thanks and name

   Just a quick note to say (in front of everyone!):

   Thanks A LOT to Peter Clark and Dirk Elzinga (BTW, I'm a fan of Tepa)
for helping me hammer our phonology for my new lang, which is named
Taalannin. Pronounced /'tO.l@n.nIn/

   Fun derivational notes on the name:

   Taalannin < tal 'tree' + 'ra 'speak' + -en 'agent nominal, -er' + -in
'stative verb/adjectival suffix'
    Which is used nominatively to mean something like "that of the
Tree-speakers".

   The 'r' of ra assimilates to the l of tal.
   The 'aa' arises from vocalisation of the l in tal due to heavy syllable
rules. Heavy syllables are open syllables (except in monosyllables), so
closing liquids and n cause compensatory lengthening, which then develops
into a new vowel. /al/ > /a:/ > aa /O/. Other closing consonants have
different effects. A closing m, for instance, would be vocalized to a u,
and cause a diphthong to develop.
   The 'e' of -en elides after a vowel.
   The 'n' of -en doubles to close a previous light (unstressed) syllable.

   I want to add that for about 15 minutes I thought it would end up as
Taalassin, which terrified me because of it's similarity to Talossan. Then
I realized I was trying to use the verbal noun of ra 'speak' (which is ras
/ra:s/), which would mean 'of the tree-speech'. I'm not entirely happy
about that initial T - I was trying to break away from the conlang tendency
for langs to start with t. Actually, it could change, once I get feedback
from my future users, to Vaelennin, vil 'sacred tree' + all the rest as
above. But then I'd have that other common name-initial, /v/. Actually,
since I'm just kind of chatting here and people probably have stopped
reading by now, I still need to figure out how I get that 'ae'. I think
it's just an orthographic weirdness which was devised by the
transliterating scholar Har Sceilien. I think it develops something like this:

    /il/ > /i:/ >/ej/ but written ae to indicate an original vowel of the
frontish variety.

   How do you folks name your languages, and what do they mean?

   Aidan

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