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 LujĂĄn, but glyptodonts never existed â€Š Bertrand Russell has brought the thesis up to date â€Š he theorises that the planet was created a few minutes ago, with a humanity that ‘remembers’ an illusory past.

(Jorge Luis Borges. La creaciĂłn 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 3537WeThFrSaSuMoTu
lweekÇÆÄÁÅÂÃ
19th25 3026  127  228  329  430  51  6
20th2  73  84  95 106 117 128 13
21st9 1410 1511 1612 1713 1814 1915 20
22nd16 2117 2218 2319 2420 2521 2622 27
23rd23 2824 2925  126  227  328  429  5
24th30  631  71  82  93 104 115 12
lunar year −2170, months 12 to 14
← 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 Ă— 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.

  13ĂŹR djUtxnyÌ DD1ĂŹRoR.13hex = 19th Terrestrial day in the DD1hex = 3537th year1st May 2074
19-egr1 day-ben-Earth-acc-acc2 3537-egr-eps2.
DD1-13-Ã2074-05-01

Dates are mainly used as temporal objects: ‘on 1st May’ as a temporal (aR) or episodic (oR) or an ‘inside’ construction; ‘from 1st May’ as an ingressive (eR); ‘until 1st May’ 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 1st May 2074 corresponds to lunar year −2170, month 13, day 6 (= −87A–D–6hex). 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.