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Re: A new version of Genesis

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Saturday, June 12, 2004, 23:16
Philippe Caquant wrote:

> Thanks for comments. True, when I reread this version, > it very much reminded me of 'Clockwork Orange', > anyway, of its French translation. I also wondered > whether "Bogue squasit" wouldn't be better then > "skazit", because "k" is seldom used in French. I > tried to adapt the Russian verbs to French > conjugation. That's why, instead of "skazal" (said), I > wrote "skazit" - or "squasit", for ex.
That hadn't occurred to me; but surely "c" would be better than "qu" before "a", no? Historically of course French, like Spanish, avoided "impure s" by adding initial e-, then Fr. lost the /s/; sometimes this is indicated by the circumflex but I'm not sure how regularly-- maybe word-medial? as in bête, (e-circumflex) but not initially, so école (e-acute)?? Then later I suppose in learnèd vocabulary, the /s/ is preserved but still takes the e-: escale, escadrille. So "skazit" should become perhaps "écazit" or "escazit" -- or even better, with -s- instead of -z-. What would be the infinitive? e(s)cazir? An amusing idea: imagine a huge influx of Slavs with the Hunnic/Gothic invasions in the 400's; the Slavs survived and stayed on. Then, what would Slavic with Romance sound changes look like? It could be the continental answer to Brithenig. :-))))))
> I'm not too good at phonetic alphabet, but your > transcription doesn't look bad. I'm not sure about > "gn": actually, it's the same as Spanish "n" with a > tilde on it.
Yes, I know; that X-Sampa [J]

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>