Re: Conlang Journal and being a fish

Irina a scris:

> Goes to show that I haven't done anything serious with Romanian since
> the early nineteen-nineties :-)  I like "â" being back.
I like "â" too! Looks nicer in words like "când", "pâine"...

> Is "sunt" pronounced [sunt], rather than [si-nt]? In that case it's
not
> only an *orthographic* reform, unless the pronunciation has changed
> radically since 1982 (last time I consciously recall hearing a native
> non-dialect* speaker say "I am").
I've only ever heard [si-nt] (although I only know 3 Romanian speakers
personally, so I don't know how much of a representative sample that
is). I think it was just an orthographic reform, designed to bring the
language closer to its roots or some such. It was based on etymological
principles; the letter "î" remained in cases where it developed out of
Latin "i", and was changed back to "â" in cases where it developed out
of Latin "a". And in the present tense of the verb to be, it was
replaced by u (sunt, suntem, suntet,i). The sound is always [i-] though,
AFAIK.

Since I'm posting to Conlang, here are a few more entries for the
collection:

Rumantsch Grischun: Jau sun in pesch

Occitan (Lengadocian): Ieu soi un peis

Catalan: Jo sóc un peix  [or maybe just jo sóc peix; they don't normally
use the indef. article when expressing nationality (sóc català) or
profession (sóc metge), but I don't know if "I am a fish" falls into
either of those categories! Better check with a native speaker, if you
can find one]

Basque: Arraina naiz

Thomas

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