NaNoGenMo-2020 submission
K. is Lazy.
A Kafkaesque, esoteric, Nano NaNoGenMo, Meow inspired epizeuxical "lengthy work of fiction" attempt in Lazy-K.
"A short while later, K. was lying in his bed. He very soon went to sleep, but before he did he thought a little while about his behaviour, he was satisfied with it but felt some surprise that he was not more satisfied."
Important note on pronunciation: For the purposes of this project, 'K.' refers to Franz Kafka's fictional character Josef K., and is to be pronounced as the German letter: 'kah'.
- Interpreter Lazy-K
- pandoc
- Hebrew / Yiddish font: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cardo
- Hittite font (UllikumiA): https://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/cuneifont/
- Arabic font (KacstOffice): https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/kacstoffice
The main source files for the various novels are named K-IS_*.lazy
There is a Makefile to perform basic tasks for each novel.
It assumes the is a compiled Lazy-K interpreter named lazy avaiable in $PATH , you will need to
export PATH=$PATH:~/LazyK or similar.
make output lang=en will produce the English version of the novel.
make count lang=en will count the words in the novel.
make sample lang=en will output a truncated sample of the novel, so you get the idea.
make sample provides a sample for every .lazy novel in this project.
make pdf lang=de will produce the output, and pass it through pandoc to generate a PDF in output/, including a title pulled from titles.csv and the Lazy-K source as a preface.
- English: First version in Lazy-K.
- German: Translating into the original language Kafka used to write 'The Trial'. Faul is used for lazy. Kafka uses this word in chapter 3 to refer to die Beamten
- Latin: A version with a different structure due to grammar. ... est.
- Catalan: Testing whether Lazy-K can produce Unicode output: "K. és mandrós" Yes!
- Yiddish: Primarily because I wanted to test RTL layouts in PDF and push Unicode output, but reflects Kafka's Ashkenazi heritage. Yiddish פויל (foyl) is close to the German faul. Noticed that Semitic aphabets'
Kis ~Kafand that Kafka's name is 'Kaf' + 'Kah' I'd be interested to know if there is any analysis of the letter symbolism in Kafka's choice of character name related to both syllables of his surname. - Hittite: Taking Unicode usage to an obscure extreme. I chose an Akkadogram QA for K. because Akkadian is the earliest attested Semitic language, it resembles the letter K, and the Akkadian word QATU means hand, which is the origin meaning of the letter in both Arabic and Hebrew (although I can't find a reference that makes a link to Akkadian directly). I could not find a Hittite word for 'lazy', so used one which means 'dirty' in a 'worthy-of-reproach' sense. Iskunanz is on the linguistic Swadesh list
To suggest a version in another language
- Equivalant abbreviated K. name (K / Kah / Kaf letter)
- 3rd person singular form of is lazy (or 'is {another verb}'.)
- Grammatical structure in the form of:
{begin-text} {repeated-middle} {end-text}.