Re: Zetowvu / Ezotwuv (new conlang)

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 10:10:25PM +0100, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>:
>
> >
> > I've realized that I was thinking of /@\/ as just an allophonic
> > realization
> > of unstressed vowels...  But now that I'm thinking about it, that seems
> > so
> > dull and overdone.  Why not have the unrounded central vowel be a vowel
> > in
> > its own right?  Probably natlangs have already done this on the sly,
> > without giving me a letter of notification.  ;)
> >
>
> Hehe, stressed schwas do exist indeed. But I cannot give you an example
> at the moment. More knowledgeable people than me have to step in here :)
> .  John? :)))
[snip]

<shameless plug> Ebisedian's /3/ is exactly [@\], and it occurs in all
sorts of places both stressed and unstressed. One prominent occurrence is
in the name of the language itself, which derives from _3bis33'di_, "the
people", pronounced [@\bi"s@\:di]. Yes, it has a loooong stressed [@\]
just so you don't miss it! ;-) It is also pronounced with the
can't-be-missed rising-and-falling tone. </shameless plug>

As far as natlangs go, Malay is one language that has prominent usage of
[@\] (well, it's *the* language I got the idea of Ebisedian's /3/ from!),
although I suspect it may be a mutation of an original [a]. You have words
like /ada/ [a"d@\], /redang/ ["r@\daN], /teman/ ["t@\man], etc.. My L1,
Hokkien, has stressed [@\], as in /se5/ (pronounced [s@\:13]), meaning "to
steal" or "to spirit away". And Mandarin has /she2/ [S@\:13] meaning
"snake". I suspect an etymological connection between the two, although
that may just be superficial.


T

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