Re: CHAT: A sample of my newborn conlang

On Fri, 25 Jan 2002 16:08:58 +0300
Pavel Iosad <pavel_iosad@...> wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
>
> Nice review! I liked it.
> Though the orthograph made look like neither like Irish nor Quenya, but
> rather like a mix of Welsh and Xhosa :-))

Gurbh maith agat agus thank'ee kindly. I did have quite a bit of trouble
with the orthography. Especially since there are four 'phonetic tricks'
used for grammatical reasons - urú (eclipsis), seimhiú (lenition, I
think; e.g. /p/->/f/), and for vowels a sort of i-affection and someting
related which for the moment I'm just calling 'vowel-grading'

If there were any examples of eclipsis in the sentence, you'd see the
resembelance with Irish better - for example the eclipsed form of
'caera' is written 'gcaera', (pronounced just as /g.ar4A/) rather than
'gaera'. I guess the second way would the Brythonic orthography, and the
first looks horrifically ugly to Brythonicers ;). Of course this leads to
trouble with digraphs - e.g. <th> for /T/ - should I write it's eclipsed
form as  <dth>, <dhth> (uurgh) or just give in and do <dh>? I opted for
the first, thought it still causes problems with some letters. Similar
problem with the lenition. The vowel progressions don't record their point
of origin however ;).

Actually, I forgot - there is some eclipis there: <feeagh> causes it.
Hence the <w> at the begining of <riruighenaetha>. Also the <gh> on <aun
cheivauvij> (conventional extension to certain vowels). Examples of
lenition: the <h>s in <nau shuula> <cheivauvij> and <chjetyl>. I point
these out since these are the only points at which one should be able to
find a similarity with Irish orthography.

I guess it's the <y>s (/y/) which give it the Welsh look, not sure where
the Xhosa comes from (how would I? I don't know what Xhosa looks like ;) -
I'll google for it next time I'm online).

> (BTW in the transliteration at least this looks very much like Tolwd :-))
You mean, it seems to sound similar?


> Just a short point so far.
>
> > 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" ;).

> Yes, it works in Welsh (though in modern only):
Only in ModW? That's a curious thing - I would have supposed that such
things go back to the common ancestor of both Brythonic & Goidelic
tongues. An innovation?


> The only possessive to trigger the nasal mutation is "fy" [v@] (my). So in
> the modern language it is omitted before words the radicals of which can be
> nasally mutated, and simply the mutation is applied:
Is there an error in this sentence? Does it make the right sense if I
replace "can be" with "can't be" ? (I still wouldn't be sure what "and
simply the mutation is applied means" - how many kind of mutation are there
in Welsh? 'nasal mutation' (/b/,/v/ > /m/, but also /p/,/f/ > /m/ ??)
and something else?)


> "my brother" is usually _mrawd_ (<brawd), but
> "my sister" is "fy chwaer", because ch- is not susceptible to nasal
> mutation.
Interesting; in my lang and in Irish, 'nasal' mutation is part of what's
called eclipsis: /p/ > /b/ > /m/ and /f/ > /v/ > /m/. I suppose you should
only really call the first part eclipsis


> Hwyl,
> Pavel
Thanks for your comments ;)

Stephen.

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