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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: new conlang - " *aiinodbus' "
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Inventing names
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Imperatives in split-S languages (was Anomaly of the (apparent) Cebuano
uvulars and Guarani info request)
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Trigger languages Re: Further language development Q's
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Inventing names
From: Jeffrey Henning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Another idea for a script for Ayeri
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: new Unnamed Conlang
From: Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. META: Conlang IRC Woes
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: new conlang - " *aiinodbus' "
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: [relay] Re: Yellow snow
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Inventing names
From: Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: I'm back!
From: J Y S Czhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Inventing names
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: META: Conlang IRC Woes
From: Robert Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Replying to Rodlox (Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?) and
obliques)
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:32:50 +0100
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: new conlang - " *aiinodbus' "
Staving Tamas Racsko:
> > a (like "bAt" & "cAn")
>
> Its usual transcription is /{/ in X-SAMPA or /&/ in CXS. But I
>was told that some pronounce it a bit closer as it were /E/.
At the risk of starting YAEPT, [&] is definitely the normal pronunciation
fo these words in most English dialects. In Northern English, it is more
common, so that, for example "aunt" and "ant" are homophones. No matter how
RP influenced someone's personal speech becomes, someone brought up in the
north of England will tend to retain this trait, and be identifiable by it.
(This applies to me personally).
/&/ realised as [E] is a characteristic of affected upper-class accents of
the early-to-mid twentieth century. (In such an accent, "century" would
come out as [sEntS)A:re]) Such speech habits are now moribund if not
extinct, except in comic performances.
Pete
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:44:10 +0100
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Inventing names
Staving Carsten Becker:
>Manisu! [ Be greeted!
>Sira ilt�yang nelnoin vaena! [ I need your help!
>
>Before I'm starting to work on a conworld I need names, I
>thought & decided. But how to come up with names? Shall I
>just make up (at least for now) random, meaningless names,
>or should I make up typical words that can appear in names
>(e.g. animals' names, gods' names, war, battle, rich, poor,
>nice, good, bad etc.)? Or shoudl I even mix both?! The
>problem with descriptive names, such as "Stormcloud" is
>that they're mostly at least trisyllabic and that way don't
>fit what I'm used to -- European names are rather short,
>only one or two syllables mostly. OTOH, when you're looking
>at Indian or generally SE-Asian names, three syllables are
>very short!
>Then there are the place names .. The same problem, the same
>question ... But descriptinve names are IMO normal, and
>many place names are polysyllabic, so this shouldn't be a
>that big problem. At last I could force my self to call the
>biggest ocean of the map of my conworld I've drawn some
>time ago "Rad�m Anana", which is Dal�ian for "The big
>ocean" (Ocean big.3sg), Ayeri would be sth like "Caron
>Nuc�rya" (Sea AGT.big).
I like names of my characters to have some meaning. Wizard's ritual names
are a reference to the act by which their latent magical powers were first
awakened. They can be quite long (e.g. K�shro�rast "crystal-free". He found
himself forced to confront an evil warlock who could enslave people by
means of a magic crystal, which imprisoned their souls when they looked
into it. When he looked into it however, he fought back and thus awakened
his dormant magical powers. He threw the crystal to the ground, shattering
it and releasing the warlock's slaves from its power). However, a name that
has been in common use for a few centuries will probably have undergone
quite a bit of phonetic erosion, so that something that started out quite
long and descriptive might well have lost a couple of syllables.
Pete
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 07:10:24 -0600
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 20:46:41 -0700, Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 03:37:43PM -0700, Apollo Hogan wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>> Interesting, can you actually tie a sphere into a knot in 4D? I
>> thought you could only do it to a 2D surface in 4D. But maybe I'm
>> wrong.
>Well, I meant S^2, the _skin_ or surface of a ball, not the solid ball.
> (I.e. the unique-up-to-homeomorphism compact two-manifold without boundary
> and with genus -2, :-) But I do think that you can tie it into a knot
> in 4-space. You can also link together spheres (S^2) inseparably, just as we
> can link rings inseparably in 3-space.
>One way (not the only way) to generate knotted spheres in 4-space is to
> "suspend" ordinary knots in 3-space... The idea is something like the knot
> becomes the "equator" of the sphere... just take two hemispheres, sew them
> together along the knot (of course you can't do this in 3-space, because of
> the twisting of the knot, but there's room in 4-space). Voila, you've got
> a knot. (Warning: I've not thought very much about this, so I'm bound to
> say something wrong, but the idea is something like this.)
Is that like the one where you take a M�bius strip and close it by sewing a panel
along the edge?
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 07:29:34 -0600
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Imperatives in split-S languages (was Anomaly of the (apparent) Cebuano
uvulars and Guarani info request)
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:10:30 +0200, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Quoting Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> The problem is, lots of "quality" verbs, in English and many languages,
>> can't have imperatives either, and it may be a near-universal. There are
>> questions of logic, real-world possibility, applicability to humans,
>> volition. Thus, "don't be ill/sick" is not an acceptable sentence, just
>> like "don't be green", "don't be intelligent". Similarly, "don't know
>> that!", "don't understand that!"-- some in this last class are acceptable as
>> positives, though rather formal.
>
> I think these are more weird than wrong - in sufficiently weird circumstances,
> they could be acceptable. A case of colorless green ideas sleeping furiously, I
> guess.
I dunno. For me "Don't know that!" looks like it's got an elided subject pronoun (I'd
expect "I"). It feels tangibly different from "Don't be intelligent"; it sounds as
ungrammatical as "He's going to can do it" or "He will can do it" -- the words are all
there but it seems it shouldn't be that way (in the latter cases, because for no
reason at all "can" has no infinitive). Some other verbs feel the same way ("like",
"understand", "see", "hear") but there are some exceptional constructions, e.g.
"please don't like me".
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:50:24 +0100
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
Tamas Racsko wrote:
>On 21 Sep 2004 Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
>>basques can use special auxilliary
>>verb forms which also reflect the gender of the addressee!
>>
>>
>
> Basque makes inanimate vs. animate distinction in another
>connection. Before locative suffixes animate noun phrases are
>marked by a suffix |ga|, but |ta| is inserted in case of inanimate
>noun phrases that have no singular determiner (inanimate noun
>phrases with singular determiner take zero suffix).
>
> Therefore I think about the gender marking in personal agreement
>slots of Basque verbs as subclasses of animate class. In this
>respect, it is not grammatical "gender" but natural "sex". Sex in
>2nd-person utterances is often expressed even in languages which
>have no gender marking (in 2nd person or at all) by
>supragrammatical means, cf. |Come here, _boy_|, |How are you,
>_girls_|.
>
>
>
>
*shrugs* It still seems strange to me. I don't actually know any of the
intimate forms (so I didn't know they didn't occur in the nor slot)
since they aren't really used much in most "learn basque" courses, given
the number of verb forms you need to acquire just to speak formally to
someone.
>>the auxilliary verb agrees with the Actor, Patient, Recipient, and
>>the Gender of the addressee (if that addressee is familiar or
>>intimate)
>>
>>
>
> AFAIK synthetic verbs (not just auxiliary but a few others also)
>have three functional slots for personal agreement marking: "nor"
>or absolutive slot, "nori" or dative slot, "nork" or ergative slot.
>Patient fills "nor" slot, Actor is ambivalent: it tries first to
>connect to "nor" slot; but if it is already occupied by Patient,
>Actor opens and fills "nork" slot. (A similar interesting
>precedence rule determines the actual position of "nork" slot in
>the suffix chain.)
>
>
>
This doesn't seem unusual to me given the ergative morphology of the
rest of Basque. It seems to make perfect sense. :)
> Gender (or sex) marking is possible only in "nori" and "nork"
>slots, "nor" slot has a single allomorph for both male and female
>2nd person morpheme.
>
>
>
>
>>I don't think even Inuit can beat this level of agreement lol...
>>
>>
>
> I am not aware of Inuit grammar, but polysynthetical languages
>may have additional slots for further case agreement. I have an
>example from Sumerian where locative marking is involved in
>addition: |mu-na-ni-n-du-{}| 'he/she has built it there for
>him/her'; |mu| ventive modality: Actor is animate; |na| < |ra| -
>dative marker: sg3 animate Recipient; |ni| - locative marker; |n| -
>ergative and aspect marker: sg3 Actor from perfective (=hamtu)
>series; |du| - verbal stem: to build; |{}| (terminal zero morpheme)
>- absolutive marker: sg3 inanimate Patient.
>
>
>
AFAIK, inuit exhibits agreement with the Actor and Patient only, but I
don't speak the language so I might be wrong. :) Its quite difficult to
get good materials even for Basque... its impossible it seems to learn
inuit unless you go and live with a speaker, since there seem to be no
good teaching books/tapes etc.
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:44:08 +0100
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
>Hi all,
> I don't know if this is silly but I wanted to confirm the exact
>difference betwwen the sound `v' and `w' in the English language and their
>IPA representation in ASCII. I think that both the sounds `v' and `w' ar
>not aspirated in English and the only difference is that `v'(isn't it the
>same as the hindi `v'?) is labio-dental and `w' is bilabial. Is this right?
> Also is there any difference in the articulation of these two sounds
>between US and British English? Also, is there any online resource for
>proper pronounciation of the IPA symbols(ie. audio files)? There are some
>audios at the IPA site, but they're too noisy to be of much help.
>
>Shanth
>``Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur''
>http://home.iitk.ac.in/student/shanth
>
>
>
V is a labiodental fricative (I believe this is similar to the hindi v
although I'm afraid I don't speak hindi); W is an approximant, and it
is... I think the word is labio-velar. Pronouncing it, I raise the back
of my tongue so that there is only a small gap at the back of my mouth
(the velar bit), and also round my lips (the labio-bit). Having said
that, a bilabial approximant is a good approximation to w. :) As far as
I know, there is no difference between American and British English when
it comes to the pronounciation of v and w.
This might be a bad suggestion, but if you're trying to get w right you
might try pronouncing /u/ (I assume hindi has this sound?) and then
shortening it as much as possible... in some languages (the romance
languages spring to mind), u has become similar to an english w in some
positions in words, and if I try pronouncing /uest/ for west and then
shortening the /u/ as much as possible it gets to the point where it
sounds almost exactly like west is normally pronounced to me. :)
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 07:45:53 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 10:04:06PM -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 03:13:15PM -0700, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > Considering that a 4D being would necessarily see in 3D (i.e., have a
> > 3D retina), this seems to lead me to just 4 pairs of directions:
>
> Exactly so.
>
> > up/down, left/right, front/back, "in"/"out" (or whatever you call
> > it... this is different from being actually "inside" or "outside" a 4D
> > volume).
>
> The terms I've most often heard for the extra two directions along the extra
> spatial dimension in fourspace are "ana" and "cata" - presumably the same
> as the prefixes in e.g. anaphoric and cataphoric.
I've seen it referred to as ana/kata or vinn/vout (Rucker).
Personally, I prefer "in" and "out" because it corresponds with what
you see in the 3D retina of a 4D person when the 4D person moves in
those directions. Of course, objectively speaking this is a bit silly,
since it's like telling a 2D person we're moving "inwards" when we
move forward in the 3rd direction, just because the image in our 2D
retina expands as we do so. But we don't have the benefit of having
native 4D terminology, so I chose the more suggestive terms over the
more abstract ones.
In the final analysis, no term would be ideal unless we create a
conlang that is natively embedded in a 4D setting. Which is what I
intend to do. :-)
T
--
Just because you survived after you did it, doesn't mean it wasn't stupid!
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Message: 8
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 16:55:58 +0200
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Trigger languages Re: Further language development Q's
Hey!
Yeah, it's true, trigger langs come up every now and then,
just like the discussions about Basque. It's both an
interesting because it's different from what most people
here are used to.
So, ... leafing through my notes and print-outs:
* Henrik Theiling explained things for me about this topic,
too, though offlist and in German.
* According to my notes, there's been a thread called
"Triggeriness", started by Andreas Johansson on December
9th, 2003, 17:18 GMT.
* I asked about that stuff that day as
well, the topic's name was "Q's abuot trigger again",
seems that I misspelled "about" unintentionally.
* Another thread about trigger systems I read was started by
Sarah Marie Parker-Allen on January 16, 2003 17:30:51 GMT,
with the mentioned answer by Christophe on January 17,
2003, 13:20:47 GMT.
If you want, I can send you those topics after September 12,
2003 as .EML files. Otherwise, search the archives, there's
more nifty explanation about that topic and also about
volitionality, though David Peterson explained the basics
very nicely. As for volitionality, I have downloaded a
paper by Daniel Andr�asson, called "Active
languages" (active.pdf; his BA thesis) from somewhere. I
haven't read that all yet because as all scientific papers,
it's quite dense, though you can read it quite fluently.
Volitionality has to do with trigger languages in that
sometimes, the only participant of an action is not the
doer, but rather the experiencer, like in "I fell down the
rocks (unintentionally)." -- It's a nice idea to think
about
something like that when creating a language. My conlang
Ayeri uses this for the comparison of adjectives.
<shameless plug>
My conlang Ayeri (see sig below) is thought to be a trigger
language as well, but I can't get the hang of
back-translating the grammar into English after I rewrote
large parts some weeks ago. The most recent version is thus
only available in German, but the vocabulary is fairly
up-to-date, and Ayeri->English as well.
</shameless plug>
Have fun with exploring this kind of system,
Carsten
--
Eri silvev�ng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoiev�ng caparei.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry, Le Petit Prince
-> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri
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Message: 9
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:22:23 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
Rodlox/David Peterson wrote:
Rodlox wrote:
<<"Que wot be thee."
" ? / what is / state-of-being / you "
"What are you?">>
>I still see two question words: "que" and "wot". I mean, right in
the translation you translate "wot" as "what is". That's about as
much of a question word as you can get.
> And
what you have are two question words: "que" and "wot". If I
were to conjecture as to how this system works, it'd be this:
>(1) Taking a standard GB root, let's say that there's a Q feature
somewhere that causes WH words to move in front of the verb.
minor question - what are 'GB' and 'WH' ?
>So, in "wot be thee", the "wot" comes from the direct object position
and moves in front of the verb.
>(2) Unlike GB, the Q feature is actually extent, and that Q feature
is "que".
'extent'?...is existing on its own?
(I derived that from "extant", so I'm likely wrong).
>(3) Further conjecturing: If you wanted to say "Are you a teacher?",
you'd have the following: "Que be teacher thee?"
>Is that what you were thinking of?
yep.
Moi:
This feature is very much like Indonesian "apa", which (1) indicates a
yes-no question--
apa kita mau makan~? (rising Q intonation)
Q we(incl.) want eat "do we want to eat? ~shall we eat?"
It's also common to suffix -kah also a Q marker) on Q-apa = apakah kita mau
makan?
--but (2) also functions as interrogative "what?" in an info. question:
kita mau makan apa? OR apa yang kita mau makan? (level S inton.)
we want eat what? what{is it} that we want eat?
"What shall we eat?"
(A problem for Engl.speaking learners, who tend simply to front the object--
*apa kita mau makan?. That works in Indonesian _only_ if you put extra
heavy stress on the apa "APA kita makan" = "WHAT [on earth] are we eating?";
APA kita mau makan? "Whatever shall we eat?")
The only difference is that his languages has two Q words, one "que" that
simply marks a question, a verbal question mark-- plus another "wot" that
asks for info. Or so I interpret it....
ObConlang: Gwr apparently does the same thing-- in the recent relay, I
translated "What did I do then?" as
ko ja-so mo gr tri (ko)
Q what-emph. I do then (Q - optional) -- ordinarily "ja" would go in normal
post-vb position, but here it's fronted because emphatic.
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Message: 10
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 16:20:51 +0100
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
Chris Bates wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> I don't know if this is silly but I wanted to confirm the exact
>> difference betwwen the sound `v' and `w' in the English language and
>> their
>> IPA representation in ASCII. I think that both the sounds `v' and
>> `w' ar
>> not aspirated in English and the only difference is that `v'(isn't it
>> the
>> same as the hindi `v'?) is labio-dental and `w' is bilabial. Is this
>> right?
>> Also is there any difference in the articulation of these two sounds
>> between US and British English? Also, is there any online resource for
>> proper pronounciation of the IPA symbols(ie. audio files)? There are
>> some
>> audios at the IPA site, but they're too noisy to be of much help.
>>
>> Shanth
>> ``Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur''
>> http://home.iitk.ac.in/student/shanth
>>
>>
>>
> V is a labiodental fricative (I believe this is similar to the hindi v
> although I'm afraid I don't speak hindi); W is an approximant, and it
> is... I think the word is labio-velar. Pronouncing it, I raise the back
> of my tongue so that there is only a small gap at the back of my mouth
> (the velar bit), and also round my lips (the labio-bit). Having said
> that, a bilabial approximant is a good approximation to w. :) As far as
> I know, there is no difference between American and British English when
> it comes to the pronounciation of v and w.
> This might be a bad suggestion, but if you're trying to get w right you
> might try pronouncing /u/ (I assume hindi has this sound?) and then
> shortening it as much as possible... in some languages (the romance
> languages spring to mind), u has become similar to an english w in some
> positions in words, and if I try pronouncing /uest/ for west and then
> shortening the /u/ as much as possible it gets to the point where it
> sounds almost exactly like west is normally pronounced to me. :)
>
Correction: I think this has happened in the Romance languages, but some
thought has thrown up that: Latin wrote both /u/ and /w/ (is w the right
symbol in X-SAMPA/CXS?) as v (w later got changed into v... or seems to
have done so from my limited knowledge of the evolution of the Romance
languages, thus causing the never ending debate about how one should
pronounce v in latin), suggesting that this had already happened before
the romans started writing. Also, I was mainly thinking of spanish
spelling, in which the vowels u and i are "weak" and tend to turn into
/w/ and /j/ respectively in front of other vowels. The problem is, the
Spanish reformed their spelling system, so I don't know if this change
happened in Medieval Spanish or is simply because of the reforms.
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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 08:43:29 -0700
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Muke Tever wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 20:46:41 -0700, Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 03:37:43PM -0700, Apollo Hogan wrote:
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> Interesting, can you actually tie a sphere into a knot in 4D? I
> >> thought you could only do it to a 2D surface in 4D. But maybe I'm
> >> wrong.
> >Well, I meant S^2, the _skin_ or surface of a ball, not the solid ball.
> > (I.e. the unique-up-to-homeomorphism compact two-manifold without boundary
> > and with genus -2, :-) But I do think that you can tie it into a knot
> > in 4-space. You can also link together spheres (S^2) inseparably, just as we
> > can link rings inseparably in 3-space.
> >One way (not the only way) to generate knotted spheres in 4-space is to
> > "suspend" ordinary knots in 3-space... The idea is something like the knot
> > becomes the "equator" of the sphere... just take two hemispheres, sew them
> > together along the knot (of course you can't do this in 3-space, because of
> > the twisting of the knot, but there's room in 4-space). Voila, you've got
> > a knot. (Warning: I've not thought very much about this, so I'm bound to
> > say something wrong, but the idea is something like this.)
>
> Is that like the one where you take a M�bius strip and close it by sewing a panel
> along the edge?
Yes, same process of "surgery", the difference is that the Mobius strip only
has one edge, of course, so you only need one panel. For the knot, I guess you
thicken it a bit so it is like a strip of paper tied in a knot (but not twisted
so it still has two edges) and then glue on two panels.
--Apollo
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:49:51 -0400
From: Jeffrey Henning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Inventing names
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:17:20 +0200, Carsten Becker
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Before I'm starting to work on a conworld I need names, I
>thought & decided. But how to come up with names?
For ideas on creating a naming language, check out this old essay of mine:
http://www.langmaker.com/ml0102.htm
Best regards,
Jeffrey
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 17:56:34 +0200
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Another idea for a script for Ayeri
Hey!
I've come up with another script for my conlang Ayeri
recently. I couldn't stand the Javanese-like script anymore
because everything looked far too similar and was
unnececerilly complicated in some ways. The latest idea is
a script that can be quite easily carved into stone or
wood, that's why it has some kind of runic character. I was
basically "inspired" by (read "I stole shapes from") Latin,
Cyrillic, Tamil, Tengwar(?). Because I still have no
scanner, I made a TTF font (not online yet) and wrote a PDF
document (with OOO under Linux :-)) ) of the description:
www.beckerscarsten.de/conlang/ayeri/ayerialphabet.pdf
<http://www.beckerscarsten.de/conlang/ayeri/ayerialphabet.pdf>
fi:le "gry:se
dE6 "ka:stn=
--
Eri silvev�ng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoiev�ng caparei.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry, Le Petit Prince
-> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 18:52:39 +0100
From: Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: new Unnamed Conlang
On 22 Sep 2004 Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I guess the "Latin" may have been lost in a rewrite. I distinctly recall
> typing it down.
Let me extend my previous list (archaic Romany, Uzbek) with Osmanli
Turkish: e.g. word |Asya| 'Asia'. And any other language of former
USSR is suspectable if it uses Latin script and letter |y| for /j/.
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:01:18 +0200
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: META: Conlang IRC Woes
�sigh...�
Just when i get a good IRC client set up, and configured to handle
Unicode, and get acquainted not only with the Conlang channel but also
with some of the religious-discussion-themed channels i used to
frequent 8 years ago, i find out that the internet connection i just
got to my university *blocks all IRC*, dang them.
Moral quandary... go back to piggybacking on my neighbors' wireless
network connection, or try and find some way to bypass the IRC block on
my own? :-P
shahhwa! (=/SaX\wa/, Rokbeigalmki curse)
-Stephen (Steg)
"rest / rest and listen / rest and listen and learn, creideiki /
for the startide rises in the currents of the dark /
and we have waited long for what must be..."
~ _startide rising_ by david brin
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Message: 16
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:46:07 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 08:46:41PM -0700, Apollo Hogan wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, H. S. Teoh wrote:
[...]
> > Interesting, can you actually tie a sphere into a knot in 4D? I
> > thought you could only do it to a 2D surface in 4D. But maybe I'm
> > wrong.
>
> Well, I meant S^2, the _skin_ or surface of a ball, not the solid
> ball. (I.e. the unique-up-to-homeomorphism compact two-manifold
> without boundary and with genus -2, :-) But I do think that you can
> tie it into a knot in 4-space. You can also link together spheres
> (S^2) inseparably, just as we can link rings inseparably in 3-space.
Any suggestions as to how one might visualize such a thing? I've tried
all night and failed. :-P
> One way (not the only way) to generate knotted spheres in 4-space is to
> "suspend" ordinary knots in 3-space... The idea is something like the knot
> becomes the "equator" of the sphere... just take two hemispheres, sew them
> together along the knot (of course you can't do this in 3-space, because of
> the twisting of the knot, but there's room in 4-space). Voila, you've got
> a knot. (Warning: I've not thought very much about this, so I'm bound to
> say something wrong, but the idea is something like this.)
Weird! I think I've a rough idea of how this might work now... but
still, it's pretty... *twisted*. :-P
[...]
> > What I want to visualize, though, is how exactly one knots a sphere...
> > what does it look like???
>
> See above for one method. Another method is to "spin" a 3d knot around
> a plane in 4d... I guess you want the center inside the knot. Good luck
> visualizing this :-)
Whoa... I have trouble visualizing this one. :-P I need to write a 4D
raytracer to render this thing...
[...]
> > http://eusebeia.dyndns.org/~hsteoh/4d/vis.html
>
> Nice. I haven't had time to read it all, but it looks very
> interesting. Needs more pictures, though :-)
Yeah it does. But I don't know how to illustrate some of the things
properly, 'cos it requires actual 3D, not just a 2D image of 3D. Such
as how a sphere is embedded between an inner cube and a frustum. Or
should I settle for wireframe diagrams?
[...]
> Well, I wouldn't get too carried away, as we have one dimension of
> teeth, but we don't have much variance with them. (Basically
> non-dental vs dental vs lateral but we don't have front-dental vs
> front-side-dental vs side-dental, etc.) And the vowel chart is
> really based on the fundamental formants of the speech signal, so
> depending on the nature of 4-dimensional sound-waves... and ears...
> maybe it's the same general shape?
Perhaps I can just assume it's similar enough to not require obscene
amounts of exotic phonemes. :-) After all, I do want this language to
be comprehensible to us poor flat 3D beings. Plus, you do have a point
that it's probably not too far-fetched that they have essentially the
same hearing apparatus as we do, since theoretically our eardrum
should be able to resonate to a 2D wave, but we only hear everything
as combinations of 1D wave forms anyway.
Nevertheless, I think there should at least be 2 sets of laterals,
'cos there'd be two perpendicular planes where the tongue can touch
the sides of the mouth while still maintaining 1 free axis. But I
guess it's a question of whether this will make any difference in
sound.
[...]
> Have you looked at the book "Knotted surfaces and their diagrams"
> (?). It's a hefty mathematical tome that I've only browsed in the
> bookstore, but it seems to give ways to draw knotted surfaces in 4d
> and techniques for manipulating them... It may be worth a gander
> just for some ideas.
Hmm. I'll look it up and maybe purchase a copy. It's high time I
grounded my 4D intuitions on solid mathematical grounds anyway. :-)
T
--
Some days you win; most days you lose.
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Message: 17
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:34:42 +0200
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
Shanthanu Bhardwaj wrote:
> Hi all,
> I don't know if this is silly but I wanted to confirm the exact
> difference betwwen the sound `v' and `w' in the English language and their
> IPA representation in ASCII. I think that both the sounds `v' and `w' ar
> not aspirated in English and the only difference is that `v'(isn't it the
> same as the hindi `v'?) is labio-dental and `w' is bilabial. Is this right?
> Also is there any difference in the articulation of these two sounds
> between US and British English? Also, is there any online resource for
> proper pronounciation of the IPA symbols(ie. audio files)? There are some
> audios at the IPA site, but they're too noisy to be of much help.
>
> Shanth
> ``Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur''
> http://home.iitk.ac.in/student/shanth
>
>
Hindi व (and Swedish |v| BTW) is a labiodental approximant,
IPA ʋ, CXS [v\] and thus falls inbetween English /v/ and /w/:
English /v/ is a labiodental fricative, while English /w/ is a
labiovelar approximant. What you need to do from a Hindi point
of view is to make a tenser pronunciation to get [v] and a
very lax bilabial pronunciation to get an acceptable [w].
If you can get hold of a Tibetan and ask him to pronounce
ངག་དབང་ /Na:waN/ you will hear the right sound in the middle.
/BP 8^) aka Ngawang Jimba
--
B.Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
(Tacitus)
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Message: 18
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:53:54 +0200
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: new conlang - " *aiinodbus' "
I think Rodlox would find "Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction
to the Sounds of Languages" by Peter Ladefoged a useful book (and CD!)
This is no criticism. Before I studied phonetics I had very foggy
ideas about sounds, trying to make sense of the phonetic transcriptions
in dictionaries and encyclopedias and trying to use them...
--
/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
(Tacitus)
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:59:51 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [relay] Re: Yellow snow
John Leland wrote:
> Rihana-ye:
> lila-i ritama he go-bi
> golden snow not eat-must
>
This reminds me of one of the possible Indonesian structures: Negative
imperative + _passive_ verb--
salju kuning jangan dimakan
snow yellow do-not be-eaten (sort of: yellow snow is not to be eaten)
I guess it softens the command by putting the implicit 2nd pers. subject at
one remove.
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Message: 20
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:39:44 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
/David Peterson wrote:
I thank you both...and everyone else who's helped out.
> <<"Que wot be thee."
> " ? / what is / state-of-being / you "
>
> "What are you?">>
>
> >I still see two question words: "que" and "wot". I mean, right in
> the translation you translate "wot" as "what is". That's about as
> much of a question word as you can get.
>
> > And
> what you have are two question words: "que" and "wot". If I
> were to conjecture as to how this system works, it'd be this:
>
> The only difference is that his languages has two Q words, one "que" that
> simply marks a question, a verbal question mark-- plus another "wot" that
> asks for info. Or so I interpret it....
and it seems that I was the one who misinterpretted it. (surprise
surprise). :)
what my intention had been, was to have "que" as a multi-purpose Q word
(with the why/where//what-is-that? sort of things, derived from the context
of the sentance)...and "wot" becomes a sort of stating-a-fact sort of thing.
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Message: 21
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:05:37 +0100
From: Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Inventing names
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> European names are rather short, only one or two syllables mostly
... due to later phonetic changes. E.g. Carsten ~ Karsten (2 syll.)
< Christian (3 syll.) < Christianus (4 syll.), Matthew (2 syll.) <
Matthaios (3 syll.) < Mattithyahu (4 syll.), etc.
Probably you also should make secondary phonetical contractions in
descriptive names resulting shorter "synchronically" meaningless
names.
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Message: 22
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:20:07 -0400
From: J Y S Czhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I'm back!
Welcome back, Teoh!
Missed ya.
And an eager, happy-bappy Hello to all & sundry (and sun-dried)...::imitates Tigger &
bounces 'round the room::
I, too, have been highly busy & non-conlanging (been more preoccuppied with finding a
place to live, health problems, and with my usual creative sonic mischief [_sonomu_ =
sound + noise + music]::BiG GRiN, wink at all the musical conlangers::
I no longer have my old Mac (it died :( , so since I have my "newer" iMac packed
still, I am limited to the local library's 'puters - at 1/2 hour limit!
I also have my toy piano packed - as well as most of my percussion, but my mother has
an ol' upright & the retirement home she's in has an organ. Lately I have been
dreaming up a plucked/bowed string/zither instrument...
That's all for now, peeps.
Hanuman Zhang a.k.a. "Stitch"
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Message: 23
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:39:44 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Inventing names
Carsten Becker wrote:
> Manisu! [ Be greeted!
> Sira ilt�yang nelnoin vaena! [ I need your help!
>
> Before I'm starting to work on a conworld I need names, I
> thought & decided. But how to come up with names? Shall I
> just make up (at least for now) random, meaningless names,
The first Kash name I came up with, "�enji" = Shenji, was completely a
priori; as I worked on the dictionary I realized that it could be derived,
and so made �enjik 'stolid, stoic'; likewise other names used constantly in
example sentences: Mina (fem.), Mita (masc.) ~~ minda 'happy'; Erek (m.) <
ereken 'ship's captain/owner' according to my notes.
Family names are another matter, so far, as are country names.
> The problem with descriptive names, such as "Stormcloud" is
> that they're mostly at least trisyllabic and that way don't
> fit what I'm used to -- European names are rather short,
> only one or two syllables mostly. OTOH, when you're looking
> at Indian or generally SE-Asian names, three syllables are
> very short!
I say, why not! True that Eur. names are short, words in general are
longish. OTOH SE Asian names can be quite long, while the languages are
often mono- or disyllabic. All those Jayavarmans in Angkorean history, the
Thai Chulalongkorn royal family IIRC. Javanese names beginning with su- are
all Sanskrit derived and mean "beatiful/good/fair whatever"-- Suharto
"beatiful treasure", Sukarno "beatiful reason" etc. etc. (su- is cognate
with Greek eu-.) There are also some very long Skt. names, which,
ironically, are often adopted by people of Chinese origin who want to
disguise a bit their Chinese-ness. (Nobody is fooled :-((( )
At last I could force my self to call the
> biggest ocean of the map of my conworld I've drawn some
> time ago "Rad�m Anana", which is Dal�ian for "The big
> ocean" (Ocean big.3sg),
Well that's logical... One of the oceans on Cindu is called _ro�e aros_
'eastern ocean', I suppose because it was the first ocean to be crossed,
thanks to prevailing winds-- The Kash sailed east to go west, unlike poor
misguided Columbus. Once you/I have some history or mythology figured out,
maybe we'll come up with equivalents of "Atlantic" or "Pacific"....
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Message: 24
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:40:02 +0000
From: Robert Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: META: Conlang IRC Woes
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Wednesday 22 September 2004 18:01, Steg Belsky wrote:
> �sigh...�
>
> Just when i get a good IRC client set up, and configured to handle
> Unicode, and get acquainted not only with the Conlang channel but also
> with some of the religious-discussion-themed channels i used to
> frequent 8 years ago, i find out that the internet connection i just
> got to my university *blocks all IRC*, dang them.
>
> Moral quandary... go back to piggybacking on my neighbors' wireless
> network connection, or try and find some way to bypass the IRC block on
> my own? :-P
Bah, SSH into priscilla.ath.cx and ill give you a shell to IRC from ;)
- --
- -----------------------------------------------
The CONLANG-IRC Server: priscilla.ath.cx #conlang
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Message: 25
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:08:19 +0200
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Replying to Rodlox (Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?) and
obliques)
On Sep 22, 2004, at 9:10 PM, Roger Mills wrote:
>> So, in Arabic, for example,
>> you have "maa" meaning "what" and "man" meaning "who", and those are
>> WH-words. All yes/no questions, though, begin with the particle
>> "hal"
>> (similar to your "que"). So, an example:
>> hal tatakalam al-?/arabiija?
>> /Q you-speak Arabic/
>> "Do you speak Arabic?"
>> "hal" above, like "que", just lets the speaker know that the phrase is
>> a question.
> Does "hal" mean anything else in its own right, or is this just a
> coincidental homophone? It occurs (borrowed I'm sure) in
> Malay/Indonesian,
> meaning "case, instance, (indefinite) thing, affair"-- e.g. pada hal
> itu 'in
> that case', hal ini berat sekali 'this matter is very serious' etc.
I'm pretty sure it just works as the question marker. There is another
word, /X\a:l/, with pharyngeal H instead of glottal h, though. I'm not
sure what exactly it means by itself, but the greeting _kayfa alHaal?_
means "what's up?", literally something like _how is the |Haal|_?
-Stephen (Steg)
"rest / rest and listen / rest and listen and learn, creideiki /
for the startide rises in the currents of the dark /
and we have waited long for what must be..."
~ _startide rising_ by david brin
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