Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:

> Ajuk has that problem too, in colloquial speech. Ajuk has quite a few
> ambiguities that don't pose much of a problem once you consider context,
> but the young'uns embrace it and use ambiguous phrases a lot. They use
> the "unknown" a lot as well, except where it's completely neccessary.
<G>  Sounds like my mom, almost--except she was observing rather than
complaining that certain things about Korean that are "true" for her,
especially in the written language, are ignored or changed by my
generation of speakers.

Er, I can't figure out where I put that email with the Kirschenbaum URL,
so I'm using 3 for the capital? epsilon (looks like 3-backwards).

Frex, /ö/ has become /w3/ and /ue/ (u-umlaut--I  could never remember the
ASCII) has become /wi/.  The difference between /e/ and /3/ is
disappearing; I can hear it but can't reliably produce it.

They've also gradually made some of the spelling more modern and sensible
to modern pronunciation.

> > The one thing that gives me a headache is the fact that monks are
> > Asian-like monks, not Western-like monks, but in the story there's a
> > senior monk who's also a woman, and I'm worried it'll confuse readers.
> > ObConlang, the Chevraqis for monk is probably "one who seeks
> > enlightenment."  (Stupid-obvious, but hey.)
>
> I'm not sure of all the details: What precisely would be confusing about
> it? I don't know much about Chevraqis.
"Monk" to Western readers, a friend pointed out to me, usually means a
male person.  "Monk" to me means male or female; I've seen enough female
Buddhist monks on the subway in Seou.  <shrug>

YHL