Re: Refining Minza

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:57:27 -0500, Herman Miller wrote:
>
>> Jeff Rollin wrote:
>>
>>> Why not consolidate some of those changes into different dialects,
>>> instead?
>>> You could also have them make small grammatical changes, or changes that
>>> depend on sociolect, e.g. extending the use of perfect tenses to cover all
>>> past tenses in speech, or by lower class (Minzans?), as in French.
>> It might be best to give Minza a place in one of the worlds where my
>> fictional languages are spoken, but there are problems with that. Minza
>> has borrowed words from languages spoken all over the place, some in
>> worlds that don't have any contact with each other. What I could do, I
>> suppose, is identify a core Minza language without all the borrowings
>> from the other languages, and expand on that.
>
> Minza could be an auxlang in your conworld, which has developed dialects
> during centuries of use in an area spanning several planetary systems.
> (The auxlang purpose also explains why the language is called "Minza".
> 'Bridge [language]' is a good name for an auxlang, isn't it?)
Some of these worlds *literally* don't have any contact with each other
(direct or indirect). Well, there's no reason I couldn't change that,
but Minza has words for things that don't exist in the places where
"minza" means "bridge".

Originally Minza was based on Lindiga, for which I haven't had a
specific place in mind, but it's moved away from Lindiga somewhat and
borrowed words from Nimrina and Kirezagi, in addition to many others.
Probably the easiest thing to do would be to find a home for Lindiga and
to have Minza be based on some closely related language. The Nimrina and
Kirezagi borrowings could be altered, as I've altered the words that
were originally distorted borrowings from modern-day human languages.