Re: Translation: Trolls and their Management

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tristan McLeay <zsau@F...> wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Morgan Palaeo Associates wrote:
>
> > Tristan McLeay wrote:
> >
> > > (UE)most ne fødef Trållen.
> > > [JQm'p_haiS       SE:]
>
> Actually (not quite like this, but it's close enough),
>  y: most n@ f2:d@f
>  wi most n@ xwor@x
>  wi mOst n@ xwo@x
>  w@ mOst n@ hwex (o@ > o: > wo > we like Spanish)
>  w@ mQ:tn@'p\eix
>  wmQ:nt'p\eiC
>  m_wQ:m'pp\aiS
>  m_wQ:m'p_haiS
Coool.  I just can't quite imagine how the speakers parse
that stuff.  I can take something like [m_wQ:] for "you
must", it's not any stranger than colloquial Englishes:
['am@n@] for "I am going to", for example.  But it seems
that the negated phrase /n@ f2:d@f/ ~~> [m'p_haiS] has
gone through so many stages of degene^H^H^Hevolution that
it's no longer analyzable (to me) -- you'd have to learn
the negated forms along with the regular verb forms every
time...  I mean, surely /f2:d@f/ alone wouldn't yield
[p_haiS], but [WaiS] or something?

And then, how do you keep up the information content?
I've been doing some small-scale a priori langmaking for
a future universe, and even within those constraints
(modern media and worldwide communication seem to slow
down language change very much), I'm somewhat timid in
allowing the loss of information...  though I guess
that's exactly what real languages bypass by coining new
idioms and changing the meaning of words.

For instance, my "future Spanish" Hombraian has /b d/ ->
[w 0] unless initial or after a nasal.  Currently, I've
kept /g/ -> /h/, but it would be more consequent to have
it go mute.  I'd end up with a lot of juxtaposed vowels
(abogado -> auohaho [a.wu.'aw]) and possibly many
homophonic words (fuego -> fuaho ['fwa.u] vs hypothetical
**fuedo -> fuaho ['fwa.u]).  I simply don't know enough
Spanish to even know whether this would lead to too many
problematic homophonic pairs.



-- Christian Thalmann

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