CHAT: A sample of my newborn conlang

Ok, here it is... the first sentence in my unnamed firstborn lang.

It's taken me about three weeks to get so far, interrupted with 5
redesigns of the phonetic system. (I decided that I should leave out the
pharyngeal fricatives since that morning when I woke up after a hard
night's conlanging with a sore throat!)

The language is inflexional-agglutination, more or less leaning on the
inflected side. Phonetically, it's influenced by Old English, Irish,
Italian, and of course ;) both Quenya and Sindarin.

I use systematic sound changes as part of the method of inflection; this
is stolen from Irish (I'm sure people here are probably more familiar
with Welsh, Breton and Scottish Gaelic than Irish - but the principle
is, I suppose, the same). Personally I think it works beautifully in
Irish - witness <a cho'ta> /A xo:tA/ "his coat" and <a co'ta> /A co:tA/
"her coat" ;).

Anyway, here's the sentence, taken from the Babel text. I write it first
in Latin-1 and then in 7-bit ASCII.

"And the Lord came down to see the city and tower that the children of
men builded"

"Ryf elcwe nau shúla ar sthólegh kyn féagh wriruighenaetha ar laudh
hoin ú dhésar, fém ghaun cheivauvij ar nautyadhel ú chjetyl"

"Ryf elcwe nau shuula ar sthoolegh kyn feeagh wriruighenaetha ar laudh
hoin uu dheesar, feem ghaun cheivauvij ar nautyadhel uu chjetyl"

(note that ty/dy are the palatals /c/ & /J\/. The orthography takes
advantage of the fact that /tj/ and /dj/ are allophones of [c] & [J\] )

Here's the pronunciation in X-SAMPA. I notate diphthongs by preceeding them
by periods - I write <ruigh> as /4.uiG/

<Ryf elcwe  nau  shuula ar sthoolegh kyn feeagh wriruighenaetha ar laudh
/4yf ElkwE n.au Su:lA  A4 sTo:lEG   qyn fe:AG  w4i4.uiGEn.AETAs A4 l.auD

hoin  uu dheesar, feem ghaun cheivauvij ar nautyadhel uu chjetyl>
h.oin u: De:sAr,  fe:m G.Aun xeiv.auviZ A4 n.aucaDEl  u: xZecl/

I'm happy about that /xZ/ sound in /chjetyl/ - it arose independently
as a result of a phonetical trick (seimhiú - aspiration)

---------------------------------------------------------
A gloss -

Ryf  elcwe nau shuula ar  sthoolegh kyn       feeagh
down and   (came    ) the lord.abs  (so that       )

wriruighenaetha     ar  laudh    hoin     uu  dheesar
(he-might-see.subj) the city.abs both-and the tower

feem    ghaun cheivauvij     ar  nautyadhel    uu  chjetyl
(which) (they were building) the child.pl.host the man.pl.host

-----------------------------------------------------------

So far it should be fairly tranparent, except for maybe the two-part
verbs (<nau shuula> and <-aun cheivauvij> as opposed to <-riruighenaetha>)
and the connecting phrases <kyn feeagh> and <feem>...

I'll post an analysis of various grammatical interestingish bit next... ;)

BTW, the lang has no conword associated with it. To quote someone's
post from a few weeks ago (Danny Wier, methinks), it's "a mystical
language for talking to God (or the curious musings of a madman)". Also
a language for writing shopping lists in and talking to yourself, and
your dog.

Stephen

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