian dayThursday
djUtxsrÌ.usrÌ.Venus/AphroditeÂVenerian dayFriday
djUtxnÌ.djingmesrÌ.Terra/GaiaÃTerrestrial daySaturday

For the first 52 × 7 = 364 days of the year, the complete date comprises a day’s name, a week’s number and a year.

Following convention, the last day of the year is called the Neptunian day (djUtfÌps.). It is actually named for the Midwinter God, and the planet Neptune was named after the same god when in was discovered in modern times, to keep the tradition of having corresponding planet and day names. Leap years have a leap day (djyttÌcd., lit. ‘a day more’) immediately before the Neptunian. Leap years are the ones that can be divided by four (that is, their unit or last digit is 0, 4, 8 or C), but not by 128 (their unit and sixteens digits, or the last two digits, are neither 00 nor 80). Neptunian and leap days do not have a week number.

The first day of the Lemizh year corresponds roughly to 20th December. To get the Lemizh year, add 1463 to the Gregorian year. During the last days of December, add 1464.

  26ìR djUtxmyjÌ D96ìRoR.26hex = 38th Uranian day in the D96hex = 3478th year5th September 2015
38-egr1 day-ben-Uranus-acc-acc2 3478-egr-eps2.
D96-26-Ç2015-09-05

Dates are mainly used as temporal objects: ‘on 5th September’ as a temporal (aR) or episodic (oR) or an ‘inside’ construction; ‘from 5th September’ as an ingressive (eR); ‘until 5th September’ as an egressive (iR). Pure days and nights of the week – without a week number – are interpretable as continuous things and thus don’t need ‘inside’ constructions.

The time spanning weeks 1 to 13 is usually called ‘winter’ (qÌs.) although this doesn’t quite match the astronomical definition. Weeks 14 to 26 are colloquially ‘spring’ (RÌsw.), weeks 27 to 39 are referred to as ‘summer’ (lÌqx.), and 40 to 52 as ‘autumn’ (hkÌt.).

Moon calendar

The old Ghean Moon calendar is still in use, especially for calculating some long-standing holidays and for other formal purposes such as announcing wedding dates.

It is based on synodic months (xarÌhk., months aligned to the lunar phases) with lengths of 29 or 30 days. The first day of a month approximately coincides with the new moon. A lunar year (OteihkÌ.) mostly consists of 14, sometimes 13 months, and sixteen lunar years complete a saros of 223 synodic months or about 18 solar years.

Normally, months with odd numbers have 29 days, and those with even numbers have 30 days, totalling 413 days in a standard lunar year. In years with even numbers that are not divisible by 16, the third month also has 30 days; and lunar years that can be divided by 16 are missing the fourteenth month. This results in a total length of 6585 days for sixteen lunar years. Additionally, if a lunar year is divisible by 48, its third month also has 30 days.

The 5th September 2015 corresponds to lunar year −2118, month 12, day 23 (= −846–C–17hex). The minus sign stems from the fact that lunar years used to be counted backwards, but when the year zero arrived and nothing happened, people continued with negative numbers.