There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical language VS
From: Mathieu Roy
1b. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1c. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Padraic Brown
1d. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
2a. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
From: Mathieu Roy
2b. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
From: Jim Henry
3a. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
3b. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Mathieu Roy
3c. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Padraic Brown
3d. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
3e. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
4a. Re: phonetic values of the 26-letter English alphabet
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4b. Re: phonetic values of the 26-letter English alphabet
From: Melroch
5a. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
From: Mathieu Roy
6a. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: Daniel Bowman
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical language VS
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 5:29 am ((PST))
Nikolay <<Russian was like that before the orthography reforms of early XX
century.>>
What do you think of such "controlled" modifications over natlangs?
What do you think of people "writing in sound" (the way they hear).
Eugene << Not necessarily. Same or similar sounding words in Classical Chinese
have diverged in pronunciation despite bein written with the same radical(s).
That could be interpreted as a parallel phenomenon.>>
The grandparents of a Brazilian friend of mine are Japanese, but they have
lived in Brazil for around 50 years or so. They still speak Japanese between
them, but when they call family that still live in Japan, they don't understand
each other at all if they speak in Japanese because the spoken language have
evolve too much. So my hypothesis was that since Japanese writing is less
phonological than the English language (for example), the way the language
sounds had more chance to evolve faster (even faster with mandarin for
example). Can someone validate or invalidate this hypothesis?
Mathieu
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] De la part
de Eugene Oh
Envoyé : dimanche 20 janvier 2013 01:40
À : [email protected]
Objet : Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical language)
Sent from my iPhone
On 19 Jan 2013, at 23:12, Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> As to why, it is a tradition. Sometimes even superficially established. I
>> don't speak French myself, but I know that in the French word _doigt_ there
>> was nothing like [g] since at least 7th century AD. But /g/ was in the
>> Latin word _digitum_ that finally gave rise to _doigt_. So the grammarians
>> included /g/ to keep track of the language's history, although at no point
>> of the history of French language people seemed to pronounce _doigt_ like
>> [doigt] (though [dojt] seem to have taken place).
>>
>> As for other languages, it is more then common. English and AFAIK Danish
>> may be named as the ones that preserve most oddities, and Russian was like
>> that before the orthography reforms of early XX century. Virtually every
>> language, in which the pronunciation of /c/ depends of the next sound are
>> applying the old norms of Latin, where /c/ was pronounced as /k/ in all
>> positions.
>>
>> In fact, as the languages develop, it is inevitable that orthographic
>> norms start reflecting not an actual pronunciation, but some older version
>> of language. In a way, all languages do this, the question is, how much.
>
> Small correction: every language that is written with some sort of abajad
> or alphabet. But even only semi-abjad Japanese uses the hiragana-symbol
> "ha" to write [wa] of the nominative case, which, AFAIR, reflects its old
> pronunciation as [pa].
>
Not necessarily. Same or similar sounding words in Classical Chinese have
diverged in pronunciation despite bein written with the same radical(s). That
could be interpreted as a parallel phenomenon.
>
>> On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 5:48 PM, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>wrote:
>>
>>> Are these phenomenon present in a lot of languages? If so, in what way?
>>>
>>> Mathieu
>>>
>>> -----Message d'origine-----
>>> De : Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] De la
>>> part de R A Brown
>>> Envoyé : samedi 19 janvier 2013 10:22
>>> À : [email protected]
>>> Objet : French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical language)
>>>
>>> On 18/01/2013 19:28, BPJ wrote:
>>>> On 2013-01-18 19:57, Mathieu Roy wrote:
>>>>> I don't know if the following is true, but my French
>>>>> teacher told me that monks in the past were paid by
>>>>> letters and therefore were adding letters to some
>>>>> words.
>>>
>>> A bit of a myth, methinks. Monks weren't paid.
>>>
>>>>> That would explain why a lot of words have for example
>>>>> the letters "eau" pronounces as "o" (bateau, eau, beau,
>>>>> chateau, etc.) or simply "au" pronounces as "o" (faux,
>>>>> taux, etc.) or silent letter at the end (faux, taux,
>>>>> etc.) or double letters that are indistinguishable from
>>>>> one letter (balle, sale, association, etc.)
>>>
>>> No, it does not explain any one of those things.
>>>
>>>> It *is* true that they added letters here and there,
>>>
>>> Yes, especially by early printers to justify lines (monks
>>> could justify them more easily by slightly modifying width
>>> of letters and spaces).
>>>
>>>> but for the most part 'illogical' spellings in French
>>>> reflect how the words were actually pronounced in the
>>>> thirteent century.
>>>
>>> Exactly! Yes, for the most part modern French spelling
>>> reflects how the language was pronounced in the 13th
>>> century. The reason for _eau_ and _au_ now pronounced as
>>> /o/, is that the spellings represent the pronunciation of
>>> the 13th century, the modern pronunciation is the result of
>>> sound changes that have taken place since.
>>>
>>> The reason silent letters occur at the end of words is that
>>> they were not silent in the 13th century, but have become so
>>> since. The only oddity here is the final -x of some plurals
>>> where _x_ was mistaken for a common handwritten abbreviation
>>> of -us.
>>>
>>>> Some were meant to approximate the spelling to their
>>>> Latin counterpart, sometimes mistakenly.
>>>
>>> That accounts for geminate consonants.
>>>
>>> Others were stuck in by learned or semi-learned people after
>>> the renaissance; the same thing happened in English. Some,
>>> as BPJ says, were mistaken, e.g. _sçavoir_ (<-- sapere) with
>>> the mistaken idea it had something to with Latin _scire_,
>>> and _dipner_ (<-- VL. *disjunáre) with mistaken idea that
>>> somehow it was related to Greek _deipnein_! Fortunately,
>>> the French were, for the most part, more sensible than their
>>> English counterparts, and dropped nearly all these
>>> absurdities, e.g. they now write: savoir, dîner. The only
>>> common survival that comes to mind is the _p_ in _sept_.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ray
>>> ==================================
>>> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
>>> ==================================
>>> "language … began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
>>> for individual beings and events."
>>> [Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
>>
>>
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:51 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 14:29, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The grandparents of a Brazilian friend of mine are Japanese, but they have
> lived in Brazil for around 50 years or so. They still speak Japanese
> between them, but when they call family that still live in Japan, they
> don't understand each other at all if they speak in Japanese because the
> spoken language have evolve too much. So my hypothesis was that since
> Japanese writing is less phonological than the English language (for
> example), the way the language sounds had more chance to evolve faster
> (even faster with mandarin for example). Can someone validate or invalidate
> this hypothesis?
>
>
>
I very much doubt that their comprehension problems are due to phonological
changes, for the simple reason that we *know* how Japanese was spoken 50
years ago, and it's not all that different from current Japanese (the main
difference is the pronunciation of the /g/ phoneme, which has moved from
[ŋ] to [g], and the slow adoption of syllables that didn't exist 50 years
ago, like [ti], in foreign borrowings). What has happened however is that
Japanese, in the last fifty years, has undergone a *tremendous* amount of
vocabulary changes (which came with the big changes that happened in
Japanese society after WWII), as well as some grammatical changes, which
are more than enough to explain issues of comprehension. Sound changes
though, not so much.
Actually, I think French has undergone more changes in pronunciation in the
last fifty years than Japanese has.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:37 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 1/20/13, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> What do you think of such "controlled" modifications over natlangs?
Generally speaking, needless monkeying around by puffed up elitists who
can find nothing better to do than discover and "fix" problems that aren't
really problems in the first place.
> What do you think of people "writing in sound" (the way they hear).
Bad social engineering. English with its unreformed orthography allows
the engaged reader to read (though not necessarily understand) everything
ever written all the back to the Beginning of History when Julius Caesar
invaded England, thus causing the English language. The more "reformed"
we make an orthography, the harder it will be for anyone brought up on
the new version to read anything in the old version.
When you do something like this, and begin to teach
the younger generation to read and write this way, you end up destroying
their ability to read anything written before the Reform. You cut them off
from an independent study of previous generations' literature and force
them to read whatever it is the Central Committee decided is worthy of
translation into the new orthography. If language informs culture, then I
as a Central Planner could determine the way future culture moves by the
nature of the orthographical Reform and the content of the literature
that gets "translated". Or at least make an attempt at the same.
For example, were I such a Central Planner, I may not want the newly
educated children to read such dangerous books as the Bible or Moliere or
Locke. Whereas those little skulls full of mush are perfectly fine with
Harry Potter or teenage werewolves or any other relatively innocuous
stories that don't obviously put subversive thoughts in their heads.
There's always the risk of a Winston Smith to come along, though.
> Mathieu
Padraic
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:56 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 16:37, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Bad social engineering. English with its unreformed orthography allows
> the engaged reader to read (though not necessarily understand) everything
> ever written all the back to the Beginning of History when Julius Caesar
> invaded England, thus causing the English language. The more "reformed"
> we make an orthography, the harder it will be for anyone brought up on
> the new version to read anything in the old version.
>
> When you do something like this, and begin to teach
> the younger generation to read and write this way, you end up destroying
> their ability to read anything written before the Reform. You cut them off
> from an independent study of previous generations' literature and force
> them to read whatever it is the Central Committee decided is worthy of
> translation into the new orthography. If language informs culture, then I
> as a Central Planner could determine the way future culture moves by the
> nature of the orthographical Reform and the content of the literature
> that gets "translated". Or at least make an attempt at the same.
>
> For example, were I such a Central Planner, I may not want the newly
> educated children to read such dangerous books as the Bible or Moliere or
> Locke. Whereas those little skulls full of mush are perfectly fine with
> Harry Potter or teenage werewolves or any other relatively innocuous
> stories that don't obviously put subversive thoughts in their heads.
>
>
What a load of nonsense! When orthography is reformed, you don't stop
reading old books: they just get reprinted with the new orthography! And
any central planner has nothing to say about what does or doesn't get
reprinted, since publishing companies are private! If there is demand for
it, it will be reprinted.
You mentioned Molière, for instance. Well, I can tell you that in France
people don't read Molière in the original orthography, and there's nothing
wrong with it, given that Molière didn't give a damn about how things were
written so long as they could be played. It was never about the
orthography, so why should we only read him in the old orthography?
(actually, Molière disliked being *read* at all. For him the only way to
truly experience his plays were to actually watch them being performed, in
which case orthography becomes a moot subject)
Your complaints make no sense, and sound like someone who thinks Homer can
only be read in the original Ancient Greek language, and not forcing
*everyone* to learn Ancient Greek is a crime against civilisation! There's
nothing wrong with *translating*, you know. I mean, do you read Molière
only in the original French?
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (4)
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________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 5:45 am ((PST))
George <<I have not heard of this term. There is a word 老 lao3 that simply
means "old". Are you perhaps talking about 孝 xiao4 "filial piety"?>>
Sorry I don't know. I've only repeated what was said in the video, which might
be false.
Chris <<First off, strictly speaking, there is no Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Neither Sapir nor Whorf ever wrote down anything that they declared to be their
hypothesis.>>
I know :/ Should I call it something else? I have only use this term because
most people seem to be using it, and I wanted to be understood.
Chris <<How do you separate linguistic issues from cultural ones?>>
Right, even people learning the language as a second one might have to learn
some of the culture at the same time. So it seems like culture, language and
thoughts all influences each other.
Messages in this topic (10)
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2b. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:11 am ((PST))
On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> because thought is non-verbal. When we "think in words", we are not
> "thinking", we are reiterating what we have already thought without
> words.
On this point, see the list thread from April 2009, "What is your
qualia of consciousness/thought?"
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CONLANG;SM0c5Q;200904030959020700A
As Alex pointed out downthread, not everyone perceives their thoughts as words.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (10)
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________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:34 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 14:06, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Fair enough. Let me try something else then.
>
> Let's say there's only 1000 people that are alive, and we're all one of
> them. We are all in the same village and speak only American Sign Language.
> We have no written system. We are sedentary, but we are not technologically
> advanced. It now has come to our attention that we are all affected by a
> virus that will make us blind in 30 days. Therefore, we decide to create a
> language using sound and ears instead of body and eyes, but we have only 30
> days to create it, or at least to create the minimum (I took this number
> because of Gary's challenge ^^). What do you think the spoken language will
> look like in 30 days?
>
>
Probably like a spoken version of ASL (with the bits and pieces that
strictly depend on its spatial nature linearised, or more likely partly
ignored), and you will have learned absolutely nothing. Sign languages are
nothing *special*, besides being spoken using hands, face and body rather
than sounds. They are handled by the same language facility in our brains
as spoken languages are, and are subject to the same restrictions. They
appear on the surface different, but that's only because the medium is
different. I don't think the resulting language would be any different from
the 6000 or so spoken languages we have already. And by that I mean that
the variety of natlangs is already so big the resulting language would
probably fall squarely within the range established by the natlangs we
already know. There's a reason the acronym ANADEW is so commonly used here.
Of course, the original version, created after 30 days, would probably be
more pidgin-like than anything (simply due to time constraints, and those
people probably not being all trained conlangers!), but by the second
generation it would turn into a creole, with all that entails (one thing
people always seem to forget is that when a pidgin becomes a creole, one
thing that develops is *exceptions to grammatical rules*. Creoles are never
100% regular, at least as far as I know). The language may then look
superficially quite exotic, but I'm sure that a deep analysis wouldn't
reveal anything vastly different from the variety we already find when
analysing existing natlangs. Some details may be unique, but I doubt they'd
be significant.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (6)
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3b. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:08 am ((PST))
I know and I agree with the most part.
In the ANADEW acronym, I'm more interested about the "EW" part.
I think the language the people in this situation would create at first would
be more regular than almost all natlangs, but I agree that exceptions would
arise as they speak it. I also think they would try to make an easy language to
learn in order that everybody learn it before becoming blind.
Mathieu
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] De la part
de Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Envoyé : dimanche 20 janvier 2013 15:34
À : [email protected]
Objet : Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical
language (was RE: Loglan[g] VS Natlang))
On 20 January 2013 14:06, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Fair enough. Let me try something else then.
>
> Let's say there's only 1000 people that are alive, and we're all one of
> them. We are all in the same village and speak only American Sign Language.
> We have no written system. We are sedentary, but we are not technologically
> advanced. It now has come to our attention that we are all affected by a
> virus that will make us blind in 30 days. Therefore, we decide to create a
> language using sound and ears instead of body and eyes, but we have only 30
> days to create it, or at least to create the minimum (I took this number
> because of Gary's challenge ^^). What do you think the spoken language will
> look like in 30 days?
>
>
Probably like a spoken version of ASL (with the bits and pieces that
strictly depend on its spatial nature linearised, or more likely partly
ignored), and you will have learned absolutely nothing. Sign languages are
nothing *special*, besides being spoken using hands, face and body rather
than sounds. They are handled by the same language facility in our brains
as spoken languages are, and are subject to the same restrictions. They
appear on the surface different, but that's only because the medium is
different. I don't think the resulting language would be any different from
the 6000 or so spoken languages we have already. And by that I mean that
the variety of natlangs is already so big the resulting language would
probably fall squarely within the range established by the natlangs we
already know. There's a reason the acronym ANADEW is so commonly used here.
Of course, the original version, created after 30 days, would probably be
more pidgin-like than anything (simply due to time constraints, and those
people probably not being all trained conlangers!), but by the second
generation it would turn into a creole, with all that entails (one thing
people always seem to forget is that when a pidgin becomes a creole, one
thing that develops is *exceptions to grammatical rules*. Creoles are never
100% regular, at least as far as I know). The language may then look
superficially quite exotic, but I'm sure that a deep analysis wouldn't
reveal anything vastly different from the variety we already find when
analysing existing natlangs. Some details may be unique, but I doubt they'd
be significant.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:16 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 1/20/13, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Fair enough. Let me try something else then.
> >
> > Let's say there's only 1000 people that are alive, and
> we're all one of
> > them. We are all in the same village and speak only
> American Sign Language.
> > We have no written system. We are sedentary, but we are
> not technologically
> > advanced. It now has come to our attention that we are
> all affected by a
> > virus that will make us blind in 30 days. Therefore, we
> decide to create a
> > language using sound and ears instead of body and eyes,
> but we have only 30
> > days to create it, or at least to create the minimum (I
> took this number
> > because of Gary's challenge ^^). What do you think the
> spoken language will
> > look like in 30 days?
> >
> >
> Probably like a spoken version of ASL (with the bits and
> pieces that strictly depend on its spatial nature linearised,
I dunno. I'd suggest that a thousand blind and utterly defenseless and
sedentary people will probably be terrified of losing one another in the
Dark. Perhaps we'd decide on something like the gripping language and
decide most firmly to never let go. If anyone got separated after the
Darkness fell, they would be utterly Lost. They couldn't see to talk, no
one would comprehend any kind of vocalism. Such a person would be in a
bad way.
More conventionally, I think you're probably right. At first, probably
something that could be transferred and learnt quickly. It's not like
we'd have a full month to create the language! We'd have one month to
run through all the anticipatory grieving processes, the decide on type,
then plan the project, then devise the language and then learn and teach
it.
Question: are all 1000 people in on the project, or is there just a small
cadre of conlangers in on it? Could be interesting, culturally and
psychologically, if half a dozen conlangers, who are facing this fate,
have to teach the rest of humanity not just a new language, but an
entirely new mode of communication. I get from Mathieu's scenario that
everyone has the capacity to talk, but no one uses that modality to
communicate. Most people will probably not even be aware that they can
talk with their mouths and see with ears!
What will the reactions of everyone else be when these intrepid conlangers
start making communicative noises with their mouths? People won't know what
to do with the sounds they're hearing!
Otherwise concur.
Padraic
> or more likely partly
> ignored), and you will have learned absolutely nothing. Sign
> languages are
> nothing *special*, besides being spoken using hands, face
> and body rather
> than sounds. They are handled by the same language facility
> in our brains
> as spoken languages are, and are subject to the same
> restrictions. They
> appear on the surface different, but that's only because the
> medium is
> different. I don't think the resulting language would be any
> different from
> the 6000 or so spoken languages we have already. And by that
> I mean that
> the variety of natlangs is already so big the resulting
> language would
> probably fall squarely within the range established by the
> natlangs we
> already know. There's a reason the acronym ANADEW is so
> commonly used here.
>
> Of course, the original version, created after 30 days,
> would probably be
> more pidgin-like than anything (simply due to time
> constraints, and those
> people probably not being all trained conlangers!), but by
> the second
> generation it would turn into a creole, with all that
> entails (one thing
> people always seem to forget is that when a pidgin becomes a
> creole, one
> thing that develops is *exceptions to grammatical rules*.
> Creoles are never
> 100% regular, at least as far as I know). The language may
> then look
> superficially quite exotic, but I'm sure that a deep
> analysis wouldn't
> reveal anything vastly different from the variety we already
> find when
> analysing existing natlangs. Some details may be unique, but
> I doubt they'd
> be significant.
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:23 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 16:08, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> I know and I agree with the most part.
>
> In the ANADEW acronym, I'm more interested about the "EW" part.
>
> I think the language the people in this situation would create at first
> would be more regular than almost all natlangs, but I agree that exceptions
> would arise as they speak it. I also think they would try to make an easy
> language to learn in order that everybody learn it before becoming blind.
>
>
The thing is: what does "easy to learn" mean? My experience with learning
languages (I'm fluent in three, conversational in another three) and with
talking to other people learning languages, is that "easy to learn" for
languages boils down to one thing, and one thing only: *familiarity*. The
closest the language is to a language you already know (it needed be your
native language, by the way), the easier it is to learn, especially in
terms of getting the sounds right, but the same is true for grammar and
lexicon. And *that* *is* *all*. In my experience, it's easier to learn a
language riddled with irregularities, if its structure is close to what you
already know (especially if the irregularities are also similar), than it
is to learn a 100% regular language with an alien grammar.
Of course, other conditions like full immersion will make learning even
easier, but familiarity gives a tremendous boost in the learning process
(it basically bootstraps it). And that's it. I don't believe that there is
a universal scale of easiness in language learning.
So what would be easy to learn for ASL speakers? Something that looks like
ASL.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:29 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 16:16, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >
> > Probably like a spoken version of ASL (with the bits and
> > pieces that strictly depend on its spatial nature linearised,
>
> I dunno. I'd suggest that a thousand blind and utterly defenseless and
> sedentary people will probably be terrified of losing one another in the
> Dark. Perhaps we'd decide on something like the gripping language and
> decide most firmly to never let go. If anyone got separated after the
> Darkness fell, they would be utterly Lost. They couldn't see to talk, no
> one would comprehend any kind of vocalism. Such a person would be in a
> bad way.
>
Of course. There are plenty of things that are just not realistic in this
thought experiment. I still went along with it because, unlike the previous
question, this one was at least not totally unrealistic down to its core.
And there is still merit to thought experiments that are not totally
realistic. I use one in my LGBT awareness workshops at work, and it's
always very effective. As long as you're willing to go along on the ride,
the learnings are worth it.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (6)
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4a. Re: phonetic values of the 26-letter English alphabet
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:18 am ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Sunday 20 January 2013 04:20:12 Herman Miller wrote:
> [...]
> j = ʒ isn't all that unusual,
French does it.
> and I can see that y could be a good
> substitute for ɣ.
At least the letters look similar.
> I used y for /ɣ/ in my romanization for Czirehlat,
> which was a spinoff from Tirelat around 12 years ago. The "w" for /ð/ is
> pretty unusual though,
It is.
> and /θ/ and /ð/ are both uncommon sounds even
> though English-speaking conlangers tend to use them a lot.
VERY true.
> I've used
> 26-letter alphabets a couple of times before, once for a language called
> Tilya in 2000, and previously in Eklektu from 1996. Both of these were
> more or less what I might call experimental languages. Most of my langs
> use either more or fewer than 26 sounds, so I haven't had much recent
> interest in one-to-one Latin alphabet writing systems.
>
> Here's the Tilya phoneme inventory:
>
> p b t d q c k g i u
> m n
> f v s z x j h r e o
> w l y a
>
> The "q" and "c" are affricates, [tʃ] and [dʒ] (c = dʒ at least has a
> precedent in Turkish).
_q_ for [tʃ] has a near-precedent in Albanian.
> Probably the most unusual mapping is r = ɣ.
[ɣ] gets quite close to [ʀ]; and in my idiolect of German,
pre-vocalic /r/ *is* realized as [ɣ], so there is a natlang
precedent of some sort. In an old version of the "Universal
Transcription System" I posted yesterday, I thus used _r_ for
[ɣ]; later, I realized that this was too idiosyncratic, and
introduced the digraph _gh_ for that sound, and _r_ was
assigned to [r].
> I
> never did write much in Tilya, but here's a sample:
>
> Ke pasya hotsa sa nahpa ke hirkinofha. Mema bo le ka dahwa?
> Birds fly over the rainbow. Why can't I?
>
> My Eklektu document used an old non-Unicode IPA font (limitations of
> Windows 95), so I have to go by the approximate English equivalents
> (with the exception that "r" is trilled). This should be close enough:
>
> a ɑ
> b b
> c ʃ
> d d
> e ɛ
> f f
> g ɡ
> h h
> i ɪ
> j ʒ
> k k
> l l
> m m
> n n
> o ɔ
> p p
> q ŋ
> r r
> s s
> t t
> u ʊ
> v v
> w w
> x x
> y j
> z z
Fair. Most letters have quite usual values; the most unusual are
_q_ for [ŋ] (which, however, is used in quite a few conlangs if
not natlangs) and, less unusual, _c_ for [ʃ].
> At the time it was customary to translate the Lord's Prayer into
> conlangs. Here's the Eklektu version. Eklektu was a mix of words adapted
> from different languages.
As the name suggests ;)
Of course, it is possible to come up with a conlang where all 26
letters of the basic Latin alphabet have their IPA values, and
those make up the full phoneme inventory of the language!
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (5)
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4b. Re: phonetic values of the 26-letter English alphabet
Posted by: "Melroch" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:21 am ((PST))
(Some digraphs here too but only ASCII...)
I used <y> for [G] which also had a [M\] allophone as well as for [I\] in
Euia Twas.
There is kind of a precedent in that the Swedish Dialect Alphabet
(Landsmålsalfabetet) uses two different <y> types (u-tail and v-tail)
respectively as [y] and [G+] and a regular <γ> as [G-] (as well as <x> [x+]
and <χ> [x-]).
I tend to use <c j x> for affricates or fricatives, <y> as either consonant
or vowel and prefer to use <q> as either voiceless or voiced back
fricatives rather than Albanian- or Pinyin-like:
<c> ts tS ts\ S s\
<x> dz dZ dz\ S s\ s`
<j> dz dZ dz\ Z z` j
<y> j y i\ G
<q> G R X x (tS ts\)
I tend to dislike English-style <+h> digraphs partly because I like
aspirates and partly because I don't like <+h> to sometimes mean
'fricative' and sometimes 'palatalized'. I like the Hungarian digraphs
where the first letter denotes manner and the second place. I like an
extended system where
A. B. C. D.
Voiceless fric. sz sc sx s
Voiced fric. z zc zx zs
Voiceless affr. cz c cx cs
Voiced affr. xz xc x xs
where the columns may be assigned tengwar-like as needed in the
dental~alveolar~apical~laminal~sublaminal~postalveolar~palatoalveolar~alveopalatal~retroflexrange
and omitting one of the <x+> alternatives and reorganizing accordingly if
only three columns are needed. It would also be possible to use the B.
column for pure palatal stops and affricates. For me going totally
overboard on this theme see <www.frathwiki.com/AAMMDD> :) As I mention
there I like using U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT for breaking up spurious digraphs
where no morheme or word boundaries are involved reserving apostrophe
and/or hyphen for where they are involved.
My perhaps weirdest all-ASCII scheme yet used <+h> in partly novel ways:
Stop Affr. Fric. Nas. Approx.
p b ph bh m f
th dh
t d n l
s z sh zh
q j qh jh
c x ch xh nh r lh
ny y ly
k g kh gh ngh w
' 'h h
i u ii uu iw uy
e v o ee vv oo ey vy oy
ew vw ow
a aa ae ay aw
/bpj
Den söndagen den 20:e januari 2013 skrev Herman Miller:
> On 1/19/2013 7:43 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
>
>> I've been using a normalized system of values for the 26-letter English
>> alphabet for my conlanging work. This allows me to use all and only these
>> 26 letters.
>>
>> a e i o u
>>
>> b p v f m
>> d t h w n
>> g k y x q
>> z s j c
>>
>> l r
>>
>> The unusual mappings are
>>
>> c = ʃ
>>
>> h = θ
>>
>> j = ʒ
>> q = ŋ
>>
>> w = ð
>>
>> y = ɣ
>>
>> An apostrophe can be added to this with a value of either h or glottal
>> stop.
>>
>> stevo
>>
>
> j = ʒ isn't all that unusual, and I can see that y could be a good
> substitute for ɣ. I used y for /ɣ/ in my romanization for Czirehlat, which
> was a spinoff from Tirelat around 12 years ago. The "w" for /ð/ is pretty
> unusual though, and /θ/ and /ð/ are both uncommon sounds even though
> English-speaking conlangers tend to use them a lot. I've used 26-letter
> alphabets a couple of times before, once for a language called Tilya in
> 2000, and previously in Eklektu from 1996. Both of these were more or less
> what I might call experimental languages. Most of my langs use either more
> or fewer than 26 sounds, so I haven't had much recent interest in
> one-to-one Latin alphabet writing systems.
>
> Here's the Tilya phoneme inventory:
>
> p b t d q c k g i u
> m n
> f v s z x j h r e o
> w l y a
>
> The "q" and "c" are affricates, [tʃ] and [dʒ] (c = dʒ at least has a
> precedent in Turkish). Probably the most unusual mapping is r = ɣ. I never
> did write much in Tilya, but here's a sample:
>
> Ke pasya hotsa sa nahpa ke hirkinofha. Mema bo le ka dahwa?
> Birds fly over the rainbow. Why can't I?
>
> My Eklektu document used an old non-Unicode IPA font (limitations of
> Windows 95), so I have to go by the approximate English equivalents (with
> the exception that "r" is trilled). This should be close enough:
>
> a ɑ
> b b
> c ʃ
> d d
> e ɛ
> f f
> g ɡ
> h h
> i ɪ
> j ʒ
> k k
> l l
> m m
> n n
> o ɔ
> p p
> q ŋ
> r r
> s s
> t t
> u ʊ
> v v
> w w
> x x
> y j
> z z
>
> At the time it was customary to translate the Lord's Prayer into conlangs.
> Here's the Eklektu version. Eklektu was a mix of words adapted from
> different languages.
>
> O tya per ni la nebo, hu sakra u nom de va,
> Hu lai u va regala, hu esen u va vil, ve ni nebo, kai ni la mond,
> Tya jur hleba hu don o tya ni kojur,
> Et hu pardon o tya e tya deballi, ve kai ha tya pardon o tya debulli,
> Et ne hu duk o tya al iskuc, no hu liberin u tya van zloi.
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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5a. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:21 am ((PST))
Also, my French teacher told me that past participles were matched with the
direct object (complément d'object direct) only if the latter was before the
verb as monks could not erase (to correct mistakes), and because it is more
difficult to know how to match a past participate with a direct object that has
not been written yet (ie. which is after it). Is that true?
Mathieu
Messages in this topic (26)
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6a. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:24 am ((PST))
Ithkuil is designed to allow a speaker to use its morphology to be able to
transparently craft words and sentences to succinctly express thoughts,
ideas, concepts, and describe complex situations that do not exist in
natural languages and would require whole paragraphs to be able to
paraphrase (which is why I think it would be great for poetry).
Hi John,
I've been thinking about what you said about Ithkuil poetry. I am not sure
if I understand what you mean. A lot of poetry uses complex metaphors.
Some of it also utilizes the semantic ambiguity of natural language to
suggest multiple meanings in a single phrase. My understanding is that
Ithkuil takes semantic precision to the highest degree possible. If so,
then a given Ithkuil poem would only have one meaning, and some of the joy
of unraveling it would be lost - the poem would be self evident from the
first reading.
If I understand you and Ithkuil correctly, only certain types of poetry
would be workeable (I imagine Haiku would be very effective) but other
types of poetry would not make much sense. Also, do you have an example of
an Ithkuil poem to demonstrate what you mean?
Danny
PS I really enjoyed the New Yorker article. What a strange experience!
>
>
Messages in this topic (9)
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