Here I am

 Here I am

I've long wanted to write things -- essays, short stories, etc. -- and put them out there, but I never really felt ready. I suppose the right time has now come.

If you're reading this, you likely know me as Bouncy, or Bouncy[alliterative noun]. While I am quite fond of the name Bouncy, it is obviously a screen name -- people don't usually call me Bouncy in real life, unless we happened to meet online.

I chose the pseudonym Ngansuril a few years ago now, while I was coming up with new words for Niváki (one of my constructed languages). I figured it would be nice to use a Niváki pen name, so I chose the first name Asikea (Asi for short), giving the full name: Asikea Ngansuril. Note that Niváki is a head-initial language, like French or Welsh, and so family names are usually written after given names.

The Niváki writing system uses logographic characters, or inisa (秘字), which are borrowed from the Chinese writing system in a similar fashion to hanja and kanji, though without any borrowed readings (the process of adapting Chinese characters ought to be the subject of its own essay). Asikea Ngansuril is rendered in inisa as 雪梟梦木. Asikea ('snow-owl') is the name given to a species of owl similar to the Ural owl. Ngansuril ('dreaming-tree') refers to the gingko tree, which the Samri (the people who speak Niváki) sometimes sleep under to receive wisdom in their dreams.

When adapting characters for use in Niváki, aesthetics is the main thing I focus on. If I don't like how a character looks, or if I prefer one form over another, then I will select accordingly. For writing ngansuril, I chose the character 梦 over its counterpart 夢. I did this because I find the two 木 at the top of 梦 to be more evocative. This does, however, mean that I have to constantly switch between input methods when I'm writing digitally, which is a fun language exercise in and of itself. For example, typing 梦木 requires me to enter "meng[space]mu", while 雪梟 requires me to switch to the Japanese input method and type "yuki[space]fukurou".

That's all I have to say for now. Here's to (hopefully) many years of writing!

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