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First let us start by saying we know nothing and this guide is just a feeble attempt at beginning a little document to help our fellow Latoans and our visitors understand and speak this developing Native tongue. Hopefully this guide will grow and expand as our Theocracies manifest their own dialects for each of their citizens. This record of our thoughts, language, and words is only now starting and as our history continues we wish to share those aspects of the Latoa language with all our friends and our Theocracies future citizens.

AN INTRODUCTION TO LT

We'll start with a simple yet so complex time, date, and calendar system you'll always be wondering, 'When is it, really?' Each day is broken down into six times. Yes only six times, so there is no need for watches or clocks, unless you've aspired to become 'Time' or maybe 'The Ministry of Shepul Tracking'. The six times are actually quite simple. They are broken down into two distinctions, the first being, 'Daytime' and oddly enough the second being, 'Nighttime'. Now the three Daytime time blocks are, 'Morning Watch', 'Forenoon Watch', and 'Afternoon Watch'. The next three time blocks are Nighttime, and they are 'First Watch', 'Middle Watch', and 'Two Dogs Watch'. Each block of Watch is about four hours if that makes any difference to you. So an example of 'Hey man, what time is it?' would be; 'It's Daytime, man, Forenoon Watch.' This would translate into roughly some chronological time between 8am and 12pm during the morning hours. For simplicities sake the 'Watch' may be dropped from casual conversations as its direct usage is more related to The Ministry of Homeland Security work and such.

With the time system now fully explained we come to the next largest block of Latoan Time, the day. Well, 'what day is it?' The answer on Latoa Island is easy, it's Tuesday, of course. Everyday is Tuesday. 'Ah, always Tuesday, you say'. 'Won't that get confusing?' 'Why, yes it will.', but here's how every day being Tuesday makes life better on Latoa. Every day is Tuesday, so you always know when things are happening, when something needs to get done, when it will be delivered, or when it's your turn to be start being the island monk. To help further confuse the rest of the world, each seven Tuesdays have a different color associated to them, in a repeating pattern of Black, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Red, White, Purple, and Mauve. Ok, the mauve was just for fun, couldn't resist the urge. Anyway each of the Tuesday blocks also has an animal associated with it to keep track of days during a moons phase. New moon to first quarter is chicken, first quarter to full moon is dog, full moon to third quarter is goat, and third quarter to new moon is cat. The seven Tuesdays also have an action between the color and the animal to track each of the seven individual days within the block. The actions are; 'resting' for Tuesday, 'fishing' for Wednesday, 'smoking' for Thursday, 'shaving' for Friday, 'drunken' for Saturday, 'spanking' for Sunday, and 'fucking' for Monday. Confused? Well let's use this new system in an example and try to make things easier for your transition into island time.

'What time and day is it?' asks a fellow Latoan or a visiting Shepul. 'Why it's Black drunken goat Tuesday, Daytime, Forenoon (Watch)' you offer in answer. Now with this sentence we can see that there may be a little confusion in translating the exact time of year it is, so that brings us to the next part of the time, date, and calendar system of Latoa, the month.

It should go without saying but here on our Island we don't use traditional months. Why would we want to make things less complicated at this point? What we do use is a moon phase time system, so our moons are thirteen in number for the entire year. They all have various animal action names to describe the mood of the moon. Not all moons have the same colored Tuesdays, and every so often the Tuesday colors will shift within the moon from year to year. I'll put these in a chart so they are a little more easily understood and so that everyone knows when to change into their new moon special hat or mask. (Changing of the moon hats or masks is a sacred Latoan tradition and always includes everyone in the village. It's presided over by the passing moons monk.)

Each of the Latoan Moon Times are 28 days long, and any adjustments to the time passage calendar will be made up during Coyote Hiding Moon. That is the time of year we will reset the cosmic clock to match the stars and so forth. Blah, Blah, Witchy Wizardry stuff and such…

The current Latoan year is the 4th (Wheel time is desending) of the Phoenix Exodus. Our new Wheel starts with the return of the Cat Dancing Moon. In Shepul time at the time of this writing, today is November 26, 2003; at about 8am. To translate today into Latoan Time (referred to hereafter as LT) it would be Daytime, Forenoon, Blue Chicken Fishing Tuesday, Chicken Throwing Moon, in the 6th Wheel of the Phoenix Exodus (or PE6). Remember that New moons start a new Latoan Moon Time.

One last thing about the cycle of colors for the Tuesdays is that just about on every Red Tuesday falls some type of High Day Celebration. Good to know that for staying in contact with your old Shepul.

Any suggestions the Theocracies have about the calendar are extremely welcome. The Monkey Master can't do it all by himself. We put down the stuff written in my notes and what we've remembered from various conversations with other Latoans during our history of drunken stupors together. If something doesn't look right feel free to change it to meet your own Theocracy's needs. We can discuss final versions at the next Council of Ministries drunken play fest.

A WORD TO WORD TRANSLATION OF TERMS