------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater?
Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/TzSHvD/SOnJAA/79vVAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
There are 17 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: My Artifacts Page
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: My Artifacts Page
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Multilingual Childhood?
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Conlang Dream
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Multilingual Childhood?
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Sumerian Lexicon
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Online Sheli Poetry Translation
From: Matt Trinsic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Conlang Dream
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Eng (was: Name mangling)
From: Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. A short passage.
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: My Artifacts Page
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Multilingual Childhood?
From: Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Sumerian Lexicon
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Sumerian Lexicon
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Shelli poem
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: My Artifacts Page
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Short passage in Ayhan
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 19:33:06 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: My Artifacts Page
* Trent Pehrson said on 2005-03-14 15:31:13 +0100
> Learned List Members,
>
> On my conlang site (<http://idrani.perastar.com>), I recently finished
> version 1.0.2 of the artifacts page. I would like to invite a peer review
> of that page only:
>
> <http://idrani.perastar.com/idrani/ISMS_artifacts.htm>
>
> My primary concerns are with basic clarity in the explanations and with
> formal and functional operation of the page and, of course, with any
> formal errors such as type-o's or misspellings. The page contains many
> very large images and may take some time to load.
It takes ages even with a very speedy connection. I suggest breaking it
up into one page per section. Apart from that, I'm in awe. Where do you
find the time?
t.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:37:58 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: My Artifacts Page
Dear Trent,
(I'm writing you personally, and also posting to the list):
I find this AMAZING. The idea of creating an "artifacts" page for your
conculture is a truly imaginative undertaking, and I had long wanted to do
something similar with Teonaht, but never had the time or the technical
expertise. The fact that you computer-generated some of your images impresses
me. But I have to ask you... did you create the masks yourself? They look
like photographs of physically made things.
I was especially impressed by "He Chased a Pebble." But I'd like to know what
exactly you mean by the Idrani Kalevala. I'm familiar with some of the
Kalevala... what does it mean in Finnish? And are these stories your invention
(Kalevala meaning "collection of tales"?) or adaptations of the actual
Kalevala? LOVE the soundbytes!
How can I make a "book" that turns like that? I have several stories that I
wanted to turn into on-line hypertexts.
The artifacts that you say were computer generated do look quite real,
especially the metal plates. Particularly beautiful was "The Edict of Sojawi"
and its delicate, embossed script. The Disipokhu Leaves look like something
you painted, and scanned in. Was it?
I have DSL, and still the pages took a long time to load. Nothing after
Alphabet Book Leaf 2 loaded, which is about two thirds of the way down. :( Is
that a problem of my computer just not being able to handle the size of the
file? I watched the lower bar as it loaded, and it brought it all the way down
from 50 percent to go to DONE, and yet the final third of the file won't
display the images.
I bookmarked it, though, so we'll see if the whole thing loads next time.
Wonderful work, Trent! And 24 years of it, I understand (I read your bio...
when I tried to access Roddenberry's "dynamic language" Eunoic, I was told that
I was "not authorised to view it." Do I have to play in Roddenberry's sandbox
to look at it? I already did that. ;-) He's [was] so stingy with his toys. :)
Sally
Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an
"The gods have retractible claws"
Gospel of Bast
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 19:35:31 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Multilingual Childhood?
Joseph a.k.a Buck wrote:
>>Tok Pisin is an awesomely awesome language. I wonder, should
>>we classify it as a Germanic language or not?
>>
>>
>
>Mi save liklik tumas olpela tok Pisin bilong Nu Gini. Bilong wanem yu
>bilipim em i olsem insait bilong tok Siamen na tok Inglis? Long tok Inglis
>em i papa bilong Tok Pisin?
>
>
>
>
Sorry, while I like Tok Pisin, I can't speak it. Could you say that in
English?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:33:34 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlang Dream
Hallo!
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:07:29 -0500,
Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...]
>
> Actually, I had a conlang "daydream" just yesterday! For some reason, the
> following sentences flashed in my head, along with the English translation:
>
> 'Ti parash na?' 'Iya.'
> 'Don't you think (so)?' 'Yes.'
>
> Then I figured out a gloss:
> ti 'you (sg.)'
> parash 'think (prs. act. ind.)'
> na 'no, not'
> iya 'yes'
>
> Finally, I worked out a different question syntax:
>
> 'Ti na parash?' 'Nayum.'
> 'You don't think (so)?' 'No, indeed.'
>
> There's an ending -yum which has an emphatic meaning. I think
> the "emphatic affirmative" would be _iyam_, though (not *iyayum).
>
> I've also been thinking of a past-tense for the verb, either _parshu_ or
> _parshi_. This gives two more conclusions to the language: it doesn't
> inflect for person or number, and it does not tolerate word-final
> consonant clusters (nor most initial ones, I'd say).
>
> Whatcha think?
Nice! The 2nd person pronoun _ti_ and the negative particle _na_
remind me at Indo-European, Uralic and related languages. (Of course,
just two morphemes don't allow any determination of relationship.)
Is your language something like that?
P.S. A few days ago I had a daydream about a visit in a Zireen city.
It looked just like a modern western city (Herman Miller certainly
has different ideas) except that everything was about half normal
size, and some buildings, signs, etc. had odd colours. There were
posters, paintings, etc. where some of the colours were off by
adding or subtracting red (which is invisible to Zireen).
Greetings,
Jörg.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:27:23 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Multilingual Childhood?
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:10:49 +0100, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is there linguistic investigation of what it means to the child? What
> effect it has on learning languages, etc.?
I've read that one side-effect of knowing two (or more) languages from
an early age is three realisations that can be very useful when
learning other languages later on: (a) different languages have
different words for the same object; there is no "inherent" name for
things, (b) different languages do not necessarily have the same range
of concepts for a given word (for example, English "blue" is not the
same as Japanese "aoi", nor English "ask" and German "fragen", though
the ranges overlap), and (c) different languages have different
grammatical structures, so you can't translate from one language to
another word-for-word (which seems to be a temptation for many
monolingual speakers learning their first foreign language).
> Is there only the obvious beneficial part to it or are there
> drawbacks, too?
I've occasionally encountered vague antipathy when speaking English
with my father; since it's a language that not everyone understands,
some people think that we might be speaking about them behind their
backs.
I remember one incident where we were asked, at church, not to speak
French with one another (something I did occasionally after I had had
French at school for a bit; my father knew it from having studied
German and French at university); they realised they couldn't very
well ask us to stop speaking English, since it was our heritage
language, but asked us to refrain from French, at least.
A vaguely related incident was sitting in the train together on our
way to work and school; my father and I had been speaking English and
French and then switched to German, at which point a couple of girls
sitting kitty-corner from us burst into giggles; I presume they had
never before heard people speaking three different languages in the
space of half an hour!
> Personal views of members of this list who have experienced or watched
> a multilingual upbringing would be exciting, too.
The biggest lesson I learned from watching our family's experience
(father British, mother German) is that different children will react
differently to the same environment.
I grew up to be bilingual in English and German, though it's true that
going to an English-language school certainly helped; however, my
youngest sister spoke very little English for quite a while when she
was younger, replying to my father in German when he addressed her in
English and occasionally claiming not to understand what he said in
English. (I've heard that this was when she came into kindergarten and
found that the other children couldn't understand her since she spoke
English, at which point she switched to only German.)
So while I would like to raise our daughter bilingually (en/de), I
realise that some children "take to it" more readily than others, and
that one cannot predict a given degree of success.
One point in our disfavour is that I, the father, who am not around
the child as much due to work, am "responsible" for the language that
is not the language of the environment; however, an advantage of
having English be the minority language is that it will be much easier
to acquire books, DVDs, etc. in English, or to find English-speaking
playmates, than if I spoke another language such as, say, Hungarian or
Farsi.
Another disadvantage is that my wife speaks very little English, so if
Amy learns English and tries to speak it to her, she won't understand;
and if she speaks to both of us at once, she'll have to use German,
further reinforcing what will undoubtedly become her dominant
language. My parents both spoke both languages, so I could speak only
English around my father without leaving my mother out.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:42:00 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sumerian Lexicon
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:22:55 -0500, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>This appeared in another list:
>http://www.sumerian.org/sumerlex.htm
>
>Quite interesting. But I'm more curious about:
>
>--Does anyone know anything about the author? (he says he was a student at
>UCSB at some point)
>
>--It seems to be legit scholarship, but is it actually? i.e. not wacked-out
>ravings
>
>Comments?
Well, based on a cursory view of it, I'm skeptical of the rather high
number of words that consist of only one vowel. IIRC, Sumerian is
notorious for its apparent extreme homophony and/or homonymy, but I doubt
that that was actually the case with the language.
As Damien said, it's also very unlikely that the Sumerians invented their
language outright (unless Mr. Halloran is talking about the written
language).
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:56:32 -0500
From: Matt Trinsic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Online Sheli Poetry Translation
Here is my attempt at translating the poem into Neryv. I've also
included translation from that into english, to see how well the poem
survived my mangling ;) Also, as Sheli doesn't have verb tenses but
Neryv does, I took the liberty of manipulating the tenses a bit to see
how it would look. The translation into english went pretty well, except
the very first line. The "tree-legs" should be read as "legs that are
trees" rather than "legs of trees". In Neryv, this is quite explicit and
would most likely be taken metaphorically.
Enjoy!
In Neryv:
ryces ehakap xyd
dohoke efatep donoz ropyb
atnaparap hapehu napacod cepatu
dobed pekyt ropeko
pewas ebowaz fejez
In conlang X-Sampa:
[r\iTIs IS&k&p Did
dVSVkE If&tIp dMnMz r\Mpib
&tn&p&r\&p SApES n&p&TMd TEpAt
dMbId pIkit r\VpEkV
pIw&s IbMw&z fIjIz]
In English:
Thick tree-legs
forcefully, slowly carved air.
Barge on ocean swims
to rock. Pirates will take
red tusks to marketplace.
~Trinsic
> Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 00:48:24 -0800
> From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Online Sheli Poetry Translation
>
> I completed a new page on my website awhile back, and,
> after a successful test run, I'm going to announce it here.
>
> Basically, I wrote a poem in Sheli, and I've put resources
> online for anyone to translate it. I've attempted two
> translations, and a friend of mine has done two, as well.
> The page is here:
>
> http://dedalvs.free.fr/sheli/poetry.html
>
> The point of the page is not so much the poem, as the
> translation. I've never been good at writing poetry,
> so I was amazed that I was actually able to fit one
> together. The point is to see how different people
> translate it. The idea is based on a book by Eliot
> Weinberger called Nineteen Ways of Looking at
> Wang Wei. Here's an Amazon link:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0918825148/104-0791613
> -1996740?v=glance
>
> The point of the book is to show nineteen different
> translations of a single four line poem by Wang Wei.
> They're all very different, and each conveys a unique
> image (though some very, very poorly). I thought it
> would be a neat experiment to try to replicate what
> Weinberger did, but with a conlangy twist.
>
> Anyway, I invite anyone to translate the poem. And,
> as I say on the page, it doesn't necessarily need to be
> a translation into English (though if it is, I'll probably
> need your help in pinning down how your translation
> works). I think it would be especially interesting to
> translate the poem into a different language and then
> back into English. It'd be like our translation relays,
> except the translator isn't in the dark.
>
> So, that's it. I look forward to any and all contributions.
>
> -David (who needs a sig! I'll work on it)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:52:24 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlang Dream
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:33:34 +0100, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Nice! The 2nd person pronoun _ti_ and the negative particle _na_
>remind me at Indo-European, Uralic and related languages. (Of course,
>just two morphemes don't allow any determination of relationship.)
>Is your language something like that?
Not sure yet. The language still consists of only those four
sentences. :P Some ideas, though:
1st-person singular: xa, mi, or ni
Pronominal accusative: -m or -n
Either no case-markings on nouns or a simple nominative-oblique distinction
Plural perhaps in -na
Verb stuff: past tense in -u or -i (more likely the former), passive in -ta
or -tha (that is, /-Ta/), infinitive in -en or -in (depends on whether I
have a 3-vowel or a 5-vowel scheme)
Some enclitic stuff, like the ending -yum/-m for 'indeed', interrogative
marker (probably), conjunctions, maybe even pronominal possessives
Default word-order SOV, modifiers precede headwords but prepositions
Possibly postvocalic lenition of some stops, like in Hebrew and Aramaic
>P.S. A few days ago I had a daydream about a visit in a Zireen city.
>It looked just like a modern western city (Herman Miller certainly
>has different ideas) except that everything was about half normal
>size, and some buildings, signs, etc. had odd colours. There were
>posters, paintings, etc. where some of the colours were off by
>adding or subtracting red (which is invisible to Zireen).
Who (or what) are the Zireen?
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 9
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:47:15 -0500
From: Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Eng (was: Name mangling)
"Tristan McLeay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Personally, I don't think it's fair to say that a particular glyph form
> is wrong, unless all the people who use the character dislike the form.
> Capital Eng is not defined by any script which mandates particular
> glyph styles, unlike lowercase eng. Even if it were, no-one thinks it's
> wrong that there's two possible glyphs for g, but the IPA says only one
> form is correct. The enlarged eng form is commonly used, is not
> confuseable for some other symbol
The "incomplete D" is confused with U+E014 TENGWAR LETTER OORE
http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/tengwar.html
Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Some of your complaints about it though remind me of why i don't like
> the uppercase thorn letter :-P .
At least uppercase thorn is good for sticking out your e-tongue
symmetrically :-Þ .
--
Damian
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 10
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 14:46:36 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: A short passage.
I'd sent this early this morning but it didn't seem to make it to the
list for some reason (I checked the archives). So, here it is again.
I've been working hard on Ayhan lately, and I have a short text in it
for you all to see. It's the first "law" from the "Code of Kalantiaw",
which was at first promulgated in most Philippine Schools around WWII,
but was later found to be a hoax. It's still passed around as if it is
an authentic system of law from the 15th century (it was penned by
José Maria Pavón)
1. Inu ihadsaay kria, inu udar kepasyaay kria sau hayansaay kria
birengyal prasay inu sihatsaay kria berkas dal kayu. Ancorji angal
atan krisotsara soji leti, ditatarkensaay kayuley ika ca suhurey siga
matak di atriha byan di siligig ji aywa.
/inu ihadsa?aj k4i?a inu uda4 kepasja?aj k4i?a sa?u hajansa?ay k4i?a
bi4eNjal p4asaj inu sihatsa?aj k4i?a be4kas dal kaju antSo4dZi aNal
atan k4isotsa4a sodZi leti ditata4kensa?aj kajulej ika tSa suhu4ej
siga matak di at4iha bjan di siligig dZi ajwa/
Not kill.act-nat.fut you, not either steal.act-nat.fut you nor
harm.act-nat.fut you old.one-who.is so that not acquire.act-nat.fut
you danger of death. All.adj person who violate.act-nat.pres this.adj
law, cause.condemn.act-nat.fut die.inf they by drown.inf with stone in
river or in boling linker water.
You will not kill, neither steal, nor harm the old so that you don't
acquire the danger of death. All people who violate this law, they
will be made to be condemend to die by drowning with stones in a
river or boiling in water.
I wasn't sure how to translate "will be condemned to die" exactly
since Ayhan lacks any sort of verb for "to be". My best guess was the
"causative" affix for the verbs, which is usually used for saying
"caused something to happen". This was a lot trickier than I thought.
Also, where I've written "act-nat" means "active natural". This is in
there because Ayhan distinguishes verb subjects which are natural or
unnatural, active, or inactive. Natural generally means things in an
untouched or unprocessed state (a picked vegetable is considered
"unnatural", but "natural" when still in the ground). Active things
are usually things that show some sign of movement or development
without the hand of man (usually) or a god or spirit (meaning the
spirit or god doesn't take an active role in manipulating it).
It's most common to use the active-natural affix (sa) for most
subjects (and is considered the safest one to use). The affixes change
due to Ayhan's rules for preserving the final consonants of roots that
have them (so with a root ending in -s, it changes the affix from -sa
to -ya, as in "kepasyaay" which derives from "kepas + sa + ay (future
affix)", yielding "kepasyaay", and not "kepassaay)
These final consonant preservation rules ont he roots extend into the
noun afixes as well where the same rules apply. Between two affixes
Ayhan permits sound changes of the final consonants on affixes.
I really do hope my explanations, interlinear, and phonetic
transcriptions are all clear, because it's 3:30 AM here :)
--
Inu payangyara unamey ati tal amariey ka sey, payangyara kria?
Yanaysatra sonataya atan inu jumoey ati atan matawsara jumoey ati.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 11
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:48:47 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: My Artifacts Page
Trent Pehrson wrote at 2005-03-14 09:31:13 (-0500)
> Learned List Members,
>
> On my conlang site (<http://idrani.perastar.com>), I recently finished
> version 1.0.2 of the artifacts page. I would like to invite a peer review
> of that page only:
>
> <http://idrani.perastar.com/idrani/ISMS_artifacts.htm>
>
> My primary concerns are with basic clarity in the explanations and
> with formal and functional operation of the page and, of course,
> with any formal errors such as type-o's or misspellings. The page
> contains many very large images and may take some time to load.
>
> If you are inclined to review it, please send criticisms to my personal
> email address:
>
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> I may not be able to respond to every review, so I heartily thank
> any kind participant in advance.
>
> Trent
Your artwork here is beautiful, particularly the calligraphy. Truly
inspirational.
I suggest that you split the one page into a series. Loading all
those images at once doesn't just take a long time, it takes up a lot
of memory. My system suffered severe slowdown culminating in a
browsel crash - faster computers with more memory will have less of a
problem, but this isn't the slowest machine on the internet, either.
I didn't notice any errors or lack of clarity in the text. It might
be an idea to include hyperlinks to other parts of the site when
relevant (descriptions of the scripts, for example).
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 12
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:36:33 -0500
From: Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Multilingual Childhood?
>On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:10:49 +0100, Henrik Theiling
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>> Is there linguistic investigation of what it means to the child?
>> What effect it has on learning languages, etc.?
My experience:
I was/am (I'm leaving the nest by the end of this year) brought up
bilingual, English and Spanish, in the United States. My parents are
both Venezuelan immigrants, and my first language was Spanish(the only
language we speak at home), and I went top a Venezuelan preschool. We
moved to the US when I entered kindergarten, where I learned English by
immersion. My parents always spoke to me in Spanish, and responded with
"no entiendo, tu quieres decir ______" when I tried to speak English to
them, or used an English word.
My sister, on the other hand, learned to speak Spanish (at home) and
English(at school) at the same time, so had a harder time separating the
two languages. However, I'm not sure how much these differences had to
do with the environment or genetics, since I have more of an interest in
languages in general than her, and have a larger vocabulary in both
languages.
As to the effect on me, I love being bilingual, and with I spoke more
languages, but I'm testing the waters to see which one draws more of my
attention.
>> Is there only the obvious beneficial part to it or are there
>> drawbacks, too?
I cannot speak to my parents in English. It just isn't done.
--Cristina
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 13
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 23:49:38 +0000
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sumerian Lexicon
Roger Mills wrote:
> This appeared in another list:
> http://www.sumerian.org/sumerlex.htm
>
> Quite interesting. But I'm more curious about:
>
> --Does anyone know anything about the author? (he says he was a student at
> UCSB at some point)
>
> --It seems to be legit scholarship, but is it actually? i.e. not wacked-out
> ravings
>
> Comments?
Well, if I may contrast the more thoughtful comments of others, who have
actually
glanced though the pages, with my own first impression, based entirely on
intuition:
He's unreliable. As Damien says, the lexicon might be reliable. But the rest
screams
wacked-out(*) raver to me. As someone commented on Language Hat a while back,
"centred
text: the sign of a deranged mind" :). Ok, it's only a centred title, but what
really
go my attention was the author's name writ large, as well as the blushing
reference
to "The author...", and the first line "... is being reviewed by other
scholars".
They all make me a bit wary, crazed loonies with such identifiable plumage
having
been(**) publishing websites for as long as I've been online. *But* I must admit
that this chap is fairly restrained as far as overt kookiness goes, and it's
even
possible that his site is useful (it's probably interesting, either way).
Still,
caveat lector :)
--
s.
(*) ObYAEPT: Can't help but think that this word would be better represented as
"whacked
out". But I use a [W]-using variety of English, so the difference might be more
important
for me. I'm not necessarily claiming that this *whack is the same as the usual
English
word "whack", though!
PS to ObYAEPT: Just after writing the above paragraph, my brother, who's still
at school,
appeared and told me a piece of pedagogical doggerel, which I can't reproduce,
that a
teacher had recited to his class. The purpose of it was to remind pupils to
pronounce
"wh" as [W]! I guess I must have been cursing audibly about the [W]-less
masses...
(**) I swear, mostly literate reader of books and writer of standard English
though I be,
I no longer trust myself on whether to use "been" or "being" in this
construction.
I make no distinction in speech, to the point of not being (aha!) able to tell
even
what the underlying form is. My guess why this particular construction is so
fragile is
that it's essentially a written form, that I'd rarely have used in speech
before my
adolescent years. It's possible I haven't forgotten the rule, but that I've
never known
it, too :).
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 14
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:00:12 -0600
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sumerian Lexicon
>From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>Well, based on a cursory view of it, I'm skeptical of the rather high
>number of words that consist of only one vowel. IIRC, Sumerian is
>notorious for its apparent extreme homophony and/or homonymy, but I doubt
>that that was actually the case with the language.
As well you should be. This is the reason most Sumerian experts posit
tonality in the language.
Athey
_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 15
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 19:22:07 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Shelli poem
Here's my Gwr version, which I've also sent to David P. Very easy (too
easy??), almost word for word, even preserving the 5-syl/5-line form.
Perhaps the author was She-li Pr-si :-)))))
The tones are: 1 low, 2 low-rising, 3 mid, 4 high-falling, 5 high
=======================================
She-li tu-l
ngu1 gaq1 day1 ti:-de3
wa:ng2 waung3 shiq3 tr4 ming3
br1-poyh5 laq3 liwng4 tru:5
xwè3 caq5, tru:5-tuing1 dliq3
treng3 trong-de3 shòng3 pr3
Interlinear:
She-li poem
with/using thick tree leg-pl
beast plod smooth(ly) through air/atmosphere
pull-boat float calm sea
collide rock, sea-thief steal
red tusk-pl sell market
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 16
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:53:20 -0800
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: My Artifacts Page
I just want to quote something I found adorable:
Tim wrote:
<<
My system suffered severe slowdown culminating in a
browsel crash
>>
Browsel! I don't care if it was a mistake, that's a fantastic word!
Of course, the subject matter is nothing to make light of, but
the word is a gem. Submit it to Langmaker!
To echo this sentiment, my computer could handle the page,
though it took a long time to load, but my iTunes songs started
skipping. If the viewer is a conlanger, they'll wait; if the viewer
is someone just casually interested in your site, they won't
tolerate this, and will leave.
If I could make a suggestion, I know it's great to have all those
images up at once, just so that they're all in one place and no
clicking is involved, but you might consider putting a few samples
up on this page (or another), and then having every image be
a link, so that when you click on it it opens up that image--and
just that image--in a separate window. I know, this is not ideal,
but we have to deal with the technology we've got now. For
an example of what I mean, go here:
http://dedalvs.free.fr/wasabi.html
Scroll down to the section entitled "Starting Up Your Own Class
at Berkeley", and click on the linked word "syllabus". This actually
opens up the syllabus in the same page, but, as I'm sure you know,
you can specify that it open up a separate browser window. That
might be best for what you want, if you don't want people going
back and forth between the main pages and subpages. If you don't
mind that, though, you could take Taliesin's advice and create a
single page for each subsection.
Sally wrote:
<<
How can I make a "book" that turns like that? I have several stories
that I wanted to turn into on-line hypertexts
>>
Major ditto. I want to do that! For some reason, though, I think
the answer is going to involve "Photoshop Deluxe", in which ase
I won't be able to do anything. :(
Just so you know, my favorites are the ones entitled "Kuwa",
"Manrai" and "Maskuka". Just fantastic. One thing I always
wanted to be was a visual artist, but I just wasn't talented
enough. If I'd had the talent, this is what I'd be doing. Just
gorgeous.
Also, I was going to suggest putting a book together like the
Codex Seraphinianvs, if you didn't know about it, but I'm
guessing that you do and have. Is this the case? If so, would
there be any way to see your complete codex?
Since you're only inviting comments on your artifacts page,
I'll leave it at that.
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 17
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 03:25:29 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Short passage in Ayhan
I've been working hard on Ayhan lately, and I have a short text in it
for you all to see. It's the first "law" from the "Code of Kalantiaw",
which was at first promulgated in most Philippine Schools around WWII,
but was later found to be a hoax. It's still passed around as if it is
an authentic system of law from the 15th century (it was penned by
José Maria Pavón)
1. Inu ihadsaay kria, inu udar kepasyaay kria sau hayansaay kria
birengyal prasay inu sihatsaay kria berkas dal kayu. Ancorji angal
atan krisotsara soji leti, ditatarkensaay kayuley ika ca suhurey siga
matak di atriha byan di siligig ji aywa.
/inu ihadsa?aj k4i?a inu uda4 kepasja?aj k4i?a sa?u hajansa?ay k4i?a
bi4eNjal p4asaj inu sihatsa?aj k4i?a be4kas dal kaju antSo4dZi aNal
atan k4isotsa4a sodZi leti ditata4kensa?aj kajulej ika tSa suhu4ej
siga matak di at4iha bjan di siligig dZi ajwa/
Not kill.act-nat.fut you, not either steal.act-nat.fut you nor
harm.act-nat.fut you old.one-who.is so that not acquire.act-nat.fut
you danger of death. All.adj person who violate.act-nat.pres this.adj
law, cause.condemn.act-nat.fut die.inf they by drown.inf with stone in
river or in boling linker water.
You will not kill, neither steal, nor harm the old so that you don't
acquire the danger of death. All people who violate this law, they
will be made to be condemend to die by drowning with stones in a
river or boiling in water.
I wasn't sure how to translate "will be condemned to die" exactly
since Ayhan lacks any sort of verb for "to be". My best guess was the
"causative" affix for the verbs, which is usually used for saying
"caused something to happen". This was a lot trickier than I thought.
Also, where I've written "act-nat" means "active natural". This is in
there because Ayhan distinguishes verb subjects which are natural or
unnatural, active, or inactive. Natural generally means things in an
untouched or unprocessed state (a picked vegetable is considered
"unnatural", but "natural" when still in the ground). Active things
are usually things that show some sign of movement or development
without the hand of man (usually) or a god or spirit (meaning the
spirit or god doesn't take an active role in manipulating it).
It's most common to use the active-natural affix (sa) for most
subjects (and is considered the safest one to use). The affixes change
due to Ayhan's rules for preserving the final consonants of roots that
have them (so with a root ending in -s, it changes the affix from -sa
to -ya, as in "kepasyaay" which derives from "kepas + sa + ay (future
affix)", yielding "kepasyaay", and not "kepassaay)
These final consonant preservation rules ont he roots extend into the
noun afixes as well where the same rules apply. Between two affixes
Ayhan permits sound changes of the final consonants on affixes.
I really do hope my explanations, interlinear, and phonetic
transcriptions are all clear, because it's 3:30 AM here :)
--
Inu payangyara unamey ati tal amariey ka sey, payangyara kria?
Yanaysatra sonataya atan inu jumoey ati atan matawsara jumoey ati.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
