conlang
Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:47:51 -0800
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/GSaulB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> There are 25 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Re: Semi-OT: Conlanging in application forms? From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2. Re: Semi-OT: Conlanging in application forms? From: Estel Telcontar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3. Germanic links From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4. Re: conlang names From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5. Re: conlang names From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 6. Re: conlang names From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7. Re: conlang names and Mensa From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 8. Re: conlang names From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9. Re: Devanagari handwriting? From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11. Re: partial letter replacement in languages? From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12. Nonsense Words From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 13. Re: conlang names From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 14. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 15. Re: German style orthography From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 16. OT: FWIW: University Exploration Days From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 17. Re: Devanagari handwriting? From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 18. Re: Babel Text in Xinkutlan From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 19. OT: Of Angles and Saxons From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 20. Re: OT: Of Angles and Saxons From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 21. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 22. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 23. Re: Babel Text in Xinkutlan From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 24. Re: Nonsense Words From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 25. Conlanging with Dick and Jane From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:47:49 -0500 From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Semi-OT: Conlanging in application forms? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Henrik Theiling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Hi! > > Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>... >> For the 1,000,001st time, what would you call "conlanging" in >> application forms? > > I'd call it 'interest in grammar theory'. :-P > > For the creativity part, I'd then paraphrase it a bit so that it > does not sound profane: Profane? Profane? :) So there are sacred and profane ways of filling out forms in German? I thought so. > E.g. 'Entwurf von Sprachen zur Erforschung der grammatischen > Grundlagen in verschiedensten Sprachfamilien.' And then Heinrik says: > Hi! Hi! Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> Glossopoeia. Language invention. > > I'd say the problem with that one is that is might scare away > the person that reads it. I doubt it's well-known. And when > looking it up, they find 'language invention'. And then they > might think: 'So, that li'l chap wanted to sound smart.' > > No, I would not use that. Okay, then why not Geheimsprache? :) :) von der Wiege bis zur Bahre, Formulare, Formulare. :) S. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:30:58 -0500 From: Estel Telcontar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Semi-OT: Conlanging in application forms? Carsten Becker ha tera a: >For the 1,000,001st time, what would you call "conlanging" in application forms. I've called it "creative linguistics", ordering it after, "creative writing" in my list of hobbies. -Estel ______________________________________________________ Få den nye Yahoo! Messenger på http://no.messenger.yahoo.com/ Nye ikoner og bakgrunner, webkamera med superkvalitet og dobbelt så morsom ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:42:09 -0500 From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Germanic links Very interesting selection, perhaps of some use to germaniconlangers, if they don't already know it: http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/linkspage.htm ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 20:15:01 +1300 From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: conlang names On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:13, # 1 wrote: > I've started my first conlang but I encountered a problem: the name > > > What do you take as names? I've always made my conlangs as part of an SF conworld. For two reasons, to justify the names, and to give background. Consequently, the names are generally related to salient features of the concultures. Vheratsho's people the Lakhabrech call themselves the Free Blood, ergo they speak the Free Speech. Praleyo's unpretentious people call themselves the Fisheaters, ergo they speak the local Coastal Language; etc. > > It is logic when you call it by the name of the imaginary people who speak > it but I don't have any history about my conlang. > > > There is also the possibility to call it with one of the words of tha > language like "esperanto" but for me I don't know wich one take and if I > make a bad choice I would consider it as a lack of originality... Use the word "no" in translation. that's got a long history of use among linguists - for example, I speak the northern european language No, as opposed to the southern european/western mediterranean language No; both of which are different from but related to the northern european language Non, and the middle european language Nein which is however related to the northern european language No. No is however related to Ekkert, which is not related to Ei, another language spoken in Scandinavia. No (southern european) is closely related to Nao, also a southern european/western mediterranean language. Neither of these is related to La or Lo', both of which played a major role in its eflorescence of culture during the middle ages. La shares a common script with Nakheyr and Nahi; it used to share a common script with Degil, but Kemil Ataturk changed that. In the meantime Nahi is very closely related to Nahi, but doesn't share the same script. Anyone tell me what languages I'm referring to? > > > Where do you take your ideas for your conlang names? -- Wesley Parish * * * Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish * * * Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:38:49 +0200 From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: conlang names Here's a nice challenge for Saturday morning... > -----Original Message----- > From: Constructed Languages List > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wesley Parish > Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 9:15 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: conlang names > > > On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:13, # 1 wrote: > > I've started my first conlang but I encountered a problem: the name > > > > [snip] > Use the word "no" in translation. that's got a long history > of use among linguists - for example, I speak the northern > european language No English , as opposed to the southern > european/western mediterranean language No; Spanish both of which are > different from but related to the northern european language > Non French , and the middle european language Nein German which is however > related to the northern european language No. English again No is however > related to Ekkert, Icelandic which is not related to Ei, another > language spoken in Scandinavia. Finnish > No (southern european) is closely related to Nao, also a > southern european/western mediterranean language. Portuguese Neither of > these is related to La Arabic or Lo', Hebrew both of which played a major > role in its eflorescence of culture during the middle ages. > La shares a common script with Nakheyr Farsi and Nahi; Not quite sure, but is it Urdu? it used to > share a common script with Degil Turkish , but Kemil Ataturk changed > that. In the meantime Nahi is very closely related to Nahi, > but doesn't share the same script. So if I'm right about Urdu, I guess Hindi. > > Anyone tell me what languages I'm referring to? > > > -- > Wesley Parish > * * * > Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish > * * * > Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" > You ask, "What is the most important thing?" > Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." > I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." > ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:30:55 +0100 From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: conlang names Quoting Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > which is not related to Ei, another > > language spoken in Scandinavia. > Finnish "No" is _ei_ in Finnish? That's a bit close to Swedish _ej_ "not" for comfort ... Andreas ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:34:18 -0800 From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: conlang names and Mensa On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 08:12:28PM -0800, Arthaey Angosii wrote: > Emaelivpeith Ph. D.: > > At that age, boys > > often are interested in ciphers and secret writing. (Do many girls > > do that? I don't remember any doing so.) > > In fourth grade, my best friend and I made up a cipher (actually, I > made it up and taught it to her). I took each English captial letter, > split it in half vertically, and reversed the ordering of the two > halves. We wrote notes to each other in it, without fear of classmates > or teachers reading them. I called the cipher "Doc," which is the word > "code" reversed, minus the E. =-O =-O =-O This was EXACTLY how I arrived at my first conscript/cipher. Except that after reversing the halves, I extended some lines and tweaked some strokes to make the letters easier to write/distinguish between lookalikes. I wouldn't be surprised if it even looked the same. Perhaps it's even mutually intelligible! :-) (Unfortunately, I've long since forgotten it, so we can't do a comparison anymore.) Is this _tikleisha_ or what! :-) > By fifth grade, I realized Doc wasn't so great, so I mangled each Doc > character a bit farther from its origins and called the new cipher > Weird. My cousin learned it and we wrote letters to one another for a > summer. [...] Heh. I had no one to write the cipher to, so it ended up being used for writing sooper sekrit computer game solutions that I discovered on my own and other such boyhood things. :-P (Yup, back in the days when I was a gamer.) T -- Notwithstanding the eloquent discontent that you have just respectfully expressed at length against my verbal capabilities, I am afraid that I must unfortunately bring it to your attention that I am, in fact, NOT verbose. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 22:31:00 +1300 From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: conlang names On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 20:38, Shaul Vardi wrote: > Here's a nice challenge for Saturday morning... And you got it right! Do you like Guinness? If you do and we're ever in the same town, it's my shout! > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Constructed Languages List > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wesley Parish > > Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 9:15 AM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: conlang names > > > > On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:13, # 1 wrote: > > > I've started my first conlang but I encountered a problem: the name > > [snip] > > > Use the word "no" in translation. that's got a long history > > of use among linguists - for example, I speak the northern > > european language No > > English > > , as opposed to the southern > > > european/western mediterranean language No; > > Spanish > > both of which are > > > different from but related to the northern european language > > Non > > French > > , and the middle european language Nein > German > > which is however > > > related to the northern european language No. > > English again > > No is however > > > related to Ekkert, > > Icelandic > > which is not related to Ei, another > > > language spoken in Scandinavia. > > Finnish > > > No (southern european) is closely related to Nao, also a > > southern european/western mediterranean language. > > Portuguese > > Neither of > > > these is related to La > > Arabic > > or Lo', > Hebrew > > both of which played a major > > > role in its eflorescence of culture during the middle ages. > > La shares a common script with Nakheyr > > Farsi > > and Nahi; > Not quite sure, but is it Urdu? Yes. > > it used to > > > share a common script with Degil > > Turkish > > , but Kemil Ataturk changed > > > that. In the meantime Nahi is very closely related to Nahi, > > but doesn't share the same script. > > So if I'm right about Urdu, I guess Hindi. Yes. > > > Anyone tell me what languages I'm referring to? > > > > > > -- > > Wesley Parish > > * * * > > Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish > > * * * > > Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" > > You ask, "What is the most important thing?" > > Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." > > I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." -- Wesley Parish * * * Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish * * * Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 9 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:58:27 +0000 From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Devanagari handwriting? J. 'Mach' Wust wrote: >On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:05:39 -0500, Pascal A. Kramm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 18:10:19 -0500, J. 'Mach' Wust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> >> >wrote: > > >>>Not all dialects of a language need to be mutually intellegible. Most >>>linguists consider the Bavarians to speak German, though I don't doubt >>>that some linguists may consider the Bavarians not to belong to the German >>>speaking world. >>> >>> >>What makes out a dialect is that it only varies slightly from the main >>language, so it can be understood without much problems by all speakers of >>the main language. >>Once a dialect has changed so tremendously from the main language that it >>is totally unintelligible to speakers of the main language (as is the case >>with Bavarian), it has become a proper language of its own. >> >> > >There may be some linguists who share that point of view, but most will >consider other factors as well, such as standard language, literature, >media, etc. > > I think the primary deciding factor is what you answer when people ask what your first language is. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 10 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 04:40:59 -0600 From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings John Cowan wrote: > Furriners (broadly considered) never hear regional accents properly, > anyway. I know some varieties of Cultivated sound somewhat British > (every time I see Nick Nicholas, he sounds more RP-ish to my ear), Me too. A couple weeks ago when I was at the Algonquian conference, I met a guy who works on Sauk (one of the dialects of the Meskwaki- Sauk-Kickapoo continuum) who, I assumed, was probably a Briton who'd lived in the US for a while -- reasonable given his area of specialization. Turns out he's actually an Australian who works in Germany. I only found this out when we got into a conversation about English second person plural pronouns, such as my native <y'all>, and he said that for Australians like him <youse> is the norm. (Somehow, I doubt, based on almost no empirical evidence whatsoever, that <youse> is as normal for most Ozzies as <y'all> is for most Southrons.) > but I'm always flabbergasted when other Americans can't tell Broad from RP! Same here. Though until this summer, I always had difficulty distinguishing different antipodean dialects. I was set right by a young New Zealander whose talk at a conference in Berlin I did not immediately identify as being in English! ========================================================================== Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 11 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:16:44 +0200 From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: partial letter replacement in languages? ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 12:18 AM Subject: Re: partial letter replacement in languages? > On Friday, December 10, 2004, at 05:05 , Rodlox wrote: > > [snip] > > > > what I meant was, such as -> > > > > /Murad/ becomes /Murat/ * > > ..yet... > > /Abdulhamid/ does not become /Abtulhamid/ > The Murad who was a student of mine last year never became a Murat at any > time :) my apologies, then. I've been reading history books published in various countries, and I had noticed the d->t shift (such as Murad/Murat) in, at least, the Turkish Republic. I did not mean to imply that it was true for all Turkic or Arabic languages...my apologies if I accidentally gave the impression that is was true. > In any case I would hardly expect /bd/ (two voiced plosive) to change to > /bt/ (but I would expect /bt/ to be assimilated to /bd/). ah. if I might ask, what is /bt/ that is could be assimilated, whereas /bd/ (a voiced plosive) could not? *curious* > With final plosives it is quite common for the distinction between voiced > & voiceless to be neutralized. Most commonly, as in German, Russian, > Breton and IIRC Turkish, they are all devoiced. Some languages, like Welsh, > prefer voicing the whole like. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 12 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 02:54:50 -0800 From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Nonsense Words In getting my computerized lexicon up-to-date (I've past 900 words online now!), I came across my half-finished translation of Jabberwocky. I'm having a minor crisis deciding whether the "nonsense" words belong in my lexicon. At the very least, I'll need to document these words *somewhere*, just to make sure I don't coin "real" words and make them non-nonsense, but I don't know that they belong in the official dictionary. Has anyone else dealt with this? Opinions? -- AA ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 13 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:20:32 +0200 From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: conlang names No, despite my origins in northern England I can't stand the stuff. Lager or vodka, please. > -----Original Message----- > From: Constructed Languages List > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wesley Parish > Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 11:31 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: conlang names > > > On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 20:38, Shaul Vardi wrote: > > Here's a nice challenge for Saturday morning... > > And you got it right! Do you like Guinness? If you do and > we're ever in the same town, it's my shout! > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: Constructed Languages List > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > On Behalf Of Wesley Parish > > > Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 9:15 AM > > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Subject: Re: conlang names > > > > > > On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:13, # 1 wrote: > > > > I've started my first conlang but I encountered a problem: the > > > > name > > > > [snip] > > > > > Use the word "no" in translation. that's got a long > history of use > > > among linguists - for example, I speak the northern european > > > language No > > > > English > > > > , as opposed to the southern > > > > > european/western mediterranean language No; > > > > Spanish > > > > both of which are > > > > > different from but related to the northern european language Non > > > > French > > > > , and the middle european language Nein > > German > > > > which is however > > > > > related to the northern european language No. > > > > English again > > > > No is however > > > > > related to Ekkert, > > > > Icelandic > > > > which is not related to Ei, another > > > > > language spoken in Scandinavia. > > > > Finnish > > > > > No (southern european) is closely related to Nao, also a southern > > > european/western mediterranean language. > > > > Portuguese > > > > Neither of > > > > > these is related to La > > > > Arabic > > > > or Lo', > > Hebrew > > > > both of which played a major > > > > > role in its eflorescence of culture during the middle ages. La > > > shares a common script with Nakheyr > > > > Farsi > > > > and Nahi; > > Not quite sure, but is it Urdu? > Yes. > > > > it used to > > > > > share a common script with Degil > > > > Turkish > > > > , but Kemil Ataturk changed > > > > > that. In the meantime Nahi is very closely related to Nahi, but > > > doesn't share the same script. > > > > So if I'm right about Urdu, I guess Hindi. > Yes. > > > > > Anyone tell me what languages I'm referring to? > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Wesley Parish > > > * * * > > > Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish > > > * * * > > > Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" > > > You ask, "What is the most important thing?" > > > Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." > > > I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." > > -- > Wesley Parish > * * * > Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish > * * * > Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" > You ask, "What is the most important thing?" > Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." > I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." > ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 14 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:38:52 +1100 From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings On 11 Dec 2004, at 1.33 am, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) wrote: > How do you like this? http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/say/vowels.htm Not very much there yet :) Also, there's something about the colorscheme I don't like, but I spose it's meant to be green and gold? But otherwise it's okay, I don't think there's much to comment on. > In the future I may add quotes from this very discussion, in order to > give people an idea of what to listen for. But are there any more > parenthical notes you would like to be added now? Nah, can't really think of anything not already said... > I can only pick the most subtle of differences. Not enough to be > remarkable. There would probably be more difference in a sentence > where "our" was stressed, such as: "Their main concern is to save the > country whereas our main concern is to save the world". As Joe observes, one our is similar and one's different. Perhaps I'm listening to one and you the other? > John Cowan wrote: > >> Furriners (broadly considered) never hear regional accents properly, >> anyway. >> I know some varieties of Cultivated sound somewhat British (every >> time I >> see Nick Nicholas, he sounds more RP-ish to my ear), but I'm always >> flabbergasted when other Americans can't tell Broad from RP! > > I think of my speech as being the same accent as most of my peers, > with obviously a few idiolectal variations as everybody has. My > considered opinion is that my speech is definitely within the spectrum > of General Australian, whatever Tristan might say. :-) :-) General South Australian maybe, but Melburnians have a better claim to Australia than Adelaideans! > There's an old joke (sourced in the old TV series GNW) that a "Downer" > is defined as a vague feeling of depression when forced to admit one's > nationality whilst overseas. Downer's been around long enough to have old jokes? God am I glad i didn't know what politics was till 2000... On 11 Dec 2004, at 9.40 pm, Thomas R. Wier wrote: > Me too. A couple weeks ago when I was at the Algonquian conference, > I met a guy who works on Sauk (one of the dialects of the Meskwaki- > Sauk-Kickapoo continuum) who, I assumed, was probably a Briton who'd > lived in the US for a while -- reasonable given his area of > specialization. > Turns out he's actually an Australian who works in Germany. I only > found this out when we got into a conversation about English second > person plural pronouns, such as my native <y'all>, and he said that > for Australians like him <youse> is the norm. (Somehow, I doubt, > based on almost no empirical evidence whatsoever, that <youse> is as > normal for most Ozzies as <y'all> is for most Southrons.) My impression is the same, though in some cases I'm beginning to feel almost obliged to say 'youse' (always in unstressed syllables, usually when goodbying multiple people---'cyas later' instead of 'cya later'). But _y'all_ is definitely not something any Aussie uses except when making fun of Americans or similar. _Y'all_, like <Ozzy>/<Ozzie>, is a particular marker of Americanness. >> but I'm always flabbergasted when other Americans can't tell Broad >> from RP! > > Same here. Though until this summer, I always had difficulty > distinguishing > different antipodean dialects. I was set right by a young New Zealander > whose talk at a conference in Berlin I did not immediately identify as > being in English! Ut wasn't. Kiwis talk Unglush, not English :) -- Tristan. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 15 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:31:49 -0500 From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: German style orthography I've just discovered a post of mine that was rejected two days ago. Sorry for the delay (and for the off-topicity). On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 17:50:28 -0500, Pascal A. Kramm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >That's not correct. There is *no* distinction made for being word-initial. >The distinctions made are "s before vowel" (which is always /z/), "s before >consonant except p, t" (which is always /s/) and "s before p, t" (which is >always /S/). All of this regardless of position in the word. Funny, I've always thought that the Alemannic were the only who pronounce the words _Ast_ "bough" and _Espe_ "aspen tree" with /St/ and /Sp/! Are you sure that you don't have some kind of Alemannic accent? This would also make your distinction of short and long consonants much more plausible to me. [EMAIL PROTECTED]: j. 'mach' wust ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 16 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:03:05 +0100 From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OT: FWIW: University Exploration Days Hey all! Recently in school, we got leaflets about the "Hochschulerkundungstage" (University Exploration Days) in Gießen from our form master. There, 12th and 13th graders can gather information about different courses at university and for which occupations you (can) need studying these subjects etc. etc. Although at the moment it does not seem like I will go to university, I think it's nevertheless worth to have a look at Anglistics and Computerlinguistics (both on 27 Jan 2005). What would also be intersting is "Medieninformatik" (Media Informatics?), which includes media design. It's interesting although I've got a red/green disorder (I cannot see red on green and vice versa when both colours have the same or a similar amount of contrast. Seeing each colour itself is no problem). Maybe there's nevertheless a chance for colourblinds to work in this business ... As a possible occupation I have "Verlagskaufmann" or something like that in my mind, though. Working in a publishing house seemed interesting as well when I had a two-weeks' job experience in March/April 2004. Heck, I'll be finished with school in 1 1/2 years, so I must care about what I do after school now -- but OTOH, it's still so long until I'm ready with school that I often forget about what comes afterwards. Carsten -- Eri silveváng aibannama padangin. Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 17 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:07:59 -0500 From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Devanagari handwriting? Joe scripsit: > I think the primary deciding factor is what you answer when people ask > what your first language is. I think not, not in general. The Indic-speaking part of India is a vast dialect continuum, where "languages" exist only as a result of regional standardization. A person from the Punjab may move to Delhi; at first the language will be difficult, because there are sharp differences (particularly in morphophonemic rules), but after a time he may accommodate his Punjabi arbitrarily close to Hindi, while still retaining a few conspicuous markers of Punjabi, just to make it clear that while what he is speaking *sounds* like Hindi, it is "in fact" still Punjabi. Yet a sociolinguistically naive linguist would surely call it Hindi. Similarly, a person living near the boundary may speak a language that is somewhat closer to standard Punjabi than to standard Hindi, and yet he may say that his language is Hindi, meaning that he associates himself with the higher prestige of Hindi, and that if he or his children were to be educated, he would wish it to be through the medium of standard Hindi. (These examples from Robbins Burling's _Man and his language_, which I have cited here before.) -- Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditionis habes. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 18 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:40:10 +0200 From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Babel Text in Xinkutlan On Dec 10, 2004, at 9:08 PM, J Y S Czhang wrote: > wowza, man. > or as they say in Terapang (futuristic pidgin Pan-English): ouza, mon. hey! how do they say "welcome back" in Terapang? ;) -Stephen (Steg) "i am the terror that flaps in the night." ~ darkwing duck ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 19 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:27:17 +0100 From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OT: Of Angles and Saxons I recently ran across the claim that no Anglo-Saxons called themselves 'Saxons' before the Conquest - that is was strictly an exonym - but all considered themselves Angles/English. The names of kingdoms and regions containing "Sax" - Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex - supposedly all postdate the Conquest, and were introduced by the Normans (leaving one to wonder what the kings of Wessex and so on called their kingdoms). I find this more than a little difficult to believe, but couldn't find any explicit denial in any book I've got easy access to. Anyone into these matters feel like commenting? Andreas ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 20 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:56:01 +0000 From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT: Of Angles and Saxons Andreas Johansson wrote: >I recently ran across the claim that no Anglo-Saxons called themselves 'Saxons' >before the Conquest - that is was strictly an exonym - but all considered >themselves Angles/English. The names of kingdoms and regions containing "Sax" - >Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex - supposedly all postdate the Conquest, and >were introduced by the Normans (leaving one to wonder what the kings of Wessex >and so on called their kingdoms). > >I find this more than a little difficult to believe, but couldn't find any >explicit denial in any book I've got easy access to. Anyone into these matters >feel like commenting? > > > Nope. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle explicitly refers to Wessex several times (probably the rest, too, but yeah). But, for some reason, the Saxons still spoke Englisc. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 21 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:12:41 -0500 From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) scripsit: > I know of a couple of phenomenon which could arguably be held as > examples of this, but as a generalisation it is new to me. Do you > mind elaborating? I think it's a fair characterization of a variety of English in which "cup" has [a], "carp" has [a:], and "coop" has something like [u\]. -- John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. --Oscar Wilde ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 22 Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 03:44:34 +1030 From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings [Firstly: I really appreciate the input of those people who have commented on the phonetic samples provided. It is very interesting to hear the perceptions of non-locals on this sort of thing.] Tristan Mc Leay wrote, quoting myself: > > I can only pick the most subtle of differences. Not enough to be > > remarkable. There would probably be more difference in a sentence > > where "our" was stressed, such as: "Their main concern is to save the > > country whereas our main concern is to save the world". > > As Joe observes, one our is similar and one's different. Perhaps I'm > listening to one and you the other? They're both clearly diphthogonal, beginning with an approximately front-open vowel and heading towards an approximately back-open vowel. I'd transcribe the first as [&6] and the second as [&V]. I think. But I welcome second opinions. Your realisation and mine are both diphthogonal, both begin at approximately the same point, and both end with a back (or non-front) vowel of some description. Thus, there is only a subtle difference to my ear. As I said, a context in which "our" receives sentence-level stress would be required for better differentiation. My theory about "our" is basically this. The word "hour" I would transcribe as /&o)@/ and at a certain deep level the word "our" is the same as "hour". However, the word "our" has evolved a fusing of the /@/ with the end of the preceding /&o/, to create the observed [&V] or [&6]. My opinion is that in the case of "our" a new phoneme /&V/ (I could have arbitrarily chosen /&6/) has evolved from a simplification of /&U)@/. > > I think of my speech as being the same accent as most of my peers, > > with obviously a few idiolectal variations as everybody has. My > > considered opinion is that my speech is definitely within the spectrum > > of General Australian, whatever Tristan might say. :-) :-) > > General South Australian maybe, but Melburnians have a better claim to > Australia than Adelaideans! Last night I emailed Melbournian relatives of mine in the hope of getting a second opinion; they haven't responded yet but I hope they do. I can't think of a witty rejoinder to the "better claim" claim right now. Adrian. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 23 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:16:41 -0800 From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Babel Text in Xinkutlan On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 06:40:10PM +0200, Steg Belsky wrote: > On Dec 10, 2004, at 9:08 PM, J Y S Czhang wrote: > >wowza, man. > >or as they say in Terapang (futuristic pidgin Pan-English): ouza, mon. Hanuman tse! sii ipai tse sa mubun nara? :-) > hey! > how do they say "welcome back" in Terapang? ;) [...] I wanna know too. :-) T -- Life would be easier if I had the source code. -- YHL ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 24 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:20:03 -0500 From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Nonsense Words Arthaey Angosii wrote: > In getting my computerized lexicon up-to-date (I've past 900 words > online now!), I came across my half-finished translation of > Jabberwocky. I'm having a minor crisis deciding whether the "nonsense" > words belong in my lexicon. At the very least, I'll need to document > these words *somewhere*, just to make sure I don't coin "real" words > and make them non-nonsense, but I don't know that they belong in the > official dictionary. > > Has anyone else dealt with this? Opinions? > Jabberwocky of course is a special case, but.... My thought would be (1) to put them in a separate section-- perhaps for loanwords used only in specific contexts (??) or (2) leave them out, but keep a private list in a file somewhere. I suppose in translating Jabberwocky, you used native (Asha'ille) resources to create the nonsense. Some of the portmanteau words could certainly be compounds of native elements, and explicable. But what native words could underlie "toves", or "mome raths outgrabe" etc. We aren't even sure what they mean in "English". These would indeed be nonsense created for...what? just to sound funny? to fit the metre? to match the rhyme? Unless there's a native tradition of nonsense poetry, IMO they don't belong in the dictionary. (Are J. words in any English dictionary? ...not in my Shorter OED...) The Kash dictionary has no loanwords from English, and only a couple from the "Galactic" language-- that's because in _that_ version of the story, the Gal.Union contacted the Cindu 200+years ago, and has not yet contacted Earth. An earlier version had the GU (including Terra) contacting the Kash in about 2400 C.E., but there was only one Terran on Cindu, so he did not contribute any loanwords either. Yet another version had the GU contacting Terra around 1985 (or 1995, or 2000, depending on how often I update the fantasy...) and sending us a First Contact Emissary who happens to be a Kash. He, strictly for his own use, adopts various Terran words into his vocab.-- so far mainly foodstuffs and (thanks to recent threads) religious terms-- but none of these, I suspect, will ever make it into the official dictionary in my lifetime. (BTW he prefers to adapt them from Spanish, usually, since the phonology most closely matches that of Kash.) Native Kash or Gwr nonsense poetry, OTOH, is something to think about :-))))) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 25 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:35:36 -0800 From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Conlanging with Dick and Jane Hidy ho. Returning after an absence of 6 or 8 months from conlanging, I naturally I looked back at my several unfinished conlang projects to decide where to pick up the pieces. Of course the only sane solution is to scrap everything and start all over from scratch. But I hated to do that knowing that I'm going to make the same mistakes and end up with yet another incomplete and uncompletable conlang fragment. That's when inspiration hit and a possible solution to systematic conlang discovery occurred to me. In the past my conlangs have suffered from haphazard development and ultimately became so unbalanced they had to be abandoned. By unbalanced I mean too much grammar early on and not enough vocabulary to adequately test and use that grammar, or too much vocabulary and not enough grammar to put that vocabulary to use. The other problem has been designing myself into a corner, so to speak, where I would include some sophisticated grammatical notion before I had adequate understanding of the fundamental grammar to support it. Then later, when filling in the more fundamental aspects of the grammar I would discover that my fancy piece of sophistication just didn't work, or didn't fit with the very most basic grammatical principles. The same problem cropped up in the lexicon where I would end up with "advanced" or complex words discovered before the most basic vocabulary is filled out, often leaving them to become awkward misfits later on. The solution occurred to me when I was sorting through some boxes of old books and came across a handful of children's early readers. Suppose one took a first year reader like "Fun With Dick and Jane" or "McGuffey's Eclectic Reader" and began on page one with "See Spot run." and "The cat sees the mouse." and translated the entire book, sentence by sentence, into the new conlang, discovering vocabulary and grammatical principles as they were needed. After discovering translations for the few hundred sentences in the first year reader one would be ready to move on to the second year reader with a good balance between vocabulary and grammar and a logical progression in the sophistication of both. By the time the fifth or sixth year reader was translated the conlang would be rich enough in both grammar and vocabulary to be used in everyday conversation. The other benefit, at least from my point of view, is the built-in disciplined nature of the work. Each time one sits down to work on the conlang one knows exactly what one needs to do. For example, having completed page 11, to turn to page 12 and discover the translation for "One, two, three," said Jane. "Three new dolls for my birthday. ... Now I have a big doll family."... And finally, by working with the conlang beginning at such an elementary level it is likely that one by-product would be for the designer to develop actual fluency in the conlang as the work progressed. How exciting to know that something new will be discovered every day! Thoughts? Ideas? --gary shannon ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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