Re: Your Help Appreciated

Hello,

Well, I knew I was a total amateur in this, but I'm sorry I've stirred up
such controversy by my (now rather pathetic, I realize) attempts to explain
the sounds of my proto-root language. Here's a stack of replies:

Herman Miller spake, saying:

> On Sun, 7 May 2000 14:35:38 -0500, John Mietus <sirchuck@...> wrote:
> The usual system many of us use on this list is a variant of SAMPA, with
> generally the following two changes (and sometimes others): stress is
> marked as ['] instead of ["], and the vowel sound of "a" in "cat" is [&]
> instead of [{]. Follow these links for more about SAMPA:
Thanks -- and again, I appreciate the patience and help here.

Then, Nik Taylor spake, saying:

> John Mietus wrote:
>> Yes, a non-nasal /m/ where the lips do not actually touch.
>
> Is there nasalization involved?
Not really...I originally thought of it as a "v" sound where there is no
dental element, hence the orthographic "vh".

> /U/, at least in the dialects I'm familiar with.  /u-/ is actually the
> same height as /u/, but halfway between /i/ and /u/ in terms of how far
> back in the mouth it is.
Got it. Well, the three "u" sounds I have are the sounds in "put," "poot"
and "putt," in that order of frequency.

Then Raymond Brown spake, saying:

> At 2:35 pm -0500 7/5/00, John Mietus wrote:
>> Primarily orthographic. The  <kth> would be something like the orthographic
>> <cth> cluster I've seen in some Greek words,
>
> If so, they were carelessly transliterated.
[...]

Got it. What I'm going for is something like /kT/.
>>> Well.  non-dental /v/ or non-labial /m/... I can't be sure what they mean.
>>> Probably a non-nasal /m/.  I could thing about /B/ sound: voiced labial
>>> fricative, as intervocalic <b> in Spanish or beta in greek.
>>
>> Yes, a non-nasal /m/ where the lips do not actually touch.
>
> Eh? But the voiced labial fricative _does_ have the lips touching!  (The
> modern Greek beta BTW is just like the English /v/, and the ancient beta
> was like /b/).
>
> But in any case, whether lips touch or don't has nothing to do with whether
> a sound is nasal or not.
>
> I don't understand what you mean by a non-nasal /m/ - it looks like a
> contradiction in terms to me.  Surely /m/ is /b/ with the air forced out
> through the nasal passage?  If I denasalize /m/, I just get /b/ - and if my
> lips then don't meet, I get nothing.
>
> Could you, maybe, give us more of clue to the sound?
Sure. As I explained above, it's more of a /v/ without the lips touching or
any dental element -- oh, or a "w" without any articulation of the lips,
where the air vibrates the lips. I only ever use the sound as an initial
consonant.

At any rate, perhaps I should have stuck with an entirely orthographic
representation to avoid such confusion? Or learned more of SAMPA before
trying to express myself with it. Let me try again:

The consonants in Palaged, in order of frequency, are:
r, n, l, s, d, t, k, m, th (/T/), v, g, dh (D), p, f,
sh (/S/), b, j (dZ), w, z, ch (/tS/), h/, zh (/Z/), wh, rh, kw, kh, gw,
kth, vh, ng

...where "r" is trilled and "rh" is not, and "vh" is a /v/ without any
dental element, "kh" is the "ch" in "loch", and "gh" is a voiced "kh".

The vowels, again, in order of frequency and represented orthographically,
are:
e in "pet", a in "father", o in "boat", é in "pate", a in "cat", í in
"peat", i in "pit", ü in "put", ú in "poot", u in "putt."

(if you're not seeing the diacritics over the e, i, and u's, I apologize)

Allowed dypthongs:
éo, aí, ío, íé, íe, ía, íú, íü, éa, éü

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.

So, to try and bring us back to my original request, what I'm looking for
are suggestions for sound changes that will make my words sound more like:

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

Any suggestions?

John