Re: Obrenje and Schwiizertüütsch

jesse stephen bangs wrote:
>
> > http://obrenaia.tripod.com/obrenje.htm .
>
> Well, it's taken me long enough, but I finally did get to take a look at
> your website, and I'm very impressed.
And I'm very flattered.  *blush*


> I looked at the phonology most
> closely, and I was fascinated by your palatalization system.  How did you
> come up with those phonetic values?  Are they shifts from an older system?
Basically, I wanted some justification to write my pseudonym Cinga
/"sINga/ with a "c" rather than an "s".  I couldn't think of any other
reason why the sound /s/ should be represented by "c" rather than "s".

It seemed kinda unimaginative to copy the /s/ and /k/ duality of the
letter "c" from the Romance languages, so I decided to let a whole
dimension of consonants shift.  Initially, I had some shifting stops
too /ta tse tsi to tu/, but I later found that I didn't like the effects
that had on the pronunciation of words.

Proximity to front vowels seemed the most straight-forward driver for
the shift.  Admittedly, that is bluntly copied from the Romance
languages.  I guess I could have used high vowels to trigger the shift
too (Japanese consonants like to shift under /u/ and /i/ IIRC), but by
that time I had already grown fond of the final -e that shifted
consonants and stress but wasn't actually pronounced itself.

To come back to your questions:  I determined the phonetic values of the
shifting consonants other than "c", "s" and "z" partly by analogy,
partly by just pronouncing them a few times followed by /i/, and seeing
what my laziness would make of it.



> I'll look more at the morphology and grammar later.  Sorry for the time
> it's taken me to respond!
Hey, I'm glad about anything.  =)


-- Christian Thalmann