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Re: Nineteen-year-old language sketch unearthed!

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Saturday, April 28, 2007, 3:35
I sometimes wish I still had documentation of Thenian, my conlang created at
16 yrs or so-- quite a few texts, mainly of a wacky religious nature,
product of an overly feverish imagination... There was actually a little
ceremony that my school room-mate (equally feverishly religious) and I would
do from time to time--

Munane Itha Theno, fekerud inekadrud mundei iminane deniei...
mighty Itha Theni-voc creator [and] preserver world-gen [and] all
thing-pl-gen...

(Itha Theni, of course, was a/the god.)

It went on from there, sort of a calque on the Gloria. Down the memory hole.

My friend contributed a "Kyrie" from a language of his own:
"Balna ku [name] alenyak" 'God damn [name]' repeated thrice, inserting names
of disliked classmates :-((( I don't recall how that phrase was segmented.
Our little folie à deux...it's almost embarrassing to reminisce about this.

A few other things remembered: bhlithe 'I am', bhlishu '3-sing. is';
ikimorithaz (rel/conj.) 'that which...'; nouns had at least the 5 cases of
Latin (nom. -ud, voc. -o, gen. -ei, dative (pl?) -nigi) etc. sing. and
plural; adjectives ended in -ane and were invariable. The verbs, I'm sure,
were just as complex and IIRC quite irregular.

There was a script, part alphabet part syllabary (e.g. that dative -nigi was
a single symbol) that somewhat constrained word creation. This was before
I'd learned that phonological systems were _organized_ :-)

The sound, and a lot else, was based on two years of Latin and Spanish, and
some (on my own) ill-digested Sanskrit.

My roommate had had several years in a British public school before coming
to this country; he'd studied Greek and I was quite envious. He'd also
created a regularized con-Romance and had translated a couple chapters of
"Through the Looking Glass" (Per lo mirroro).

School days-- what a strange time..........

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Amanda Babcock Furrow <langs@...>