Re: Tunu not dead yet

Hi all,

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Taka Tunu wrote:
> The Tunu language is back at http://conlang.free.fr
> I lost the old lexicon so I made up a new one with excel. It's CVCV with
a, e,
> i, o, u, p, k, t, m, n, x, r. Instead of parts of speech there are 4
deictics
> referring to the topic, the previous word and phrase and the next
phrase--but
> it looks the same.
Just had a chance to look at it now.  Impressively logical.  I wonder
whether
it would be less verbose if you had more distinct consonants?  Also, is
there
any particular reason for not allowing monosyllabic roots?  If the 100 or so
commonest roots had only one syllable, the language would be much more
efficient.

I'm also impressed with the way you can completely discard the lexicon and
start over with the same rules.  Not that this ever happens with natlangs,
but
supposing two neighbouring languages used the exact same rules while
completely replacing the vocabulary, I imagine it would take a speaker of
one
a very little time to learn the other.

Also, the link to the Tunu Primer is broken.

> The Pikutu language with only 6 phonemes (p, k, t, a, i, u) at
> http://galimathias.free.fr also came out less silly than I thought it
would.

It's not at all silly.  But it IS very long-winded! :-)  The small phoneme
inventory makes for inefficiency.

If you ask most people "What's the opposite of 'something'?", I'd be
willing to bet they'd answer "'Nothing'.", rather than "'Anything'." as
you have in Pikutu.

Expressing some significant distinctions by a single phoneme, would, in my
opinion, make misunderstandings fairly common.  Greater redundancy would
add to Pikutu's robustness and usability.

All quibbles aside, both your conlangs demonstrate that a small palette of
sounds and a small book of rules can indeed produce a very expressive
language.  Very elegant!

>
> µ.
 ... still for "Mathias", or have you changed your name to "(the mysterious)
µ"?

Regards,
Yahya

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