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Your Help Appreciated

From:John Mietus <sirchuck@...>
Date:Sunday, May 7, 2000, 17:58
Before I make my rather grandiose request to you good people, I just want to
say that I¹ve been lurking for about a month now, and not only have I
learned a lot about the hobby, I¹ve been more than impressed by the civility
and generosity of the members of this list.

Now, having said that, as a rank amateur in this hobby, I throw myself on
the mercy of this list for assistance. I¹ve developed a proto-root language
(Palaged) with the following phonetics:

My consonants, in order of frequency, are:
/r/, /n/, /l/, /s/, /d/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /th/, /v/, /g/, /dh/, /p/, /f/,
/sh/, /b/, /j/, /w/, /z/, /ch/, /h/, /zh/, /wh/, /rh/, /kw/, /kh/, /gw/,
/kth/, /vh/, /ng/

...where /r/ is trilled and /rh/ is not, and /vh/ is a non-dental /v/ (it
could also be classified as a non-labial /m/).

The vowels, again, in order of frequency, are:
/e/, /a/, /o/, /E/, /&/, /I/, /i/, /u-/, /U/, /u/

Allowed dypthongs:
/Eo/, /aI/, /Io/, /IE/, /Ie/, /Ia/, /IU/, /Iu-/, /Ea/, /Eu-/

The syllable structure is essentially:
    (C)V(M)(E)

Where M = /r/, /n/, /m/, /l/, /s/
and E = /d/, /t/, /k/, /th/, /g/, /dh/, /p/, /f/, /sh/, /b/, /j/, /z/, /ch/,
/zh/, /kw/, /kh/, /gw/, /v/, /ng/
Certain ending combinations are still not possible (e.g. /sng/, /mgw/) --
for the most part, if it¹s allowed in English or Proto-Indo-European, it¹s
allowed in Palaged.

I¹ve developed root-based vocabularies for a number of language families.
What I would now like to do is take these families and apply sound changes
to make them similar to the following real world families:

1. Germanic
2. Greek
3. Latin
4. Balto-Slavic
5. Gaelic

Since I have very little background in these tongues, any suggestions on how
to make my proto-roots sounds like these languages would be greatly
appreciated. This is part of a long, ongoing project, and I¹ll be more than
happy to post reports of my results on the list before I work up a website
devoted to it.

Thank you,

John