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

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

>En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>
>
>>Well, I had the idea and I really couldn't resist...
>>
>>
>LOL. Hehe, you get your inspiration from really strange sources ;)) .
>
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.

>>    - A large collection of vowels, long and short, rounded and
>>unrounded, nasalised and not.
>>    - More diphthongs than you could shake a stick at
>>
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? That could work. Or maybe there's something
horribly innovative I just haven't thought of?

>>    - A smaller collection of approximates, including /j/, /w/, /H/
>>and
>>/v\/.
>>
>>
>I hope it contains also /r\/, /r\`/ and /M\/ ;)))) .
>
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?

>And why would they have chosen Ygyde as their interlang? Masochism? ;))))
>
I never said it had to make sense!

>
> Given
>
>
>>that it's spoken in Australia, some words have an Australianness about
>>them, e.g. jaug /Cou/, which means 'drought' and Lu Jaug /wo Cou/
>>(lit.
>>'The Drought') which means 'El Nino'.
>>('Jaug' derives from 'yjagu', absorption of water.) I'm sure South
>>Americans wouldn't think of El Nino as a drought...
>>
On another note (staring at /wo Cou/), I think I want to have most roots
monosyllabic, but obviously some will have to settle for two.

>>      1st             2nd            3rd
>>      Sing.   Pl      Sing.  Pl      Sing.                     Pl.
>>                                     m,that   f       n,this
>>Nom.  la      oila    le     oile    li       lo      lu       oilu
>>      la      Ha      le     9:      je       lo      wo       Ho
>>Gen.  aila    oola    aile   oole    aili     ailo    ailu     oolu
>>      e:l@    wi:     e:le   wie     ei       e:lo    eu       wo:
>>Dat.  lai     oilai   lei    oilei   lii      loi     lui      oilui
>>      le:     yle:    li:    yli:    j9y      ly      wy       H9
>>Acc.  iila    iola    iile   iole    iili     iilo    iilu     iolu
>>      @la     jol@    @le    j9:     r\i:     @lo     r\y      jou
>>Loc.  dsaila  dsoila  dsaile dsoile  dsaili   dsailo  dsailu   dsoilu
>>      je:l@   Dy:     je:    D9:     jei      je:lu   jou      v\y
>>
>>
>Nice! They all look the same but have widely different pronunciations!!! ;))
>
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.)

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. Lulling you into a
false sense of security. 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?

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. :) (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).)

>Hehe, now Andrew is probably gonna have a heart attack when he's gonna see
>this ;)))) .
>
Why is it that auxlangers who come here to promote their language never
stay, even if they calm down?

It's almost a pity he's left... 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? /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.

Tristan.

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