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Re: Dallza is the name

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 1, 2003, 7:34
"A. Ingram" wrote:
> While I was reviewing the sounds for my language, I noticed the absence of > a sound equivalent to the letter "b" in English. Is this sound in every > language?
It's pretty common, but it's not present in every language. It is rather unusual to have a /p/ without a /b/, but I don't think that's impossible. I'm assuming you do have /p/, since you didn't mention not having it.
> I would like to set up the grammar for my language, Dallza (that's the name > I decided on), to make it an isolating language, like Chinese. Does anyone > know much about isolating languages? The other types of languages I might > use later. Does an isolating language have to be analytical? Or can it be > synthetic?
Well, "analytic" is pretty much a synonym for "isolating"
> Really, I just need some general information on isolating > laguages, some specifics would be useful, I guess, but there are some > things I'd like to make up for myself.
Well, isolating languages tend to have simple morphology, which means, very few compound words, few affixes. Instead of inflections, other words and/or word order are used. For example, instead of having a past tense, you might have a word that translates as something like "finish", so that to say "I ate the pie", you'd say "I finish eat pie". Since this is an independent word, you may have things between it and the other verb, like "I finish yesterday eat pie" for "I ate the pie yesterday"
> Lastly, I'd like to ask if it is > possible to mix two types of languages. For instance, if I made a language > to have some inflections and be isolating still.
Certainly. There's no such thing as a language that's purely one type or another.
> PS Happy New Year already. :)
Happy New Year! Uatiani uakluu uiauva! -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42