Re: Babel Text in Ayeri (With sound file!)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Thalmann" <cinga@...>


>> I like it when your sense of the words' pronunciation
>> differs from mine; I very much admire languages that put a "spin," so to
>> speak, on their vowels and consonants.
>
> Wouldn't it be terribly boring if we all pronounced our
> words the same?
But of course, Christian! What I meant--and I wasn't expressing myself
well-- was that when we read a text in a language unknown to us but with
characters we recognize, we sometimes make assumptions about the
pronunciation.  I did that when trying to read the Finnish from Hedningarna
and the Czech from Iva Bittova.  Then when I heard the lyrics sung, I was
amazed at how wrong I was!  It was an aesthetic experience hard to describe.
So when the same thing happened with Carsten's text, I was deeply gratified.
I guess it passed a "test" for me.

>> It's the same with
>> Teonaht.  Memorizing a word requires me to merge "meaning" and "sound."
>> That's hard to do if you are making up a new batch of words--for a
> relay or
>> for a translation game.
>
> Then maybe you haven't yet found the perfect word for the
> purpose...
It can become the perfect word, if it will put on its meaning.  I like this
idea: words wearing their meanings like clothing.   I might adopt that as a
metaphor in Teonaht for learning languages.  When they are unknown, words
are naked.  When they are known, they are clothed.  Of course this clashes
with the age-old medieval notion of the "naked text" as the literal one.

It could work the other way around, too.  When they are unknown, they are
cloaked.  When they are known, they show their true faces.  I've often felt
that a word is a glass vessel, empty until it fills up with its meaning for
me.

Does anyone else have metaphors for language learning in their conlangs?


  That's why I find word-making such a tedious
> task in a priori languages.  If you want every word to
> sound "right" but not stolen from PIE stock, you're in for
> a long, winding journey.
:) I gather, Christian, that you know that I've been working on Teonaht for
forty years. ;)  You've got it on your 10 Sept 2001 posted update.  I've
been on this list for almost exactly seven years (started, I think in
February of 1998), and have blabbed AFMCL repeatedly about the long, winding
journey of inventing and refining Teonaht.

Remind me of your own conlang(s), Christian.  Are they a priori?  I think
Jovian is one you've created IIRC?

>> I think you do it a disservice!  "Crappy"?  Also I don't think it's
> all THAT
>> nice sounding in the conventional sense of "nice."   It's full of
> nasals, I
>> noticed: "m" and "ng."
>
> What's wrong with nasals?
Nothing!  It was a compliment to Carsten, who thought his text was too
conventionally "pretty."

> I'd have to agree that ng is not the prettiest of nasals, though.
I love it!  I seem to gravitate towards weird initial clusters: nr, mr, hm--
and lots of back consonants like "k".  Nreklakemp.  Something to do with the
head. /'nrEkl@kEmp/   Just made that up.  Sounds like a neck cramp, but that
would be a dishonest application to Teonaht, which is more than just relexes
of English.  So what does nrekla "sound like" ?  :)

Sally

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