Re: Etabnannery, no Maggelity (long)

Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: TRISTAN
>
>
>>Sally Caves wrote:
>>
>>>So YOU'RE the culprit, Tristan!  :)
>>
>>Of course ;)
>>
>>
>>>Does RRRRRRamnunari have a language
>>
>>That u doesn't make sense. The vowel there is essentially the same as
>>the one in 'cat' in Australian and American English. (I'm assuming
>>you're trying to spell 'etabnannery'.)
>
>
> I'm trying to PRONOUNCE it, Tristan.
Spell, pronounce-in-writing, same thing.

> But I need an accurate pronunciation.
> The culprit for me is not enough familiarity with all the varieties of
> SAMPA.  I read your & as a @ originally, which explains my "ramnunari," "u"
> standing in for the heavy "uh" sound of English.  I also mark stress with an
> apostrophe.  I don't understand your symbology below very well, with the 2s.
They merely symbolise the second tone, which is low.

>>>it's attached to?  A web site?  Where does the emPHASis go in the word?
>>
>>Of course: Etabnanni /ra:2mn&2n/ 2=low tone. In Etabnanni, the stress
>>always falls on the first syllable of a word, but in the English word
>>etabnannery, the second syllable
>
>
> It's an English word?
As much as 'tabulate' is.

> So /ram'n&nri/.  rahm NAN ree.
Yeah, that's about right.

>>> (or third if you evilly pronounce the
>>>initial e-)
>
> No.  But curious about it.  It seems more etabnanneric to leave it out.
> Unless you have a really unusual and unintuitive pronunciation for "e."
No, etabnannery is about there being rules but not necessarily obvious
ones. Maggelity is about confusion. The orthography was standardised in
the language I call Middle Etabnanni, which is, of course, totally
fictional. A series of totally fictional but entirly regular sound
changes resulted in Modern Etabnanni. Two of these are that VtV > VrV
(where V=a vowel and t=a Middle Etabnanni /t/ or /d/ (which by this
stage had merged; the former distinction being maintained now by tone on
the vowel), and, of course, r=/r/) and #vC > #C (where #=the beginning
of a word, v=an unstressed vowel and C=any consonant).

> All I'm after is the rules of pronunciation.
I'm trying to find them... I can remember them, but I have a much nicer
list *somewhere*.

(And here it is, edited slightly (mainly the IPAs, but some facts of the
language have changed). This, I think, is the first mention of it. It's
certainly the first I can find (indeed, it's the only from the timeframe
I want, but there should be at least two or three others). It's from the
alt.language.artifical newsgroup. The character <á> should be an
a-acute. It sometimes should be a-macron-acute, but these days I
normally just asciiify both (as well as a-macron) as <a>.)

Note on ASCII IPA: I will be using the Conlang XSAMPA* with 2=low tone
on preceeding vowel. 1 (one) may be used for clarity, but it's implied
when no symbol is used (it's a high tone, but it merely needs to be
relatively higher than the low tone).

*Except I use the official " for primary stress because I'm too used to
it to want to change.

Etábnanni (/"rA2mne2n/) was designed because a person whom I frequently
chat with keeps dissing the English orthography (I'm not saying his
wrong, I'm not saying we shouldn't change, I'm just saying that he keeps
dissing it), so I decided to design a conlang with highly irregular
orthography. Then I decided that that was way to hard, so I settled with
one with an archaic orthography (like English), but for the most part
regular.

Etábnanni is a tonal language with more vowels than consonants. I'm
pretty sure that it has/will have three genders, and two different
nounal declensions for each gender. More later unless people say, 'No!
We've had enough! We can't take any more of this stop! Stop! Stooooop!'
(and words to that effect will not be allowed).

Phonology

The vowels are:
/i/, /i:/, /i\/* [that is, barred i], /u/, /u:/, /e/, /e:/, /@\/,*
/@\:/,* /o/, /o:/, /&/, /a/,** /a:/**.

Vowels marked with a * have rounded allophones near labial consonants.
Vowels marked with a ** have the rounded allophone in some dialects but
not in others.

The consonants are:
/p/,* /t/,* /k/,* /r/, /m/, /n/, /N/

Consonants marked with a * have voiced and fricative allophones. I'll
have to work out when these happen later :) /t/ and /n/ are dental.

Consonants may be long or doubled.

Tones:
There are two tones, high and low. The high tone is the normal pitch,
and the low tone is lower.

Syllable Structure:
Syllables are in the form [C]V[C]. Two vowels cannot be near each other.

Stress:
Stress always falls on the first syllable of the word, including prefixes.

Orthography:
The transliteration of Etábnanni uses <aeiouâêîôûywfshvzcptkbdgmnq>.
When Unicode is available, the circumflexes are macrons, the c is a
yogh, and the q an eng. s and z may be thorn and eth. The circumflexes
tend to be omitted in emails.

Letters 'that suggest a voiced sound are' <bdgvzcwynm>.

Consonants may or may not be doubled. This has no effect on the
pronounciation of the word (except for word final qq - more on this later).

The marking is generally transliterated as an acute or apostrophe,
though I tend to omit this when it isn't important.

1.  Unmarked initial vowels are silent, but they affect the
pronunciation of the word.

2. (a) Unmarked final vowels are silent.
    (b) <i> causes i-mutation (as explained),
    (c) Other letters normally do not affect the pronunciation of the word.

3. A consonant joining a nasal is nasalised, thus <ídmani> (I
objected) is pronounced /'i2nme2n/.

4. In a sequence of consonants with a vowel pronounced only on one side,
only the first is pronounced, thus <idmáni> (they (masc) objected) is
pronounced /'ne2n/.

5. (a) If a syllable is ended with a letter that suggests a voiced
consonant, the tone is low.
    (b) Otherwise, the tone is high. Thus <ítmani> (you (s) objected) is
pronounced /'inme2n/.

7. I-Mutation:
    (a) If the next syllable has a <y> or <i> in it, i-mutation occurs.
    (b) Vowels are pronounced according to the following rules (letters
are pronounced as if they are written with this letter, and have all the
sound changes that go with being that letter, except the i-mutation):
<a> > /e/
<e> > /i/
<i> > /i/
<o> > /@\/
<u> > /i\/
<â> > /&/
<ê> > /i:/
<î> > /i:/
<ô> > /e:/
<û> > /i:/

8. (a) Double consonants are pronounced as single consonants;
    (b) however, if two differently spelt letters would be pronounced
the same, they are both pronounced.
    Thus, <fiffaqqi> is /pipe2N/, and <fipfaqqi> is /pippe2N/.

9. <W>s, <V>s, <Z>s, and <C>s
These sounds are all nasalised, into /m/, /m/, /n/, and /q/,
respectively. Note that this change happens after adjacent sounds are
nasalised, so <ádvin> is /a2tmi2n/, not */a2nmi2n/.

10. <F>s, <S>s, and <H>s
These sounds are pronounced as the equivalent stop, i.e. /p/, /t/, /k/.

11. <T>s and <D>s
Between vowels that affect the spelling of a word, these letters become
/r/. Otherwise, they become /t/.

12. <B>s, <P>s, <K>s, and <G>s
These sounds are also pronounced as stops.

13. <Y> causes i-mutation to the next vowel, and the one before it.

14. <M>, <Q>, and <N>
These letters are normally pronounced as-is. <Q> is silent if it would
otherwise be the last sounded letter in a word (but <qq(V)#> is
pronounced as /N/).

13. Do not be put of by accents (´). They mean only that the letter is
pronounced in an otherwise unpronounced place (however, they used to
mark stress).

14. As a rough guide, vowels are pronounced as:
<a>: /a/
<e>, <ya>: /e/
<i>, <ye>, <yi>: /i/
<o>: /o/
<u>: /u/
<yo>: /@\/
<yu>: /i\/
<â>: /a:/
<ê>, <yô>: /e:/
<î>, <yî>, <yê>, <yô>: /i:/
<ô> /o:/
<û> /u:/
<yâ> /&/

--

If anything I've said more recently contradicts any of this, it's
probably more correct as changes have happened since this was written.
Of course, I may have been wrong. In the unlikely event that you
actually need to know, ask :)

*Definitely* take any comments about the grammar in that with a couple
tons of salt.

> As far as I can tell, the only etabnanneric aspect of this particular word
> is the pronunciations of "t" as "r."
> Correct?  "bn" as "m" I can understand; that makes some sense.
No-one said the rulse didn't have to make sense. You should always be
able to tell (and understand) the pronunciation of an Etabnanni word
just by looking at it.

> I'd be
> curious to see some orthographic rules.  Someday.
Is today okay?

Tristan.