Re: Nuif (was: TRANS: Ideas)

En réponse à Muke Tever <alrivera@...>:

> >>
> >> Interlin:
> >>     el  impórtaant  n'êt   di avier
> >>     El  im"pOrtA:nt nEht   di "Avi:r
> >>     DEF important   NEG-3S to have.INF
>
> <el> /El/ should probably be <ul> /Yl/... there's a change there I'm not
> too
> sure of yet.
>
What kind of change would it be? /i/>/y/>/Y/ (maybe influenced by the /u/
present in the ending of illum in the accusative)? I thnk it would be a nice
idea to have a Romance language with some forms of umlaut. And I don't think it
would be unrealistic.

> >>     mul      idées,  meis di viver    oun
> >>     myl      i"dE@   mEjh di "vivr=   un
> >>     thousand idea.PL but  to live.INF one
>
> And I'm not entirely sure of the stress on <viver>.
>
Indeed, it's one of those pesky -ere verbs with short e, stressed on the
antepenult. In French the stress didn't move, and the short e disappeared (thus
French 'vivre'), but in Spanish those verbs were transferred to the -ire
conjugation and the stress put back on the ending (thus Spanish 'vivir' with
final stress). As I see it, it seems you take the French approach (the stress
stays on the initial syllable and the e disappears), but in your language this
disappearance is compensated by r becoming syllabic (which seems to indicate
that this change would have occurred after the disappearance of final -e's, but
it's quite possible that that one happened early on). I personally don't see
anything wrong in that. French is a good precedent in the keeping of that
stress position.

>
>     ogel   /"Oxl=/   "eye"  (pl. ogles /"Oxl@/)
>     vrader /"fradr=/ "brother" (pl. vradres /"vradr@/)
>
With v?

> (I'm not exactly sure what kind of /r/ Nuif has yet..)
Well, apart from French, all Romance languages have an alveolar flap or trill.
Only French has an uvular fricative. It mostly depends on where this language
is supposed to be spoken.

>
>     nuet  /noe_^t/     "night" (that's an oe-diphthong.. not the single
> sound)
>     noun  /nun/        "name"
>
> Also didn't like losing /f/...
>
>     folaar /"fOlA:r/   "speak"
>     fjer   /"fj\Er/    "iron"
>
> The long vowels come from, hmm, stress shifts (the stressed vowels were
> a bit
> longer and stayed long when the stress moved away from them) and, hmm,
> final
> vowel loss in some of the verb declensions
>
>     jo fole  /j\O fO:l/
>
So basically the long vowels are not the reflection of Latin's long vowels?
Neat! Middle French also had a long/short vowel distinction that didn't
originate with the Latin long vowels. It didn't keep them for long though.

> Anyway.. yeah, the /h/ comes from lost /s/, and possibly /h/ would be
> retained
> in original words (or at least relearned ones).  The vowel (stressed /o/
> I
> believe) that became <ue> in Spanish is <ui> /VH/ in Nuif.  I don't
> think /H/
> shows up too much otherwise.
>
Too bad, I like that sound! :))

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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