There are 13 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: OT: Old Computer Games (Was: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
2. The "best" system of writing
From: Gary Shannon
3. Re: Hello! - introduction
From: Henrik Theiling
4. OT: Direxia (< Hello! - introduction)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5a. Re: Tonal Sandhi
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5b. Re: Tonal Sandhi
From: Eldin Raigmore
6. Re: Vertical script (was: UTF-8 support in *nix terminals)
From: Remi Villatel
7a. Conflicts in loanword adaptation
From: JR
7b. Re: Conflicts in loanword adaptation
From: H. S. Teoh
8. Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1)
From: scott
9. Weekly Vocab #5.3 (original)
From: Henrik Theiling
10. Re: Vertical script
From: Philip Newton
11. Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.1 (repost #1)
From: Philip Newton
Messages
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1. Re: OT: Old Computer Games (Was: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:28 pm (PDT)
On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 03:32:38PM -0400, Paul Bennett wrote:
> Server lets you make your own virtual machines.
>
> Player only lets you use virtual machines made by someone else.
Ah. I was under the misapprehension that VMware was simply a hardware
simulator. Obviously it is more complicated than that; I will have to
read up on it...
Thanks,
Amanda
Messages in this topic (37)
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2. The "best" system of writing
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:57 pm (PDT)
What is the "best" system of writing? Of course such a broad question cannot be
answered in any absolute sense. For a system of writing to be judged good or
bad it must be judged in reference to some specific set of criteria. For
example, a system of writing might consist of delicate and ornate flourishes of
great artistic beauty, but be virtually unreadable due to its complexity. Such
a system could be called "good" when measured for artistic merit, but
"terrible" when judged according to its legibility. So before I share my
thoughts on the "best" system of writing I should clearly state my criteria.
1. Of first importance (to me) is reading efficiency. A thing written once can
be read again and again, so the ease and quickness with which it can be read
outweighs the ease of writing.
2. It should be relatively compact, without sacrificing readability. If the
same novel can be printed in one writing system on 30% fewer pages than with
another writing system, then the eye can scan it 30% faster, and 30% fewer
trees need to be cut down to make paper.
Any other criteria are, to me, of negliable significance and can be ignored.
Thus it doesn't matter if the system is consistent, easy to learn, or
phonetically accurate. We read by visually identifying the shape of the word
(or ideograph) as a whole, and once those shapes are memorized by the fluent
reader it doesn't make a bit of difference whether those shapes are constructed
from systematic phonetic elements or made up of arbitrary squiggles.
The first criteria, readability, means that a particular word should be easily
distinguished from all other words, without the need to examine minute details
of the symbol that encode that word. Two words of twenty letters length which
differ only by one vowel somewhere deep in the interior of the word would
violate this principle. Words should be recognizable at the briefest glance.
For this reason "eccentric" spelling is better than regularized spelling in
that it lends more unique shapes to the words. "hit" and "bit" differ only by
whether the bottom of the "h/b" shape is open or closed. This could be too
subtle a difference if the ink is smudged or a speck of mud stains the page.
Suppose, instead, that we spelled them "hit" and "bjt". Never mind that 'j' is
phonetically wrong in that context, after all we have no trouble with the "gh"
in "light", or the "L" in "walk". Once the word shape is memorized it doesn't
matter that some element of that shape is "phonetically wrong".
We do pretty much the same thing with "kite", "light" and "height" spelling the
long-I sound "i-e", "igh" and "eigh", which does a good job of creating less
ambiguous word shapes. We might even distinguish further between "night" and
"right" (which differ only by how far down the upper loop of the "n/r" extends)
by spelling them "right" and "nijt". This would be better because it would
create more varied and less confusable word shapes. "right" and "nijt" are
visually very different, which, once those shapes are thoroughly internalized,
aids speed of recognition.
Viewed in this light the "problems" of English spelling are actually virtues,
and having recognized that fact, my next conlang is going to have extremely
irregular, non-phonetic, and eccentric spelling aimed at making the written
words as compact and individually unambiguous as possible, thus rendering them
readable at a faster rate and with less error, (once those shapes are
internalized of course).
Messages in this topic (1)
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3. Re: Hello! - introduction
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:07 pm (PDT)
Santiago Matías Feldman writes:
> Hello, conlangers.
>
> I'm new to the list. Well, in fact, I was a member of
> the list in 2002 through 2003. But then, for a number
> of reasons I unsubscribed from it.
Welcome back! :-)
>...
> Today, I'm working in two new conlangs set on this
> Earth, more precisely in Western Europe. One is
> Laturslav, basically a Romance language as regards
> vocabulary, but Turkic as regards morphology and
> syntax (agglutinating).
>...
Very interesting. Do you have some examples? Since I've been doing a
Romance lang myself now, I get even more interested in comparing it
(and the whole continuum of Romance conlangs I've already looked into)
to other people's work. :-)
Is the grammar fully taken from or inspired by Turkic or did you
evolve Latin into being agglutinative in some way that feels like
Turkic? (There's this polysynthetic Romance natlang which they call
'French', so why not evolve Latin into something agglutinative?)
>...
> The other conlang still doesn't have a name, but the idea is a
> non-Indo European language, absolutely unrelated to the rest of
> languages of the world, but with some specialized lexis taken from
> Latin, Ancient Greek and English, as most Europeans languages have
> it.
>...
Also interesting -- I'd also be interested in more information about
its design goals, etc.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (7)
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4. OT: Direxia (< Hello! - introduction)
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:12 pm (PDT)
li [Larry Sulky] mi tulis la
> On 9/14/06, Santiago Matías Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ---SNIP---
> > And I said that my new conlangs are meant to be set in
> > Western Europe but what I meant was Eastern Europe!
> > This last slip of the pen (of the keyboard?) is
> > because I always associate East with oceans and West
> > with land and mountains (which is the pattern from my
> > point of view on the Southwestern coast of South
> > America).
>
> LOL! I did the same thing after moving to the east coast of North
> America after having grown up on the west coast. I was always
> following and giving directions the wrong way around. It took me years
> to adjust! ---larry
I did the same thing. I was always used to having the coast on the
West, then moved to the East coast and got North and South confused
whenever I was using the beach as a reference point. The other one was
having sunrises instead of sunsets. I don't have those problems now
because the roads here all are winding and could end up going any
direction so I just put a compass in the car.
Messages in this topic (7)
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5a. Re: Tonal Sandhi
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:44 pm (PDT)
I've emailed the Bantu master himself (Prof Larry Hyman) of Berkeley, and he
mentioned that even the "experts' still argue what is the tonogenesis in Bantu
tones. SO the information is out there, in small bits..
But yeah, I too search consistently for register tone info out there on the net.
Messages in this topic (6)
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5b. Re: Tonal Sandhi
Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:12 pm (PDT)
On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:20:59 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[snip]
>So my question would be, which style of tones are ya looking for?
>Contour or Register...
In legato speech, after sandhi has applied, definitely the surface tones
would constitute a "Contour Tone" system.
But in staccato speech, the underlying system might be either a "contour
tone" system or a "register tone" system.
It will have three pitches; high, medium, and low.
Whether the underlying tones of staccato speech will be MM, HL, LH
(thus "contour"); or else be M, L, H (thus "register"); I don't know yet.
But I can imagine all nine combinations arising as a result of sandhi.
-----
eldin
(P.S. I am not the author of the conlang in question; he has asked for help
on the EastAsianConLangs Yahoo!group, and got no knowledgeable answer --
only me.)
Messages in this topic (6)
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6. Re: Vertical script (was: UTF-8 support in *nix terminals)
Posted by: "Remi Villatel" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:08 pm (PDT)
On Thursday 14 September 2006 17:18, Christian Thalmann wrote:
> > In action, it looks like this:
> > http://home.tele2.fr/mxls/images/bli/story.png
> >
> ::boggle::
> ::
> ::drool::
>
> I'm envious.
:-D Thank you...
And thanks to B. who harassed me so much that I drew this script to get rid
of her. (Partially true story.) ;-)
xa zato satxi. [Za: zatO sa.tCi] (= **There will be speech again.)
--
==================
Remi Villatel
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
==================
Messages in this topic (35)
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7a. Conflicts in loanword adaptation
Posted by: "JR" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:32 pm (PDT)
I want to have one conlang, Eloshtan, borrow the word 'galïli' from another
conlang, Kar Marinam. The stress on that word in K.M. is on the second
syllable, but in Eloshtan, the stress is always on the first syllable. So, I
have two choices: either borrow the word as 'galili' with a different
stress; or drop the first vowel, and have 'glili', with the stress still on
the 'li'. Does anyone know what natlangs do in this sort of situation?
What's more important, retaining the stress, or retaining all the original
sounds? Does it depend on the language in question, the whims of the
speakers, other factors?
Actually, I am aware that some natlangs would go a different route and adopt
the word as is, with the foreign stress pattern, but I don't think E. is
ready for this.
--
Josh Roth
http://fuscian.freespaces.com/
"Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage."
-Ogden Nash
Messages in this topic (2)
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7b. Re: Conflicts in loanword adaptation
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 6:09 pm (PDT)
On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 03:10:03AM +0300, JR wrote:
> I want to have one conlang, Eloshtan, borrow the word 'galïli' from
> another conlang, Kar Marinam. The stress on that word in K.M. is on
> the second syllable, but in Eloshtan, the stress is always on the
> first syllable. So, I have two choices: either borrow the word as
> 'galili' with a different stress; or drop the first vowel, and have
> 'glili', with the stress still on the 'li'. Does anyone know what
> natlangs do in this sort of situation? What's more important,
> retaining the stress, or retaining all the original sounds? Does it
> depend on the language in question, the whims of the speakers, other
> factors?
It depends on the language (and possibly the speakers). Stress is
usually one of the first things to go, as well as declension.
For example, the name of the historical king Darius is correctly
accented on the /i/, not on the /a/ as most people pronounce it. But
going around saying [d@'[EMAIL PROTECTED] sounds awfully pretentious unless
you're
speaking to like-clued people.
Similarly, the correct plural of 'octopus' is 'octopodes' (Greek), but
just about nobody speaks that way. The fact is that once a word is
borrowed into a language, it becomes subject to native rules, no longer
to rules in the original language.
Witness also 'alcohol', 'algebra', and 'algorithm', where the article of
the source language has become part of the loanword, and the stress is
placed as if these were native words.
> Actually, I am aware that some natlangs would go a different route and
> adopt the word as is, with the foreign stress pattern, but I don't
> think E. is ready for this.
[...]
If it doesn't contort the native lang too much, that works. But
sometimes the target language is just so incompatibly different that you
just have to butcher the word to make it fit.
For example, Japanese loans from English have a lot of epithentic vowels
inserted to remove consonant clusters hard for natives to pronounce, and
have consonants suitably modified to work with Japanese phonology.
Natives still consider the words foreign borrowings (which fact
apparently adds a "coolness" factor to a word).
Mandarin is especially notorious for totally butchering names by trying
to shoehorn Western names into the trisyllabic scheme. The general
procedure is to take the first two syllables from a Western first name
(and dropping the rest), the first syllable from the last name, mold
them appropriately to fit Mandarin phonology, and then assigning to
characters meaningful related (sometimes only barely or not at all) to
the original name. Needless to say, the placement of stress in the
original is completely irrelevant: the tones in the result are freely
varied in order to find the most "meaningful" combination of characters.
On the other end of the spectrum, some English loanwords in Russian
actually break native pronunciation rules (such as unstressed о being
pronounced [o] instead of [Ê] because the source language has it as
such), and spelling conventions (such as Ñ in places where it would
never occur in a native word, in order to retain a semblance of the
original pronunciation of the loanword).
T
--
The easy way is the wrong way, and the hard way is the stupid way. Pick one.
Messages in this topic (2)
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8. Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1)
Posted by: "scott" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 6:13 pm (PDT)
On Sep 13, 2006, at 9:24 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Lars Finsen writes:
>> in the right hand field. I like that language very much and I'd like
>> to set up a course for it as well. But will anybody care? At least
>> I'll have it for my own enjoyment.
>> ...
> I enjoy conlanging for myself. It is nice when conlangs attract some
> attention, of course, so for the interest of others, I publish my
> results as well, but much more important I think is that the
> conlanging itself is fun.
I have posted some of my conlang online. It is nice to think that
someone may find it interesting. However, I find that when I intend
to post a piece of my conlang on line I end up expanding upon
my brief notes. So my conlang actually expands when I put it online.
scott
Wikilret -- homepage.mac.com/sjcaldwell/Wikilret/
Messages in this topic (37)
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9. Weekly Vocab #5.3 (original)
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:44 pm (PDT)
It is the first time this is posted.
> From: "Carsten Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Hi List,
>
> I have tried to translate my shopping list into Ayeri
> recently, but I failed at some words. I thought I should
> share this Weekly Vocab exercise with you thus, brought to
> you by the Real LifeTM. Most things should be pretty easy to
> translate, but I'm astonished again and again what there is
> still no word for in my dictionary yet although you use this
> something daily. This time, it's 15 words because it
> shouldn't be too hard.
>
> Here we go:
>
> 1. apples
> 2. bread
> 3. bus/train/... ticket
> 4. butter
> 5. cheese
> 6. cream
> 7. ink
> 8. jam/marmelade
> 9. milk
> 10. noodles/pasta
> 11. salad
> 12. sausage (of which you put slices on your bread)
> 13. soap
> 14. stamps
> 15. toilet paper
>
> Some sentences:
>
> 1. I like to eat an apple at the end of my lunch break.
> 2. This bread is mouldy, I urgently need to buy a new one.
> 3. In order to use the bus you must have a bus ticket.
> 4. Butter tastes very well on a fresh raisin roll.
> 5. If you need something to eat quickly, you can make rice
> with melted cheese and ketchup.
> 6. Cream is made of milk.
> 7. I need ink for my printer.
> 8. Fruit jam when eaten outside is likely to attract wasps.
> 9. You have to pay attention that the milk won't get sour.
> 10. Noodles like to boil over.
> 11. Salad is suitable as a side dish for almost anything.
> 12. This is a sausage of which you put slices on your bread.
> 13. The Federal Health Authority recommends to use soap.
> 14. The postal service will refuse to deliver this letter
> becaues the stamp is missing.
> 15. I had my brother bring me a new roll of toilet paper.
>
> Happy translating :-)
>
> Yours,
> Carsten Becker
>
> --
> "Miranayam kepauarà naranoaris." (Kalvin nay Hobbes)
> Tingraena, Ravikan 24, 2315 ya 26:45:33 pd
Bonus Vocab from WordNet:
This is randomly selected automatically, so in case it offends you
or you disagree, please either ignore or be inspired to make up
different words and/or phrases:
- carving, n.
removing parts to create a desired shape
- bevel, v.
cut a bevel on; shape to a bevel; "bevel the surface"
Fiant verba!
----
If you want to post your own weekly vocab, please do not send it to
the list directly. To prevent unbalanced amounts of new vocab, send
it to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> in order to enqueue it in the
regular weekly posting process. Just write a mail as if addressing
the list directly -- it will be forwarded as is.
Messages in this topic (1)
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10. Re: Vertical script
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:43 pm (PDT)
On 9/14/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Philip Newton writes:
> >
> > I'd pronounce it roughly [ka:.stn=]
>
> Exactly the same here (an aspirated [k_h] that is, I assume).
Ah - yes, of course. Thanks clarifying my underspecified(?) transcription.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (35)
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11. Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.1 (repost #1)
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:48 am (PDT)
On 9/5/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Carsten Becker writes:
> > >> 2. werewolf / lycanthrope of some variety
> >
> > ayvengaryo (lit. "wolf-man")
>
> Interesting. Did you have a particular reason to decide to reverse
> the typical order for compounding? All the languages in which I know
> the word 'werewolf' compound it as 'man-wolf'.
"Lycanthrope" is a counter-example :) (lykos, wolf; anthropos, human)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (36)
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