Re: REQUEST: Engelang?

David J. Peterson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Can someone please give me an example of an engelang that
> isn't an auxlang or a loglang?
Every once in a while I think about wanting to revive Jaghri. I've
mentioned it a couple of times on the list, but I haven't given it the
kind of attention as the more recent languages like Jarda, Tirelat, and
Minza. Jaghri has a number of engineered features, like self-segregating
morphology and an alphabet based on phonetic features (Tharkania, a
precursor to the Lhoerr alphabet used by Jarda), but it isn't an
auxlang, and isn't associated with any conculture.

Kisuna might have fallen into this category when I first developed it,
since the point of Kisuna was to create a language that had only six
segmental phonemes, which involved more "engineering" type of work than
anything else at first. But I decided that I liked the end product, and
"adopted" it as an artlang.

"The Fox and the Grapes" in Jaghri:

Yidrataa ngurpanikia

Panngajrii yidraghia tilkuriu timbii balrii ngurpai finhzhania
vishracitkai darmii. Bavniriu wilcii ditrinishaa kagharbudhie,
tethadinggithuriu gedhringue kagharbujananhie. Khushtie thadaridrou,
jektukiu withpia, kakhthukiu "ngurpania marwiu, tetimbiu tarmukuyee nae."

Features of Jaghri grammar:

The main verb of a clause ends in -u (tilkuriu "saw", marwiu "sour").
The head of a noun phrase ends in -a (yidraghia "fox", ngurpania
"grapes"). Noun modifiers end in -i (*balrii ngurpai* finhzhania
"bunches *of black grapes*"). Adverbs end in -e (gedhringue "without
success", tarmukuyee "as he had thought"). Words are built from roots
which begin with a single consonant and end with a vowel; roots of more
than one syllable must have clusters of two or more consonants (the
typical root structure is CVCCV, although longer roots may be derived by
adding CVC- prefixes or -CCV suffixes). The structure of longer roots
isn't entirely unambiguous; you can't predict in advance whether a root
like "kervabna" is derived from "ker-vabna" or "kerva-bna", but the
derivation of these complex roots is really just a mnemonic aid, and the
meaning of each root needs to be defined separately in any case.

There isn't anything really "logical" about all that; the idea for
self-segregating morphology came from reading about languages like
Lojban, but Jaghri pretty much has traditional grammatical categories,
cases of nouns, aspects of verbs, and other features that loglangs tend
to avoid. But on the other hand, this doesn't look much like any natural
language; the exclusive CV and CVCCV structure of the basic roots is too
regular to be natural.

Now if I can only find that sample of Tharkania writing that I used to
have. I seem to have lost all copies of the Tharkania font, and I'll
have to recreate it from scratch....