rikchik

pgadey

Rikchik-Home is a smaller planet than Earth, but denser. It's also hotter and wetter than Earth, with lots of jungles and grassy plains, deserts maybe near the equator, and not much arctic. There's only one major continent, which is handy since rikchiks can't swim. pgadey points out that the modifier aspect of Ground meaning "red" implies that it's iron-rich, like Mars, which makes a lot of sense to me.

As mentioned, one of the main kinds of terrain on Rikchik-Home is grassy plains. The modifier of Grass means "yellow", implying that most grass is at least yellow-ish (or as pgadey says, "the color of wheat"). Grass is also one of the length measurement units - in its idea aspect, it's a "blade" which is about 9.5 inches. I had previously thought of this as the length of a blade of grass, but pgadey points out that the glyph for Ninja implies larger grass.

Based on "The Universal Ninja Puzzle" from Phil Foglio's sci-fi comic Buck Godot, Rikchiks had a class of stealthy warriors which we refer to as "ninja". The symbol for Ninja is a circle among grass-blades. If the circle represents the eye of a ninja with its globe on the ground, it would imply that rikchik grass is about 3 feet high. If the circle represents the entire globe of a ninja standing in grass, then that grass must be about 10 feet high. In that case the "blade" measurement could be the width of a blade of grass, for a 1:12 aspect ratio which seems reasonable. As I said to pgadey, "I think I have to go with this interpretation simply because it is more awesome."

There is also the grass-crawler to consider. A grass-crawler "has a small body with a front-facing mouth, seven long, flat legs, and an eye on a very long stalk that allows it to see over the tall grasses that it lives in." Previously, that meant a 10-inch long eyestalk - crawlers were about cat-sized. But if grass is 10 feet high, that stalk must be similarly sized, which scales up the entire creature. Crawlers are now twice the height of rikchiks, and their bodies are 1-2 feet wide. Quoting myself again, "This is also much more awesome."

Edited to add: a bad picture of a crawler, with some low-detail rikchiks for scale.

rikchik

conlangs

This has two new structures in it. The first is specifying a span that has been going on for a while but is still going. If it wasn't still going, I could have used After to say "A long span that now is after". Instead, I had the span include now and also be generically "before" though I don't say what it's before. "Now" seems like a reasonable default for the arguments of After.

The second is specifying the "watcher" (would be listener in a spoken language). That doesn't really connect to the rest of the sentence semantically, so I had to basically add "is what I say to Mr. Anderson" after the main clause. Does this seem like a good solution?

cnoocy

Rhyme in Rikchik is based on the Rikchik set of phonemes. This is also the system by which the Morphemes by glyph and the Morpheme Quick List is sorted. This is the native Rikchik ordering for morphemes. Every tentacle in a word is an expression of exactly one morpheme. To start with, take a look at the 13 Rikchik morphemes:

1. 
   Circle is straightforward. All four tentacles in the morpheme Home are Circles.
   
2. 
   Line is a simple straight line. Seven and Ground are both composed entirely of Lines.
   
3. 
   Squiggle is the S-shape or its reverse, as in the two lower tentacles in Tree .
   
4. 
   Arc is a section of circle, but note that Elliptical Arc and Great Arc are separate morphemes. All of the non-circle tentacles in Beast or Sound are Arcs.
   
5. 
   Elliptical Arc, or Ellarc, is a section of an ellipse. Happy is composed of an Ellarc, a Circle, and two Lines.
   
6. 
   Great Arc is a section of the largest possible circle that fits in the morpheme space. Rock , Choice , and Eye all contain Great Arcs.
   
7. 
   Wicket is a 180-degree arc with equal lines extending from the ends. All the tentacles in Flower are Wickets.
   
8. 
   Hook is a 180-degree arc with a line extending from one end. Fruit contains a Hook.
   
9. 
   L-Bend is a line with a single 90-degree turn. There are two L-Bends in Gear .
   
10. 
    Halfhook is a 90-degree arc with a line extending from one end. Change and Exchange both contain Halfhooks.
    
11. 
    Zigzag is a line with two opposite 90-degree turns. Two contains two Lines and Zigzags.
    
12. 
    Fishbend is a 135-degree arc with lines extending from both ends. Unsurprisingly, two Fishbends appear in Fish .
    
13. 
    Lobe is a 180-degree arc with a 90-degree elliptical arc extending from one end. Lobe appears in the aspect Name .
    

The rule of rhyme in Rikchik is that two words rhyme if their morphemes are composed of the same four phonemes. The order, position, or configuration of the morphemes has no effect, nor does any inflection tentacle. Happy , Mouth , and Night all rhyme, for example, as do Sad , Share , and Tree . Two lines of poetry rhyme if they end in rhyming words.

Sorting is based on this same classification, with the addition of order. The order of morphemes given above is the order. As in rhyme, the order, position, and configuration of the morphemes has no affect. Morphemes that sort earlier are more significant for sorting than ones that sort later. That is, a morpheme with one Circle and three Arcs comes before one with one Circle, one Arc, and two Great Arcs.