Re: Rokbeigalmki

On Sat, 13 Mar 1999 12:21:45 -0800 Sally Caves <scaves@...>
writes:
>Just listened to your sound bytes for the Babel text, Steg;
>that makes three of us, it seems, who've put up some kind
>of RealAudio sample for our conlangs.  Anybody else?
>Steg, your language is wonderful, but you give no background
>for it.  I might have it somewhere in the survey, but it sounds
>vaguely Arabic to me.  What are your models?  Or is it
>fairly eclectic?  I really like the sound of it!  What does
>Rokbeigalmki mean?
>
>Found at:
>http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dunes/8515/conlang.html#babel
>
>Sally Caves
>scaves@frontiernet.net
>http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
>
Well, i've been planning on revising the Rokbeigalmki webpage for a while
now, i just haven't gotten around to it...maybe i'll make a whole
Rokbeigalm Cyber-Embassy or something, a miracle of modern technology
that allows the pre-historic Middle-Earth'lings tell the Modern Real
World about their culture, language, etc.  I already have a picture of
the flag....i think it's up in the website directory as rokbflag.jpg or
rokbflag.gif or something.

On the Conlang Member Languages Page there's a little
background....Rokbeigalmki is the language of the Rokbeigalm (<<
_rokvm^eigalm_, rokv.m-ei-gal.m, "riders of the waves") a somewhat
ancient-polyneasian-like tribe of oceanic seminomads who inhabit the only
sketchily-described southern hemisphere of Tolkien's Middle-Earth.
They're about 80% humans, with about 15% elves and 5% mixtures.  They
were inspired by my character on ElendorMUSH, Stygius (rokb. Stiigiyus),
who is a Rokbeigalmkidh (-ki = "-ian/-ite, etc. -dh = "doer" noun. in
this case the -kidh differentiates a Rokbeigalmki person from anything
else described by the adjective _rokbeigalmki_.) who wandered around
exploring until he eventually hit the North-West of Middle-Earth, where
the books take place, and settled down among the denizens of the Anduin
River Valley (the Beornings/Woodmen).

You're the second person to say that it sounds Arabic....one other person
said it sounds African, although i don't know what African language or
languagefamily he was talking about :) .  The words are mostly eclectic,
many of them based on or (sub?)consciously influenced by English, Hebrew,
and Spanish, and many others are totally a-priori.  There are a few words
based on languages that i don't know, such as a few from Arabic, Russian,
and Chinese.  There are also a few words based on people's names, and
some that i liked the sound of them in their original languages so much
that i just absorbed them without any change.

The grammar is also sort of eclectic...there are influences from English,
Hebrew, Spanish, and my and my brother's first aborted conlang,
ool-Nuziiferoi [Ul nuzajfROj].  Because of this there are sometimes many
ways to say things (for instance, the subjunctive has three different
forms), and different levels of redundancy, and very free word order.
It's agglutinative, and it's "prepositions" are case-prefixes that detach
when they get doubled up.  It has a suffixed definite article _-a_ [?a]
and no indefinite article.  It has four gender pronouns: male, female,
neuter (genderless) and neutral (gender indeterminate).  It has a few
parts of speech that i'm not sure what to call, such as verb-nouns and
adjective-nouns.

It has a lot of distinct phonemes, one of my favorites being {ng} [n"]
the uvular nasal.  Vowels can also come in normal-length [a],
accent-lengthened [a:], and tilde-lengthened [a::] forms.
Accent-lengthening is caused usually by two-syllable words where the
first vowel is perceptibly stronger than the second, such as _me:fihs_
[mE:PIs], [E]-[I].  It can only happen when the second vowel is [I] or
[U].  Tilde-lengthening is caused by the evolutionary disappearence of
the phoneme {hh} [H] pharyngeal fricative from all words in the language
except for names and exclamations when it was between two of the same
vowels.  _gura~t_ [gura::t] "awe" << _gurahhat_ [guraHat].  The [r]
phoneme is an alveolar flap.  Diphthongs are considered one unit, as are
the affricates [ts] [tS] and [dZ], which is why they are written with one
character in the Rokbeigalmki alphabet.  The affricate [dz] doesn't exist
- {dz} in words such as _dzuwaurg_ "festival" is pronounced with a
(ultra?)short shwa, [d@zuwOrg].

Btw, the sound file and the Bavel text translation it's of are slightly
obsolete now....i need to rerecord it, preferably with a mic that doesn't
put in so much static.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "hhalomot zeh b'emet"

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