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There are 10 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Yasaro writing
From: Herman Miller
1b. TECH: Typography (was Re: Yasaro writing)
From: Paul Bennett
1c. Re: TECH: Typography (was Re: Yasaro writing)
From: Mark J. Reed
1d. Re: Yasaro writing
From: Herman Miller
2. Re: Project: Contact!
From: Joseph B.
3. book recommendation - "Volapuk"
From: Rick Harrison
4a. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: John Vertical
4b. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Alex Fink
5. Going No-Mail
From: David J. Peterson
6. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
From: Andreas Johansson
Messages
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1a. Re: Yasaro writing
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 7:35 pm (PDT)
Tim May wrote:
> I'm not sure that they're the theoretically correct characters to use,
> though, Herman - they're in the CJK Symbols & Punctuation block. I
> think what you want is probably $,1{) (U+2329) and $,1{* (U+232A) (although
> they are marked as equivalent... I'm not entirely sure what that means
> in this case).
That explains the odd spacing. There must be some character translation
going on behind the scenes -- if I paste in the 〈〉 characters, I end up
with 〈〉 in the preview. Using 〈 and 〉 gives me the correct
characters, but using a font that doesn't match. I guess I'm stuck with
less-than / greater-than <> or guillemets ‹› as substitutes. I think I
prefer the look of the guillemets; at least they shouldn't cause trouble
with most fonts...
Well, it was worth a try.
Messages in this topic (8)
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1b. TECH: Typography (was Re: Yasaro writing)
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:03 pm (PDT)
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 22:30:07 -0400, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Tim May wrote:
>
> That explains the odd spacing. There must be some character translation
> going on behind the scenes -- if I paste in the 〈〉 characters, I end up
> with 〈〉 in the preview. Using 〈 and 〉 gives me the correct
> characters, but using a font that doesn't match. I guess I'm stuck with
> less-than / greater-than <> or guillemets ‹› as substitutes. I think I
> prefer the look of the guillemets; at least they shouldn't cause trouble
> with most fonts...
>
> Well, it was worth a try.
Unless you're producing printed or at least typeset material, typesetting
and font choice is the responsibility of the reader. I have always been of
the opinion that you should use the correct characters in email and html,
and let the recipient find the right software and fonts to read it. Having
said that, Opera appears to have done something rather odd to your angle
brackets. They were fine when reading your message, but have been modified
by hitting "Reply". Let's see what the list-server and everyone else's
software does to the changed characters...
Paul
Messages in this topic (8)
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1c. Re: TECH: Typography (was Re: Yasaro writing)
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:12 am (PDT)
On 7/22/06, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Unless you're producing printed or at least typeset material, typesetting
> and font choice is the responsibility of the reader.
If you're producing a document for distribution over the Internet, you
have basically these choice:
1) Take a standards-compliant approach despite the fact that some
readers aren't using standards-complaint software;
2) Bend over backwards while jumping through hoops to try and get it
to work for everyone - and inevitably fail;
3) compromise between 1) and 2) to make sure the readers of the most
popular non-compliant software see the right thing (hello, Microsoft);
4) Use a distribution medium that gives you more complete control,
while making the viewing process slightly less convenient - e.g. PDF
or an image. A PDF can still have font issues, but it's possible to
bundle the desired fonts within the PDF, though it incurs a
significant download size penalty.
The angle brackets showed up fine here, btw.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (8)
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1d. Re: Yasaro writing
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 2:58 pm (PDT)
Herman Miller wrote:
> Yasaro is written using the Lelimi script (Yasaro lelímī "alphabet"),
> which is closely related to the Vlika script. The spelling of native
> Yasaro words is largely based on the pronunciation of an earlier stage
> of the language, Middle Yasaro, while retaining some features of Old
> Yasaro pronunciation. Borrowed words are spelled in various ways
> depending on when the words were borrowed and from which language.
I added an illustration of the Lelimi script, which as you can see looks
a lot like the Vlika script I used for writing Tirelat.
http://wiki.frath.net/Lelimi
http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/Tirelat/script.html
I'm thinking I should probably use Ljoerr for Tirelat, since it's the
sort of writing system the logical Sangari would have come up with, and
reserve the Vlika script for Zireen languages like Virelli. I already
have Pintek as a native writing system for Jarda.
http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/Jarda/Ljoerr.html
The FrathWiki page also briefly mentions one of the sound changes in the
history of the Yasaro language; voiced stops changed to nasals. (Mostly.
There are a few cases of /g/ -> /v/ | _/u/ and similar conditioned
changes, which preceded the voiced stop -> nasal change.) So Yasaro has
two letters for /m/ and /n/ (original /m/ and /n/, plus original /b/ and
/d/ which merged with /m/ and /n/).
Messages in this topic (8)
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2. Re: Project: Contact!
Posted by: "Joseph B." [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:06 am (PDT)
Sounds like fun. Pidgins & creoles have been a long-time interest of mine.
>Two people who each have their own distinct conlang
>get together and devise a contact language using
>elements of both conlangs, such that native speakers
>of the two conlangs can communicate with each other in
>a basic way.
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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3. book recommendation - "Volapuk"
Posted by: "Rick Harrison" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:31 am (PDT)
Loha. Just wanted to recommend the historical novel VOLAPUK by Andrew Drummond,
ISBN 1904598676, recently published by Polygon. It made me laugh out loud
several times, which no book has succeeded in doing to me in quite some time. I
obtained my copy from Amazon UK.
Messages in this topic (1)
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4a. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "John Vertical" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:24 pm (PDT)
Paul Bennett wrote:
>
>Eric Christopherson wrote:
> > As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine with
> > other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
>Nahuatl > at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it might
>become > /N/, but that might be a stretch.
>
>The change /?/ -> /N/ I think is documented in Nenets (or a related
>natlang?)
>
>Paul
To my kno'lij, this change occured word-initially in at least Nenets and
Nganasan (& quite possibly in a few other Samoyedic languages, too.) I
thought it was /0/ > /N/ however, but checking sum' resorces there indeed
seems to exist a /?/ phoneme in the languages.
Anyway, how about reverse Hawai'ianism: /?/ > /k/ (or /q/)? I've herd
reports of epenthetic /k/ appearing between vowels ex_nihilo in some
languages, which does seem to sort of set a precedent...
And for a slightly more bizarre suggestion, how about epiglottalization: /?/
> />\/ ? After lerning how to pronounce epiglottals in the first place,
I've found myself surprizingly prone to this substitution in sum' contexts
(esp. word-initially); probably mainly because epiglottals do not interfere
with voicing.
John Vertical
(back after a thirtnight country excursion...)
Messages in this topic (9)
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4b. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:07 pm (PDT)
On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:59:12 +0300, John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Paul Bennett wrote:
>>
>>Eric Christopherson wrote:
>> > As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine with
>> > other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
>>Nahuatl > at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it might
>>become > /N/, but that might be a stretch.
>>
>>The change /?/ -> /N/ I think is documented in Nenets (or a related
>>natlang?)
>>
>>Paul
>
>To my kno'lij, this change occured word-initially in at least Nenets and
>Nganasan (& quite possibly in a few other Samoyedic languages, too.) I
>thought it was /0/ > /N/ however, but checking sum' resorces there indeed
>seems to exist a /?/ phoneme in the languages.
I had heard that this change was /0/ (not /?/) > /N/ as well. Tapani
Salminen's grammatical sketch
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/sketch.html
says that the change went the other direction, i.e. was loss of initial /N/
(but this is from a synchronic perspective; perhaps the /N/ was added and
then lost again).
The same sketch says there are two different phonemes realized as [?]. One,
|h|, occurs in word-final position and alternates with nasals (and seems to
be a development of word-final /n N/); the other, |q|, occurs
post-vocalically and alternates with obstruents (and seems to be a
development of them). There's also a non-phonemic [?] after final /b m l
r/. Anyway, none of these occur in the relevant word-initial environment
where /0/ > /N/ happened.
Maybe another chain shift would be fitting in Eric's situation? If you've
got /0 ?/ contrasting initially, then you could do /0/ > /N/ (or whatever)
initially followed by /?/ > /0/.
Alex
Messages in this topic (9)
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5. Going No-Mail
Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:43 pm (PDT)
I'm yet again venturing to the land away from civilization (my
girlfriend's parents' in Chico, where there's no TV, no newspaper,
no cell phone reception, no internet, and where you have to
"drive into town" to get to the nearest store--I love it!), so I'm
going to be going no-mail for quite awhile (till the middle of
August). If you need to reach me, I'll still be able to answer
e-mail for about a week, and after that only sporadically.
See you in August. :)
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
Messages in this topic (1)
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6. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:17 pm (PDT)
Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Hallo!
>
> On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 13:07:53 -0400, Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> > Thagojian has been rebuilt from the ground up several times.
> >
> > First, it was a consonant-rich, vowel-poor monstrosity of Techian
> > proportions, vaguely Nostratic, with morphological processes centered on
> > shuffling vowels (in a Semitic way) and masses of consonant mutations (in a
> > way similar to but more insane than Celtic). I *think* there were 288
> > consonantal phonemes, some bi- or tri-segmental, and 3 vowels, /i/, /A/
> > and /Q/. The orthography was perfectly regular, but horrific (including
> > s-overdot for /x/ as I recall).
>
> Yes, I remember that beast. I think it wasn't a bad idea to revise it.
> It was indeed quite similar to Tech, and it tells a lot that Tech never
> really went anywhere. Tech went through numerous build-and-tear cycles,
> with ever new variations on the theme of a huge consonant inventory, and
> barely anything beyond consonant phonology ever being developed. Haven't
> heard of Danny Wier for two years, BTW.
One day he'll return with the perfected Tech. ;)
I'm generally loth to change things in my conlangs once they've been "set", so
change in them tends to be by the adding of new material changing the centre of
gravity.
Tairezazh (with relatives) could use being rebuilt - my linguistic naivite at
the time it got started means it's much more euroclonish than there's any call
for - but I'll never be able to bring myself to do it. Additions over the years
has moved it towards greater exoticism and quirkiness (it started out
nigh-totally regular), but it still essentially looks like a European language
whose phonotactics caught a mild case of Georgian. The superabundance of stops
and frics makes for a somewhat unusual sound, at least.
Meghean has seen more revision, chiefly in the direction of making its phonology
less fit for contemplation. More languages, I feel, should distinguish [N G~ G].
Tersnuvu *has* been torn down and rebuilt a couple of times - perhaps as a
result, it's never reached enough stability or completion for me to feel it
worth presenting here in any detail. Featuring heavy use of umlauts, it is
vaguely inspired by Sindarin, but nonetheless is very different from Meghean.
My other projects, such as Altaii, Yargish, Kalini Sapak, and Nanoling have
changed little from inception to effective abandonment.
Andreas
Messages in this topic (12)
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