My plans for the near future...

Well it's the "other Super Tuesday" here in Texas, and I'm gonna vote in the
Republican primary this afternoon.  Politics just happens to be my fourth
main interest, after number one music, number two fantasy/science fiction,
and number three language and culture.

First of all, work on Tech proper is going to be suspended for the time
being.  I've worked out the phonology (finally!), have a few (130+) words
(or at least word roots and morphemes), and have some idea of grammar (VSO,
NA, prepositional, polypersonal verb conjugation, initial consonant
mutation, ablaut, infixing, conjugated prepositions, definite articles
before both nouns and adjectives, adverb final, double negatives along the
line of French _ne VERB pas_...)

Tech, right after the Nostratic base, has a layer of Egyptian-Coptic and
Meroese-Old Nubian, so I'm going to start a side project for another
fictitious race.  These are a nomadic people whose origin is in both lower
and upper Egypt (and nearby parts of Sudan).  In fact, they're the "real
Gypsies" and are also (erroneously) called Romani (incidentally, the Coptic
word for "man" is _romi_!)  But instead of speaking an Indic language, they
speak Coptic (or Kemetic, from the Coptic word for Egypt).

Specifically, the Coptic is of the Bohairic dialect, but you have Sahidic
and Akhmimic influence most definitely.  Naturally Greek is of the most
influence, but so is Arabic, French and English.  The script (which I plan
to use for "Koine Tech", Techia's official language) is a modernized Coptic
with modern Greek (two case), Latin and Cyrillic influences.

Certain features include:

1) Coptic letters _janja_ and _cima_ have two sounds each: [G] (_gamma_) and
[q] next to back vowels; [dZ] and [tS] next to front vowels.
2) Final (and medial in certain cases) _iota_ is silent, but palatizes the
preceeding consonant, along the lines of Russian "soft" and Irish "slender"
consonants.
3) The final letter in the alphabet, _ti_, is no longer [ti], but [ts].
4) The _jencom_, a grave accent indicating preceding vowel [e], is no longer
used except on the two nasal consonants _mu_ and _nu_ (which some pronounce
as syllabics).  For example, _phnouts_ "God" is pronounced _efnuts_ or even
_f@nuts_, but the initial _phi_ is unmarked.  However, when _iota_ and
_upsilon_ after vowels are to be shown as separate syllables and not part of
a vowel digraph (umlaut), a diaeresis/trema (two dots) is placed above.
Overlines are used to indicate numerals (if letters are used; you'll see
modern Arabic numbers most likely) and _nomina sacra_ abbreviations (like IC
XC, etc.)
5) The aspirated letters _theta_, _phi_ and _khi_ are pronounced as
fricatives in all cases, so you have two letters for [f] (_phi_ and _fai_)
and [x] (_khi_ and _khai_).  Other Modern Greek conventions, such as _beta_
= [v], _gamma_ (and _janja_ by back vowels) = [G] (_gamma_) and _delta_ =
[D] (eth), _eta_ and _upsilon_ = [i], no differentiation between _omicron_
and _omega_, and vocalization of voiceless stops after nasals (_mp_ = [mb],
_nt_ = [nd]).
6) Both capital and lowercase letters are used; only the first word of a
sentence and all proper nouns are capitalized.

There are other conventions I might throw in; I might make final -Vn and -Vm
into -V~ (nasal vowel), for example.  Otherwise, this is mostly relexing of
a natlang, not an _a priori_ creation.

Also, work on my now-unnamed IAL (formerly called Big Six, Pig and other
things), will begin again with a Mandarin Chinese-based vocabulary,
referencing to Cantonese, T'ang Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Sino-Japanese.
  Then English, Spanish, Hindi etc.

Danny

Danny
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