Day of the Republic.

Den 13. aug. 2008 kl. 22.30 skreiv Carsten Becker:

> ¹) When I made the calendar bit, I coined names for the months
> without any etymologies. Lately I have been thinking whether I
> shouldn't just enumerate the months. I'd be tempted to use names
> from the Ayeri pantheon, but I have not worked on something like
> that yet too. "Mesangan" however plainly means "Fourteenth".
Some peoples do just enumerate their months and/or weekdays, and I
think it's charmless. But it helps if you have charming number like
you seem to do I guess.

Anyhow I'm just back from a brief hospitalisation after my excesses
during my celebrations of Tun Rantem, the Day of the Republic. I
didn't have time to bring my laptop when I went there, but I was able
to browse the Urianian material Henqrik published (thanks to him)
from one of our relays using my phone, so I was able to spend some
time resolving a handful of problems/exploring new ideas regarding
Urianian morphology and phonology. Thus I have removed the TAN from
the header.

1. I am considering making the masc.&neut. gen.sg. of nouns with
roots of more than one syllable unmarked. Thus Day of the People will
be Tun Temja, while the Day of the Republic is Tun Rantem as above.
Stress in Urianian is initial as a general rule. Roots with more than
one syllable however will shift stress to penultimate in a word if an
ending containing more than one phoneme is attached, for example as
in "Cuvam ran'temat" - "I'm coming from the republic", while in
"Briam 'rantema" - "I love the republic", for example, the stress
remains on the 'ran' syllable. I think the language retains the
Urianian "feel" better this way. However, I don't think the m&n
gen.sg. ending fits so well in this pattern, and so I had the idea to
drop it. It can be done without too much confusion, I think. And some
areal influence from Celtic may be construed as an explanation.

2. I am changing the loc.pl. of f. m. & n. nouns respectively from
esi, usi, usi to ei, vi, vi. Thus, "I'm looking at the stars" will be
"Ajam tirvi", which has a much nicer Urianian ring to it than "Ajam
tirusi" in my opinion. The s is a vulnerable sound in Urianian. It's
already lost initially before consonant clusters and internally
before any consonant. Finally it turns into a t. So why not do
something to it intervocally as well, like in several other
languages. This also gives me the benefit of creating some
phonological clashes producing mutations that lead to a few nice,
quirky irregularities. Mainly the v will lose its voice after b, n
and m, and will turn the n into an m. Also, a final v or cluster in
the root will turn the v in the ending into a u. Thus, seb = top, but
sepfi = at the tops; tun = day, but tumfi = at the days; gem = bay,
but gemfi = at the bays; geln = rise, but gelnui = at the rises; giv
= homecoming, but givui = at the homecomings.

3. Actually my biggest delight was the decision to make final v's
voiceless. This finally gives me a source for the -if ending I have
seen in a small number of items from my list of names. It's a 3.
person singular past subjunctive. Thus for example the relatively
well-known surname Zirfif (the ending exclusively occurs in surnames)
means "he/she may have worked/fashioned" or "ought to have worked/
fashioned". Odd choice for a name, but perhaps his ancestor took it
out of remorse from having missed a day of work or failed a task or
something, what do I know?

4. Finally, also in order to achieve a better Urianian feel to it, I
have simplified some personal pronouns: 3p.dat.: formerly (e)mat, now
mat; all persons plural genitive, formerly esan, usan, isan, now all
san; 3rd person ablative, formerly imat and (e)mat, now both mat.
2p.abl. umit>mit; 3p.inst. (e)mut>mut. This gives me a few homophones
among them, but it won't give me any problems that the context can't
solve, I think. Besides, as I didn't have any homophones among the
personal pronouns before, it makes my language look more natural. And
the monosyllables fit better into the Urianian pattern. The only
disyllabic personal pronouns I have now are 1p.nom. numit and 1p.dat.
nemi. I can live with those. Though the former ought perhaps to be
nunt...

LEF