Re: Elomi!

Hello, Herman!

On 11/20/05, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

> 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.
 I did an Esperanto variant/refinement that used that mechanism to mark word
endings; e.g. nouns ended in "oi", or something like that.

> In the case of
> Elomi, the boundary between words comes between the two vowels in a
> sequence.
 Right. In rapid speech this might be blurred, but then, in rapid speech,
comprehension is always compromised.

 > 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).
 It is a concern, so that's why there is a mechanism for permitting
completely foreign names, as well as names that have phonemes outside of
"native" Elomi but have structures that fit within Elomi. It also may be
that speakers will eventually drop these mechanisms and just use the foreign
names as is, maybe with a dramatic pause around them. Or there may be a mix
of techniques. When I hear my first name and last names adapted into
Japanese or Chinese, I have to accept that my names just don't fit the
phonology or morphology of those languages, and speakers of those languages
_will_ change my name to suit.

---larry