Re: Streaming foreign languages was Re: Maltese Phonology

From: "Thomas Leigh" <thomas@...>

> So is Kabardian the same thing as Circassian? I love the name
"Circassian",
> but for some reason it always makes me think of the Cardassians from Star
> Trek. :)
I assumed it was Kabardian since it's the most-spoken NW Caucasian language.
Circassian is actually two sister languages, Kabardian and Adyghe.
Circassian, Abkhaz-Abaza and Ubykh are the three branches of the family, and
Ubykh is extinct as of 1992. Many consonants, few vowels.

Ubykh, not surprisingly, gave me SUCH inspiration for Tech. Except Tech has
a lot more vowels.

Cardassian? Is the language invented yet?

> I met a Circassian woman once, in a shop in Turkey, when I was there on
> holiday in 1990. All I remember about her was that she had really
stunning,
> incredible blue eyes and that she made it explicitly clear that she was
> Circassian and not Turkish. I couldn't get her to speak any Circassian to
> me, though. She might not have known the language, I suppose; she was
> probably in her 20's, and I don't know how many people of her/my/our
> generation speak the language. I did get a one-armed Kurdish carpet
salesman
> to recite a poem in Kurdish for me, though, which was pretty cool. Kurdish
> is a great language. I love all those /xw/'s.
Ah, the old /xw/ phoneme from Old Persian, which just merged with /x/ in
Farsi. Circassian does have /X_w/ as a phoneme, I believe.

> Thomas
~Danny~ (6 AM and already the boy ain't right.)