Re: Quick language sketch -- Hrondu

On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> :-)  Looks vaguely like Korean or Japanese in that respect.  (Korean I
> *think* only has one topic particle.)
I've been playing with Japanese (I wouldn't say studying it) and that's
where I got the topic-compliment stuff.

> (Is a mora something vaguely related to a syllable?)
Yes and no.  To put it in native terms, a mora is one syllable symbol in
the writing system, but since we're using a transliteration here, it's
hard to see that.

Think of a mora less as a syllable and more as the lenth of time it takes
to pronounce the syllable.  The native name, for instance, is made of
three mora but only two syllables:

Hro -- unvoiced /r/ followed by a vowel
n
du


> JOOC, how does that work?  I am probably just peculiar, but my biggest
> problem in Latin is that I keep wanting to loudness-stress long vowels.
> (For some reason Japanese doesn't bother me that way.)  And then, on the
> "real" stress of Latin words I find myself pitch-accenting instead of
> loudness-accenting, which makes me feel like an idiot.
*smiles*  You're more fastidious than I am.  I just read the thing whoever
I wish; I figure I'm not likely to run into Caesar anytime soon.

BTW, some scholars think that Latin *was* at one time pitch-accented.
However, I personally suspect this is based on unreliable evidence
(namely, the assertion of various Romans who were trying to point out
similarities with Greek).

> The point of this digression being to say, as a foreign speaker of this
> language I would find myself shifting stress to the ultimate mora? (final
> syllable-like thing?) with the doubled final vowel.  Perhaps it could be
> a Yoonian accent.  =^)
Here your instinct woudl be correct.  In, say,

kipuu -- to cook; to burn(tr)

the accent is on the penultimate mora, which is in the final syllable.

 kipusa -- will cook

the accent is still on the penultimate mora, but now this mora falls on
the penultimate syllable.

So you wouldn't have an accent after all!  At least, not an accent based
on -- well, accent.  hehehe

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