Dog Claws and Linguistics

No, one doesn't have anything to do with the other. They just happen to appear in the same post.

This morning, DH woke me up with the help of the pup. That, on the surface is cute and sweet and, you would think, and great way to wake up. It was, up until the point that the dog got overly-excited and the dog raked his paw over my face and my open eye. Yep, that's right, my eye was scratched by a dog's claw. It hurts, it itches, it's a little blurry, but I can pretty much see, so we're all good. Feels like there's something in my eye, but I can't rub it or anything.

Been doing a lot of work on the new book lately. I've got an 80+ page "world-building book", where I'm writing about the history and culture of the continent in my book. I also have a non-human race in my book, and I've been doing some linguistics studies to start developing a language for them.

Linguistics is fascinating. I've always loved words, and word-sounds, and how language changes and the seemingly arbitrary way words (which are basically a collection of letters and sounds) are assigned definitions, and how those developed. It's an amazing process, and I knew it was involved, but I had no idea that you couldn't just develop a language. I didn't count on "mother tongues" and "sound shifts" and all that jazz.

I won't be developing a mother-tongue, but I'll keep in mind the "old forms" of some of the words that I'm creating. I could see this turning into (1) an integral part of the book and (2) a completely addictive hobby.

I'll keep you updated on my progress. It's a lot of fun...if you're into that sort of thing.