Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Nuif (was: TRANS: Ideas)

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 20, 2002, 8:44
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 Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply

Muke Tever <alrivera@...>