Re: Mau's conlang, was Re: Men vs Women on Conlang

--- Balazs Sudar <conlang@...> wrote:
> Terrence Donnelly <teresh_2000@...>
> 2002.12.10. 08:20:23 -8h-kor írta:
>
> > Mau, do you have a website? I'm a student of
> Ancient
> > Egyptian and have toyed for a while with creating
> a
> > "Restored Egyptian" - not an attempt to really
> > determine how Ancient Egyptian sounded, but to
> make an
> > easily-speakable version that would be consistent
> with
> > existing hierogpyhic texts.
> >
[...]

> WOW! That's great! I really wonder if still anyone
> speaks the language of Ancient Egypt! Or only the
> language of the Kopts is still known. Any answer? If
> you try this language modernization, please inform
> me! I would be interested! (I love Ancient Egypt :)
>
Well, it wouldn't really be a modernization, just an
attempt to make something that could be spoken and
would sound nice, and that wouldn't be inconsistent
with existing ancient Egyptian texts.  It wouldn't
even be a written language, nor would I try to fit
its grammatical description into the traditional
framework used for Ancient Egyptian now.  I would try
to make clearer some of the similarities (or
differences!) in grammatical forms that are obscured
by the lack of vowelling in hieroglyphic
transcription.

For example, in current transcription, we have {nTr}
for "god" and {nTrt} for "goddess".  In RE, these
might simply be presented as "nacha", the "r" being
silent, and "nachra" ,with a different vowelling
pattern and the final feminine "t" consistently
dropped.  On the other hand, the "t" might re-appear
when used genitivally: "nachrat pir" the house of the
goddess, which would simply be {nTrt pr} in
transcription.  Or, the strong verb conjugation shows
very little variation in writing between the various
forms (eg. sDm "to hear" can be indicative,
infinitive, explicatory or even the present active
masculine participle), but might have completely
different vowelling patterns.

-- Terry Donnelly

http://www.geocities.com/teresh_2000
http://www.geocities.com/weseb_2000


>         Balazs
>
> --
> I lúme vin deí asi mosted!
> May Heaven give you its grace!
>
> Balazs Sudar <conlang@...>

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