Re: Newbie says hi

>From: Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
>It has a strange
>writing system too, where the roots are written with an alphabet but the
>suffixes are written with a syllabary, with each sign corresponding to a VC
>combination!
Now THAT's a great idea. I have long thought of what it would be like to use
a mixed writing system like the Egyptians had - partly ideogram, partly
phonetic. I believe the Chinese system is similar.

>I went very far with the same principle: at one time, I thought I found
>*the*
>principle behind a successful auxlang: since all people have different
>phonetic
>inventories, end everyone finds sounds more or less difficult to pronounce,
>the
>best auxlang should have as few sounds as possible. It ended up with 4
>consonants and four vowels! Of course, I had forgotten that for many people
>it's not the sounds themselves but the syllable constraints that were
>important, and to prevent too long words I allowed pretty heavy clusters...
>Always count on me to forget half of what I'm doing ;))) .
There are extreme natural languages with minimum vowels or consonants: for
instance the extinct Caucasian language Ubykh, which had only three vowels.
I believe Hawaiian has around the fewest consonants. It definitely reduces a
language's ability to create varied lexemes. For auxiliary languages it is
definitely a good idea to reduce the number of phonemes; but it should be
done sensibly and with reference to the reality of the natlangs out there;
we need to learn from the example of Schleyer who created Volapük without an
R, replacing all R's with L's, because the Chinese don't have an R - only to
find that the Chinese DO have an R :).

> > 4) "Ruman", probably the one I am going to have most fun reviving. It is
> > a
> > fictional Romance language, on the "what would have happened if there
> > had
> > been another country which developed an X type of language" principle,
> > which
> > I see many people have followed with their ficlangs. I imagined a
> > small
> > central European country called Talina that spoke Ruman, and that I
> > was
> > going to write a story about it (including interacting with other
> > European
> > countries and languages). Never got round to it of course... probably
> > won't
> > now, but it might be nice to revamp Ruman to a workable level on the
> > Net,
> > including some minor "pretend history" background. It was good with
> > Ruman to
> > get away from the common IAL obsession with regularity, and to have fun
> > with
> > artificial 'naturalistic' irregularity in imitation of French,
> > Spanish,
> > Italian etc. :) N.B. Ruman, being a fictional language, is not to be
> > confused with any of the auxlang projects that involve reviving Latin
> > or
> > interrelating Romance languages (Interlingua, LSF etc.)
> >
>
>Funny, it looks quite like my Reman, also a fictional Romance language
>(although I never even evolved a culture for them). When I first designed
>it, I
>had also thought it could be spoken somewhere in Central Europe. But when I
>saw
>how it developped, I realised that it would need complete isolation and I
>scrapped that idea.
Talina (actually Tallin in English) is a small country east of Switzerland,
west of Austria, north of Italy, and south of Germany, and no, it's not
Liechtenstein :). The main influence on Ruman was Celtic, just as with
Rumansch, French, Galician and High German. (However TBH that doesn't come
out much in the sound changes - it's more like Italian.)

>Funny that Indonesian seems to attract many conlangers. Maybe because it's
>the
>most successful conlang of all times ;))) .
I presume you are referring to the fact that Indonesian was kind of
invented? That it was a modified form of Malay (Bahasa Melayu), but that
nobody spoke any such thing until the Indonesian authorities promoted it?

> > 7) Similarly to Tipikyero, I have had a sense of a language very Sinitic
> > in
> > phonology and some aspects of syntax (extremely isolating, etc.) Again,
> > the
> > idea here was a story involving a new language - this one would be
> > science
> > fiction and set in the future.
> >
>
>I have a 'Dragon Language' which has the same features (except that it's
>spoken
>nowadays ;)) ), but I never really worked on it. It was just an idea for a
>story I never finished writing (and like anything I do, it's not dead. It's
>just in prolonged sleep :)) ).
I forgot to mention: this story (which has no plot yet, just a feeling), is
not only set in the future, but in space. The beings are not necessarily
human, or are maybe only descended from humans; there is not necessarily any
descent from real Chinese.

>The language is called Inuktitut (or at least, the most prominent of those
>languages is). The term 'Eskimo' is a bit insulting.
Yes I have heard that; yet it is the best-known word for identifying that
people to people generally.

>As for a language like you describe, there's always my Notya, my
>"neither-verb-
>nor-noun" language :)) . It has all the features you describe. It doesn't
>even
>have anything like particles or pre/postpositions. All the words belong to
>the
>same category. Even inflections are very few: 2 suffixes which can appear
>in
>two different states, thus making four suffixes and that's all. 3 rules of
>grammar are enough to explain all the grammar there is. The rest is purely
>lexical :)) .
That is *fascinating*! I will definitely check it out in the archives.


>You can always begin by presenting some of your work on the list! We're
>always
>hungry for reading about new conlangs :)))
I think that's probably the way to do it.

>I'm especially interested about
>your Ruman. I wonder how near or far from my Reman it is ;)) .
I think I will probably emphasise Ruman since I enjoy it more than the
others.

Thanks Christophe, à bientôt!
(In Ruman, "Gracias Christophe, te rever!" (see you again) or "A sequito!"
(until next time))

Mat


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