Re: CHAT: Happy Birthday (was Re: Re: Uglossia and Utopia)

Carlos Thompson wrote:
>
> Nicole Perrin wrote:
>
> > Mine's 28 February.  And only 15, so Nik, don't feel young.  And in my
> > language, birthday's aren't really celebrated, so you'd probably just be
> > nice and tell someone to have a good day, which is:
> >
> > Len gebycmen miritnyl
> > to a female and
> >
> > Lon gobucman maratnul
> > to a male.
>
> So the difference between adressing male and female is a vowel shift?
Not so much addressing a male and female as using them as the subject.
The subject is omitted here because a) it's obvious and b)the sentence
is imperative, but the vowels of the verb must agree with the vowels of
the subject.  other nouns can change vowels relatively freely, as long
as adjectives and such change along with them, but there's a tendency
among females to use i, e, and y while males use a, o, and u.  Because
of this, they should be considered gender markers instead of vowel
harmony.

>
> Should I read letters by their IPA values?
yes, but <c> is /k/.

Nicole