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Finally delurking, and some info in Ciktal

From:Arnt Richard Johansen <arntrich@...>
Date:Tuesday, October 16, 2001, 11:51
Good evening/morning/afternoon ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce
myself.  I have been reading this list off and on for about a year now.
Mostly off, I'm afraid, since until recently I haven't been bothered to
learn how to configure decent email filtering.

The language I have been tinkering with in idle moments, I choose for
the time being to call Ciktal ['SiktAl].  Not because it means anything in
particular, but because I like the sound of it.  It is a fairly inflecting
language with an SOV argument structure.  The order of phrases within the
NP is relative phrase, then noun, then prepositional phrase.  There are no
adjectives, the function filled by adjectives in other languages are
filled by nouns and verbs.

Ciktal has nine vowel phonemes.  The first five are the monophthongs /A/,
/7/ (close-mid back unrounded vowel), /u/, /i/ and /E/.  The other four
are the diphtongs /Aj/, /7j/, /uj/ and /Ej/.  There are 16 consonant
phonemes: /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /g/, /f/, /s/, /S/, /m/, /n/, /N/, /r\/
and /l/.

My main interest in conlanging is vocabulary, semantics, and writing
systems.  This has caused me to spend less time on syntax and phonology,
and morphology, and I still have a bery foggy idea as to who the speakers
of Ciktal actually are.

But in the course of about 7 months, I've managed to cook up a syllabary.
It is written from left to right, then from the top to the bottom.  You
can see images at <URL:http://home.nvg.org/~arj/ciktal/Syllabary1.png> and
<URL:http://home.nvg.org/~arj/ciktal/Syllabary2.png>.  In the last
picture, there are also three example sentences below the grids.  I'll
give you the pronunciation and translation in a minute.

Since Ciktal's syllable structure is a lot more complex than CV, it
requires four diacritics to be fully expressive.  These are the
diphthongizer ("vaat", ['vA:t]), which looks like a macron, the vowel
lengthener ("könam", ['k7jnAm]), the syllable reverser (a small ring
underneath the character), and the vowel killer (not shown in the
example).

This is what the sentences at the bottom of the second picture say:
Andi dosam eloske, ön ngimam elos.
[Andi 'd7sAm 'El7skE '7jn 'NimAm 'El7s]
If everyone were men, there would be no humans.

Ön ökitan caavamëni!
['7jn '7jkitAn 'SA:vAmEjni]
Don't puke in my bed!

Teni Olko varë maselos?
[tEni '7lk7 vArEj 'mAsEl7s]
Who did Olko give yours to?

I'd be happy to give you interlinears, but I'm not quite sure how to do
it.  Do anybody have any webpages that describe it, including such things
as common abbreviations of case names?

Oh, by the way, I've constructed a Conlanger Code too!  Here it is:
CLI/CS lp+ cN:R:S:H a++ y n19:1d R?+++ A E L++++ N2 Iv k-- ia+:+ p+ m- o
P---- d? b? Ciktal

--
Best regards,
Arnt Richard Johansen

Replies

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>