Re: Welsh - Verb-Nouns

>Actually, -ing in modern English forms both present participles (adjectives)
>and nouns: I am reading (adjective); reading is fun, I like reading (noun).
>In Old English, however, -ing formed only nouns from verbs. The present
>participle ended in -ende. At some point (I don't know when) then fell
>together as -ing. My guess is that over time, the d of -ende maybe
>disappeared, leaving -ene or -en. Likewise the g of -ing disappeared (we
>write -ing, and have that enforced as the "proper" pronunciation, but the
>natural, spoken form in both North America and the British Isles is -in),
>and the resulting -en and -in were so similar that they fell together. That
>is only a guess though; perhaps someone who knows more about the historical
>development of English can tell me if I'm totally off base there.
>
>
Surely ng is a velar nasal, and not n + g? I think I pronounce the ng in
-ing as a velar nasal, although most of the people where I live do
pronounce it as n unless they are speaking formally.

>
>Actually, Old English did just that: ic ne understande. I don't know when or
>why we started using "do" as an auxiliary there. For that matter, I wonder
>when the negative adverb became "not" after the verb instead of "ne" before
>the verb, which was the Old English form. I wonder if "not" derives from
>naught (Old English naht < na-wiht "no thing"), i.e. "nothing". As for
>negating with "not" alone instead of using "do", we do still do it, though
>it's restricted to auxiliary/modal verbs: I am not, I have not, I cannot, I
>do not, I would not, etc. In more archaic language, you certainly find it
>with other verbs: I know not whereof you speak = I don't know what you're
>talking about.
>
I'm afraid I don't know that much about etymology... or at least the
etymology of english words, although I had read somewhere that nostril
comes from words meaning nose hole.

>
>English words are fascinating things. Did you know, for example, that
>"nostril" developed out of the Old English nas-þyrel "nose-hole"? And the
>word "þyrel" itself derives from the word þurh (through) -- a hole is
>something that a thing can pass through. I wish Old English was a required
>subject in school, so I could have had more than one college semester of it.
>
>Do you have anything in your Welsh/Tagalog/etc. conlang you could share,
>BTW? My curiosity has been aroused! :-)
>
>Regards
>
>Thomas
>
>
>
As for the welsh tagalog conlang, I started it and now I'm redoing
it.... perhaps in a week or two I'll have something again worth showing.
One thing though... I got bored of CVCV.. etc structure, so the conlang
has enough consonant clusters to give you real difficulties. Its almost
as bad as georgian in that way....

Chris.

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