Re: New Tunu

From:    Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:

<<<
I agree, the language does sound very nice. The only problem is the extreme
length of complex sentences. Would there be any way to cut down on this?
>>>
Previous threads re. euphony in conlangs showed that "tous les goûts sont
dans la nature" so I do appreciate your comment.
Your line about word length is interesting:

First of all, most Tunu words in the sentences I wrote are compounds and
could be readily halved. For instance "to modify" is bai-miku-nai
"make-change-transitive" but I added jimu "to build" > bai-miku-jimu-nai "to
change (and) build." This contrasts with the verb bai-jiki-jimu-nai "to
combine (and) build".
Also, since my conlangs are always completely selfsegregating, I could type
a space between all rootwords. Accordingly
"Ibanirangayu kami abaijikinai kanitunu..."
may be written:
"I bani ranga yu kami a bai jiki nai kani tunu..."
That would not change anything, except that this ultimate chopping prompts
in me a feeling of...choppiness.

Second, after two decades of doodling with brutto grammar and listing
essential rootwords I am now in a phase of making vocabulary, and since my
langs have barely any deriving affixes, making words means compounding. And
the easy way for me to make compounds is basically to translate Japanese
sinojapanese vocabulary into Tunu. For instance, the rootword for "language"
is tunu (right...) but in the example I gave the word "language" is
tunu-matu "language-word", a direct translation of Japanese "gengo." I
rarely use single rootwords anymore, so much so that most words are
compounds. For instance "woman" is taka-kina "person-woman", "house" is
miki-jara "house-home", "food" is bita-tumu "consumable-eat", "tree" is
tuma-tanu "vegetal-tree", "water" is nuri-sara "liquid-water". Like for
Japanese compound sinojapanese words, the combination changes acording to
the context: "water" is sara-tumu "water-eat", sara-juni "water-sea", etc.,
depending on the context.

Third, I think that the right length of words and sentences depends on your
own language background: "Soretomo" is a wee longer than "or" yet it doesn't
sound "lengthy" to Japanese speakers.

µ