There are 6 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Odd use of "k" in Gawain and the Green Knight
From: Matthew Boutilier
2a. Re: Easy-typing Arabic romanization (was: Not really a conlang...)
From: MorphemeAddict
2b. Re: Easy-typing Arabic romanization (was: Not really a conlang...)
From: Alex Fink
3a. Re: A Language For The (Asteroid) Belt
From: Anthony Miles
4. Literal vowel harmony for non-human artlang: phones, phonology, and
From: Matthew George
5a. Re: Koha
From: Herman Miller
Messages
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1a. Re: Odd use of "k" in Gawain and the Green Knight
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 7, 2013 1:21 pm ((PST))
What Patrick said. This is probably a retention of the /k/ at the end of
the original *-līk- suffix.
It might help to point out that OE superlatives were (with a few
exceptions) made with -ost -- e.g. lēoflīcost -- which probably would
have prevented the /k/ from being palatalized to /tʃ/ (as it was in the
positive form, hence the word <luflych> that I found in my ME book; unless
it palatalized in the positive form lēoflic and then spread to the
comparative and superlative analogically).
Considering that the middle vowel of OE lēoflīcost was unstressed it's
understandable if in this ME dialect it got reduced to a mere schwa sound
in <louelokkest>, which I guess happened to be written with <o>. That's the
best explanation I can come up with.
matt
On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 3:10 PM, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> One thing that occurs to me is that in Old English, the suffix that became
> -ly was -lice. So, for example, "lovely" would be "leoflice" or "luflic".
> That {k} may be a survival of the original {c} which I learned to
> pronounce as a palatal stop or an affricate.
>
> How it might have been pronounced in that dialect of middle English, I've
> got no clue to offer, though.
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Sam Stutter <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I've been considering this on Google+ - in Gawain and the Green Knight
> > you'll find the words "louelokkest" and "comlokest" ("loveliest" and
> > "comeliest"). What I've been trying to work out is *how* are these
> > pronounced? Given that Gawain was written in either Cheshire or
> > Staffordshire, I'm not sure to what degree pronunciation is believed to
> > follow southern Middle English dialects. Given that I (Cheshire-dweller
> > that I am) can read Gawain without much difficulty and people with very
> > traditional Cheshire dialects find it almost entirely intelligible, I'm
> > trying to imagine how an elderly Cheshire speaker might render the words
> > "loveliest" and "comeliest".
> >
> > I can't imagine any reason why they might say /kʊmlɒkest/ or /lʊvlɒkest/,
> > or use /ʧ/, /ç/ or /x/ instead of /k/. I can only think of it as being
> some
> > quirk of spelling (like the use of "qu" vs "wh", "ɜ", "þ" and "y").
> Trying
> > to imagine it, I can only hear /kʊmleɪst/ and /lʊvleɪst/. Of course, I
> > might very well be getting the wrong end of the stick here.
> >
> > I'm not sure to what degree Great Vowel Shift-age has happened here, but
> > I'm happy with how the vowels sound, so that's not a worry.
> >
> > Sam Stutter
> > [email protected]
> > "No e na'l cu barri"
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
> order from Finishing Line
> Press<
> http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
> and
> Amazon<
> http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2
> >.
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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2a. Re: Easy-typing Arabic romanization (was: Not really a conlang...)
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 7, 2013 1:24 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Adnan Majid <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> If the goal of Jeff and others is just to simplify Arabic without being
> particularly tied down to Arabic's complex phonetics, I wonder whether one
> can use *vowels* to represent different consonants that were originally
> different. Many of the emphatic consonants in Arabic (as well as some
> others) cause the following vowel to become more rounded (is that the right
> term?) - namely T, Z, S, D, kh, gh, r, and q.
>
> For instance, the verb "dalal" would mean "he showed" while the verb
> ".Dalal" would mean "he erred." Since the "o" vowel isn't usually used in
> Arabic, one could render the the latter as "dolal", differentiating it from
> "dalal" without having to use any digraphs or diacritics. And it actually
> ends up sounding fairly similar to the original.
>
> It helps that Arabic has only 3 main vowels. Thus the vowel changes could
> be something like the following: a->o, i->y, u->eu, or maybe a->o, i->e,
> u->y, or whatever you'd like (for instance, we already use "syria" to
> render the Arabic ".Sooriyya" as the Greek "y" was originally similar to
> the french "eu").
The Greek upsilon (whence "y") was originally pronounced similar to the
French "u" [IPA y] (not "eu").
stevo
Depending on one's goals, one doesn't need to be totally
> precise - just precise enough to differentiate similar words.
>
> Just a suggestion - haven't thought about all too much.
>
> Adnan
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 8:26 AM, David McCann <[email protected]
> >wrote:
>
> > On Monday 04 February 2013 22:00:52 Jeffrey Brown wrote:
> >
> > > Yeah, the orthography of Sim-Arabic is sort of ugly. DIN 31635 (the
> > > transliteration standard of the Deutsche Morgenländische
> > > Gesellschaft) is a lot prettier - but it is not easier to use. It
> > > needs the following diacritics: macron above, macron below, dot
> > > above, dot below, caron above, breve below - and these special
> > > characters: right half ring, left half ring. It is a pain in the
> > > neck to type.
> >
> > Surely it's just a question of getting your keyboard set up properly,
> > like:
> > Compose -a for ā
> > Compose _t for ṯ
> > Compose !t for ṭ
> > Compose cs for š
> > Compose bh for ḫ
> > L3Sh { for ʿ
> > L3Sh } for ʾ
> > Typing three keys for š is not much worse than typing sh, and I believe
> > that you can get compose-key emulation for Windows these days.
> >
> > I've got everything including the kitchen sink set up here: ẖ ꜣ ƛ ʢ and
> > so on.
> >
>
Messages in this topic (22)
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2b. Re: Easy-typing Arabic romanization (was: Not really a conlang...)
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 7, 2013 2:01 pm ((PST))
On Thu, 7 Feb 2013 11:31:08 -0800, Adnan Majid <[email protected]> wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>If the goal of Jeff and others is just to simplify Arabic without being
>particularly tied down to Arabic's complex phonetics, I wonder whether one
>can use *vowels* to represent different consonants that were originally
>different. Many of the emphatic consonants in Arabic (as well as some
>others) cause the following vowel to become more rounded (is that the right
>term?) - namely T, Z, S, D, kh, gh, r, and q.
Rounding is a meaningful phonetic term, but I don't know of an Arabic dialect
in which rounding is the relevant thing there. Instead, it's backing: /a/ is
[&] most places, but [A] in the vicinity of this set of emphatics and allies.
>For instance, the verb "dalal" would mean "he showed" while the verb
>".Dalal" would mean "he erred." Since the "o" vowel isn't usually used in
>Arabic, one could render the the latter as "dolal", differentiating it from
>"dalal" without having to use any digraphs or diacritics. And it actually
>ends up sounding fairly similar to the original.
You've basically just reinvented Maltese! It collapses emphatic coronals with
plain ones, but the original Arabic *a is Maltese /a/ in the vicinity of the
emphatics and /e/ elsewhere.
That's as far as the phonemic splits go in Maltese, but cross-linguistically
vowel lowering near uvulars and pharyngeals is also extremely common. So the
sensible way to extend this approach to all the original Arabic vowels, I would
think, would be *a i u being [A e o] near emphatics and [& i u] elsewhere.
(Not these strange front rounded things.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (22)
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3a. Re: A Language For The (Asteroid) Belt
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 7, 2013 1:56 pm ((PST))
It's derived from Maltese. If I were going for the super-hard SF/alt-hist, yes,
I'd have to go with a mixed group, but
1) I liked the homonymy of Belt (asteroid belt) and il-Belt (Valetta, in Malta,
where my great-grandma was born).
2) I wanted to use something where I already owned the book.
3) I thought a Semitic language, and in particular, one with broken plurals,
would make for a different Space language, especially with ethnonyms (and yes I
know ivsat, vesta, vosot is technically a color pattern - best i could do - had
to pick something with male-female-plural).
4) Other parts will be colonized by others; but I gotta start somewhere.
5) The admixture of populations (as if the Maltese people hadn't already met
every group in the Mediterranean!) is reflected in the reduction of the verb
paradigm. The emergence of universal gender agreement in the singular of all
persons is a happy accident.
6) The balance of Ceres (a large ocean in space) and Vesta (an arid rock that
has suffered environmental catastrophes) matches up with Malta's position and
enviroment nicely.
>
George Corley wrote:
What language is this derived from? It looks vaguely semitic. I would
think that many languages would be represented in future space exploration,
as so many people around the world colonize different areas.
>
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
> When the waters rose, the small nations, those closest to the water,
> suffered and vanished. Their people struggled to hold their identity
> against the Way of Every Person and the Good Language which it imposed. The
> world government tired of their complaints and offered them emigration to
> the other bodies of the Solar System. The largest of these was Mars; the
> second largest was Ceres. The Dal-Ikris (male Dal-Keres, female Dil-Kersa),
> the settlers of Ceres, established Calvino Cities anchored above Dil-Bar,
> the interior ocean of Ceres, and prospered. After a half-century, the
> Dal-Ikris colonized Vesta, whose inhabitants became known as the Dal-Vosot
> (male Dal-Ivsat, female Dil-Vesta).
>
> The language of the Dal-Ikris and the Dal-Vosot was not the same as that
> of their ancestors, despite the efforts of their teachers and scholars. The
> articles were kept, but the demonstrative combined with the definite
> article, leaving a typical male-female-plural pattern “dal-dil-dal”. The
> difference between “dal – singular” and “dal – plural” appeared in the
> distinct forms of the noun, e.g., “dal-ktib” “the book”, “dal-kotba” “the
> books”. Diminution devastated the regularity of the personal pronouns. The
> affirmative pronouns became “ina, ti, u, i, nana, tom, uma” “1s, 2s, 3ms,
> 3fs, 1p, 2p, 3p”, while the negative pronouns became “nish, tish, mush,
> mish, tomsh, umish”. The verb also suffered simplification: the seven forms
> of the ancestral language reduced to three: male-female-plural. An example
> is “to write”: past “kiteb, kitbet, kitbu”, imperative “ikteb, iktbu”,
> non-past “yikteb, tikteb, yiktbu.”There were also negative forms “ma
> ktibsh, ma kitbitsh, ma kitbush, ma tiktibsh, ma tiktbush, ma yiktibsh, ma
> tiktibsh, ma yiktbush” and interrogative “shkiteb, shkitbet, shkitbu,
> shyikteb, shtikteb, shyiktbu.” Simplification, however, was not universal:
> the reduction of the verbal paradigm forces each combination with the
> personal pronoun to indicate gender; the speaker of “ina ma ktibsh” “I will
> not write” could only be a girl.
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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4. Literal vowel harmony for non-human artlang: phones, phonology, and
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 7, 2013 3:37 pm ((PST))
This is my first attempt at any kind of constructed language, so I'd
appreciate any feedback I can get on my crazy idea. Obviously, when
dealing with a wholly fictional species, human physiology and psychology
don't apply. But I'd like to be able to pronounce and use the language I
create, even if only approximately - and my fictional humans should, too.
And I don't know enough to recognize how hard I'm making things.
My idea: the insectoid species I'm crafting a language for has lungs and
produces a limited number of human-like phones, as well as a few that we
can't (like mandible clacking). They have no lips and mouths more
specialized than ours, so they can only manage dental, alveolar, and
palato-alveolar sounds from the human range. It seems reasonable to say
that their ability to make vowels would also be somewhat restricted - no
rounding possible, and a limited 'back' dimension. Add on the restriction
that their language would have to involve a lot of buzzing, so voicing is
mandatory... and there aren't that many possible sounds remaining, and the
restricted vowel space makes it harder to distinguish between the available
options.
But what if their language compensated by utilizing features human
languages don't? Everything I've read on tonal languages stresses that the
tone profiles depend on the speaker's normal pitch and are not precisely
defined even in an individual. what if that changed? What if every vowel
had to be sung, and pitch was phonemic for vowels? I could take a very
limited number of vowels and distinguish between them by assigning them
notes. I've read of musical languages that were pure notes, and tonality,
but never anything in-between.
Unfortunately, several sources I encountered stressed the importance of not
distinguishing words with vowels alone; that's an inevitable consequence of
my hypothetical feature. And since I want to be able to pronounce the
language (and have fictional humans productively approximate it), normal
human capacities matter.
I realize this would be a challenging feature for humans to learn and use,
but... just how challenging? How terrible an idea is this, for something
human beings could learn and use?
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (1)
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5a. Re: Koha
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 7, 2013 5:22 pm ((PST))
On 2/6/2013 10:49 PM, Anthony Miles wrote:
> Koha is a German-derived language spoken on the Earth of the
> "Eis-Lehre-Welt (ELW)" cosm of the Polycosm, the equivalent of all
> the Pacific Ocean creoles on OTL's Earth. It started as an
> slow-burning experiment in late 2011 to see how much of German syntax
> could survive extreme simplification (most of it, as it turns out).
I like this; it looks vaguely Pacific at first glance, but you can see
the Germanic roots if you point them out. Interesting though that it
appears to have /o/ but no /u/. (I'd have expected "muka" for "mother".)
Messages in this topic (2)
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