Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: YAC: Widse -- a conlang based on Ygyde

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, January 27, 2003, 14:41
En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

> > > Actually, I'm thinking a regular language with plenty of words is a > very > likely source for me to create a conlang from, given how I like > turning > regularities into irregularities. >
True, especially since that language is just shouting to be made irregular ;))) .
> >> > Seems to me this language is going to be a rhymers' bane. Maybe poetry > written by these hypothetical Australians would be written in Sarah's > hypothetical language ;) Or else we just go the way of the Old English > and alliterate. Or I believe Latin and Greek had syllable-weight the > decider of good poetry?
Yep. Verses were organised in feet, each foot having a specific prosodic structure (I guess quite like singing, which makes me wonder if Latin and Greek poetry were not always sung..). Rhyme was unimportant. That could work. Or maybe there's something
> horribly innovative I just haven't thought of? >
Well, you have also things like haiku (a strict haiku must have 17 syllables and a term referring to a season. No rhyme or reason are needed, those two constraints are enough to make it poetic :) ). Rhyme, alliteration, prosody, etc... actually none of those things are needed to make poetry.
> > > Oh yes, I forgot to mention /r\/, and /M\/ could certainly find its > place. /r\`/ would be somewhat harder, though---there's no other > retroflex. How do retroflexes come about? >
Well, look at the thread about retroflex consonants started today ;)) . A cluster r+consonant (or consonant+r) can easily become a retroflex :) .
> > > I never said it had to make sense! >
LOL. Indeed...
> > > Yup.... well... iolu and dsailu are pronounced the same but have > (widely) different pronunciations... (BTW... all those /9/ and /9:/s > should be /2/ and /2:/s, though considering there's no mid-open vowels > (yet) it probably doesn't matter.) >
Since you used phonemic instead of phonetic transcription, it doesn't indeed. You needn't be overly precise in this transcription.
> Oh, and the stuff happening in the Locative that looks like dsa- makes > the ds /j/ and dso- makes the ds /D/? You're wrong.
I didn't think of it at all, especially since dsoilu is pronounced /v\y/ ;)) (great Maggelish-looking word by the way ;))) ). Lulling you into a
> false sense of security.
The essence of Maggelity. You are talking to an expert ;))) . The old i- that died off helped make the
> decision; if it were a u- it'd be more like what's happening in dsoilu > /v\y/. I just don't want to have silent vowels floating around mucking > up my orthography; you've seen what its done to English, haven't you? >
It's made it *interesting* ;))) . Hehe, Maggel just loves silents letters ;)) . But in your case, if getting rid of silent letters helps maggelity, please do so! There are more than one Path to Maggelity ;))) .
> And I'm thinking its incredibly likely that gramattical gender will > emerge... All those men talking of 'that' with the male pronoun, so > the > women decide that they should use the female pronoun for 'that' and so > a > generation or so later the children learn the language some words with > the masculine pronoun and others with the feminine, and don't worry > Christophe, it's not unlikely that 'husband' wouldn't be feminine and > 'wife' masculine. :)
LOL! That would be nice! ;)) I already know that "wife" is feminine in Maggel, but nothing says that "husband" needs to be masculine ;)))) . (No word for either of those, so I'll just use
> ymape (female relation) and ymepe (male relation) > _mab_ /mab/ m. > 'wife' and _mefe_ /me:/ f. 'husband' (if they aren't boring, I don't > know what is... maybe I'll do some compounding or more interesting > semantic shift).) >
Well, I find them already nice enough this way ;) .
> > > Why is it that auxlangers who come here to promote their language > never > stay, even if they calm down? >
Because they expect use to praise them, and after a while, seeing that it doesn't work, they leave. They are mostly blocked in the thought that *they* have the key to world communication and peace, and cannot cope with disagreement, even if they can fake it for a while. You will note that although he himself criticised Ygyde, he never *changed* anything in it (he just added this ill-thought mapping of CV syllables to CVV ones), while a wealth of solutions were presented to him. I keep on thinking that he never meant any of the critics he gave himself. He just used them to look modest (you'll note that each time we used the same critics as him, he kept on defending Ygyde by saying how worse other philosophical languages are. Typical rejection of responsibility). When you criticize yourself but don't make any effort to change, I cannot believe you mean the critics you utter...
> It's almost a pity he's left...
Well, I won't miss him personally... But he had explicitly said it's the
> Linux of the conlang world (though I guess this would be more > appropriate if it were the BSD of the conlang world I guess... Linux > isn't forky enough).
;)) But if it's the Linux of the conlang world, that
> implies its released under a GPL-like licence, which would mean that I > have to release the source (being, I guess, the GMP) of this now... > See, > this is why I prefer BSD-style licences... Or is the GMP more of a > patchfile, really?
I'm confused too now. Maybe you should consider a license like the "Artistic License" under which Perl is distributed :) . /me wonders off confusing even himself. I've been
> nominated to be on the megapanel at an up-coming SF con. What's the > megapanel, I ask. 'Exactly' was the reply. >
?!!! ;))) Is there a Dadaist in the room? ;)))) Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies

John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Tristan <kesuari@...>