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/"laistuN/ - Taianzh language famility

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 22, 2001, 20:16
The other day, I got an attack of a kind of hubris I suspect is very common
among conlangers, and resolved flesh out my meagre notes on Tairezazh's and
Steianzh's related langs, which make up a language famility known as the
"Taianzh" family. Taianzh is a Tairezazh word derived from the same stem
_tai-_ "(planet) Earth" as the word Tairezazh.

Proto-Taianzh would've been spoken, from our viewpoint, well over ten
thousand years into the future, and from its general structure, I strongly
believe that IE figures somewhere in its ancestry. From a conlang-typology
POV, it should however be seen as an a-priori lang that's in many ways
inspired by IE langs. Unfortunately, I'm doing it all backwards, so I have
to device Proto-Taianzh's phonology so that it can yield the forms seen in
the descendants, primarily Tairezazh - not an easy task.

Now, to give you a taste of this language family, I thought I'd give you the
words for "language" in those Taianzh langs I've done any work on. Note that
only Klaish, Tairezazh and Steienzh have defined roman orthographies yet, so
for the rest I simply use a phonemic SAMPA representation:

Proto-Taianzh   /"laistuN/
Taizh           /"la:stu/
Klaish          láistu
Tairezazh       laist
Steianzh        laiss (stem _laist-_, eg dat _laister_)
Parklest        /"lE:st@n/
Tsárizh         /"lest@n/
Telenzh         /lest/
Siréazh         /"lE:t@n/

Notice that these are all nominatives. The lowest four langs in the table
all share, among other things, the change /ai/>/E:/ (later >/e/ in Tsárizh
and Telenzh) and make up the so-called "Midzh" subgroup, while the rest are
the "Dasht" group. See horrid ASCII table below:


                             Proto-Taianzh
                             /          \
                            /            \
                        Dasht            Midzh
                        /   \            |    \
                       /     \           |     \
                  Klaish   Taizh   Old Siréazh  Parklest
                  /    \                 |       |      \
                 /      \                |       |       \
           Tairezazh   Steianzh    New Siréazh  Telenzh  Tsárizh

All lang-names are given in their Tairezazh form.

Now, I'll go back to pondering Proto-Taianzh consonants ...

                                                    Andreas
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