Darkovan Dictionary

Zine
Title:	Darkovan Dictionary
Publisher:	John Shimwell, out of Mountain View, CA
Editor(s):
Type:
Date(s):	1985-ish
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Darkover
Language:	English, and presumably Darkovan
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Darkovan Dictionary was created by John Shimwell.

a December 1990 flyer

It was offered for sale in very early 1986 (and perhaps earlier), and was out-of-print by at least September 1989: "John Shimwell did compile a Darkovan part-grammar, part-dictionary, but it is out-of-print --that is, the original manuscript is now in such poor shape that it can't be duplicated again." This statement was repudiated in a December 1990 flyer by John Shimwell that was printed in Darkover Newsletter #21.

Shimwell wrote a letter to Darkover Newsletter in September 1986 and explains some Darkovan language terms. Ann Sharp replied: "John is the the one to write about Darkover dictionaries. To our knowledge, he is the person who has done the most work in this area."

Shimwell died less than a year after publishing the three-volume set.

Originally One Volume, Then Three

The original edition of this fanwork in 1986 was one volume.

In 1990, it was sold as part of a three volume set: "Darkovan Dictionary Part One" ("Terran to Casta"), "Darkovan Dictionary Part Two" ("Livara Das: Cast'al Terranan") and "Casta for Beginners."

The first two volumes appear to be about the conlang that Marion Zimmer Bradley created. The third volume's focus is "the words that didn't appear in Marion's book."

Description

The culmination of more than three years' work, this Darkover "trilogy" presents, for the first time, the full beauty and harmony of casta in a form which clearly displays its potential for poetic flow, intimate communication, and, of course, insults-it is one of the creative pursuits of educated Darkovans to invent double-meanings of their own, especially if these can be used as insults in derogatory mode against one's own enemies and, of course, the Terrans.

THE DARKOVAN DICTIONARY: Volume 1, a companion volume to "CASTA FOR BEGINNERS," appeared almost three years after I first sat down with a blank loose-leaf book and a liberal supply of confidence, Ridenow laran, optimism, and-dare I say it-ignorance! What I begin I try to finish, and six months after its completion, Volume 2, the Cast'al Terranan, was also ready.

Volume 1 contains some 12,000 entries from pronouns to proverbs, and turned out to be a remarkably consistent, flexible, and beautiful language. Even though this is "unofficial" casta, it is at least a more-or-less -complete version, and amply justifies MZB's original premise that Spanish and Scots Gaelic would, in the unique environment of Darkover, merge to become an alien language in its own right. At any rate, this magnum opus has her blessing. Even though she continues to derive any necessary vocabulary intuitively, all her words are included (up to Thendara House), with book references. In fact, many of her choices were instrumental in shaping the final form of the language as I now perceive it.

Volume 2 contains basically the same entries in casta word-order (although not in casta script!). My original idea that each word of casta had only one meaning turned out to be false, but because the various renderings of a single word can often be accommodated on one line, this volume is much more concise (or should I say, compact?) than its predecessor. To make both books the same length, I added three valuable appendices of interest to Darkovans everywhere, whether working for the Empire or in exile on Terra: the Oath of the Free Amazons, Darkovan proverbs, and even the Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda (yes, it still rhymes in casta!).

CASTA FOR BEGINNERS: When I first began to wonder what the rest of casta looked like (the words that didn't appear in Marion's books), I didnt imagine that it would take me nearly two Terran years of work before I found out! CASTA FOR BEGINNERS is a 200-page Xerox'd book, spiral bound in suitable Bloody Sun red covers. It is a basic do-it-yourself casta course designed to be understood by even the dimmest of Terran Empire employees. (You the reader, therefore, have a considerable advantage!) The course begins with simple concepts and takes the student all the way through to complex tenses, intimate and derogatory mode, and a brief look at Hellers dialect. Each section is well illustrated with worked examples, and ends with a reading passage and a self-test set of questions, whose answers are given at the end of the book. There is a summary of the most essential points of the grammar, and a thousand-word vocabulary in both casta and Terran word-order.