Re: Plastic Surgery on a Conlang

At 11:37 pm +0200 19/4/02, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:
>
>>
>> Problems:
>> *********
>>
>> (1) Stop+Nasal clusters, such as in |getne| "fearing".
>>
>
>What, you don't like them? I like those exotic clusters
So do I   :)

>......on the other hand! |nt| is boring!
...unless it's a prenasalized plosive!  In all the sub-Saharan African
languages I've come across {getne} would consist of two _open_ syllables:
[ge nte].

But the plain ol' Amero-European syllabification [gen te] is rather boring.

>
>> (2) Stop+Stop+Fricative clusters, such as in |noggze|.
>>
>
>Here again, I find them aesthetically quite pleasing. Too bad you don't like
>them...
Nah - too bizarre & I could never pronounce them.  I go along with
Christian on that one.

>> (3) Ugly typographical juxtapositions due to non-standard letter
>>     values, as in |kcare| or |kwaq|.
>>
>
><sob> I like them all!!! Why change?!!
Yes, I agree - I don't find them typographically ugly at all.

>Oh well, what's my opinion, since it comes from a man who is reviving a
>language which has monsters like |ibolteadg| pronounced ['poUK] (X-SAMPA,
>except that ' marks primary stress), or |himidu| pronounced ['CE~mptU], and
>what about |imuohf| pronounced ['mbu:]? :))) Until now, the nearly worst stays
>|iragft| pronounced ['xa~N] :)), though |eidriuojha| pronounced ['itrYj\@] is
>near in the competition :)) .
Ach y fi!  It makes English look almost regular  :))))

[snip]
>
>> (2) I changed the syllabification rules to draw the syllable boundary
>>     between two consonants, regardless of stops.  This means all words
>>     like |kotre| are now pronounced /"kOtr@/, thus rendering the
>>     spelling |kottre| obsolete.  As a side effect, the pronunciation
>>     /"ko:tr@/ is now impossible.  Too bad, I kinda liked it.
You could be less prescriptive.  In the prosodic rules of ancient Greek and
Classical Latin verse, such words could be syllabified as _either_ /kot re/
_or_ /ko tre/.

[snip]
>
>>     The public transliteration will reflect pronunciation rather than
>>     phonemic structure.  For reasons of personal aesthetic preference,
>>     glides will be written as vowels except intervocally, and /S/, /Z/
>>     will be represented as s' and z', since I find sh, zh or j, x to
>>     be less pleasant.
Personally, I do find {s'} and {z'} typographically ugly.  I find nothing
unpleasing in the French use of {j} for /Z/ nor, for that matter, the
Maltese use of {x} = /S/.  Actually, I've always found the Norwegian {sj} =
/S/ aesthetically pleasing.

>>I'll also use c for /k/.
>>
A la Quenyaise.  It seems to me, indeed, that the 'plastic surgery'
Christian is giving his conlang is making more Quenya-like.  If that is the
intention, then fair enough.

[snip]

>>
>> Bottom line:
>> ************
>>
>> So, the formerly ugly words |getne|, |kcare|, |nokkce| and |kwaq| will
>> become =gente=, =chare=, =nocse= and =cuang=, or even =noxe= and
>> =quang=.  It's that nice?  =)
>>
>
>Hehe, it looks like your aesthetic preferences match quite well Tolkien's
>:)) .
That's how it seems to me also. I don't say that it's either 'a good thing'
or 'a bad thing' in itself.  If Christian finds it more to his liking, then
fine - but I like the 'more exotic' feel of former words, except for
{nokkce}!

[snip]
>> Thanx in advance for your -- as always -- prolific feedback...
You're welcome.

And thanx in advance for your feedback on my 'A BrSc a' mail  :))

--------------------------------------------------------------

At 12:48 am +0200 20/4/02, Christian Thalmann wrote:
>> In a message dated 4/19/02 01.34.11 PM, cinga@GMX.NET writes:
>
>>     Yep, spelin reeforms are always rather interesting. It likes like yours
>> is more Romance-like now (except _cuang_ looks a bit South East Asian,
>> hehe... a lil spiciness there to break up "the usual Romance" look of the
>> language, eh?)
>
>Yep, the new transliteration is intended to look like the civilized
>classy high language of some ancient culture,
But only if it had a Latinate transliteration.  The way I (and many others)
transliterate ancient Greek gives it a very different effect (lots of Ks,
and not a {c} in sight).  And ancient Egyptian was a pretty classy high
language of an ancient culture that had a longer duration than the
Classical greek or Classical Roman civilizations; the standard way of
transliterating that language in Roman script is quite different from the
Latinate style of Quenya.

>but clearly not Latin
>or Greek.  The vowel letters used for glides in words like =guai=
>(linguistic notation |gwaj|) taste a bit celtic to me.
Eh? It looks distinctly like Spanish or Italian.  In Breton, Cornish and
Welsh it'd be written {gwai}

[snip]
>
>I never realized how many apostrophes my new transliteration scheme
>would produce... but somehow they don't even disturb me.  =S'= and
>=Z'= could be written with haceks where available.
Yes, please - anything's better than all those apostrophes.

Ray.




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