Re: Are any of you working on a conlang that is based off ofnon-indo-european languages?

On Thu, 30 May 2002, Balazs Sudar wrote:
>
> An important thing about Hungarian: I don't know any other languages, where the
> suffix for a word is chosen following phonological rules :)
> When I say: I go to the house: Odamegyek a házHOZ.
> Or: I go to the fridge. Odamegyek a hûtõHÖZ.
> Or: I go to the chair. Odamegyek a székHEZ.
> I tried to use this rule, too, but I'm not able to create so much suffixes (at the moment).
This is called vowel harmony in English. Most of the Uralic languages have
it, though not all, notably Estonian, and not every Uralic language has a
vowel harmony system as developed as Hungarian or Finnish. I know also
that Altaic languages (Turkish, Mongol and Kazak at the least) have vowel
harmony.

The simplest way to explain it, using your examples above.

The allative suffix in Hungarian is, basically, _-hoz_. This can vary
depending on the vowel harmony/root vowel in the word in question. For
example:

_ha'z_ (house) has a back vowel. Thus it will take the suffix with a back
vowel in it, in this case, _-hoz_, resulting in _ha'zhoz_.

_hu"to"_ (cooler, fridge), has a front rounded vowel. Thus it takes the
corresponding suffix, _-ho:z_: _hu"to"ho:z_

same applies with _sze'k_ (chair). It has a mid (or front unrounded)
vowel, so it will take _-hez_ - _sze'khez_


---ferko