Re: Regarding "Number Nine"...
| From: | Herman Miller <hmiller@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, May 20, 2000, 3:50 |
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On Fri, 12 May 2000 18:17:22 -0500, "Daniel A. Wier" <DaWier@...>
wrote:
>Anyway, no rush. I'm just issuing the challenge to try to develop a
>language with as few phonemes as possible. (Or course I could make up a
>language using only /t/ and /e/, and transliterate Morse Code; SOS could
>be _tetete teeteetee tetete_...)
>
>DaW.
I've been playing around over the last couple of days with a language that
has only SIX phonemes. The language is tentatively called "Tilkan", which
illustrates the entire range of segmental phonemes. What I've done so far
is a relex of Rick Harrison's Universal Language Dictionary, using words
mainly derived from English as a test of the basic concept. For example:
anait 001 en about (pertaining to; on the topic of) [pr]
ala 002 en above, over [pr]
aklat 003 en across (at / to the other side of) [pr]
aktal 004 en after (later than; in the future of) [pr]
alain 005 en around, encircling, surrounding [pr]
at 006 en at (in the same location as) [pr]
titina 007 en because of, due to [pr]
aita 008 en before, in front of, ahead of (spatially) [pr]
aliata 009 en before, prior to, earlier than [pr]
Surprisingly, the words don't turn out very much longer than English, often
no more than one syllable longer. From "cry out" is derived "klaiati" (-i
added to avoid conflict with "klaiat" = "quiet"), "dark" is "talka" ("talk"
was already used for English "talk", and if you're wondering why "talk"
wasn't "tak", it's because "tak" is English "top"), and "break" is "nalik"
("n" corresponds to English "b", and I haven't been allowing initial "nl").
Some words are up to two syllables longer than English, but those were
short words to begin with.
Next, I'll do some shuffling around and filling in gaps to remove some of
the English bias, and work on the grammar.
--
languages of Azir------> ----<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
h i l r i . o "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
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(Herman Miller) there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin