Hallo!
Paul Bennett wrote:
> Nothing very substantive, but I wanted to keep you all abreast.
>
> I have the beginnings of ideas about the world of Lizardman. They're
> probably going to exist within a generic fantasy environment, though I have
> contemplated making them aliens. Also, I'm tempted to go with Yahya's
> suggestion for a native name for the language, which romanizes as
> Jiggoghiid /J\ig:7Gi:d_m/, though I'm not sure whether that's a species
> name or a language name yet.
>
> To answer a question asked earlier about the Jiggoghiid people (see what I
> did there?): they can whisper, but they lack the neural wiring to freely
> mix and match voiced and voiceless sounds within one word.
That's an interesting idea - voicing harmony taken to the extreme due to
neural limitations of the speakers!
> I still may add distinctive phonation to the language.
>
> I'm formulating a native Brahmi-derived script for Br'ga, but I might toss
> the notion if I can't find something aesthetically pleasing. Right now, it
> looks like Insular roman script mixed with Kannada and Khmer (with a dash
> of Myanmar), and I'm moderately happy with it. I still may find the notion
> of a native writing system antithetical.
What's the conhistory/concultural background of Br'ga?
> I may throw away the entire conhistory of Thagojian prior to the Alphabetic
> script. I'm not sure I'm happy with the story any more. For the
> uninitiated, their migration was out of the PIE urheimat with the Satem
> wave, into Mesopotamia where they adopted the Cuneiform syllabary, and then
> across to the Levant where they developed a Demotic script based on
> Cuneiform. Finally, they adopted the Greek/Coptic alphabet, plus a couple
> of borrowings from Hebrew and one innovation of their own, while retaining
> a few determinatives ultimately from Cuneiform.
How about making them descendants of the Sea People?
> I suspect the Jiggoghiid script will be more or less runic in appearance.
>
> I found my old notes containing the case matrix for Thagojian. This is
> going to help tremendously in formulating at least short translation
> exercises, though I also need to solidify the sound change rules for
> laryngeals, and find a sufficiently powerful sound change applier (one that
> makes vowel harmony easy) that I can learn fairly easily.
>
> I think I may embark on a Bible translation for Thagojian,
Now that's a truly ambitious project!
> but first I need
> to purchase an interlinear Hebrew Old Testament (I already have an
> interlinear Greek NT). Most ideal would be an interlinear Bible with all
> books in the languages of their earliest attested versions. I'm not sure
> such a beast exists. Any suggestions?
Well, the original languages are Hebrew for the Old Testament, and Greek
for the New Testament.
> I'm still throwing the occasional fit over romanizing Thagojian. It's a
> big, sticky mess, quite frankly.
>
> I may produce a Thagojian Modern script, with a proper upper and lower
> case. I will probably borrow glyphs from Cyrillic in at least some cases.
> The letter for /S/ |shima| seems a worthy candidate, since the Coptic /S/
> |shai| (and Hebrew /S/ |shin| for that matter) is tolerably close to the
> Cyrillic /S/ |sha|.
The Cyrillic letter is borrowed from Glagolitic, and possibly ultimately
derives from the Hebrew letter.
Greetings,
Jörg.