Re: An arabo-romance conlang?

> On  Mon, 19 Feb 2001 Fabian <lajzar@...> wrote :
>
> > Re: An arabo-romance conlang?
> >> I was looking for Maltese material on the web but have only found a
> >> few snippits so far. However, it appears that Maltese developed a
> >> special class of verbs for Romance loans that wouldn't fit into any
> >> of the Arabic patterns. If this is true it might provide some
> >> suggestions for a> suggestions for arabised Romance.
>
> > That's only half-true. Maltese treats italian/english verbs as class 1
> > arabic verbs with a weak third (ie final) (ie J, but not W or Gh)
> > consonant.
>
> <j> = [j], <gh> = Arab. 'ayn ? or ghayn ? or both ???
In modern Maltese, the gh letter is essentially silent, except in a few very
rare words where it occurs finally, and has the [x] sound (as in 'loch
ness'). Most words where it would occur finally replace it with an
apostrophe to indicate that it is silent. The etymology is definitely
Arabic, though I couldn't say which Arabic letter it represents.

> Could you give some examples, as I don't quite understand how these
> words were adapted, did the result look Arabic or Romance?
The general rule is...

For English verbs, add -ja to the end.
Prefix it with iC- if it does not begin with a vowel.

Italian loan versb all end with one of
-a, -issa, -izza, -ixxa
Prefix as above

In general, the dictionary form looks pretty similar to the L1 form. The
inflected forms have suffixes, those Italian -ixx- infixes get dropped in
some cases, and all have single consonant prefixes in the imperfect tense.
They are not productive in the way that Arabic triliterals are.

> > There are some oddities within this rule, but it generally works. The
> > exeptions have rules of their own - this is one of the few areas
> > where Maltese can claim a modicum of regularity.
>
> I didn't realise it was as bad as that.
Well, Maltese and verb/noun paradigms reminds me of the CS students joke.
Paraphrased...

We love paradigms, which is why we have so many of them.

To whit, for verbs...

10 basic verb paradigms from Arabic.
subtract 1, as class 4 is obsolete in Maltese
Add a half dozen or so to account for weak consonants
add one each for English, and Italian loan verbs
add another one for Italian -ixxa verbs
I may have missed a couple of paradigms somewhere

How many languages can claim 18 verb paradigms?

Nouns can have masculine, feminine, plural, and mass forms.

A half dozen or so from Arabic.

From English:
-s
-is

From Italian
-a  > -jiet (not strictly It, but very common with It words)
-   > -i
-ku > -ci

Plus a couple of others that are rather obscure. Even loan words
occassionally use Arabic suffixes and word shapes to form plurals. FOr
example:

Kangaroo
\pd noun
\pdl n m
\pdv kangarù
\pdl n pl
\pdv kangarwijiet

Ink
\pd noun
\pdl n f
\pdv linka
\pdv inka
\pdl n pl
\pdv linek
\pdv inek

Oh, adjectives inflect like nouns, except there is no infixing with them.
Other parts of speach don't inflect, although assimilation is very common,
and almost mandatory with prepositions, demonstratives and articles. Err,
article.

> > btw, who is making this arabesque/romance conlang? And do you want
> > help? Im kinda partial to Maltese you see.
>
> Christophe, I think, and Steg is looking at doing a Judeo-Romance
> lang.
Incidentally, my Maltese dictionary now has around 9000 headwords. I guess I
had some spare time while I was in Korea. Alas, I don't have any webspace to
put it up now. The file size is currently sitting at around a meg, zipped
Shoebox format.

--
Fabian
Find your enemy's weakest point, and destroy it.
But remember who your own worst enemy is.