Re: yet another new conlang

Hi!

First of all, Tsiressa seems already to be a language full of detail,
judging from the poem. Congrats!

May I say a few things (after everyone was talking about conlang criticism)

1. I don't know the background of Tsiressa's spelling, but at a few points
(like nh= /J/, d=/dh/) it seemed difficult to me. But again, I don't know
the background.

2. Is is common in Tsiressa to bring attributal phrases to the front?
This habit is common in English or German, but there are also languages
that don't tolerate this. (First sentence of poem)

3. Word order: In the first sentence (Rel. clause: Object + its attribute
+ Predicate + Relative marker on Subject of main clause; subject of main
clause + location + Predicate). So, basically SOV in main clauses?
Head first? Prepositions?

4. The case system is quite "European standard": A genetive, an accusative.
An unmarked nominative. Is there a dative? It isn't necessary, btw. Akkadian
had only three cases (which quickly merged into only two!), called Nom.,
Gen. and Akk. by modern scholars. (or so I remember ;-)) There is reason,
of course, why these cases are found so often.

5. Is there an "attribute" ending for nouns? I mean this because of "nhhid"
(mutated subject of first clause) and "nhide" (attribute of land in second
clause).

6. Just a suggestion: There a many languages that do not reflect
differences in pronounciation, coming from different forms or positions,
in spelling. One striking example is my own native language German. We write
"Rad" for the singular of "wheel" and "Raeder" for the plural (of course
ae=umlaut a in orthography, just to avoid encoding problems). The point is,
a final "d" is almost voiceless, more like a /t/ (but not aspirated! At
least not in the South), but in "Raeder", "d" is followed by a vowel and
therefore spoken /d/. But is spelled with "d" both times to make it easier
to memorize the spelling. At least, that is what the official commission for
orthography says. (I have it from our standard spelling book, the official
"Oesterreichisches Woerterbuch", or Austrian spelling book, and they call
it something which would translate in "root-oriented spelling".

Thanks a lot for sharing your creation with us, and KUGTW. (How I like those
abbrevations! ;-))

Christian

Reply