WW #2: Season Well

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Muipido developed the first accurate solar calendar, dividing the 345-day year into twenty months of 17 or 18 days based on the lunar cycle. This calendar was borrowed by Kharul, who calqued most of the words and phrases related to it, so calendar-related vocabulary has a similar structure in Muipidan and Kharulian.

The Muipidan calendar grouped the months into five “seasons”, each consisting of three 17-day months followed by one 18-day month. The Muipidans called these seasons naok’odo ne-fendi [ˈna.ɔˌkʼo.do nɛˈfɛ.ⁿdi], which just means “group of four months”. Muipidan makes words for groups of a certain size by adding the kup’o (collective) class to a numeral, in this case nao “four”, producing naok’odo “group of four”; ne-fendi is the word for “month” with the genitive marker ne-.

Kharul borrowed the phrase as ugyenraghmat [u.ɟɛn.raʝˈmat], which is ugyen “four” plus raghmat “month”, so, again, “group of four months”. Raghmat is literally “act of shining” (from the verb root raghyam “to shine”), and can refer either to the full moon (when the shining is strongest) or to the period between full moons.

As an extra worldbuilding note: Meamoria has two moons (isn’t this a requirement for conworlds?), but one is much brighter and larger in the sky than the other. Most cultures, including Muipido, based their calendars on only the cycles of the large moon. But sooner or later, we’ll meet the Nitherians, who developed a double-lunar calendar, based entirely on the phases of the two moons.

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