“Things Every Southern Woman Should Know How to Make”

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Alice clicked on the headline, mildly curious about what yet another stranger thought should be in her kitchen repertoire. Pictures of China plates mounded with crispy fried chicken, greens, cobbler, and a pile of biscuits a mile high flooded the screen, all set off with a pitcher of sweet tea beaded with condensation. The table was set; an apron draped off to the side next to a box labeled “Gramma’s Recipes” in fine calligraphy. She closed the browser and put away her tablet. She was born a Georgia peach, but she couldn’t make a cobbler to save her life. Did that mean she wasn’t southern? Or maybe just not “Southern.” For Alice, there was no recipe box full of family traditions. Her younger years were filled with rental homes in different states and her father’s voice coaxing her toward a text book rather than a cookbook. Metalworking and fabrication held more interest than learning to flambé or sauté. Did it make her less of a woman that her cooking skills consisted of fresh salads...
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Putting Linguistics Classes to Good Use

One day, I had a wandering brain moment and decided I needed my own language for my stories. I knew right away that it wasn't an elven language, but it was something ancient, forgotten, and tied to magic.  I wanted something I could use across various stories in different ways.  For example, I have a character who speaks it when he's upset, but in another story, the main character uses it only when performing a spell. It's not the words themselves that are magic; there must be talent and intent behind them or they're just words.

I needed a language that was different, so I used loosely the rules I learned from the linguistics classes I took in college.  (Love linguistics, btw.  It's algebra for words!)  I selected sentence structure, created tense markers, negative markers, placed vowel restrictions on myself, and went to work.

I've got around a dozen phrases and two hundred words, some of which I've yet to designate a meaning.  It's good to have extras.  I never know what a character's going to say until they say it, so it's nice to have something on hand if I don't already have a translation.  And I have a translation!   I forget sometimes what they mean myself.

While building my base vocabulary, I discovered another use for my new language:  to make my cousin's head hurt.  Hehehe.

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