Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

En réponse à Barry Garcia <Barry_Garcia@...>:

> Well, I pretty much copied the entire "From Latin to Romance in Sound
> charts"(um......by writing the rules manually......yeah). Anyway, the
> following vowel changes occur in my romance lang (not too different from
> the way Spanish does things, but a little different). I've been working
> on
> some sound changes I like and reconsidering the ones I posted about
> before. But, it's a lot of work (at least in my mind). So it's been slow
> going......
>
Wow! Writing it manually? Well, I'm impressed. 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, but still I don't have a list of Vulgar Latin
words - is there one available on the web? - and I'm not writing down sound
changes), but more of correspondances between my conlangs and other Romance
languages I know (namely French, Spanish, a little of Italian and bits of
Portuguese and Provençal). 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).

> Changes:
>
> - I'm going to cheat and rip off the Spanish vowel system (I'm ALL about
> the easy way out. Besides i'm not sure as to where it could go, other
> than
> the way the other languages do it, but, i prefer the way Spanish does
> it).
>  However, can anyone on the list give me an idea of the ways the vowels
> could have gone, that aren't like the other romance languages?
>
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) 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 decided just to follow the rest of the romance languages and change
> au
> to /o/.
>
> - d intervocalically and finally drops: cantado > cantao, ciudad > ciuá
> /Swa/
>
These two changes could lead to long vowels, as I said earlier :) .

> - s + /j/ > /Sj/: cielo > /Sjelo/ (unsure as to how I should do the
> orthography)
>
> - au becomes /o/, but there will be "learned" words added in that keep
> the
> au sound.
>
> - c before front vowels is pronounced as /s/.
>
> - nn, gn, /nj/, mn, /mnj/ become /Nj/, written as ñg: ANNO > añgo,
> CALUMNIA > caloñga, SOMNIU > sueñgo
>
That's something different! I like it.

> - intervocalic b and v become /u/: CABALLU > cauallo. If it follows a u,
> it drops (or is that assimilate?): PLUVIA > pluvia > pluuia > pluia
> (plausible? Yes? No?)
>
Sounds okay with me, but wouldn't they become /w/ better than /u/, or is it a
typo?

> - 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...)

> - Intervocalic T and P: t becomes d, which then drops. p changes to b.
>
Would this /b/ become /u/?

> - initial PL-, CL-, FL-  show no changes: PLUVIA > pluia
>
> - word final nasals become /N/: CUM > con > cong
>
Sounds like Southern French.

> - PT becomes t as in Spanish.  P´T , P'D, B'T, V'T (where the apostrophe
> represents a vowel that dropped out), you get ud or d as in Spanish. BUT
> the rule where d drops if intervocalically comes into play: DUBITA >
> dubda
> > duda > dúa, CIVITATE > cibdat > ciudad > ciuá
>
>
> There's more, but well....it's getting confusing! Ay....so many things
> to
> think about! I think i'll go through the copies of the sound charts I
> scanned from that book and go step by step that way.
>
Brace yourself! Good luck! I don't know if I could do such a work...

Christophe.