Re: Satritain babel text complete

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan van Steenbergen" <ijzeren_jan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 12:02 PM
Subject: Re: Satritain babel text complete


[snip]
> > adeteche, thgahmm keich sh da babel; adete tnaveda hashem mm pedowne
shmm
> > dethe iowke kude; wa hede da tnave hashem mm iarnatrileeya owkehij.
>
> Interesting, this language has a very particular look indeed! Could you
please
> elaborate a bit on the pronunciation? Words like "mm", "hkhyra", "kgthsa",
and
> "shmm" look like real tongue-killers to me :) Examples of maggelity?
"mm" is just a humming sound. It's loosely used as both an indefinite and
definite article, depending on context, and is a component of some words.

"hkhyra" -- (cleared hill) 3 syllables. hk -- (a kind of aspirating stop
which might sound like [hxk]) -- hy [haI] -- ra [ra] (r trilled)
"kgthsa" -- (will burn) 3 syllables [k]-[gT]-[sa]
"shmm" -- (of the) [s`]-[mm]

It looks a lot worse than it is, because a reader unfamiliar with the
language will usually see one monolithic word. The key to pronouncing
Satritain is being able to make clear transitions from one syllable to the
next, as with [khte] ('will move'), which is actually three syllables.

> "Saukerne": beautiful word. Could have been borrowed straight from
Tocharian.
> Would you mind if I steal it from you and use it for Hattic?
Go for it :) (Here it means brick or tile).

> And, any particular reason why you don't use capitals?
Satritain has its own script and I saw no reason to adopt the convention, so
when I write it on the computer, I use all lowercase.

Also, there is a (very rudimentary) Satritain font now. Unfortunately, the
Satritain alphabet has far more letters than the Roman, and I've had to
bypass this by using lowercase for one set of characters and uppercase for
the others. I haven't quite finished reteaching myself how to type yet. :)

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