Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

John Cowan sikyal:

> There seems to be some evidence that for speakers of a language, there is
> some other specific language that all foreign words are assumed to be in.
> For English, it's French.
>
> A lot more on this at http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/6/6-555.html#1
Very interesting discussion! If only I could read the German parts, as
well.

> ObConlang: how do people's conlangs handle foreign words?
This is a difficult question. A quick search through my online Yivrian
lexicon turns up seven words currently marked as borrowed, and three of
these are from Praçí. Nonetheless, I believe that Hiksilipsi actually
provides the default language for Yivrian borrowings, since the contact
between Y and H has been very long, and an important Yivrian religious
site happens to lie in H-speaking territory. (There are currently no H
borrowings in Yivrian because Hiksilipsi doesn't yet exist in any form
suitable for borrowing.)

Nonetheless, I have no idea at present how the Yivrindi will borrow from
the Hiksi, since H contains a great many phonemes that no Yivrian person
could handle and vice versa.

For the other neighboring languages it's easy: Yivrian is the default,
since it's the culturally dominant language in its part of the world.

> Gua\spi does something similar, as in this nice example (: is glottal stop):
>
>         ^:i \dlau -fn -borneo /juo \xr -bror -fn -:ma-ka-gani
>         Mahogany trees live on the island of Borneo
>         (more literally:
>         The island Borneo is the habitat of typical mahogany trees)
Is this language orthography designed to resemble an elaborate Unix
command?


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton