Jovian goes into Puberty

Don't all languages eventually reach an age where they
begin to develop all sorts of lazy quirks, seemingly
intent on doing everything but what their wise parents
have planned for them?  ;-)

Well, Jovian isn't quite so bad yet, but it has grown
a few slang features that apparently many young
commoners in Jervaine employ nowadays...  ::shakes
head in disapproval::

It involves a reduction of unstressed endings (/@/ ->
nil except where required to break up ugly consonant
collisions, and /@n/ -> /@/ except where required for
liaison between vowels), as well as a simplification
of noun declinations (nouns and adjectives are always
in the nominative form, leaving the case inflections
for articles and pronouns).

Example:

"The beautiful woman gives the old mister a fresh fish."

Old:
Feima bella da doemo seini pixen friscun.
['fejm@ 'vell@ da 'dAjmA 'zejni 'piS@m 'priSk@n ]

New:
Ja feima bella da ei doemu seine un pix friscun.
[j@ vejm vel da e zAjm sejn @m 'biS 'friSk@]


But some instances of reduction have even found their
way into official Jovian.  For example, the noun
|doemu| [dAjm@] "mister" usually comes out as [dAjm]
in addresses such as [A zAjm] "sir!".  Then again,
the official spelling of that is |o doeme|, which has
its roots in the Latin vocative.  In the same way,
most proper names on |-us| in Latin end up with a
mute |-e| rather than a pronounced |-u| in Jovian.


-- Christian Thalmann

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