Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

On 4 Sep 02, at 10:45, John Cowan wrote:
> > ObConlang: how do people's conlangs handle foreign words?
Uatakassi basically mangles the pronunciation into the closest possible
equivalent in U. phonology.  How it gets mangled tends to depend on the
type of word.  Foreign place names, for example, tend to be adapted by
the leaders, who tend to have a pronunciation close to the classic,
while names of recently conquered places, for example, tend to have an
official name, that's adapted according to the conventions of
near-classic pronunciation, and a common name, that's adapted according
to the conventions of the local dialect.  Likewise, words relating to
things like religion or philosophy tend to be borrowed with near-classic
conventions, while food items would be borrowed by the conventions of
the local dialect.

Some specific examples: In most post-classical dialects, the usual
epenthetic vowel was /@/, but in the classic language it was /u/.
Post-classical dialects had six vowels, /i/ /e/ /a/ /@/ /o/ /u/ and two
diphthongs /ej/ and /ow/ (sometimes eight vowels, adding /E/ and /O/,
with no diphthongs).  In general, post-classic languages had more
phonemes and freer syllable structures, and thus are capable of coming
closer to the target pronunciation.

Because the Kassi syllabry isn't used by any other languages (except for
a few minority languages in the Empire, and those are generally written
according to Kassi conventions), there's not much
spelling-pronunciation.

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