Skeskatai (was: Re: Short words for complex ideas)

From: "Christopher B Wright" <faceloran@...>
> ---Family and similar relations---
> Sister's cousin-in-law's uncle's brother-in-law's wife: ske
Fascinatingly enough, just tonight at work I invented a word {s*ke} /skE/
meaning, roughly, "folk".

This is part of a reinvention of "skeskatai" (s*ke sk'a tai*) I've been working
on...

The lang has two series of stops,

    p  t  k   (voiceless/aspirated)
    p' t' k'  (ejective - Just two days ago I
               pronounced k' ex utopia and realized I
               finally knew what was meant by 'ejective' !)

where the voiceless voice intervocalically, and (I think) nasalize initially.

and seven vowels:

    a e i u   (e = /E/)
    a* i* u*  ('super-tense', or falsetto, or high tone)

Actually, s /S/ and s* /s/ are systematically vowels, which is quite odd.

For the lang's obTypographicalDifficulty, the asterisks are actually supposed to
be hollow superscript stars (like U+2606, although rings such as å are allowed
in a pinch), and the ejective apostrophe is actually a hollow subscript moon
(like U+263D) (which is actually superscript on the /p/ for space reasons).

Syllable form is (C)V, with insertion of [h] between vowels (so sau* /Sa.u*/
"human" is [Sa.hu*]).

The lang is isolating, head-first, SVO, with disyllabic roots--stuff like s*kE
are systematically disyllabic, and drawn out as [s.kE] (or even [hs.kE], for
real hypercorrection).

...

    *Muke!