Re: CHAT: Sitting by your fire (and a very brief de-lurk)

Welcome back, Peter!!

Peter Clark wrote:

>         Well, I still don't intend to de-lurk, but I suppose I might as
> well say what my particular contributions to the Secret Vice are. My
> personal language, Enamyn, has been under construction ever since the very
> beginning. It was birthed as a philosophical language, much like Ro (this
> was before I ever knew about Ro, or that other conlangs besides Esperanto
> existed), but I quickly realized the impracticality of trying to force a
> meaning to every sound. So in the past four years, Enamyn (which has also
> gone by the name Nonami--"No-name" in ages when I had not yet decided on
> name) has been undergoing radical, even violent, changes. Now, Enamyn's
> stated goal is to be archane, baroque, and encrusted with centuries of
> irregularities.
Bravo.  I utterly approve of that goal.  Arcane, baroque, and encrusted
with centuries of irregularities... that is precisely Teonaht's aim as
well.  I might add that its most admired written forms strive as well
for an unnaturalness of expression--which the T. consider elegant.

About the only aspect of its grammar that has not changed
> significantly is the noun tense. That is, the noun is inflected for
> tense; the subject receives the actual tense marker, while any other nouns
> in the sentance receive a relative marker, indicating whether they are in
> the past, present, or future of the subject. Currently, I am working on
> the orthography, which has slightly Hebraic flavor to it--so far I am very
> pleased with the results. There will be a second, rarer script in the
> style of the Classical Mongolian vertical script, but that can wait a
> while.
This definitely sounds baroque.  Maybe you should post an .ra file, as
you did for Teonaht.  You, after all, were the one who so eloquently
defended the internet as the perfect site for conlangers... if they'd
only use all of its multimedia.


>         Have been thinking about inventing a spouse language. :) Something
> I can specifically speak with my (soon-to-be, as of December) wife. Enamyn
> will probably be far too complex for even its humble creator to speak with
> a fair degree of fluency, but a simpler language, with simple
> phonology and morphology, might be interesting. Assuming, of course, that
> she is interested. Has anyone done this before?
I have tried to teach Teonaht to my spouse (congratulations, btw, on
your upcoming wedding!) but we got as far as body parts and that was
about it.

A language capable of
> expressing, "Come over here and rescue me from this dreadful bore! If I
> have to listen to him talk for another minute, I shall have to kill
> him!" Such a language could be immensely useful. However, it would most
> likely turn into a Russian/Japanese hybrid: she will teach me Japanese,
> and I will teach her Russian, and since neither of us are native speakers
> in either language, the results will be most interesting. ;>
>         Well, I need to get my day started, but I just thought I would add
> my two kopecks to discussion. We now return you to your regularly
> scheduled message: "Re: CHAT: Has anyone written a poem in Hittite? was
> Re: RE: Uses of the subjunctive in PIE, was: RE: USAGE: Trigger articles
> in proto-Austronesian languages". Thank you, and have a nice day.
>         :Peter
You have one, too, Peter!
Sally
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SALLY CAVES
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves (bragpage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html (T. homepage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else)
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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