Re: Simafira: phonetics

---------< Original Message >---------
>> > I'm confused now.  It sounds like you're talking about changing one
>> > language into another, saying that "[v] was reassigned to [f]" and
>that
>> > "Affricates were done away with."  Yet you never directly mention
>parent
>> > nor daughter language.
>>
>> I interpreted Steve's comments as saying that he started out with some
>> set -- not necessarily an ideal one -- and then changed it.  That could
>mean
>> one or more of at least two things:
>> (1) He was envisioning an earlier stage of the same language, and what
>> happened to it after those changes;
>> (2) He just didn't like his earlier set, for esthetic reasons, and so
>changed it
>> In either case, he seems to have done so with regular *rules*, though.
>
>This is possible.  I await Steve's response.
>
I wish I was as intelligent as I'm being given credit for!  I didn't really
make myself clear; the still-unnamed island where the language is spoken is in
the north Pacific, between Asia and North America, so my models, more or less,
were English and Japanese.  The more practical roots are that the language is
designed to be spoken among a group of a dozen or so enthusiasts.  The group is
primarily native English speakers, as I'm a U.S. citizen and the group is mostly
U.S. citizens and Canadians; however, due to the fact that I drew them from a
group of Japanese animation fans,almost all have some conversance in Japanese.

So the "starting set" I was thinking of were the most familiar sounds to the
group - those of English and Japanese.

As far as development, I didn't want the language to just be a pidgin, so there
will also quite a lot of _a priori_ elements, which I'm justifying as having
developed independently on the island.  Many of these will be little bits of my
own group's peculiar slang, such as the Baltimore "O", and the use of "te" to
mean "yes" (a Quebecoise-American transform of "okay" > "'kay" > "'tay").

Also, when I placed the island, it turned out that the closest land was
Hawai'i, so I'm also trying to work in some Hawai'ian; that's a bit more
problematic, since I don't know that language.

--
Steve Kramer   -=oOo=-   scooter at buser dot net
Thought for today:
 Maj. Burns: "I won't let you down, sir."
 Col. Potter: "There's no way you can."