I’ve finally figured it out! This is something that’s been stumping me for the past couple of months, and it took three days of scouring the internet for useful graphs and then combining them into one of my own, here:
click to visit larger image Fenekere Harmonic Series From The Fenworks |
Speakers of Fenekere typically measure everything in harmonics, in relation to some wave form. Visible light, for instance, is measured as harmonics of a deep infrared wave with a wavelength of 546,000nm. But for learning the language, you don’t need to know that. Also, a little later in the fictional history, they developed a more conventional measuring system (which I’ll tackle later).
The important thing is this!
Colors and musical notes correspond, and use the same scale. The naming convention is based on that.
Harmony itself is ‘ekehele – the “Artist” of Harmonics.
Light itself is ‘erele’e.
Sound itself is nemeneme.
So, Red is generally described as the first harmonic step of visible light:
ef’uu’ekuhela ‘erile’o /ɛfʔuuʔɛkuhɛla ʔɛɹilɛʔo/ – The first harmony of the product of light.
And the tonic note (say, C) is generally described as the first harmonic step of sound:
ef’uu’ekuhela neminemo /ɛfʔuuʔɛkuhɛla nɛminɛmo/ – The first harmony of the product of sound.
Of course, with music, you’ll need to tell the musicians what key you’re in, which I’ll work out how to do some day. The important thing to realize is that the tonic note can end up being anything, depending on what this scale is a harmonic of.
Anyway! You can shorten it. If someone is confused by the short version, they’ll ask, and then you specify that you’re talking about harmonies by repeating the long version above.
Colors:
ef’uu’erile’o – red
ed’uu’erile’o – orange-red
el’uu’erile’o – orange
et’uu’erile’o – yellow
ew’uu’erile’o – green
es’uu’erile’o – blue
You may note, looking at the chart in the graphic link above, that these names correspond with the numbers (and letters) of the Fenekere alphabet, and that there are colors in between. And, it turns out that Fenekere seems to have more words for Orange than any other color! But you can dial it in. Say, you want to talk about a specific hue of blue. You use the decimal system. When talking about harmonics, the Fenekere number system is interpreted a little differently.
When you say es’apuu’erileo, you are not saying, “the 6Eth harmonic of visible light” (in base 31). You are actually saying, “The sixth harmonic of the 14th harmonic of visible light.” (Though, I may need the help of a mathematician to make sure I’m getting this right).
Any, the musical notes work in the same way:
ef’uuneminemo – C
ed’uuneminemo – C sharp
ev’uuneminemo – D
eh’uuneminemo – D sharp
ew’uuneminemo – E
ej’uuneminemo – F
es’uuneminemo – G
ey’uuneminemo – Middle C
On that end of the scale, you don’t get A or B. But, there are 31 steps, and if you keep going, you do run into those notes above Middle C. It also starts to look like a regular 16 step harmonic scale up there. In any case, if you’re curious, you can refer to my graph above.
All of these notations will be entered into my online dictionary by the time it’s ready to go public.
But now I can do colors!
In other news, I’ve started work on importing most of the taxonomic tree of life into Fenekere. So, we’ll be able to talk about the yellow tiny watery theropods!
Color and Musical Harmony in Fenekere originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2014/08/24.