Re: Elomi!

Larry Sulky wrote:
> Here is something new that I've been working on: Elomi (
> http://ca.geocities.com/handydad/elomi/elomi-main.html).
>
> I've always liked the sound of Hawai'ian and other Polynesian languages,
> but had never thought of a way to achieve something like it in a
> self-segregating morphology with the clear-cut compounding mechanisms
> that I prefer. Now I think I have.
Interesting how the first letter specifies the part of speech. I had a
similar system in Jaghri except that the part of speech vowel was
attached to the end of the word. So every word ends in a series of two
vowels, and since sequences of vowels are not allowed inside words,
every sequence of two vowels marks the end of a word. In the case of
Elomi, the boundary between words comes between the two vowels in a
sequence.

> Elomi's genesis lies within Konya but it is quite a different language.
> It is even more vowel-y. Its morphology is even simpler. It is strongly
> head-initial. And I think it is prettier, more appealing, though at the
> cost, sometimes, of some extra syllables.
I like head-initial languages, and that fits with the Polynesian theme,
with a number of VSO languages, and even some VOS ones like Fijian. But
have you considered how names (place names and personal names) can be
borrowed into Elomi while remaining recognizable? It seems like that
would be a major concern for a language like this (with a relatively
simple phonology compared with most languages that the names would be
borrowed from). It's hard enough to recognize names in Japanese (which
at least distinguishes voiced and voiceless consonants).

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