Re: Babel text in Shfanzhol

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 01:53:57 -0400, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

>Adam Walker scripsit:
>
>> I only noticed two occurences of doubled
>> letters: in _tsoosh_ and _naa_ whadupwidat?
>
>Todos and nada respectively: intervocalic and final d are gone, leaving
>hiatus.
>
>> And then there's the devine title, SHENZHOL.
>
>Señor, as Steg says.  No known Chinese influence here!
>
>Roger Mills scripsit:
>
>> Without an intensive read, it appears that maybe the reflexes of **/t/
>> vary a bit:  tsoa, siedzha, ajonteshio, oleiense, oslo(sh), todzhe,
>> shableshielon, ashta, sienen, eshto.  There is probably a system.....
>
>I made some errors here.  Generally t > s, but initially ts, but s
>again before an i-glide.  d > t initially and after a consonant (when
>it's a stop, basically), disappears otherwise.  I haven't decided what
>happens to st (shs is just too bogus), and haven't been consistent.
>The anaptyctic e has been lost, hence Shfanzhol, not Eshfanzhol.
>
>The "Spanzhol" in the subject line (now fixed) was a failure to carry
>through the sound changes sufficiently.
>
>> Two "r"s crept in-- no doubt typos-- "I ushalon larizho en lukar...."
>
>/r/ > /l/ only for the first instance (not countining rr or initial r,
>which is phonemically rr).  All others remain.  There may be errors in
>some words.
>
>> Is "Bavel" right?? usually **b > p
>
>Foreign word.
>
>> kjosamoshlosh should be kjoshamoshlosh, no?
>
>Yes.
>
>> Otherwise it's fun, but ¡amor de dios, que feeeeeeeeeeo! tanto al
>> ojo como al oído.
>
>I hold no brief for the orthography, but I think it sounds rather nice,
>actually.
>
>Mark J. Reed scripsit:
>
>> Affricativization (verbing weirds language!) of initial voiceless
>> stops ([t] -> [ts], [p] -> [pf]); that's interesting.  A response to the
>> English-speakers' aspiration of what are in native monolingual Spanish
>> unaspirated stops, perhaps?
>
>I don't really know what the motivation might be.  The changes to the
>stops are precisely those of the 2nd (or High German) Consonant Shift
>(not Grimm's/Verner's Laws, which are the First Consonant Shift).
>As you conjectured, "j" represents /x/.
You should note that a preceding /s/ inhibits affrication/fricativization
for German as well as Grimm. I can't think of a definitive example, though.

Jeff

>
>--
>John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
jcowan@reutershealth.com

Reply