From the Dhammapada

Food for thought on Memorial Day.

Na hi verena verani sammant' idha kudacanam, averena ca sammanti. Esa dhammo sanantano.

And, courtesy of the transliteration engine:

Rús Damapadwa-
Líz vé tónglipé tónglip tínghal húné,
wútónglipé tarth tínghal. Hí pot wuajhmes é.

And in English:

Not indeed by violence does violence ever cease in the here and now,
only by non-violence. This is a law eternal. 

A New Reference Publication

Great news!

For the first time since 2008, the Órgomphald has released a new reference work in bound book format. Titled An Órgom Silawa Reference, it consists only of a revised grammatical outline, the standard introductory course and an updated glossary, current as of the publication of this post. Obviously this is a departure from our normal m.o. since this volume lacks a selection of reading texts. Hopefully, making the reference portion of the Chrestomathy model available first in stand-alone form will encourage Ó.S. original composition and translation work. In that light, a further volume of texts and commentary is planned for release sometime in the coming year.

Check it out (and perhaps purchase your own copy) here.

Transliteration Engine

I've been working on a program to automatically convert text stored in an Ó.S. font compatible format to the standard romanization scheme. I'm pleased with my initial success, but there's work to be done. Here is what the program does so far:


-prompts the user for a text file to convert,
-executes a search-and-replace loop to change capitalized letters either to accented characters or the appropriate digraphs (as well as changing & to kwe),
-displays the results, and finally
-prompts the user for a file name to save the results to a new location.


Some things to work on:


-Sentence level capitalization,
-converting the (base five, if you'll recall) numerals to text or to base ten.


Here is a sample of its work.


Ó.S. text in its native alphabet:

The result of a raw font-change transliteration:

SImam hUn EU sut PlebsIgE & ad PoroDar.

And finally, the output of the program:

Transliteration: shímam hún éú sut phlebsígé kwe ad phorodhar.

Blog Retirement

Some time ago I switched most of my activity over to my new website. Since I've installed an "updates" feature that will allow me to merge the functions of a blog with the more flexible archive format of a website, I won't be needing this outlet any more. Needless to say, it will remain up for reference purposes. 

Láé gad!

Ryōkan Translation

A little translation project for old time's sake.

New Website Up!

Using Google Sites, I have put together a new website to hold all of the relevant information about my various language projects, especially Órgom Silawa. It has all sorts of goodies, including the first ever on-line lexicon of Órgom Silawa, and a peek at my newest language Kelemad Lim. Go check it out!

(ps.: Google docs is a must.)

New Entry in the Official Grammar

I have made a new entry in the Official Grammar of Órgom Silawa, filling a longstanding gap: reflexive pronouns. The new forms are related to the normal pronouns, and so should be easy to learn and use. The reflexive is formed by placing an s before the normal pronoun in question. They decline as usual (though the nominative is rare, it does exist.)

Here, then, is a breakdown of the forms:

[1st, 2nd, 3rd person]
sing, sang, séng  [singular]
sin, san, sén        [dual]
sidh, sadh, sédh  [plural]

(File this under sect. 2.3.4 of the grammar)

Happy reflexing!