There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
From: David McCann
1.2. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
From: Nikolay Ivankov
1.3. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
From: Elena ``of Valhalla''
2a. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
From: Roger Mills
3a. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
From: David McCann
3b. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
From: Eugene Oh
4a. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: J. M. DeSantis
4b. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: Eugene Oh
4c. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: J. M. DeSantis
4d. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: Gary Shannon
5a. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: selpa'i
5b. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: selpa'i
5c. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: selpa'i
5d. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: Melroch
6a. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
From: Js Bangs
Messages
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1.1. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:22 am ((PST))
On Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:21:27 +0100
Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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?
No (like many things that we're told at school!) The natural tendency
was to treat the compound verb, whether with être or avoir, as a
verb and leave the participle uninflected. That became the norm by the
13th century. Inflection was re-introduced under the influence of
Latin, but that was of course in the script, since the -e and -s had
become silent. The modern rule was proposed by Ramus in the 16th
century but not established until the 18th.
Messages in this topic (29)
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1.2. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:22 am ((PST))
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Eugene Oh <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.
>
Yes, I haven't taken this into consideration. Let's say, any writing system
in which the at least some symbols may have a phonetic value. In effect,
that's almost all writing systems in the world - I don't know any that
didn't.
> >
> >> 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 (29)
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1.3. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
Posted by: "Elena ``of Valhalla''" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:45 am ((PST))
On 2013-01-20 at 16:21:27 +0100, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> 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?
Actually, monks could erase, up to a certain point, by scraping a bit
of parchment; it is definitely more invasive than hitting the backspace
key and leaves traces, but for small errors it could be done.
What makes the explanation quite unrealistic, however, is the fact
that the monks weren't writing new material on the expensive vellum:
most of the time they were copying existing books, and even in the
rare case when they weren't, the text would have been composed and
written on something cheap and reusable like waxed tablets, and
only later copied on a more durable support.
Additionally, I don't know much about the history of French, but
if what I remember about Italian applies, I suspect that the monks
had little influence on its developement (as a written language),
since they tended to live in (medieval) Latin language/culture islands.
--
Elena ``of Valhalla''
Messages in this topic (29)
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2a. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:34 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 1/20/13, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
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.
================================================
That was certainly true for us westerners learning Bahasa Indonesia. For ex,
the most common question when you're getting to know someone is "apa sudah
kawin?" 'are you married?' (lit. Q already married). The polite, most usual
negative response is "belum" 'not yet'; if you answered "tidak" 'not' it would
be considered very forceful and definite, and would probably elicit a further
question, "why not?". SAme with another common question (if you answer yes to
the married question) -- "apa sudah beranak?" 'do you have children'; and
you're again supposed to answer "belum". All this because in their culture it
is assumed you are or will be married, and if so, you do, or plan to, have
children.
Similarly using "kurang" lit. 'less', as a polite negative response about the
quality of something-- somebody's cooking is "kurang enak" 'less (than)
delicious', while "tidak enak" is a real slam.
And while I'm ranting....the least attractive aspect of Javanese culture is
their inability to give a direct "no" to some request. So when someone agrees
to do something, it may or may not happen....But AIUI this is a common
"failing" of many other cultures too. Makes negotiating a little difficult.
Messages in this topic (11)
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3a. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:52 am ((PST))
On Sat, 19 Jan 2013 18:26:31 +0100
Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sure. For Russian, for instance, there is a scholarly
> transliteration that maps Cyrillic letters on Latin letters,
> often with diacritics, loosely according to the conventions
> used for languages such as Czech or Croatian. But in German
> newspapers, one rather find spellings such as _Gorbatschow_
> which simply attempt to apply German spelling conventions to
> Russian names. This has many shortcomings. You never know
> whether _s_ represents /s/ or /z/, or whether _sch_ represents
> /Ê/ or /Ê/! (Also, it has a *heptagraph*: _schtsch_ for what
> is a single phoneme in names such as _Chruschtschow_!)
In the English-speaking world, the ISO transcription is tending to give
way to the Library of Congress system, since that's the one in the
library catalogues.
It's interesting that (as far as I know) the Russians don't
transliterate, but transcribe. My favourite example is the old ÐÑл
"Gul" for Hull, but the other day I found Halle Berry as Ð¥Ñлли
"Khelli". The perception of /æ/ as /É/ seems common, as in Ñен "fen" <
"fan".
Messages in this topic (9)
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3b. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:16 am ((PST))
Sometimes this reveals hypercorrections too, such as ÐйлингÑон
/ajliNtOn/ for Islington /IzlINt@n/, the London borough, on Google maps.
Eugene
Sent from my iPhone
On 20 Jan 2013, at 16:52, David McCann <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Jan 2013 18:26:31 +0100
> Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Sure. For Russian, for instance, there is a scholarly
>> transliteration that maps Cyrillic letters on Latin letters,
>> often with diacritics, loosely according to the conventions
>> used for languages such as Czech or Croatian. But in German
>> newspapers, one rather find spellings such as _Gorbatschow_
>> which simply attempt to apply German spelling conventions to
>> Russian names. This has many shortcomings. You never know
>> whether _s_ represents /s/ or /z/, or whether _sch_ represents
>> /Ê/ or /Ê/! (Also, it has a *heptagraph*: _schtsch_ for what
>> is a single phoneme in names such as _Chruschtschow_!)
>
> In the English-speaking world, the ISO transcription is tending to give
> way to the Library of Congress system, since that's the one in the
> library catalogues.
>
> It's interesting that (as far as I know) the Russians don't
> transliterate, but transcribe. My favourite example is the old ÐÑл
> "Gul" for Hull, but the other day I found Halle Berry as Ð¥Ñлли
> "Khelli". The perception of /æ/ as /É/ seems common, as in Ñен "fen" <
> "fan".
Messages in this topic (9)
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4a. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "J. M. DeSantis" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:41 am ((PST))
I know it was probably lost in the feed with all of these other
conversations going, but would anyone mind looking over the post I made
early on Saturday morning and offering some feedback?
Sincerely,
J. M. DeSantis
Writer - Illustrator
Official Website: jmdesantis.com <http://www.jmdesantis.com>
On 1/19/2013 5:54 AM, J. M. DeSantis wrote:
> Conlang List,
>
> First of all, I just want to warn and apologise about the length. I'm
> listing all of the information here on a short, quick conlang exercise
> I did, for those who are interested, so this message is going to be
> quite long, in the end.
>
> That said, even though I'm behind on where I want to be in my script
> for a Chadhiyana graphic novel (which I've started writing and is part
> of the fantasy world, which includes many conlangs, I've been working
> on and which. I also mentioned previously, I published a small preview
> comic for the character, Chadhiyana), I was in the midst of creating
> new names for some characters and had a startling revelation. Though
> I've been coining new words and names, stumbling in the dark through
> the process (seemingly), I realised I've never created a conlang from
> (relative) start to finish. So I decided to take some time over the
> past two days and create something new that I could coin some names
> from and write a few sentences in. I wasn't concerned so much with how
> the language sounded. Merely this was an exercise I took on to get
> ideas on paper, commit to choices made, and build a working structure.
> A sketch, so to speak. Practice. The exercise was both eye opening and
> surprising. Some of the language, to me, sounds very good to my ear,
> though, as usual with my conlangs, I find concentrating on the
> language first results in awkward names. Whereas, creating names
> first, makes the language difficult to build properly. (Anyone else
> have this problem or know how to solve it?) But, first the language in
> full. And note it *is* very small; I was just trying to build
> something quick to put together a few sentences with, but I thought
> I'd share it anyway. After that, perhaps a few more comments:
>
> PHONOLOGY:
> As in English: /B, D, K, L, M, N, P, T/
> F *f*ar
> G *g*et
> H *h*orse
> R trilled
> S initially and finally say*s*. Elsewhere *s*even
> V *v*ery
> W *w*et
> I initially before a vowel, *y*ore. Elsewhere, vowel i
>
> A f*a*ther
> E *e*ducate
> I st*ee*l
> U s*oo*n
> AI st*a*ke
> EI gr*ey*
>
> Word Order: SOV
> No definite or indefinite articles
> 2 noun classes: neuter & living things
> Neuter Endings: L, M, N
> Living-Things Endings: B, D, K
>
> Prefixes (for Morphology):
> atru- multiple
> gei- half
> teg- true
> al- inside
> eig- non/un
> asa- part of
> ain- from/of
>
> NOUNS:
> beil darkness/dark
> freb tree
> tuk man
> dad woman
> grel swamp
> vek bird
> teb beast/animal (non-bird)
> wud fish
> mim light
> krel water
> ren sky
> pak fire (notice it's classified as a living thing)
> hib earth (again, living thing)
> farn blade
> sail wheel
> aldad child
> geivek penguin (I don't know why, I really love that penguin means
> "half bird")
> ainvek egg
> ril steel
> tegril sword
> eigtuk corpse
> tegdad mother
> geifarn knife/dagger
> ainhib life
> atrufarn fork
> atrutuk community/society
> sed ear
> gub demon
> wreg tale
> verun time
>
> ADJECTIVES: (created by appending the suffix *it* to nouns)
> wilit yellow
> ienit green
> lalit white
> krimit black
> valit red
> geivalit orange
> tegwulit blue
> wulit purple
> mimit gleam/shine
> eigmimit dull
> rilit strong
> dadit caring
> aldadit innocent
> tegmimit pure
> tirnit noble
>
> VERBS:
> Verbs are conjugated by person and tense. Tense is created by adding a
> suffix to the root. Person by adding a prefix.
> Personal Prefixes:
> a- he
> ai- she
> i- it
> li- you
> uli- you (all)
> ura- they
> ira- we
>
> Tense Suffixes:
> -ri Present
> -rug Past Perfect
> -tug Past Imperfect
> -aw Future
> -it Imperative
>
> Root forms of verbs take the ending *agal* which is dropped during
> conjugation.
> eigtukagal to die
> dadagal to give birth/to begin
> tegdadagal to care
> tegrilagal to fight/to wage war
> ainhibagal to live
> renagal to fly
> valitagal to bleed
> wulitagal to rage/to be angry
> beilagal to sleep
> sedagal to hear
> tainagal to kill
> hinagal to break/to destroy
> faimagal to avenge
> brukagal to be
>
> PRONOUNS (some):
> ugra how
> fav thus
> sego this
>
> PREPOSITIONS:
> la by
> hik for
>
> MISC WORDS (which I added while doing the translation below):
> utu all
> ug it
> agr her
> d and
>
> TRANSLATION EXERCISE: (note, I may have messed up the grammar on the
> end of the last sentence, but the sentence was so complex (as I tend
> to write) I was uncertain of some of it's order--corrections on this
> welcome)
>
> Sedit! Lisedri ugra Tegmimit Dad agr aldad aifaimrug la Grelgub
> aitainrug d Krimit Tegril aihinrug, hik utu verun. Ibrukri tirnit
> wreg. Fav idadri!
> Listen! Hear how the Pure Mother avenged her child by slaying the
> Swamp Demon and broke the Black Sword, for all time. This is a noble
> tale. Thus it begins!
>
>
> Now, I won't say this is the most wonderful language (or fragment of a
> language, rather) ever created, however, the exercise was fun to do,
> and it did produce some fun results. Some of the words I am not so
> crazy about, and I really dislike the name Grelgub (even for a swamp
> demon), but the other names are good, at least to me. But the exercise
> still did not solve a few concerns which always make me uncertain
> about what I'm doing: roots, word/name length and (as I alluded to
> earlier) the fact that creating words first can create some abysmal
> names, however, creating the language from names can create its own
> set of difficulties (either forcing rules to change or hours of work
> just on one name until it can be modified to fit the language's rules
> well and still sound good to the ear). Word and name length is an
> especial concern of mine because. An example of my concerns is: if a
> root is two syllables, then add a one syllable prefix to modify it's
> meaning, and then turn that noun into a verb with a two syllable
> conjugated ending, you're talking about a five syllable word. The same
> with compound names. A root word of two syllables becomes three with
> an adjective--let's go with a prefix in this case. Add the two
> syllable noun with it's extra single-syllable noun ending that the
> adjective is describing and quickly you've coined a six syllable name.
> Names such as that could certainly work in the languages of
> Chadhiyana's culture (more Indian-based), however, once moving to the
> more European-esque parts of the world, a name like that is just too
> long. I feel it's too easy to have long names, and very, very, very
> difficult (almost impossible) to have one or two syllable names (even
> if using a single noun, as a classifier added to a root must produce
> at least two syllables, making one syllable impossible). Anyone's
> thoughts on this?
>
> Anyway, again, this was just a private exercise I took on. It's
> nothing I'm planning to use, but, considering the nature of the list,
> I thought I'd share it. Feel free to comment and offer some
> constructive criticism. After all, feedback is perhaps the best way
> for me to learn a thing or two. All the best.
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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4b. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:56 am ((PST))
I haven't read all of it, but first thing I noticed - stake and grey have the
same vowel.
Eugene
Sent from my iPhone
On 20 Jan 2013, at 18:41, "J. M. DeSantis" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I know it was probably lost in the feed with all of these other conversations
> going, but would anyone mind looking over the post I made early on Saturday
> morning and offering some feedback?
>
> Sincerely,
> J. M. DeSantis
> Writer - Illustrator
>
> Official Website: jmdesantis.com <http://www.jmdesantis.com>
> On 1/19/2013 5:54 AM, J. M. DeSantis wrote:
>> Conlang List,
>>
>> First of all, I just want to warn and apologise about the length. I'm
>> listing all of the information here on a short, quick conlang exercise I
>> did, for those who are interested, so this message is going to be quite
>> long, in the end.
>>
>> That said, even though I'm behind on where I want to be in my script for a
>> Chadhiyana graphic novel (which I've started writing and is part of the
>> fantasy world, which includes many conlangs, I've been working on and which.
>> I also mentioned previously, I published a small preview comic for the
>> character, Chadhiyana), I was in the midst of creating new names for some
>> characters and had a startling revelation. Though I've been coining new
>> words and names, stumbling in the dark through the process (seemingly), I
>> realised I've never created a conlang from (relative) start to finish. So I
>> decided to take some time over the past two days and create something new
>> that I could coin some names from and write a few sentences in. I wasn't
>> concerned so much with how the language sounded. Merely this was an exercise
>> I took on to get ideas on paper, commit to choices made, and build a working
>> structure. A sketch, so to speak. Practice. The exercise was both eye
>> opening and surprising. Some of the language, to me, sounds very good to my
>> ear, though, as usual with my conlangs, I find concentrating on the language
>> first results in awkward names. Whereas, creating names first, makes the
>> language difficult to build properly. (Anyone else have this problem or know
>> how to solve it?) But, first the language in full. And note it *is* very
>> small; I was just trying to build something quick to put together a few
>> sentences with, but I thought I'd share it anyway. After that, perhaps a few
>> more comments:
>>
>> PHONOLOGY:
>> As in English: /B, D, K, L, M, N, P, T/
>> F *f*ar
>> G *g*et
>> H *h*orse
>> R trilled
>> S initially and finally say*s*. Elsewhere *s*even
>> V *v*ery
>> W *w*et
>> I initially before a vowel, *y*ore. Elsewhere, vowel i
>>
>> A f*a*ther
>> E *e*ducate
>> I st*ee*l
>> U s*oo*n
>> AI st*a*ke
>> EI gr*ey*
>>
>> Word Order: SOV
>> No definite or indefinite articles
>> 2 noun classes: neuter & living things
>> Neuter Endings: L, M, N
>> Living-Things Endings: B, D, K
>>
>> Prefixes (for Morphology):
>> atru- multiple
>> gei- half
>> teg- true
>> al- inside
>> eig- non/un
>> asa- part of
>> ain- from/of
>>
>> NOUNS:
>> beil darkness/dark
>> freb tree
>> tuk man
>> dad woman
>> grel swamp
>> vek bird
>> teb beast/animal (non-bird)
>> wud fish
>> mim light
>> krel water
>> ren sky
>> pak fire (notice it's classified as a living thing)
>> hib earth (again, living thing)
>> farn blade
>> sail wheel
>> aldad child
>> geivek penguin (I don't know why, I really love that penguin means "half
>> bird")
>> ainvek egg
>> ril steel
>> tegril sword
>> eigtuk corpse
>> tegdad mother
>> geifarn knife/dagger
>> ainhib life
>> atrufarn fork
>> atrutuk community/society
>> sed ear
>> gub demon
>> wreg tale
>> verun time
>>
>> ADJECTIVES: (created by appending the suffix *it* to nouns)
>> wilit yellow
>> ienit green
>> lalit white
>> krimit black
>> valit red
>> geivalit orange
>> tegwulit blue
>> wulit purple
>> mimit gleam/shine
>> eigmimit dull
>> rilit strong
>> dadit caring
>> aldadit innocent
>> tegmimit pure
>> tirnit noble
>>
>> VERBS:
>> Verbs are conjugated by person and tense. Tense is created by adding a
>> suffix to the root. Person by adding a prefix.
>> Personal Prefixes:
>> a- he
>> ai- she
>> i- it
>> li- you
>> uli- you (all)
>> ura- they
>> ira- we
>>
>> Tense Suffixes:
>> -ri Present
>> -rug Past Perfect
>> -tug Past Imperfect
>> -aw Future
>> -it Imperative
>>
>> Root forms of verbs take the ending *agal* which is dropped during
>> conjugation.
>> eigtukagal to die
>> dadagal to give birth/to begin
>> tegdadagal to care
>> tegrilagal to fight/to wage war
>> ainhibagal to live
>> renagal to fly
>> valitagal to bleed
>> wulitagal to rage/to be angry
>> beilagal to sleep
>> sedagal to hear
>> tainagal to kill
>> hinagal to break/to destroy
>> faimagal to avenge
>> brukagal to be
>>
>> PRONOUNS (some):
>> ugra how
>> fav thus
>> sego this
>>
>> PREPOSITIONS:
>> la by
>> hik for
>>
>> MISC WORDS (which I added while doing the translation below):
>> utu all
>> ug it
>> agr her
>> d and
>>
>> TRANSLATION EXERCISE: (note, I may have messed up the grammar on the end of
>> the last sentence, but the sentence was so complex (as I tend to write) I
>> was uncertain of some of it's order--corrections on this welcome)
>>
>> Sedit! Lisedri ugra Tegmimit Dad agr aldad aifaimrug la Grelgub aitainrug d
>> Krimit Tegril aihinrug, hik utu verun. Ibrukri tirnit wreg. Fav idadri!
>> Listen! Hear how the Pure Mother avenged her child by slaying the Swamp
>> Demon and broke the Black Sword, for all time. This is a noble tale. Thus it
>> begins!
>>
>>
>> Now, I won't say this is the most wonderful language (or fragment of a
>> language, rather) ever created, however, the exercise was fun to do, and it
>> did produce some fun results. Some of the words I am not so crazy about, and
>> I really dislike the name Grelgub (even for a swamp demon), but the other
>> names are good, at least to me. But the exercise still did not solve a few
>> concerns which always make me uncertain about what I'm doing: roots,
>> word/name length and (as I alluded to earlier) the fact that creating words
>> first can create some abysmal names, however, creating the language from
>> names can create its own set of difficulties (either forcing rules to change
>> or hours of work just on one name until it can be modified to fit the
>> language's rules well and still sound good to the ear). Word and name length
>> is an especial concern of mine because. An example of my concerns is: if a
>> root is two syllables, then add a one syllable prefix to modify it's
>> meaning, and then turn that noun into a verb with a two syllable conjugated
>> ending, you're talking about a five syllable word. The same with compound
>> names. A root word of two syllables becomes three with an adjective--let's
>> go with a prefix in this case. Add the two syllable noun with it's extra
>> single-syllable noun ending that the adjective is describing and quickly
>> you've coined a six syllable name. Names such as that could certainly work
>> in the languages of Chadhiyana's culture (more Indian-based), however, once
>> moving to the more European-esque parts of the world, a name like that is
>> just too long. I feel it's too easy to have long names, and very, very, very
>> difficult (almost impossible) to have one or two syllable names (even if
>> using a single noun, as a classifier added to a root must produce at least
>> two syllables, making one syllable impossible). Anyone's thoughts on this?
>>
>> Anyway, again, this was just a private exercise I took on. It's nothing I'm
>> planning to use, but, considering the nature of the list, I thought I'd
>> share it. Feel free to comment and offer some constructive criticism. After
>> all, feedback is perhaps the best way for me to learn a thing or two. All
>> the best.
>>
Messages in this topic (5)
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4c. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "J. M. DeSantis" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 11:54 am ((PST))
On 1/20/2013 1:56 PM, Eugene Oh wrote:
> I haven't read all of it, but first thing I noticed - stake and grey have the
> same vowel.
>
> Eugene
Oh! You're right. I missed that entirely. It should have been "eye" for
ai and not "stake." Just an error on my part. But thank you for taking a
look.
Sincerely,
J. M. DeSantis
Writer - Illustrator
Official Website: jmdesantis.com <http://www.jmdesantis.com>
Messages in this topic (5)
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4d. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 12:18 pm ((PST))
Just so you know, I've saved it for future reference when I have more
time to look at it. :-) --gary
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 10:41 AM, J. M. DeSantis <[email protected]> wrote:
> I know it was probably lost in the feed with all of these other
> conversations going, but would anyone mind looking over the post I made
> early on Saturday morning and offering some feedback?
>
>
> Sincerely,
> J. M. DeSantis
> Writer - Illustrator
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "selpa'i" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:44 am ((PST))
la'o me. David Peterson .me cusku di'e
> On Jan 19, 2013, at 5:46 PM, selpa'i <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> It saddens me a bit to read this. Do you have solid evidence for
>> your belief or is it more of an intuitive guess? Surely, you
>> understand the complexity of Ithkuil the best, but I don't want to
>> easily give up my hopes that "THAT level of fluency" is attainable.
>> Why do you think it's impossible?
>
> If I could add, you might want to search the archives for discussions
> of Fith or Shallow Fith and its alienness. One of the things that And
> Rosta pointed out about Fith is that it's possible to speak it
> without taking advantage of some of the oddities of its stack
> operations. Doing so would technically be speaking Fith, it just
> wouldn't be very interesting, compared to what it's possible to do
> with Fith. I think John's saying the same thing here.
Yes, this parallel to Fith came to mind immediately. I was there for
that discussion; in fact, I asked the same question there: "Can humans
speak Fith", and of course the answer about "shallow" and "real" Fith
was given.
While I probably agree with the distintion, you, or And Rosta are
making, I think it's also worth noting that English is not being used to
its full potential by anyone either. It's impossible. As soon as a
certain amount of nesting starts to happen, both the speaker and the
listener lose track of what's going on. Are they not speaking English? I
think they are.
> As to the benefits, I think the personal benefits would far outweigh
> any possible external benefits. I, for one, would be impressed, but
> that only goes so far. If the Ithkuil experiment works as I think it
> could, working with it might sharpen one's observational and
> analytical skills when it comes to examining some gestaltwhatever it
> isand breaking it down.
I agree, and therefore I believe that it *is* worth bothering to learn
it. Even if one doesn't get to the very top of the mountain, one still
gets to enjoy a great view.
> Theoretically with Ithkuil one goes beyond metaphorical understanding
> allowing one to break down any concept into its actual component
> parts. This isn't something that comes easily or naturally to most
> people. If you continue to work with Ithkuil, perhaps you will
> improve your ability to deconstruct abstract phenomena.
Yes, maybe. We'd need to find out.
> I'm not sure if this would be encouraging or discouraging, and I
> don't have anything to back this up. These are hypotheses and
> opinions. If you were to work with Ithkuil and try to gain some
> measure of fluency, I'm sure the subject would make a wonderful
> article for Fiat Lingua. :)
Well maybe it would make an interesting article if a person had not only
tried, but also succeeded. Just "Person X is trying to learn Ithkuil"
doesn't sound very interesting until there is some evidence that Person
X is actually making noteworthy progress. (Not to mention how
anticlimactic it would be to announce in the next article that Person X
failed!)
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
Messages in this topic (13)
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5b. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "selpa'i" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:58 am ((PST))
la'o me. John Q .me cusku di'e
>>> It took me about fifteen minutes to piece together the above
>>> Ithkuil word after first thinking about the "scene" I wanted to
>>> describe. A "100% fluent" speaker (e.g., the hypothetical sports
>>> announcer) would, in theory, be able to come up with such a word
>>> ON THE SPOT. It is THAT level of fluency which Ithkuil
>>> potentially allows, and it is THAT level of fluency which I now
>>> believe is unattainable.
>
>> It saddens me a bit to read this. Do you have solid evidence for
>> your belief or is it more of an intuitive guess? Surely, you
>> understand the complexity of Ithkuil the best, but I don't want to
>> easily give up my hopes that "THAT level of fluency" is attainable.
>> Why do you think it's impossible?
> ____________________________________
>
> Admittedly an intuitive guess. I doubt such a level of fluency is
> possible because, being aware of how much mental effort I have to
> make during the fifteen or so minutes to decompose the semantic
> elements of a scene like my football example and then tediously map
> them one by one to the overt components of Ithkuil morphology
> (including choosing which lexical roots to use, which stems from
> those roots, which derivation all affixes to employ, and then
> determine which of the myriad declensions of the 22 mandatory
> morphological categories for each verb is appropriate, then string it
> all together morpho-syntactically into a word or phrase or sentence,
> well...to expect a human being to be able to do that on the fly in a
> couple of seconds like the hypothetical sports announcer in my
> example seems like a super-human feat to me. Perhaps, as Stevo says,
> an advanced human like a trained psychoneticist perhaps could do it.
> ;-)
;)
But you lose a lot of time by having to look up all those roots, stems
and affixes. And you don't have much practice (I'm talking daily use
here). I think just fixing these two problems would speed up the process
by at least 50%, probably more like 90%. And sure, this football example
is complex, but it's not like everything we say is always complex (or at
least we like to pretend it isn't). Ithkuil allows us to be complex and
precise and whatnot, but I don't quite see how not *always* making full
use of this capacity is in any way an inferior use of the language. It
would be like saying that we'd only be using English fully if we were
constantly formulating profound philosophical monologues (or dialogues)
and making precise assesments of every situation we are in and then
verbalizing those assesments. I think it should depend on the situation
how we use any given language.
Clearly, there is too little evidence for or against the question
whether (Deep) Ithkuil is learnable. The future remains uncertain and
interesting. :)
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
Messages in this topic (13)
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5c. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "selpa'i" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 11:02 am ((PST))
la gleki cu cusku di'e
> On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:50 PM, selpa'i <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering, however. There seems to be surprisingly little talk about
>> Ithkuil on the net or on this list. There is no Ithkuil mailing list, no
>> IRC channel, no youtube videos, no learning resources other than the
>> Reference Grammar. Even Gua\spi seems to have a bigger web presence, and it
>> was revived only some months ago by myself. Why is there so little
>> activity, so little output? There clearly are people out there that have a
>> serious interest in Ithkuil; I am aware of the reddit and facebook groups,
>> and that there is a community of Russian enthusiasts, and yet, it seems
>> that no texts have been translated into Ithkuil (e.g. The Little Prince).
>>
>
> Side note. This Russian community currently consists of only one person.
> His name is la .zalaim. But he couldn't reach such level of proficiency in
> Ithkuil as he could do in Lojban. He says that's because there are so few
> Ithkuilists.
Oh, only zalaim? How disappointing. But okay, I might have to contact
him someday. Thanks for the heads-up.
> For me the biggest obstacle is that Ithkuil is not decomposable. You can't
> utter only one affix. You have to build the whole word. This is in direct
> violation of esperantic principle of sufficiency and necessesity (add as
> many affixes as you need but not more). Of course esperanto itself violates
> this principle although not to such extent.
I'd like to hear John Q about this. Is it really the case that any verb
or noun has to be fully specified? To me it seemed like some of the
example sentences he gave used very simple verbs, which clearly couldn't
have been fully specified and still be so short. Of course you can't
utter a bound morpheme in isolation, but as far as I can tell, you can
use a root with just the affixes you need. John?
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
Messages in this topic (13)
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5d. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "Melroch" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 11:07 am ((PST))
David Peterson wrote:
If I could add, you might want to search the archives for discussions of
Fith or Shallow Fith and its alienness. One of the things that And Rosta
pointed out about Fith is that it's possible to speak it without taking
advantage of some of the oddities of its stack operations. Doing so would
technically be speaking Fith, it just wouldn't be very interesting,
compared to what it's possible to do with Fith. I think John's saying the
same thing here.
----------------
It strikes me that it doesn't have to be a language as alien as Fith or
Ithkuil to get this effect, only a language sufficiently 'alien' compared
to your L1. The 'all infinite' style of late Sanskrit I wrote about a while
back would actually be an example of this. The verbal categories of full
Paa.ninian Sanskrit were too hard to tackle so they took advantage of a few
features of the grammar, namely that you could build subordinate clauses
with only infinite verb forms and even main clauses with infinite verb
forms and a dummy finite copula. You could also freely drop a copula, at
least in the third present singular indicative. You could also replace
whole NPs and even clauses with compounds, and you could compound
compounds, theoretically ad infinitum. So they took these regular
grammatical constructs and overapplied them (and to a degree misapplied
them) to get a mode of expression which was easier for them to master. They
weren't (obviously at least) formally violating any rules of the codified
grammar, but they also did not use the full potential of that grammar and
more impostantly their mode of expression would not have felt natural to
native speakers of Old Indo-Aryan!
Perhaps this is even a natural strategy in learning an 'alien' grammar. I
don't think I ever used an imperfect or passato remoto form very often when
speaking Italian. I overused the analytic passato prossimo. The funny thing
was that my sentences were morphologically and syntactically correct even
if often pragmatically and semantically a bit off, but people understood
what I wanted to say. I have noticed the same strategy in immigrants'
Swedish. People with a highly polysymthetic L1 may well have an easier time
using a fuller range of Ithkuil if relative difference from L1 is important
in this area. Similarly the fact that modern spoken Esperanto has no clear
division between compounding and derivation or indeed between derivation
and subordination may be an example of such grammar reduction with an
efficiency gain.
Now I *am* inclined to believe that redundancy and (optional) ambiguity,
imprecision and ellipsis (RAIE as I call them) are actually good things in
human language. They help us to digest process and produce language -- in
short communicating -- efficiently at normal conversational speed. But are
we naturally constrained to the use of such languages, or even to languages
similar to existing natlangs? I think not. Written language usually cuts
down a lot on RAIE compared to spoken language, and generally more the
longer a tradition of writing longer texts and reading (as opposed to
listening to) them persists. The obvious reason is that you can literally
see a longer chunk of a written page than what you can hold verbatim in
your conscious mind while listening or speaking. I believe that most in
language is nurture more than nature. At the risk of angering any
Chomskyans I believe that there are four factors enabling and inclining
humans to create and use language, none of them originally, primarily or
exclusively linguistic in nature:
1) The ability to think with and in terms of symbol and symbolized which If
I could add, you might want to search the archives for discussions of Fith
or Shallow Fith and its alienness. One of the things that And Rosta pointed
out about Fith is that it's possible to speak it without taking advantage
of some of the oddities of its stack operations. Doing so would technically
be speaking Fith, it just wouldn't be very interesting, compared to what
it's possible to do with Fith. I think John's saying the same thing here
are distinct yet arbitrarily linked. Symbolic thinking for short.
2) The ability to build up symbols from smaller parts which are themselves
arbitrary and asymbolic. I call this 'double symbolization'.
3) The typically human way of vocalization.
4) The ability to usefully combine (2) and (3) aka double articulation.
To these I should probably add the ability to replace (3) with something
else if you aren't capable of it, an area I alas know very little of.
Humans are probably just the only species where all of these abilities are
present.
All the rest of language is IMHO a cultural achievement which has gone on
for an unknown how long but probably rather long time, and is still
ongoing.
While it may not come naturally to humans to express themselves readily in
a language with as little RAIE as Ithkuil I think it would be possible and
useful to learn to *read* it fluently. After all humans can learn to
express ourselves and read in languages with very little RAIE as
exemplified by programming languages. I was going to say "imagine how much
information you could get onto the back of a carton if you wrote in
Ithkuil", but more generally I don't think Ithkuil would be a failure if it
could be efficiently used as a language for reading. It takes longer for
me to translate a given amount of text than it does for a colleague without
cerebral palsy simply because I type slower, but to someone reading my
translations only their accuracy matters, and I don't think that is
affected negatively by my slow typing. In fact the quality of my product is
probably rather good since I do get employed. I also think that someone who
became efficient at expressing themselves in Ithkuil would gradually expand
their grammar if they regularly read texts in advanced Ithkuil, and would
gradually pass on a more expanded grammar to at least some of their
students. That's what happening to *English* around the world. Learning
tourist English may not enable you to read Shakespeare or refined
philosophy but it may enable you to help your kids to achieve that ability.
In fact I know such a case personally. She is now learning more advanced
English (and Swedish!) from her children.
Messages in this topic (13)
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________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
Posted by: "Js Bangs" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 11:43 am ((PST))
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> 2013/1/18 Patrick Dunn <[email protected]>:
> > That's a really good question. I'm not sure how one would begin to
> answer
> > it in any sort of analytic way, but when you consider things like Ancient
> > Greek or Sanskrit, which have frankly *InSANE* amounts of inflection that
> > people actually seemed to use (judging, at least, from the writing -- the
> > spoken language may have been less complex in practice),
>
> And that's the core of my question. In Portuguese, there are a lot of
> verbal forms that people rarely use in spoken language. I have heard
> also that German people don't use the genitive case anymore and the
> French diglossia has been widely discussed in this list. Maybe there's
> some "people valve" to expel excessive inflection.
>
>
I think it's pretty clear that the inflectional complexity of Sanskrit,
Greek, etc. was present in the spoken language at some point---otherwise
what was the point of initially writing them down that way? Furthermore,
there are other living, spoken languages whose morphological complexity
equals or exceeds that of the old IE languages. Navajo and Greenlandic come
immediately to mind here.
The Indo-European languages have been trending towards morphological
simplicity for several millenia, now, which explains why the familiar
European languages are all somewhat simpler in their spoken forms than
their written forms. But this is by no means universal or required.
Messages in this topic (6)
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