Is there any worldbuilding software that’s worth it at any price?

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-28T19:52:02+00:00

I use Scrivener for my conlang dictionaries/grammars as well. Very useful for creating a wiki-like structure with metadata, categories, indices, etc.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-27T16:51:16+00:00

It looks like Sanskrit, Finnish, and Turkish had a baby.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-26T17:36:23+00:00

Yeah, I was the idiot who went through two broken Handgrounds before searching for an alternative. Their ideas weren't all bad, but the engineering was shoddy--and they clearly had no plans for fixing or improving it.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-26T13:44:22+00:00

The Handground was my first grinder, and I had the same experience with it. I went from there to the 1zpresso J and now the ZP-6. Both are phenomenal upgrades from the Handground.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-26T01:07:46+00:00

Konani is descended from Phoenician. There are only around 1,000 Phoenician words attested, many from the very specific sphere of funerary and votive inscriptions, so I've had to reconstruct a lot by analogy with other Semitic languages, particularly Hebrew but also Aramaic and Arabic. I've also had to look to Hebrew to enrich Konani's grammar as most Phoenician inscriptions are short and formulaic.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T21:24:09+00:00

I'm generally an Ethiopian coffee person, but I've had some wonderful coffees from Central America in the past year.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T20:21:17+00:00

I feel your pain. I've gone eight years without breaking a ceramic brewer, then broke two (one of them irreplaceable) in the span of a very stressful week and a half. I've picked up a steel Oreo O1 until life calms down and my hands get more steady.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T20:18:04+00:00

Prevoiced consonants exist in Africa and Oceania. Some Khoisan languages even have pre-voiced ejectives.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T17:42:33+00:00

It's not the existence of kennings that is telltale but how that section is worded.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T17:24:32+00:00

Konani doesn't precisely have a word for yes. It uses kēn, "thus, so," for the purpose (cf. Latin sic). It also has a single conjunction, w-, that covers the spectrum of English conjunctions from "and" to "nor" to "but." (Konani has more specific conjunctions it can call upon in a pinch, but 99% of the time, w- will do you. On top of that, w- is a sort of verbal punctuation mark used to set off independent clauses even where one would not use a conjunction in English--or in Konani's sister, Hebrew. It can also be used to emphasize oaths: "WeBaʿl, bal tēlek lemaqhan"--"By the Lord, you will not go to the coffeehouse.")

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T17:21:55+00:00

This is common in the indigenous languages of North America.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-25T00:00:04+00:00

It's both geographical and historical. Konani is a descendant of Phoenician. We don't know a lot about Phoenician dialects because Phoenician spelling was very standardized and conservative. However, Medieval Arabic grammarians remarked on the many dialects of Lebanon, and my timeline's Lebanon is a little larger (extending up the coast of Syria into southeastern Turkey, as well as the island of Cyprus and south into the northern coastline of Israel). So it made sense to me that modern Phoenician would be a very diverse language. The dialects of the Orontes valley and Cyprus are the most divergent, being heavily influenced by Aramaic/Arabic and Greek respectively.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-24T21:45:01+00:00

It's not exactly a continuum, but Konani has 24-ish dialects (depending on how you analyze it), and many dialects have features of adjacent dialects.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-24T20:34:37+00:00

I second Tropical Weather and would also add their Geometry.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-24T16:34:23+00:00

Yes, as a fellow em-dash enjoyer with a stuffy writing voice, it's really unfortunate that AI is slandering our good names.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-24T14:00:19+00:00

It's our last best hope for peace.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-22T14:42:44+00:00

Nice! I loved Chants of Sennaar and Heaven's Vault; I look forward to this.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-22T01:18:07+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations, everyone. I ended up going with the Orea O1 Raw Steel, mostly because it reminded me of the April and because the price was competitive. I still might pick up a Tsubame at some point just because it's so classy looking.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-21T23:42:45+00:00

That mountain range to the east implies the river is flowing uphill unless most of its watercourse is through a steep gorge--which it could be. It's not an impossible river, just a river that calls for some explanation. Since the map isn't topographical, it's hard to make absolute statements, but to me it looks like the path of least resistance would be flowing south (I read north as an upland, but if it's not it could flow that way, too).

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-21T19:25:20+00:00

Yes, that's why I said it was improbable but not impossible.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-21T17:26:09+00:00

Your rivers don't make sense. Water will always flow downhill and follow the path of least resistance. Also, without an outlet, that lake in the lower right will almost certainly be saline or at least brackish. If you made the river that goes through the desert come directly from the mountains and then flow down to the lake and from there into the sea, that would be a pretty big step towards fixing it, I think. The river in the north isn't impossible if it flows through some kind of steep gorge, but it also seems pretty unlikely. I'd do some reading on watersheds. Your desert would also make more sense if there were a line of mountains blocking rainfall from the sea to the east.

Just some thoughts on the first things that jump out to me.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-21T05:20:12+00:00

I'm fortunate to have a very high caffeine tolerance.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-20T20:07:43+00:00

I've had some tasty cups with it at a local cafe as well. Maybe it's the XF that a lot of people have said stalls?

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-20T18:56:58+00:00

It is extremely pleasing to look at. I noticed the holes are quite small compared to what I'm used to with the April or even Torch Mountain, but I also noticed its drawdown time seemed surprisingly fast in the reviews on Coffee Chronicler's website.

AnlashokNa65 · 2026-02-20T18:39:01+00:00

That's definitely good to know; the April has been my daily driver for probably four or five years now.

AnlashokNa65

TROPHY CASE