Re: Name mangling (Was: Re: First Sound Recording of Asha'ille!)

Quoting Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Andreas Johansson <andjo@F...> wrote:
>
> > The _ñ_ has been in all along. I'm not terribly happy with it either
> - it's the
> > only diacritic'd letter, for a start - but the realistic alternative
> is using
> > 'k' or 'q' for [N], either of which seems overly perverse to me, not
> to speak
> > of 'kh' or 'qh' for [G~], or, horror of horrors, 'kc' or 'qc' for [Nk].
>
> There's always 'ng'.  Not the prettiest of sights, but way
> preferable over 'ñ' IMHO.  [Nk] can just be written 'nc'.
> Even in Oro Mpaa, where everything else is extremely regular
> (albeit weirdly so), I write [Ng] as |nc| rather than |gc|.
Thing is, Meghean orthography is supposed to be a one-to-one transliteration of
the native script; I really don't want have to worry about which digraphs are
"really there" and which are artefacts of transliteration.

Also, Meghean contrasts [N] and [Ng]; this makes |ng| for [N] particularly
undesirabe, IMNSHO.

Joe suggested eng, but, AFAIK, it doesn't have an uppercase form, and it's
riskier in electronic form than is ñ.

> > I kind of like the nasal frics. They give rise to some very neat
> alterations. :)
>
> I'm not even sure I can pronounce them.  I think I end up
> with [to~G] instead.
If it's any consolation, I've considered making nasal spreading to [to~G~] an
optional or dialectal feature. [to~G] would probably be understood.

> > What did you think of the introduction of [h]? I must say I'm rather
> proud of
> > alterations like _tash_ [tah] ~ _tans_ [tans].
>
> I love syllable-final aitches...  Hombraian is full of them.
> :)  I must have missed that introduction, though.  I haven't
> been following the list closely lately.
>
> So is tash the new way to say tans, or a dialectal variant?
No, _tans_ is the plural of _tash_.

> > Your name, BTW, would most straightforwardly be adapted as
> Cris-Tiean Tal-Man
> > [kris.tSi.jan tal.man] or Cris-Tean [kris.tSan]. In normal usage,
> the hyphens
> > would be dropped, of course. In fact, I've not yet decided whether a
> > hyphen-equivalent is used at all in the native script.
>
> The former, although less fluent, is preferable.  I tend to
> give my name as /'kris.ti.@n/ in English, since I'm not fond
> of being homonymous with a religious term.  Most of the time
> I'm /kris/ anyway.
Well, _Cris_ sounds like a perfectly good Meghean nick-name (a bit monosyllabic
for a "real" name). Shortening the somewhat clunky Cristiean to it would no
doubt come very natural to mezanophones.

> > Incidentally, I'm considering making [G~] > [Z~] before front
> vowels. Would make
> >  sense, since [G] > [Z] in the same position.
>
> I adore [Z], so I ain't complaining.  ;)  Still, I'm rather
> wary of those nasal frics.  They are certainly original and
> worth experimenting with, but do you really have to test
> your new chemicals in a crystal chalice?  :\
Introducing them allowed for some improvements of the inflectional system, so
I'm afraid they stay. :)

                                                 Andreas

Replies