Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>
>
>Wow! Writing it manually? Well, I'm impressed.
Ok, I lied, i copied the entire book by xerox machine. Only because my
library doesnt own it :)

> Personally, for both Romance
>conlangs I have (Reman and the yet-unnamed one :) ) I didn't go through
>this
>process. I didn't think really of sound changes (well, a little more with
>my
>last project than with Reman,
Well, for me, since i'm working with my own, i thought the best idea for
me was to figure out all the sound changes I want, and record them. This
way, i can look over the common ones, then look over my additional ones,
and come up with something different from actual romance langs. I can see
what these languages do, and then try and think of a way that's plausible
that I can do to make it veer away from those languages.

>but still I don't have a list of Vulgar Latin
>words - is there one available on the web?
I dont know. I didnt really look because i'm working on sound changes.
But, there is a book on Spanish language history that I borrowed from my
school's library ( "A History of the Spanish Language" - Ralph Penny),
that has a small glossary of Vulgar Latin words in the back (it marks long
vowels, unmarked vowels in this book are short)

>But I'm sure if I wanted to go back to Latin trying
>to find the sound changes that made it evolve into my conlangs, I would
>find a
>sensible way of explaining why it evolved like that (I'm quite consistent
>in my
>work, that's why I'm nearly sure I could do that).
>
I didnt want to be influenced too much by modern Romance Langs. I do
however look at the modern languages to get ideas, and see the rules in
action  (i like the Spanish vowel system out of all the ones i've looked
at).
>
>
>Why not adding nasal vowels? (I know, some other Romance languages do it
>too,
>but if you compare Portuguese and French, their ways of handling nasals
>are
>quite different and I'm sure you could find a third way)
Well, i dont really like nasal vowels that much  :) (dont get me wrong,
the process both langs took to get to their nasals is interesting, but i
just dont prefer it )

>You could also find
>some changes that would reintroduce vowel length (for instance by changing
>diphtongs into long simple vowels, instead of short ones, or by dropping
>the
>consonnant between two identical vowels). That would be something really
>different from the Romance languages I know (I wonder about Romanian, I
>don't
>know a lot about it, and its orthography makes it difficult to know how
>everything's pronounced).
I'll have to think about this. I already dropped d's intervocalically
(it's already producing some pretty words, I think: cantado > cantáo
/kantau/
>
With long simple vowels, are they just pronounced the same as the short
ones, but drawn out longer? I'm always confused as to long and short
vowels, because what I gather from English, it's not really the same
>
>
>
>That's something different! I like it.
There have been a few more changes (i'll probably put them on a web page,
instead of trying to post them here, because it's a VERY long list) so,
some of it's probably changed. I'll have to try to work on it this week
since I am off for a week on vacation.
>
>Sounds okay with me, but wouldn't they become /w/ better than /u/, or is
>it a
>typo?
Typo there. I decided that the v (and b, since at least in Spanish, both
are pronounced the same) does in fact become /w/ intervocalically, so
PLUVIA becomes:

-PLUVIA > pluuia /pluwia/

It's spawned at least one interesting sounding word: NOVE > nueve > nueue
/nwewe/  (if I do in fact use the Spanish vowel system (i.e. use
diphthongs)
>
>> - double l ...not sure if I'll go with /lj/ or just /j/, I like the
>> Latin
>> American way with /j/, but i'm still undecided.
>>
>
>Why not having both possible? (two different accents, or some very used
>words
>would have /j/, while more learned ones would have /lj/, or depending on
>the
>position in the word...)
Well, i've been leaning towards a personal lang with this only, but i do
kind of like the idea of having it a plausible Romance Lang (Problem is,
where do I put them? In the mediterranean, i have to think up who they
would have come into contact with, if they were conquered, by who, and
also, i'd have to think about those influences.).

My work is already cut out for me as it is, and with school, it's not that
easy to just sit down ant think about all this each day. (I havent even
done anything for the lang in the past 4 or 5 days). So, if personal, i
would only really be pronouncing ll one way, but if an actual lang, i'd
have dialects most likely.
>
>> - Intervocalic T and P: t becomes d, which then drops. p changes to b.
>>
>
>Would this /b/ become /u/?
Yes, i remedied this later when I sat down and thought more on the sound
changes.
>
>> - initial PL-, CL-, FL-  show no changes: PLUVIA > pluia
>>
>> - word final nasals become /N/: CUM > con > cong
>>
>
>Sounds like Southern French.
I'm actually trying to make people wonder "Hmm......Southern French does
this, yet it does a lot like Spanish does that. Where have I heard this
language before?". In effect, a kind of language mutt that makes people
guess.  I wasnt sure about the word final n's becoming /N/. But as I
thought about it, the more I started to like the idea.
>
>
>
>Brace yourself! Good luck! I don't know if I could do such a work...
>
Yes, i'm finding it's a shit load (as i say a lot) of work! What have I
gotten myself into? I guess i'm being an ultra perfectionist on this
conlang here. Much more work on the phonology than I have done for
Saalangal (that was simple, I didnt have to worry about the vowel system
too much). Most of the work seems to be in the vowel system, since a lot
of the distinctivness in the Romance Langs is through the vowels.

Of course, with Saalangal, i still work on it, but getting inspired by
reading about the Romance Langs sparked the conlanging bug again.