Re: New Language

Nik Taylor wrote:
> The last few days, I've been sketching out a new language, the Traders'
> Language (kok Nak zox li"mbu).
Which should be kok Nak zox Li"mbu.  _Lim_ means "Trader" (not "one who
trades", but rather, a member of the Trading People, "one who trades" is
_pe"gni"wak_, from _pegni-_ "one who" and _wak_, "to trade".  A trader
is a caste in the Trading People, but the whole race is referred to as
Traders by most other peoples.

> Nouns have two cases, nominative and oblique.
The oblique, incidentally, derived from the genetive and the accusative
in the older language.

In Old Traderslang, plural was indicated by -i, while genetive was -a
and accusative was -u; the plurals of those were -ya and -yu (later -a:
and -u:) respectively.  The consonant mutations are caused by being
intervocalic.  Thus, the old _peki_ (persons) became _pexu_ in the acc.
singular and _pexu:_ in the acc. plural; when short final vowels were
lost, word-final consonants changed.  All stops and fricatives became
voiceless, while -w and -y became -f (thru -v) and -ch (thru -jh).
Between vowels, nasals became nasal-stop sequences (but -mbi, -mba, and
-mbu all became -m, as with all nasals), stops to fricative, voiced
fricatives to approximates (thus gh --> y; when -u/-a were lost, then -y
became -ch), while voiceless fricatives were voiced.  Later, long vowels
were shortened, and the genetive plural was absorbed into the accusative
plural.

> Cases are indicated by particles.  The following cases use the oblique
> form of the noun:
> Accusative: ne"
> Genetive: zo
> Dative: ve"
> Benefactive: ne"
> The following use the nominative form, and have seperate singular and
> plural forms
> Commitative: cho/cho"
> Instrumental: fle"/fle
> Passive agent: ga/ga"
These were originally prepositions, some taking genetive, some
accusative, and some nominative.

> General (no meaning): -x
From _kog_ meaning "the"
> This: -n(ta)/-n(ta")
From -m, which in turn was from mak (this) + -ta (here)
> That near: -f(a)/-f(a")
From -fwa from -f, which in turn was from pin (that near) (Vpin --> Vfin
--> Vf) plus -wa (there)
> That far: -vno/-vno"
Oops, should've been -vne"/-vne
From -fne < -f + ne (yonder)
> The: -s
From _sol_ (yon)

> That near: pinwa
Er, that should be _pinwa"_

--
"If all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were
sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed" -
Benjamin Franklin
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files/
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ #: 18656696
AIM screen-name: NikTailor