Re: Linguistic Flavor

At 11:13 pm -0700 8/6/01, Tommie L Powell wrote:
>On Sat, 9 Jun 2001 David Peterson wrote:
>> [CJ "Ciege" Miller wrote:]
>> << through a quient ancient forest, more than babbling brooks
>> and  singing birds. Am I just nuts? >>
>
>I interject that "quient" in "quient ancient forest" may mean
>"quiet" or "quaint"
I assume (unless it's a typo) that it is a portmanteau word meaning both
quaint & quiet.

>and that David took it to mean "quiet"
>in this response:
>>
>>     I suggest a lot of vowels and dipthongs with few consonants.
>> Those consonants you do have (again, in my opinion) would be
>> mainly fricatives (non-retroflex--in fact, no flaps or trills at all),
No trills?  I thought trills were one of the most typical features of
language spoken by those who live (mainly) outdoors, and CJ "Ciege" Miller
wanted IIRC an 'outdoorsy' feel to the language.  Trills carry a long way.
It has been observed that rhotic sounds loose their trills when speech
become urbanized; we all live too close together in towns & cities and
don't needs sounds that will carry across distances.

>> all unvoiced, and if you need a stop, just t p and k.  I'm thinking
>> lots of [s], [S], [f], [T] maybe even [tS].
I disagree.  Fricatives tend to get lost or confused if there is rustling
noise.  Even in an ancient forest, however quient, there will surely be
faintly rustling in the leaves at times.  Leave fricatives for the townies
who do everything against a background of all sorts of noise and must needs
be close to those to whome they speak.

[snip]

>>This is
>> what I think up when I see the words "walk through a quiet,
>> ancient forest".  Of course, you just need one person to say they
>> think of the totally opposite thing, and you'll see the problem in
>> asking advice for "linguistic flavor".  ~:) -David
I agree  :)

>We have some ancient forests here in the Pacific Northwest and
>they are "quaint" but not "quiet" -- so here's a different sort of
>suggestion: Do as the Salish Indians here did. Back in the 1960s,
>an argument raged among linguists over whether their language
>had one vowel or two. (The few remaining native speakers were
>unaware of any vowel differentiation they may have been making.)
>
>They mostly used p,t,k,s (and several variations of such sounds)
>to start a syllable, and then either stuck their vowel sound directly
>after such a consonant sound or stuck an "l" or "w" sound between
>such a consonant sound and their vowel sound (except that a
>word's final syllable could end with such a consonant sound or
>with an "l" or "w" after such a consonant sound).
>
>Several other Indian languages in this region (British Columbia,
>Washington State, Oregon) also used "l" and "w" in that manner,
>but I think that only the Salish ignored vowels so thoroughly.
Tommie's suggestion sounds good to me - tho I think I'd still include a trill.

Ray.





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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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