Re: The Grand Master Plan for Germanech, version 1.0

I wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I just thought that I could post the Grand Master Plan for my Romance
> conlang, Germanech, as it is.  I have just finished it; possibly, it
> will undergo later changes, but for now, here it is.
The first of these changes are here; see below.

> Share and enjoy!
>
> Jörg.
>
> The Grand Master Plan for Germanech, version 1.0
>
> (C) 2001 Jörg Rhiemeier
>
> Key:
>
> V:  long vowel
> ->  becomes
> #   word boundary
> $   syllable boundary
> C   any consonant
> V   any (short) vowel
> R   any of {l,r,m,n}
> T   any obstruent
> A   any vowel other than _i_ or _e_
> C*  zero or more consonants
> C+  one or more consonants
> 0   deletion
>
> "a,"o,"u  umlauted vowels (ä,ö,ü)
I should have mentioned that (as you probably already guessed) these
rules operate at the orthographic level, i.e. they produce the written
forms of the words.  The letters are pronounced as follows:

a   [a]
"a  [E] (in some dialects lower than e)
c   [S] before e,i, otherwise [k]
ch  [x] after a,o,u, otherwise [C] (as in German)
cj  [S]
dj  [dZ]
e   [E] in stressed, [@] in unstressed syllables
g   [Z] before e,i, otherwise [k]
gu  [g] before e,i
gj  [Z]
h   [h] in words of Germanic origin, otherwise mute
j   [j] (but see cj,dj,gj,tj)
o   [O]
"o  lower-mid front rounded vowel
ph  [f]
qu  [k] before e,i
tj  [tS]
"u  [y] (high front rounded vowel)
v   [v]
w   [v]
x   [s]
y   [y]
z   [s]

ph, x and y occur mainly in Greek loanwords, e.g. _xylophon_ [sylOfOn].

The remaining letters are straightforward.

Vowel length is not phonemic, but stressed vowels in open syllables are
phonetically somewhat lengthened.

Stress is usually predictable from the Latin source.  If there is only
one vowel other than e in a word (which is the case very often), one can
safely assume that it receives the stress.

There are also a few rules which I had forgotten (it is not easy to come
up with rules which actually produce what one has a more or less vague
idea about what has happened).

> LATIN --> OLD GERMANECH
m -> 0 /_#

> [...]
>
> OLD GERMANECH --> MIDDLE GERMANECH
>
> The rules in this section only apply to unstressed vowels.
>
> [...]
>
> e -> 0 /_#
> e -> 0 /VR_C{V,#}
There are two further deletion rules, namely:

e -> 0 /VR_
e -> 0 /_RV

As you can see, the first one is a more general form of the second of
the two above.

> [...]
...brought to you by the Weeping Elf and the letter "ö"