nerdfishgirl asked:

I've been working on a story (not that it will be done any time soon) and realized I needed a cardassian word for "space" as in spaceships, deep space, etc. I didn't see one in the dictionary, and so I was wondering if you or Vyc had come up with one? If you haven't I had thought that perhaps "itzik'Unt" might work. Thanks so much!

It may well! Must look into it - but well done you for doing the research!

levonsnape asked:

I'm trying to name my kitten and I was wondering if there are Cardassian words for white, albino, or maybe cloud? Sorry you probably get a lot of people asking 'is there a Cardassian word for ___'. My bb really needs a name though it would be really cool if a Cardassian name could work out for it. :D

Dear lord, we’ve nothing for any of them! No colours?? This is a gap!

Vyc - shall I offer up suggestions? Have you something banked?

nerdfishgirl asked:

I've been going through your cardassians tag and I have a whole bunch of the posts in my queue - so I thought I'd say hi (so as not to be too creepy :). I love your work with the Kardasi language, and I've been enjoying your cardassians tag as well. The sheer variety of headcanons people have had is kinda mindboggling to me! You mentioned the Cardassian sourcebook in a couple posts, and I was wondering if that was a physical book or if it was a pdf? Thanks so much!

Woohah, Cardassians~~~ Be sure to check out @cardassianlanguage, where Vyc currently maintains Kardasi (and does a smashing job!).

The Cardassian sourcebook may once have been a physical thing, but is now a pdf. Worth the read! Clearly done with love!

The best thing about Cardassians is that all the headcanons are true~~~

The Ideal Cardassian

[coolandsurefriends]

So, @impossiblejellyfishfart made a post about Dukat & Garak the other day, and I love the post, and I just have to add to the discussion.

So at the heart of a good Cardassian is a piece of Cardassia itself: a good Cardassian should be devoted above all else to their planet. Note that I say the planet – at one point it was said that “the Obsidian Order is Cardassia”, and that the state is Cardassia too, but I think that’s more an attempt at mangling loyalties to fit an agenda than anything more.

Now, the ideal Cardassian’s loyalties should be as follows: firstly they should be loyal to Cardassia, second they should be loyal to themselves/their family.

Now I say this because Cardassian honour is very family-focused, and it seems like the honour of an individual is very rarely considered on its own – one’s honour is one’s father’s, mother’s and family’s honour as much as it is one’s own.

And this is where I want to talk about Dukat and Garak like Morgan has in the post linked above - “Garak and Dukat serve as foils and highlight the difference between the appearance of what a Cardassian is and what Cardassian core ideals really are.” Beautiful phrasing, fucking spot on. This is really important.

Keep reading

Anonymous asked:

Hello there! I hope this afternoon/evening/night finds you well! I wanted to ask you what an 'icek'samlan' is? I read it in several of your stories, and I'm curious. Also, depending on its exact meaning, may I use it in one of my own fanfics?

It’s a measurement of length, from the version of Kardasi that Vyc moderates. More details can be found at cardassianlanguage.tumblr.com.

One iceksamlan is abouut 1.4 cm. 

One samlan is 1.13 m.

One samlanuj is 0.92 km.

Base 9 multiples, don’tcha know… 

And yes, by all means, use it! :D

cosmictuesdays asked:

Would there be any historical timekeeping based on Cardassian lunar cycles? Would any of that have survived to the present day, much as the common Western names for some of the days of the week come from Greek and Norse and Old English - Sun's Day, Moon's Day, Týr's Day, Odin's Day, Thor's Day, Freya's Day, Saturn's Day?

tinsnip answered:

God, there MUST be, mustn’t there?

Mmmmph. Three moons, though. Wide-eyed moon, side-eye moon, blind moon. (Or something. Vyc knows.)

Perhaps the month rotates around the brightest time and darkest time, instead of a specific moon’s rotation.

Perhaps the length of months varies as the moons wax and wane. You’d have long months with big separations, and short months that might consist of only a week.

(Which, I remember, we worked out some time back would be thirteen days long. Because Cardassian memory can handle it no problem, and it works out neatly.)

God, what a bitch that would be. I love it, she said, enraptured. ^^

And most certainly the days would wear names that aren’t as meaningful as they might appear. I wonder if they’d have links to Hebitian myth? That seems pretty funny. :)

[feltelures]

How many moons there are actually depends on which canon you’re using! If you go by the novels, there are three: Letau (the closest to Cardassia Prime), the Blind Moon, and one other that doesn’t get named (I think). (Either of you wanna fix that?) (Note to self: Translate “Blind Moon.”) If you go by the Cardassian Sourcebook, there’s only one, that’s nowhere near as interesting.

I’d love to find a place where you could model lunar cycles of a planet with three months, because I’m having a lot of trouble picturing it. orz

Remind me to put the finishing touches on the document where I’ve collected the various cultural things from the sourcebook–there’s a ton of Hebitian religious stuff in there that would be useful for naming days/months/etc. I could probably manage it within the week, provided I don’t get distracted again.

[tinsnip]

Didn’t we work this out once upon a time? leta’U and such?

Let me go and see…

Yes, here it is! Edited for spelling, grammar and capitalisation errors, all entirely mine, because wow, was I drunk?

* * * * *

tinsnip wrote: Hey, what do you think re: “Watcher” for Cardassia’s sun? Big eye in the sky, seems appropriately paranoid and/or protective, depending on how you look at things.

“Watcher sees everything today” = it’s too bright out

“Good day for secrets” = it’s cloudy

ajev = watcher already

In fact, call it “The Watcher,” ra'ajev, because she’s the ur-watcher, the watcher of all things. She deputizes the moons to spy for her when she’s sleeping. There are three of them. We can give them names too–I don’t see names in the file! What do you think?

feltelures wrote:

XD That sounds very paranoid and Cardassian. And I absolutely agree that ra'ajev is the better name, because all other watchers would have been under her aegis. (Possibly in ancient times the sun goddess would have been the patron deity of the police? Would there still be sun symbolism surrounding law enforcement?)

IIRC in ASIT at least one of the moons was given a name–I’ll have to check to be sure the other two weren’t as well.

…

feltelures wrote: Memory Beta says Letau is the name of the innermost moon, but the last one doesn’t seem to have a name.

[…]

tinsnip wrote: Mnnnnnn right okay moons getting back to this–

So we have ra'ajev, “The Watcher”, for the sun.We have three moons. Let’s deputize them as the watcher’s spare eyes. So we have the brightest one, Keen-eyed moon. We have the slow, fat one, Low-lids moon, who might be watching, might not. And we have the tiny, pale one, Blind Moon. Perhaps with blind not literally meaning blind; perhaps with blind meaning more in the sense of “choosing not to look” - the forgiving moon. I like the idea of Letau being the blind moon. 

So let’s have letaU (leh-tah-oo) mean “unseeing (with connotation of choosing to ignore)”.

Keen-eyed moon is Chov, also meaning “watchful”.

And Low-lids moon is ca'pris, literally “half-eye”, which can also mean the expression of someone who is pretending not to watch but is watching very subtly. (Garak is the maaaaaster of ca'pris.)

Thoughts?

(I know the suffix for moon/satellite is -ok but it didn’t seem to fit. Perhaps if these three are being formally named, they’re letau-ok, Chovok, and ca'prisok?)

feltelures wrote: Oh, I like the idea of the deliberately forgiving moon, the one who knows but turns away. letaU it is! Chov is good, and mmmmmm, ca'pris–delicious! Though Garak spends quite a bit of time talking about letaU in ASIT, I can’t help but think he would identify with ca'pris quite a bit!

I like the idea of -ok being the official/scientific designation–that’s certainly the impression I got from the sourcebook. letaU, Chov, and ca'pris would make great common names.

cosmictuesdays asked:

Would there be any historical timekeeping based on Cardassian lunar cycles? Would any of that have survived to the present day, much as the common Western names for some of the days of the week come from Greek and Norse and Old English - Sun's Day, Moon's Day, Týr's Day, Odin's Day, Thor's Day, Freya's Day, Saturn's Day?

God, there MUST be, mustn’t there?

Mmmmph. Three moons, though. Wide-eyed moon, side-eye moon, blind moon. (Or something. Vyc knows.)

Perhaps the month rotates around the brightest time and darkest time, instead of a specific moon’s rotation.

Perhaps the length of months varies as the moons wax and wane. You’d have long months with big separations, and short months that might consist of only a week.

(Which, I remember, we worked out some time back would be thirteen days long. Because Cardassian memory can handle it no problem, and it works out neatly.)

God, what a bitch that would be. I love it, she said, enraptured. ^^

And most certainly the days would wear names that aren’t as meaningful as they might appear. I wonder if they’d have links to Hebitian myth? That seems pretty funny. :)

Anonymous asked:

Hey! I love your work with the Cardassian language, and I was wondering about units of time. Working off the assumption that a month is about 26 days and weeks are about half, I (unable to find "week" in your dictionary) used the term wen'jess, which should mean something like "small month". I did something similar for hours/minutes/seconds: Aws'peyka (big'timelarge) is hour, aws'pey (big'time) is minute, and wen'pey (small'time) is second. Do you guys have a better plan for this? Thanks!

I’m going to toss this one over to the lovely Vyc, who’s assumed primary responsibility for the language. What do you think, my dear?

drive.google.com

English-Kardasi dictionary.pdf

English-Kardasi Dictionary Version 0.5 (July 12/15)

[cardassianlanguage]

Did I say I was going to post this by the end of June? I totally meant by the end of July. Ahahaha…yeah….

Anyway! Here it is: Version 0.5 of the English-Kardasi dictionary based on the Cardassian language has created by me and tinsnip! Currently, it’s a work in progress, because we’re still putting together the language; you’ll probably notice some placeholders here and there. Also possibly a few mistakes/typos, so I’d welcome a heads-up if you find any.

At the moment, there aren’t any pronunciation notes included, which is largely why this isn’t a complete Version 1 release. I intend to add those in at some point, but at the moment, I need to take a bit of a rest. :D;;

Anyway! You can view or download the dictionary via the above link. Thanks for reading!

[vantarinitel]

It might work like Korean text, where each box is a word, but each little piece is a phonetic symbol. The gap between doing a flick down and a blank square is less different than serif and sans serif in style. All it requires is a pen with a wide beveled edge. :D