Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Love Those Double Vowels (was: Diving In...)

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Monday, November 5, 2001, 2:16
On Sun, 4 Nov 2001 18:21:20 -0500, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>Josh Roth wrote: >> (I read something once about a similar thing happening in English, with words >> like "little" "itty-bitty" "tiny" (originally pronounced with a front vowel) >> "teeny" (brough back to a front vowel!) > >That's a common phenomenon across languages. Another good example is >Japanese "chibi" for "small". It just *sounds* little. :-) > >In Uatakassi, I use _pifi_ for "small" and _zamuu_ for "large", also an >example of my voiceless-voiced associations! :-)
Similarly, Tirelhat has "tikrhi" for "little" and "nogli" for "big" (most stative verbs end in -i); "vedi" (narrow) vs. "ugi" (wide), "tirri" (short) vs. "zhafi" (tall). To some extent this may have been deliberate, but it also seems to be the case that /i/ and /e/ more often "sound" like the right vowels for little things, and /o/, /u/, or /a/ for big things. Still, it's not hard to find exceptions: "zuruta" for "centipede", or "khilhki" for "planet". -- languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>--- hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any @io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body, \ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin