Re: Time to play Identify Those Phones, and a bit of a pharyngeal question

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000 13:17:49 +0100 Sven Sommerfeld
<sven.sommerfeld@...> writes:
> No high vowels before a pharayngeal
> Some people say that pharyngeal sounds require [-high] or even
> [+low] sounds
> before or after them, just because they are [+low] themselves. Would
> be kind
> of an assimilation process here.
>   -Sven Sommerfeld
.

Wow, this explains something in Rokbeigalmki!
You can take a word for a natural occurance, and turn it into an unusual,
dangerous, generally-concieved-as-as-wide, huge version of it.
The way you do this is by making the word a palindrome, and inserting /H/
with the final vowel between it.

gal = wave
galahhalag = tsunami

(in Stiigiyus's time the palindromic forms have been shortened in regular
speech to a single binding vowel "galalag".  In writing they are still
written with a tilde-lengthened vowel, and read accordingly "galãlag"
/gala::lag/.  However, warning signs and the shout that goes along with
them when you see a tsunami and want everyone to run away are still the
original full "galahhalag" form.)

there's also:

ur = fire (like a torch or bonfire...larger than a flame and generally
used for something)
uroohhooru = wildfire

The /u/ has been lowered slightly to /U/, which i did automatically when
creating the form, without thinking about it.  This also has the
different forms "uroohooru" / "urõõru" / "urooru".


-Stephen (Steg)
 "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom."