"Bauhinese" [was: Re: I was wondering...]

"Hiro M." wrote:

> Honestly, what you were talking about sounds a lot
> like what I was thinking of.
>
> For my language (which is based primarily on Japanese
> and Korean, and also has a conculture to go with it),
> I was thinking of three scripts: a common script,
> which would be similar to katakana and hiragana, with
> a little hangul mixed in; an upper-class script,
> comprised of equal parts common script and logographs
> similar to kanzi/hanja/kanji; and finally, a naming
> script, used by all classes for writing names, and
> only for writing names.
I'm certainly interested in your project as mine overlaps in certain
areas.  I too had thought of using some hangul; it's a very logical
script and has a nice look to it.

Since our projects are somewhat related, and because I had been
meaning to anyway, I'll introduce my Asian conlang project to the
list.  (As a footnote, I'm working on two other projects at the same
time - hey, it's summer and I finally have a lot of time on my hands
to indulge in my favorite hobby.  I've discussed those on
romanceconlang and will introduce them here when I've worked some
more on them)

For starters, my project is one part personal expression of
creativity (conlang as art) and one part exploration of Asian
languages (conlang as language education).  Before beginning work on
this project a month ago, I admit I knew very little about the
languages involved but had always admired the cultures and histories
of their speakers.  Now, I know more about Middle Chinese, tones,
hiragana, Vietnamese honorific language, and Cantonese phonology
than I could have possibly imagined.

I have no name for my language as of yet (some of you may have seen
the discussion I started about naming our languages on
romanceconlang - a discussion I haven't had a lot of time to
participate in today, although I've followed everyone's posts with
interest)  We had discussed this a little bit on a.l.a - my criteria
are mainly that it be ethnically neutral (especially in recognition
of the fact that there is more to Asia and Asian culture than China
or Japan, as great as they are) and that it not be an emotionally
and historically charged term.  This led me to the examination of
the symbolism of flowers and colours in Asian poetry.  Because I had
asked for a verification of my Mandarin translation of the name of
the bauhinia blakeana flower I am using the working title
"Bauhinese" but rather jokingly.  At this point I really have no
clue what I will call it.

The languages involved are:

The Chinese languages (I hesitate using the term dialects of course)
Japanese (Even here Ethnologue prefers to separate into languages)
Korean
Thai
Vietnamese

I'm limiting myself to the periphery of the Asian world, although I
could conceivably include Austronesian languages, Tibetan, Pali.
Words from these languages may find a way in to "Bauhinese" because
of their importance in religion and philosophy (especially Pali and
Sanskrit).

(I should add the disclaimer here: I promise, I'm not making the
mistake common among poorly informed Westerners of assuming that all
of these languages are "Chinese" because they may use similar
scripts, Chinese words, etc.)

The outline of the language is roughly as follows:

Vocabulary
----------
Vocabulary is based mainly on the Chinese "dialects" partly because
of the large population of Chinese language speakers but mostly
because of the enormous influence of Chinese vocabulary and culture
in the region as seen in the amount of Chinese loanwords in Asian
languages. The vocabulary uses terms from the other languages
involved as much as possible, though, especially in regards to terms
for ideas/concepts/items specific to a certain culture (Thai words
for Thai phenomena, etc.)

Phonology
---------
I'm starting with Middle Chinese and studying how sounds evolved in
the various Chinese languages and how these sounds evolved when
Chinese words were borrowed into Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and
Thai.  (I'm roughly half way through an etymological dictionary but
then I have to complete my comparisons in Korean, Vietnamese and
Thai)  Therefore the phonology doesn't necessarily reflect the
native forms, but rather how these forms evolved in the so-called
Sino-Xenic languages (note: Sino-Xenic is not necessarily a term I
adore)  I'm then looking for common forms in all of the languages
involved and using population or historical linguistics as a tie
breaker.  An illustration: unlike Mandarin, the consonant finals m,
p, t and k are retained here because they are retained for the most
part in other Chiense languages and because they are retained in
Korean and Vietnamese, and their historical presence is often
reflected if not entirely retained in Japanese.

Studying sound change patterns has been a rather complex task, as
I'm doing most of it from scratch (although I'm sure some source
exists and I just don't have access to it).  To quote my a.l.a post:
"This process has become so complicated as to bring up the following
error message: 'Brain not ready.  Abort, retry, fail' But there is a
system involved, and I will derive the vocabulary in a systematic
way that reflects actual sound changes."

Tones are an iffy situation.  Japanese and Korean do not use tones
as Chinese does (or as Vietname and Thai do), so I'm against using
an elaborate tone system.  Tones, however, are an important part of
the phonology of Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese so I would like their
presence to be reflected somehow, if possible.  Some suggestions
I've been considering are: 1) having tone affect vowel
length/quality; 2) using high and neutral; 3) using level, rising
and falling contours.  Did the tone of a word in Chinese have any
effect at all on how it was borrowed in to Japanese or Korean?

The language will not necessarily be monosyllabic, meaning that tone
will be less important (especially if I adopt the idea - which I'm
considering - of "monosignificance").

Script
------
The Chinese script is an important unifying force, at least
historically, in the Asian world: Vietnamese used them, Korean still
uses them to an extent, Japanese not only uses them but based both
hiragana and katakana on them, etc.  So I do not want to neglect
this important aspect of the languages in my own conlang, but I've
decied, as I told Hiro, on using a modification of the Japanese
system in that Japanese gana/kana are "shorthand" ways of writing
Chinese characters and using them for syllabic value rather than
meaning.

By modification I mean: I have one script instead of two; I use some
hiragana and some katakana, depending on history and sound value
(and personal taste), I sometimes use a hiragana for one sound and
the corresponding katakana for a related sound, etc.  The biggest
modification of all is this: because Japanese essentially appends a
vowel to what would be a final consonant of a Chinese word, I need a
way to represent these final consonants without the vowel; for this
purpose, I'm using stylistically modified characters from the Zhu
Yin (aka BoPoMoFo) script to represent these sounds.  By
"stylistically modified" I mean that I'm using the same character
but making it "fit in" a little better aesthetically with the kana.
The Japanese characters, therefore, indicate C-V and the Zhu Yin
indicate final C for a combination of (surprise!) C-V-C.  In
addition, I'm going to use the 50 or so most common/important hanzi
characters, in their traditional form.

Grammar
-------
Grammar is based mostly on Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese, however
I am looking at the grammars of Korean, Thai and Vietnamese as
well.  Although these are unrelated languages, they often have
similar concepts or categories (for example, honorific language).
Thus the grammar is based on what is common or similar among the
languages involved, even if the silmilarity is coincidental or
accidental.  Otherwise, I'm looking to Cantonese, Mandarin and
Japanese.  (This is a vague description of grammar, but it's the
area I've worked the least on so far)

This is mainly a personal artistic project, but I hope others will
find it interesting.  I'm aiming to create my language in a
systematic way that makes sense given the linguistics of the
languages involved, not merely picking out features at random.

If anyone has any comments, suggestions, what-have-you, please
share!  Hiro, I look forward to hearing more about your own project!

> Just to let you know, this is my first conlang, and
> (ashamed as I am to say it) I'm considering using the
> LangMaker program to make a lot of the words of my
> language.
Using software isn't a bad thing; I'm probably going to use the
"Sound Change Applier" programme I got from the "Language
Construction Kit" to take the manual labor out of my vocabulary
creation, though the mental labor will still be there and just as
satisfying.

Cheers to all!
Eamon