Re: CHAT: Bob's Introduction

Robert Hailman <robert@...> wrote:


>Hey hey!
Hey, Bob! Welcome to the list.

>I've been reading this list for three or four days now,
Aren't you scared yet?

>I have a project coming up at school where I'm allowed to do more or
>less anything I want, and I'm considering developing a Conlang.
Oh, how lucky you are! And how strange it is, I think, to
see a modern educative facility where creativity is actually
encouraged... ;)

>I've started a very rough sketch of a language, but it's nowhere near
>complete enough to post here, I have to decide on quite a bit of the
>grammar and have at least some vocabulary to provide examples with. I'll
>post more on this as it develops.

We'll be waiting.

>1) When I post a sketch of a language, and I give the phonololgy, do I
>give just the IPA symbols, or do I use the alphabet I am using if it is
>a Roman alphabet as well as the IPA if they don't agree?
The Roman alphabet is easier to read and handle (in particular,
the lower characters of ASCII, for e-mail -- i. e. the ones up
to code 126, the tilde ~). As most people have pointed out,
you should explain the phonology using the IPA, and indicate
the correspondencies between IPA and the "native" orthography
(BTW have you thought of a con-script?). IPA is not comfortable
to work with in computer edition, and may be tiresome to read.
The Roman alphabet, OTOH, has an important shortage of suitable
symbols for certain sounds. It's a good idea to keep the Roman
orthography as close to IPA as possible, but some things are
just counterintuitive for English readers (like using <x> for
/x/ [unvoiced velar fricative] or <j> for /j/ [palatal
approximant, "y"]) -- for ASCII-IPA conventions, see Don
Blaheta's page,

    http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html

Of course, if you have to do it, do it all the way -- *they*
have to read your papers. :)

>2) The Conlang FAQ, or at least the URL I have of it, hasn't been
>updated since 1998. Has it been abandoned, is a new version still in
>development, or do I have the wrong adress for it?
As someone mentioned already, there's one in www.conlang.org;
it's a collaborative effort -- you can go and add a question
(with its answer, of course) and then anyone can see both.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html