Nuif (was: TRANS: Ideas)

From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
>>     El impórtaant n'êt di avier mul idées, meis di viver oun.
>>
>> 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.

>>     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>.

>
>A Romance lang with phonemic long vowels and syllabic r's?!!! Plus nice sounds
>like schwa, /h/ and /H/!!! I want to know more!
Well, I've had the need of this lang for awhile but not really too many ideas
for it till recently...

Originally (and I may have posted some here before) I just used Spanish with all
the final vowels removed.  That gave me some of the syllabics which still remain
even now that it has its own sound changes...

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

(I'm not exactly sure what kind of /r/ Nuif has yet..)
Yeah and I didn't like the way Spanish did some of its sound clusters so I did a
little tweaking...

    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/

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.

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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