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There are 21 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: conlang names and Mensa
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Bilabial trills
From: Michael Poxon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Asha'ille site update
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Do yous know this?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Do yous know this?
From: azathoth500 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. More Kash stuff
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: vowels: are they necessary?
From: Carlos Alberto Martinez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: vowels: are they necessary?
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: vowels: are they necessary?
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: vowels: are they necessary?
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: German style orthography
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: German style orthography
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Devanagari handwriting?
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: German style orthography
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: German style orthography
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: conlang names and Mensa
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: conlang names and Mensa
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: conlang names and Mensa
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:28:49 +0200
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: conlang names and Mensa
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roger Mills
> Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 9:25 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: conlang names and Mensa
>
>
> Sally Caves wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Shaul Vardi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> > > You guys should consider yourselves lucky - you're naming your
> > > Conlangs now as [presumably] sane adults. I named my
> Conlang when I
> > > was 14, building my language during dull moments in math
> classes...
> > > The result is (pretty embarrasingly) that my Conlang has
> ever since
> > > born the name Tesk. Why? (*Blush*) Because I saw the
> Conlang as a
> > > manifestation of my intelligence [bear in mind that I
> thought I was
> > > the only person in the world doing this]; intelligence
> led me to the
> > > organization Mensa [NOT a road I'd go down today]; mensa = table;
> > > and table in my Conlang is tesk.
> >
> > This is really very funny, Shaul! :) It's enlightening to
> understand
> > the processes of association we go through. "Tesk," too,
> reminds me
> > of "desk." I don't know if you were thinking in terms of
> English then
> > (I assume you are
> > multilingual), but I wonder if sitting at your desk in math
> class you
> > chose
> > a name for table that subliminally reminded you of "desk"
> in English.
>
> That struck me, too. But actually I don't find "Tesk" at all
> "bad"; au contraire it's quite good. IIRC there's an
> Albanian dialect called Tosk.
Right, the famous twins Tosk and Geg. Thanks for the support! Anyway
it's been Tesk for 27 years so I think I'm stuck with it.
> Certainly no worse than "Kash", which is supposed to be
> derived < kayi 'living, alive' by an irregular process that
> isn't found anywhere else in the language (as so far known).
>
Kabirr pax mix qytsut
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 20:30:15 -0000
From: Michael Poxon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Bilabial trills
I'm pretty sure that there's a language of New Guinea (the landmass, not the
country) that uses a BT, but can't at the moment
remember its name.
Mike
> > >Interesting. I don't know of any lang that uses the bilabial trill
> > >phonemically. Cool! :-)
> >
> > There are some, or else the IPA is lying.
>
> I wonder what they might be.
>
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:35:29 -0800
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Asha'ille site update
Emaelivpeith H. S. Teoh:
> Nice. Only, some of them appear rather odd, e.g. the entry for
> _c�tuth kef�ln_ has a very large gap between "n." and "Terran". This
> symptom seems to afflict all sub-entries.
Whoa, how'd I miss noticing that?? Fixed now.
> Incidentally, the TF lexicon page (including the search result pages)
> use a table to layout the various fields. :-)
My tabular layout uses a table too. :) I was going more for the look
of a printed dictionary on the detailed version, though.
> Completely irrelevant note: could it be possible that _kun�th_ is
> derived from "Knuth"? ;-)
Nope, although it's a fun coincidence. :P The adjective _kun�th_ is
regularly derived from the noun _kun�_, which is borrowed straight
from English's "kung fu".
--
AA
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:42:55 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Do yous know this?
Hi!
Canadian for beginners:
http://www.tourcanada.com/comedy.htm
Bye,
Henrik
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:58:11 -0500
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) scripsit:
> To me, both of these particulars are markers of Britishness, and I
> have always regarded them as such.
More specifically, *not* having back vowels, esp. low ones, is a
marker of Australasian-ness.
--
LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy? John Cowan
FOOL: All thy other titles http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
thou hast given away: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
That thou wast born with. http://www.reutershealth.com
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:10:43 -0500
From: azathoth500 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Do yous know this?
Good god that site gives me a headache
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:42:55 +0100, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Canadian for beginners:
>
> http://www.tourcanada.com/comedy.htm
>
> Bye,
> Henrik
>
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:18:04 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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 :)
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/).
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.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:25:01 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: More Kash stuff
Added: social structure and titles of the aristocracy
http://cinduworld.tripod.com/various_notes.htm
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:18:36 -0300
From: Carlos Alberto Martinez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
>-- Mensaje Original --
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 12:40:19 -0700
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>On Dec 8, 2004, at 10:29 AM, Paul Roser wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 18:25:19 -0500, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I would like to know, </FONT></P>
>>> When a consonant is fricative or trilled, it can be continued as long
>>> we
>>> want. Is there any languages that has some words that are only
>>> consonants
>>> without vowels? A little word that is only a rolled [r], a [s], a [v],
>>> without the vowel releasing. It would be conceivable.
>>
I thought I've read somewhere, that czech for "cross" is "krst", this qualifies
as a vowelless word methinks.
Besides, it would be interesting to know if there are words that are
consonant-less
(I mean, just 3 vowels or more, no cons at all). Maybe hawaiian?
---
E-mail y acceso a Internet UltraVeloz totalmente GRATIS en 25 ciudades,
Nro. de acceso 5500-5500 Usuario: Argentina Password: Argentina
http://www.Argentina.com
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:32:35 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
Carlos Alberto Martinez wrote:
>>-- Mensaje Original --
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 12:40:19 -0700
>>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
>>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>
>>On Dec 8, 2004, at 10:29 AM, Paul Roser wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 18:25:19 -0500, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I would like to know, </FONT></P>
>>>>When a consonant is fricative or trilled, it can be continued as long
>>>>we
>>>>want. Is there any languages that has some words that are only
>>>>consonants
>>>>without vowels? A little word that is only a rolled [r], a [s], a [v],
>>>>without the vowel releasing. It would be conceivable.
>>>>
>>>>
>
>I thought I've read somewhere, that czech for "cross" is "krst", this qualifies
>as a vowelless word methinks.
>
>Besides, it would be interesting to know if there are words that are
>consonant-less
>(I mean, just 3 vowels or more, no cons at all). Maybe hawaiian?
>
>
>
The name of the language is a clue, there, since it has three consonants
(the h, the w, and the 'okina)
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Message: 11
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:33:12 +0000
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
Rene Uittenbogaard wrote:
> IIRC, the extra |o| only appears before certain consonant
> clusters, most notably |vs-| and |mn-|:
>
> vo vsyom "in everything"
> so vsyem "with everything"
> ko mnye "to me"
> so mnoy "with me"
Yes, definitely with |vs| and |mn|. I'm sure I've seen it with
one or two others, but I can't recall what they were.
> If a word happens to start with the same consonant as the
> preposition, then that alone is not reason enough to add |o|.
Yes. Actually, I suppose that I could have answered that probably
nothing happens in the case of /s zdra-/, but I thought I'd answer
the implied wider question.
> To make a distinction, I believe that the consonant is
> pronounced long.
In fact, since all of these one-letter forms are prepositions,
they often prefix to noun steps to form new words, just like
pri- and po- and all the other prepositions. The strange result
is that there are actually words which begin, orthographically,
with doubled consonants, and which I suppose are pronounced with
an initial geminate. I guess if they are further prefixed by a
preposition, nothing extra happens(?).
Some examples from a dictionary:
_ssora_ 'a quarrel' (it takes a lot of concentration for me to
avoid typing "ccopa", in Latin latters)
_ssylka_ 'exile'
_vvek_ 'never'
_vverjat'_ 'entrust'
Mercifully, I don't see any words beginning _kk-_ :)
> v voskresen'ye "on Sunday" pronounced as [v:]-
> v vodu "into the water"
> s sestroy "with the sister" pronounced as [s:]-
> k kafe "towards the cafe" pronounced as [k:]- ?
I think there is indeed a [k:] here. Well, it may not actually
be a geminate, but instead have a slight hiatus between two
[k]s? Hmm, aren't there any native Russian speakers around at
the moment? It's not as if we're talking about an obscure lang :).
s.
--
Stephen Mulraney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://livejournal.com/~ataltane
I remember that I tried several times to use a slide rule, and that, several
times also, I began modern maths textbooks, saying to myself that if I were
going slowly, if I read all the lessons all in order, doing the exercises
and all, there was no reason why I should stall -- Georges Perec
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Message: 12
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:40:32 +0000
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
Carlos Alberto Martinez wrote:
>
> I thought I've read somewhere, that czech for "cross" is "krst", this
> qualifies
> as a vowelless word methinks.
The _r_ is the vowel (like in the second syllable of English _better_, although
the
Czech _r_ is trilled IIRC) (yes, syllabic and trilled.. :).
> Besides, it would be interesting to know if there are words that are
> consonant-less
> (I mean, just 3 vowels or more, no cons at all). Maybe hawaiian?
Again, you shouldn't get distracted by the traditional description of certain
letters
of the alphabet as "vowel" and others as "consonants" (have a look at Ray's
post in
this thread).
I can't think of any three-vowel words of the top of my head at the moment,
but I don't see any reason why not.
s.
--
Stephen Mulraney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://livejournal.com/~ataltane
I remember that I tried several times to use a slide rule, and that, several
times also, I began modern maths textbooks, saying to myself that if I were
going slowly, if I read all the lessons all in order, doing the exercises
and all, there was no reason why I should stall -- Georges Perec
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:42:38 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:50:37 +0000, Chris Bates
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>It seems really strange to me that s is always voiced at the start of
>words... how did this arise? I could understand it if (since I'm
>assuming that originally german had no contrast between [s] and [z]) s
>was always [z] intervocally, but.. I don't know, I'd just really like to
>know how it became voiced at the start of all native german words.
It's not like this in all varieties of standard German. Southern standard
German has no voiced fricatives (except for /v/, which might as well be
considered an approximant /v\/) and not voiced stops at all. The southern
German opposition between /s/ and /z/ (e.g. in words such as _reissen_
/'[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ "to rip" vs. _reisen_ /'[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ "to travel") is
often described as
an opposition of fortis vs. lenis, though I've always had the impression
that it'd be an opposition of long consonant vs. short consonant.
I imagine that High German (that is, southern German) formerly had an
opposition of short and long consonants, such as is still reflected in the
orthography and preserved in certain varieties, e.g. many Swiss dialects. I
also imagine there might have been an interrelation of only having voiceless
fricatives/stops and of distinguishing short and long consonants. I don't
know it for sure.
I also imagine, again without any source, that the voiced stops/fricatives
were always present in Low German. Maybe their occurrence in the actual
"standard" pronunciation is due to a Low German substratum? For sure, the
actual prescriptive standard pronunciation is the pronunciation of the
educated upper class of northern German cities.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:58:24 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:56:25 +0100, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> |Self...| [sElf...]
>and |Soft...| [sOft...]
>and |surf...| [s96f...]
>and |Set| [sEt]
>and |Setting| ['sEtIN].
I'd pronounce all these with /z/, except for _self_ which I can't think of
but in the word _Selfmademan_, a loan I don't adapt to German pronunciation.
Maybe my vast use of /z/ is a Swiss peculiarity. There might be some
connection to the Swiss opposition of short and long consonants.
I'm not sure about the Swiss German pronunciation of _Cent_. We don't use
that money. The pronunciation /sEnt/ reminds me always of US-dollars, so I'd
rather prefer /tsEnt/. I could imagine that there are Swiss Germans who'd
intuitively use the French word _centime_ /'sa~tim/ (though in French, both
_cent_ /sa~/ and _centime_ seem to be used).
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:58:36 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Devanagari handwriting?
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.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 16
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:15:54 -0500
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
J. 'Mach' Wust scripsit:
> I also imagine, again without any source, that the voiced stops/fricatives
> were always present in Low German. Maybe their occurrence in the actual
> "standard" pronunciation is due to a Low German substratum?
Standard German derives from a fusion of Middle and Upper German dialects
with Low German phonology, just as Standard Italian is "lingua toscana
in bocca romana."
--
"Kill Gorg�n! Kill orc-folk! John Cowan
No other words please Wild Men. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Drive away bad air and darkness http://www.reutershealth.com
with bright iron!" --Gh�n-buri-Gh�n http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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Message: 17
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:24:24 -0500
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
J. 'Mach' Wust scripsit:
> The pronunciation /sEnt/ reminds me always of US-dollars, so I'd
> rather prefer /tsEnt/. I could imagine that there are Swiss Germans who'd
> intuitively use the French word _centime_ /'sa~tim/ (though in French, both
> _cent_ /sa~/ and _centime_ seem to be used).
Indeed, in official Catalan the word for 1/100 euro is "centim" /sEntim/.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please leave your values Check your assumptions. In fact,
at the front desk. check your assumptions at the door.
--sign in Paris hotel --Cordelia Vorkosigan
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Message: 18
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:55:43 -0500
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: conlang names and Mensa
Shaul Vardi wrote:
>
> You guys should consider yourselves lucky - you're naming
> your Conlangs now as [presumably] sane adults. I named
> my Conlang when I was 14, building my language during
> dull moments in math classes... The result is (pretty
> embarrasingly) that my Conlang has ever since born the
> name Tesk. Why? (*Blush*) Because I saw the Conlang
> as a manifestation of my intelligence [bear in mind that I
> thought I was the only person in the world doing this];
> intelligence led me to the organization Mensa [NOT a road
> I'd go down today]; mensa = table; and table in my Conlang
> is tesk.
Okay, here's my story, FWIW:
When I was twelve, I created my own micronation. My playmates
thought I was crazy; what a dumb thing to do. At that age, boys
often are interested in ciphers and secret writing. (Do many girls
do that? I don't remember any doing so.) Some of my classmates
and I were writing secret messages by using a cipher where
there is a secret number (in our case 12401). One writes that
number repeatedly over the message, then advances each letter
that many in the alphabet.
We had built a treehouse in my backyard, which we always
referred to as "treefort" (never *the* treefort, just treefort). So
I encoded it as
12401124
TREEFORT
UTIEGPTX
So I called my micronation Utiegptx (pronounced as if spelled
|yoo-teg-pets|. Later when I was in high school, I shortened it to
the Utieg Republic, and even later to the Uteg Republic, which
is its current name. When I took Printing in high school, my first
project was to print currency for the Uteg Republic. The unit was
the Favler which was equal to the value of a pound of lead. (I
had a lot of small bars of lead which I got from someone who
used to cast lead soldiers.) My parents were very understanding.
They allowed me to put up a ten-foot piece of pipe as a flagpole
from which I always flew the Uteg flag (a 3x5 foot one).
A classmate and I developed two languages when we were in
high school. The first was mostly a Latin relex of English, the
second a Romance euroclone.
I'm currently working on the real Uteg language (in which most
of the vocabulary will be from Irish). I still fly the Uteg flag in my
backyard on sunny days. (My playmates were almost correct.
I'm not crazy; I'm just eccentric.)
--Ph. D.
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Message: 19
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 20:12:28 -0800
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: conlang names and Mensa
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.
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.
So yes, girls do that too. ;)
--
AA
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Message: 20
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:53:51 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: conlang names and Mensa
On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 08:12:28PM -0800, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> Ph. D.:
> > At that age, boys
> > often are interested in ciphers and secret writing.
Yup, a cipher is the origin of my conlang Methkaeki as well. I think I
explained this on here before, but it was a one-offset Caesar-cipher,
the trick being that vowels advance to the next vowel, and consonants to
the next consonant, wrapping around the end of the alphabet.
Thus, the word
LANGUAGE became
MEPHAEHI
which I pronounced /m@'faj.hi/. The problem was pronouncing clusters -
for instance, the definite article VJI which I pronounced something like
/v@'dZi/. So over time I went toward a more phonemic scheme - not
completely phonemic, because I wanted words that are homophones in
English not to be homophonic in my lang. But the latest mapping turns
/N/ into /T/ and |g| into /k/, which is how I got Methkaeki
/mET'kaj.ki/.
-Marcos
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Message: 21
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:57:44 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Joe wrote, quoting myself where indicated:
> [O:], for |our|, |ore| and |ure|, for me. I have [E:] for most of what
> is usually cited in RP as [EMAIL PROTECTED], and [I:] for [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> fairly frequently
> (though by no means universally. Also, 'our'(the word) is [A:], which
> is actually opposed to 'hour', which is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[stE:] for "stare" is certainly the pronunciation that comes across as
most characteristically English to my ears.
I think of "our" the way I pronounce it as a unique diphthong
approximately like [&6] (might be [&V] when the mouth is closing in
preparation for the onset of the next word). The basic idea is that
the vowel remains open, but slides from front-ish to relatively
back-ish. (I have a theory about the underlying phonology, but that's
another story.)
I definitely find my pronunciation of "our" much closer to Tristan's
than to Joe's, because it's a diphthong, though I will agree that it's
slightly closer to Joe's than Tristan's is.
> > * Consonant wise, the main difference is that the 't' on the end of
> > 'stout' is much more aspirated.
>
> The only one that surprises me is this one.
Surprised that I think of it as peculiarily English? In the accent of
RP speakers, I routinely notice a very strong aspiration of /t/ when
it occurs at the end of a word (as in 'stout' and 'stint'). I
certainly find it a marker of stereotypical British RP.
John Cowan wrote:
> More specifically, *not* having back vowels, esp. low ones, is a
> marker of Australasian-ness.
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?
Adrian.
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