Re: A Sample of Acadon

From: "Herman Miller" <hmiller@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2000 2:23 PM
Subject: Re: A Sample of Acadon


> On Fri, 9 Jun 2000 18:17:38 -0700, AcadonBot <acadon@...> wrote:
>
> >Conlangers,
> >
> >I value comments on the "look" of a language, and
> >especially from artlangers.
> >
> >So for possible comment I send you an example
> >of Acadon. This time not a simple folk tale, but
> >some heavier reading.
> >Your comments and impressions would be appreciated.
>
> Since you don't seem to mind digraphs, I think "q" would look better
> written as "qu".
That's what Jeff Henning has said from way back, so the
two spellings are both possible. (QU is taken as if a font
variation of Q)

> "C" and "k" seem backwards at first, but you have to admit
> that it _looks_ better this way.
K is relatively rare, as is W. At one point I felt that the
letters in an IAL would be more efficiently used if they
all had (about) the same frequency. But natlangs don't
seem to do this, so I gave up on that objective. But I
don't have any exceedingly rare letters.

> Is "ph" pronounced as spelled, or as [f]?
Neither, as [fw] and in Spanish "fuera."
TH is pronounced as [tw] in "twin."
These create a degree of complexity, but sometimes
the simplicity/complexity issue can cut both ways.

> It looks like it's pretty easy to tell at a glance which words are nouns,
> verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, for the most part. Then we come to "fro
> qale antropaeo", where it looks like "which" is modifying "mankind" as an
> adjective. Having pronouns that look like adjectives can be confusing.
In general, the high frequency words are not marked for
part of speech. "Mo" is I, not a noun.  "Mi" is me, not a verb.
Quale/Qale is which, not an adjective.

In general, the learner will need less help on the part of
speech of the 200 most common words or so. But after
that, p-o-s marking is, IMO, more valuable.

> hmiller (Herman Miller
Thanks for the remarks,                   LEO