Re: A (Long) First Text in Costanice

On Monday, April 11, 2005, at 08:33 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Hallo!
>
> On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 22:10:02 -0500,
> JS Bangs <jaspax@...> wrote:
>
>> I nave a text in Costanice to share with the group. Costanice, if you
>> recall, is the official language of Nea Illenicia, my country in IB,
>> and the original spec called for "Castillian Greek"--Koine Greek
>> developed to look like Spanish. For a translation I set out to do the
>> book of Mark, or at least part of it, and the first chapter is
>> finished. I feel like it fulfills its mission: it certainly *looks*
>> similar to Spanish, but a closer reading will readily reveal it to be
>> mostly Greek. Comments/observations welcome:
>>
>> TON EVANGELLO CADA MARCO
>>
>> Ten arje ton evangellos to Iesus Xristos Ios to Zeos: Zues sti
>> grásanon en ten Êseye profiede:
>> "Eú, postelo to mú angelo pro to sú prosuebo,
>> tudon o cadastévase te sú odo
>> Fuene to cleyontos en ten erieme,
>> "Etimaste ten odon to cirios,
>> poyéd ozíos tos tú caminos."
>>
>> [...]
>
> Welcome back, Jesse, we have been missing you!
Amen.

> And Costanice is a really, really great work.  Filtering a beautiful
> language (Greek) through the sound changes of another beautiful
> language (Castilian), you have created one of the most beautiful and
> interesting conlangs I have ever seen.
Certainly interesting - from what I can see, Costanice seems to contain
some archaic features lost over the other side of the Med in Greece &
neighboring dialects, e.g. the preposition _en_ survives (replaced by 'es'
  elsewhere) and, indeed, final -n obviously survived better here   :)

I must confess I haven't tried to pick apart the grammar in detail, but it
seems to retain present participle with adjectival endings unlike modern
Greek, where it has become an indeclinable gerund. Interesting.

It seems that eta survives as |e| in Costanice; it was [e:] at the end of
the Republic & in the early Empire, but appears to have changed to [i]
sometime between the 2nd & 3rd centuries CE in mainstream Koine. I guess
the Greek speaking enclave in Spain got separated from their eastern
cousins relatively early on.

I assume one should read the letters in the Castilian manner (e.g. z = /T/
) so I was bit surprised by Xristos. Is the initial |x| to be pronounced
[x]?

Ray
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