Re: Problems with Ayeri

Carsten Becker wrote:

> What disturbs me a little from time to time is that this language has
> run away over the time changing to something Quenya-like sounding. Ayeri
> has become too flowing, and has less m's, n's and ng's and more l's, y's
> and r's than I actually wanted.
It's my own fault, but Kash doesn't sound quite the way I'd like it to,
either.  Too many [j], [J] and [S].  /j S/ due to conjugation/inflection,
/J/ due to ill-considered sound change < *N.  The only recourse is to find
another dialect or distant relative....
It is remarkable, isn't it, how almost all natlangs do manage to sound nice.

>I don't know whether to change this or
> not, because like Ayeri is at the moment, it sounds nice for me either.
> I'd suggest:
>
>    c        =>   k
>    s        =>   /s/ everywhere
>
>    -in      =>   -pan
>    -on      =>   -gon
>    -aris    =>   -sung
>    sira     =>   misung
>    -lei     =>   -nan
>    le       =>   ney
> (snip etc.)
Yes, with minor exceptions those are unrealistic as sound changes.
Maybe consider the idea that at some point Ayeri was overwhelmed by contact
with another (unrelated??) language, and ended up borrowing a lot of
morphology ( though that's difficult to justify too ;-( )

>    * "Tay" is always put before names. This is kind of a definite
> article.   ???
Many Indonesian langs. have a "personal article" like that, usually not in
direct address, however. For different levels of politeness too. And often
used with pet's names, and epithets e.g. "sang merah-putih" Art.-HON.
red-white = the national flag.