Re: Part 2 Why my con langs SUCK!!!

Staving Andreas Johansson:


>If a conlang is, or is supposed to be, written natively in an irregular
>orthography, I'd expect the romanization to reflect the native spelling in all
>its irregular glory. This is the approach I'm taking with my conlangs.
>
>
True, in principle, but it would give me problems with Magikimnaz
[ma:gIkImn&z] and Magiñas [m&gIJ&s]. Magikimnaz was the language of the
Empire of Yimegan, which eventually conquered the whole of Huna. After
this, its method of succession (the prince who conquered most would succeed
his father) broke down, and the Empire very messily broke up. During the
War of Breaking, many different dialects diverged from Magikimnaz. Magiñas
is the language of the Most Strong and Rightful Empire, which is the
contemporary rump state of the Empire, and is descended from a chaotic
koine of several dialects. The orthography simply couldn't keep up, and
these days the literate classes of the MSRE take perverse pride in being
able to master the totally messed up spelling system (for example, any
vowel can be pronounced at least eight different ways, and high vowels can
also be silent, while the fricatives are totally garbled). The native
spelling of Magiñas is identical to the original spelling of Magikimnaz. I
need to be able to distinguish between then even if the native speakers
probably don't usually bother.

The situation is roughly equivalent to a modern Romance language called
[leimb lEtSei~], spelt "Lingua Latina", whose speakers considered it to be
the same language as spoken by [uluz Siz6].

Pete

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