Re: Judean Romancelang Plans

Quoth Steg Belsky:
> The language would be able to be written in the Latin alphabet and in the
> Hebrew alphabet.  In general, right-handed people would primarily use the
> Latin alphabet, and left-handed people would use the Hebrew one (in order
> not to smudge the ink).  However, it would also be common to write in the
> Greek "boustrophedon" style, where each successive line is written
> right>>left and then left>>right, except here it would be written in a
> different alphabet, and not just by flipping the letters around.
This is _so_ cool.  I can't wait to see a written sample. ;)

> So, in order to start working on it i need a little help.  I could not
> find *any* website that described the phonology of Latin, besides that
> {v} was pronounced /w/.  So, if someone could explain to me how it worked
> i'd be very appreciative.
There are five vowels, each of which can be short or long.  The length
is actually a time thing in Republic times, but already by early Empire
it was starting to become a distinction of quality as well; by about the
fourth century CE certain mergers had occurred to reduce the system to
seven vowels (/aeEioOu/, iirc).  The vowels are: AEIOV; once lower case
started popped up you had AaEeIiOoVu---much later, when that last one
was separated into vowel and consonant, you saw Uu and Vv.

The consonants were as follows: BCDFGHLMNPQRSTX.  They all have their
obvious pronunciations; C = /k/, G = /g/, and X = /ks/.  In addition,
there were a very few words with K (= /k/), and some borrowings from
Greek with Y (early = /y/, late = /i/ or /I/).  Moving into Empire, it's
thought that M after vowels merely indicated a nasalisation of the
vowel, no actual /m/ sound.  Also, late in the Empire you start to see
Vu diverge into a vowel (/u/) and a consonant (/w/->/v/), as likewise Ii
diverged into vowel Ii /i/ and consonant Jj /j/, the latter of which
later palatalised in late Empire into /J/, thence to /Z/ and /dZ/.  I
think it's early empire where C and G begin developing their hard/soft
distinction (before EIY, soft, before AOU, hard), but of course that
change continued long after the various languages broke apart, which is
why there is such variation in the "soft" sounds.  Q was, as always, a
letter which represented /k/ before *consonantal* /u/; thus the words
QUI /kwi/ and CUI /ku.i/ or /kuj/ were kept distinct.  H may have been
/x/ at some point, but I think it was mostly /h/.  I'm really not sure
where Z entered in, although I'm pretty sure it wasn't originally in
Latin.

> Also, in order to test out this system, i'd like to know how to say
> "Judean" in Latin, so that i can mutate it into the name of the conlang
> itself.
Well, "of the Jews" was "Iudaeorum", so "Iudaeus/Iudaea" (Jew, Judean)
would be what you're looking for.

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