CONLANG Digest - 4 Sep 2000 to 5 Sep 2000 (#2000-242)

>ObConLang: Do y'all deal with butchered foreigners' names in your
>conlangs?  :-)  By some strange coincidence, my name is entirely
>pronounceable in Chevraqis.  My boyfriend's name is a nightmare (but
>then, his last name is Betzwieser, which is a nightmare in Korean, too).
To lyanjenize foreign words, they just say it as close as they can. There's
no real formal procedure. They always take the word from its home language;
e.g. they'd lyanjenize the word "Oesterreich" instead of "Austria". Earth
scientific words  (including names of animals and plants) are taken from
Latin, and for some reason names of months and weekdays are from English.

Some samples (* = proposed) - please excuse any transcription errors; I've
only taken phonology as part of an intro course!!

Masiu Mikláklin = Matthew McLauchlin
/'m{sju mIk'l{klIn/ = /'m{Tju: m'glAkl@n/ or, more formally, /m{k'laxlan/

Ínternet = internet
/'intErnet/ = /'Int3rnet/

ínglic = English language
/'inglIS/ = /'INglIS/

*Íngland = England
/'ingland/ = /'iNgl@nd/
(compare ínglanda = English person; ínglande = Englishwoman; ínglando =
Englishman)

esperanto = Esperanto
/EspEr'{nto/ = /EspEr'anto/

Tera = Terra [Earth]
/'tera/ = /'tEra/

*fransé = français [French language]
/fran'se/ = /fra~'se/

*kórvus brakirínkos = Corvus brachyrhynchos [common crow]
/'korvus brakI'rinkos/ = /'korvus brakirinkos/

idjániueri = January
/id'Z{njuErI/ = /'dZ{njueri/
máretc = March
/'m{retS/ = /mArtS/
(Note the use of vowels to break up the impossible clusters /rtS/ and
word-initial /dZ/.)

pébrueri = February
/'pebruErI/ = /'febrUeri/
(note substitution of voiceless bilabial stop for nonexistent voiceless
labiodental fricative)

*Moreal = Montréal
/morE{l/ = V=/mVre'{l/

Senca Efel = Tour Eiffel [Eiffel Tower]
/E'fel/ = /e'fEl/




> > And about a IE-like 3-gender system: is it common, or a peculiarity of
>our
> > language-family? Are there other families with this kind of gender
>system?
Lyanjen doesn't have grammatical gender, but it does have a Latin-like
declension system in which nouns of one gender (in Lyanjen's case, semantic
gender) fall into one declension, along with other words. For example, in
Latin, the feminine "puella, rosa, lingua", etc, all feminine, fall into a
certain declension, but so does the masculine "agricola".

Similarly, in Lyanjen, múnie (queen), mañe (mother), lyere (woman),  nitre
(girl), etc, etc, all fall into one declension; so do compounds like izade
(wife = spouse + fem). But since that declension includes all nouns that end
in unstressed monophthongal e or i, it also includes words like k'abe
(blessing).


Blessed be,                        Écartons ces romans
Matt McLauchlin                          qu'on appèle systèmes,
GM18, Montreal, Canada             Et pour nous éléver
English/français/esperanto               descendons dans nous-mêmes.
icq: 4420218                               -Voltaire
http://www.crosswinds.net/~montrealais

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