Re: Tong-cho-la

Sorry - I accidently hit send before I had comleted my response.

>Tongchola is not based on Ygyde, and I don't know if it's
>better than Ygyde. What I set out to do can be summed up in
>the following:
<snip>

Thanks for clarifying, though I admit I'm a bit disturned that someone other
than yourself (the author of Tong-cho-la) previously replied with a very
different explanation, my response was based solely on that 1ast
explanation. My apology to you and the list.

>- Solution?  Remove the CVC roots.  But I don't want to do that,
>and for two reasons. First, having them gives you many more possible
>syllables (and therefore root words).  Second, if you have less
>possible syllables, words in general must be longer than otherwise >needed.
Agreed. One of the goals in my 2nd conlang, Bez Dis'z, was to stick with
monosllyablic roots as long as possible. As none on my conlangs has been
intended as an auxlang, wherether a phoneme was difficult or easy for any
speaker of a natlang was irrelevant.

As for word length, I initially had trouble retaining my own ear to the
frequency of longer words in Russian - at first I had a tendency to break
words into smaller units, resulting in my hearing bursts of gibberish.

>Solution? I don't think there is one. But I would propose that
>those who wish to choose effective roots should examine some of
>the languages out there that have been dealing with this problem
>for thousands of years and see what they use most often. It might
>not be the best way, but it's one that we know works.
Well, a concensus (needed to avoid ethnocentrism) might yield a core set of
roots, but I personally question whether this would be comprehensive or
exhaustive of the potential roots. Of course, it can be left open ended to
be completed as needs as found through individual's usage of the language.

>3) The words don't seem familiar. To someone who speaks a European
>language, it leaves out a whole array of possible sounds and puts
>the ones it has together in an unusual way.  And I imagine speakers
>of other languages would have similar views. (I don't know enough
>Putonghua to fake a native view yet...)
>
>- Solution?  Well, you can't please them all.
The question of cognates applies only if you intend "public" usage of the
language (e.g. an auxlang). Persons speaking Romance and Germanic languages
will find Chinese, Japanese roots as unfamilar and vise-versa. Same for
speakers Finno-Urgic, Bantu, Polynesian etc. families.


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