User:Remousamavi

Gemorali Ethnographical Questionnaire

Dr. Zahar’s Ethnographical Questionnaire was compiled by David Zahir to help in the description of concultures, and can be found in the files section of the Conculture group at Yahoo.

Gemoarali

Geography

Gemoarali is a moonless world approximately 85% the size of Earth, with slightly less gravity. 45% of the planet's surface consists of plateau regions rising between 20 and 30 kilometers above ocean level, while the other 55% consists of an ocean only one kilometer deep at its deepest point. Scattered across this ocean are islands, which vary from small isles no bigger than a hillside to huge islands the size of Japan or New Zealand. These land masses are relatively smooth, with a few round topped mountains, and each island or group of isles has its own biome. The largest land masses are the plateaus, which start out as regular islands at the shorelines, and become huge jagged mountainscapes a few hundred kilometers in. At the edge of the plateau are enormous glaciers which literally cover the mountain peaks underneath them, and only end below the plateau edge itself. The plateau surfaces are utterly uninhabitable; the air at this altitude is very thin and cold stratospheric air, and the temperatures are well below freezing. The plateaus are only inhabited by mining facilities.

Climate

Gemoarali's seasons are very mild, and barely effect precipitation at all. The temperature varies by as little as five degrees Celsius, and in most factions, seasons have a history of being based solely on the wobble of Ywvai's path across the sky rather than any climatic extremes at all. The temperature is, on average, 25 to 30 degrees Celsius in most areas of Gemoarali except the polar regions which are on average -10 degrees Celsius. Rainstorms come in steady streams and drizzle most of the time, and rarely form large rain drops unless a disturbance exists in the area such as volcanic activity.

Natural Disasters

The most common occurrences on Gemoarali are quakes, landslides, and volcanos. People living on a plateau continent coastal region are in the biggest seismic activity zones, as well as being in danger of a landslide from high up the plateau's edge leveling their city. Volcanos, on the other hand, are scattered on and between the smaller islands. A volcanic eruption happening at the edge of a plateau will most likely trigger a series of avalanches on the surface.

Foods

The Gemoariese, as a whole, are a sea-faring race, and most of the foods they eat are fish or seaweeds. The few crops they grow on or near land resemble rice, and are grown on aquatic farms which can be located in lagoons or even in shallow regions of the ocean usually found near islands where the ocean current is weak and deposits sand and minerals. The marine life of Gemoarali, on the other hand, is an abundant variety of food. The most commonly eaten of these are known as Zyjuki (Shy-YOU-key), and are similar to the Orca Whale found on earth, only much smaller and with different skin patterns. Some of the rarest foods on Gemoarali can be found in grottos deep under the ocean, and most of which discovered only recently by small submersibles. Rarely will alcohol be used as a drink, and as tolerable as the Gemoariese culture is in most respects, drinking alcohol is generally frowned upon. The one alcohol that is used in a drink is Jonade (Yo-NAH-de), and is only presented on very special occasions such as weddings, graduations, and revolution ceremonies. Other drinks of honor are generally juices from rare plants.

Famine

Though in stable times Gemoarali's food distribution is relatively level, famine can occur during times of war, pandemics, and extreme natural disasters. When food levels drop far enough, the head faction Jufande (YOU-faun-DEH) issues a special order requiring all citizens to use their own food sources. Most traditional-culture people living in wooden huts with their own small farmland will have no problem with this, and have little if nothing at all to do with the food distribution system at all. People living in skyscraper cities will find the issue more of a threat, and so they prepare ahead of time by signing a deal with a farmer to send in extra long-lasting food to stockpile in vaults for the occasion.

Resources

The most abundant resource present on Gemoarali is the native flora, which is used in cooking and the wood as construction materials. Most of Gemoarali's suburbs exist as wooden huts and dirt roads on which to walk, with the occasional Cylogen antigravity two-seater hovercraft, the tram systems arching over the world on large pillars, and a few people carrying PDAs. Almost everywhere on Gemoarali, the most abundant resource is literally all around you. The most valuable, and yet the rarest materials on Gemoarali are metal ores. Most cities on Gemoarali are made of a plastic-like alloy manufactured on Cyloga, a highly sophisticated space-faring race whose allegiance to Gemoarali has always been controversial and never entirely answerable. There are traces of a possible native society who may have mined out most of the existing ores before going extinct or leaving Gemoarali. Most existing ores are mostly present in the oceanic regions.

Transportation

Being a world of many small islands, the Gemoariese favor aquatic vehicles. The most common of these are the same approximate size and quantity as Terran cars. The larger aquatic vehicles are variable in size, from ferry sized transporters that work as busses to giant floating islands thirty or forty decks tall which drift with the current and only move to avoid land. The few land vehicles are trams, usually monorails, which move in small webs between each major city of that particular landmass. Larger islands have more than one system, such as one system to travel between different regions of the landmass, and smaller ones to travel inside the region.

Territory

Gemoarali, being a planet, has no border; instead, territorial issues between Gemoarali and the other worlds are sorted out based on claim of planet, claim of star, and claim of orbital distances, among other more complex details. Gemoarali lays claim on Ywvai and its entire system from center of star to edge of gravitational influence.

Questions of Faith

What superstitions are common? What kinds of supernatural

events/beings do people fear?

Questions of Education

The Gemoariese Language

The primary language spoken throughout Gemoarali is, naturally, Gemoariese. The language is spoken by every faction, and is spoken as a primary in 24 factions, including Tajira, Bexanu, and Moranijanu. Five of the 24 Gemoariese-speaking factions, including Josohiji, have their own dialect for the language.

The Gemoariese language is modulated into syllables consisting of a consonant and a vowel, such as JA (YAH) and SI (SEE.) This formula is strict, and the writing system makes few provisions for codas or diphthongs. To transcribe SAN into Gemoariese, for example, would be SANU. The transcriptions for 'Shift' and 'Night' are ZI-FU-TU (SHEE-fu-tu) and NA-JI-TU (NA-EE-tu).

There are oddities and exceptions in this system, however. In Gemoariese, many verb endings, particles, and foreign names are spelled in Gemoariese writing as two characters but are pronounced with only one syllable. The particle NA, for example, is pronounced NYA. It also attaches itself to the word before, forming a new nasalized ending for the last vowel of the word: JE-MA-LE-JA-NA is pronounced EH-ma-LEI-YAN-ya. These unwritten sounds also appear in the form of guttural stops, such as JO-JO (OH-OH), JA-JA (AH-AH), and JU-JU (OOH-OOH), which often make up names of foods and animals. This does not happen to JE-JE or JI-Ji, which make JAY and JEE sounds, or other J-consonant syllables with different vowels, which form the diphthongs.

In two factions, Josohiji and Maruja, the language is pronounced a bit differently. In Josohiji, the syllables with the J-consonant, which are ordinarily pronounced with an English Y-consonant, or left with just the vowels, are instead pronounced like the R in Hiroshima, with an alveolar consonant. In Maruja, the vowels are dampened towards AH, making A E I U O become AH - EH - IH - UH - OO, and many oddities exist in which written or implied vowels are maintained.