> - what do I do
> > with
> > a proto-lang word like 'mayam'. - thst word would
> be
> > perfectly acceptable in modern Elenyo, so what
> would
> > cause it to change?
>
> First off, keep in minds that words don't change
> to
> something else because they're not acceptable. From
> my
> other post, matter and madder are both accepatable.
> But matter > madder nonetheless.
>
> Should I simply come up with
> > some
> > arbitrary vowel shifts, and perhaps from there a
> > longer vowel might force gemination or something,
> a
> > little bit of insertion/deletion and metathesis,
> or
> > is
> > there another way?
>
> All of those are perfectly acceptable. Look at
> the
> way you pronounce things, and the was other
> languages
> pronounce things. for example, the y of Spanish,
> which
> is pronounced almost like /dZ/. Or the voicing of
> consonants between vowels (matter > madder).
>
> To me, an obvious change would be to strengthen
> the
> y, because it sometimes gets lost in pronunciation.
> Maybe, y > dy /dZ/ between vowels. And then later
> on,
> y disappears after affecting a preceding vowel. And
> maybe a little nasalization too, which eventually
> just
> results in a long vowel. What you'd get from this
> simple changes is:
>
> mayam > madyam > mezham > mezha~ > mezhaa /meZa:/
>
> or something like medaa if you don't want dy >
> /Z/.
>
> What I often to is slur the words on purpose, to
> see
> how sounds would naturally change.
>
> > - however I do not see how I could
> > do
> > that with Elenyo and its protolang.
>
> Well, if you use suffixes, that solves the
> problem.
> Even if the suffix gets mutated through time to be
> unrecognizable, this could still be a derivational
> process. Or you could go Chinese like, and compound
> words together.
>
>
> > Or is it perhaps
> > a
> > question or making mini derivational patterns. So
> > perhaps sets of words all evolve in the same way,
> > but
> > in different ways to other sets - or should the
> > derivational rules be universal and affect all the
> > words in the proto-lang?
>
> What I do in Aelya is have several different
> levels
> of sound change. Sound change level 1 affects
> Quenya,
> but level 2 affects later Irish borrowings. The two
> levels (at different points in history) don't have
> to
> have the same changes take place. Perhaps you could
> have a northern, an eastern, and a central sound
> change system. They happen in East-North-Central
> order.
> So you spread your protolang out on a map, and apply
> the North changes. But this little city here
> eventually becomes big, and it's in NE central Blah,
> so it gets all sounds changes applied, and becomes
> standard. But this tiny village over in the East, it
> only gets Eastern changes applied. Voila! You have
> sister langs.
>
>
> Aidan
>
>
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