Re: The Melting

> Vyko, Htomas, traltan-jo! (hello and greetings!)  And anybody
else... it feels like we're having a public private conversation

I know. :) Part of me hesitates, unsure of how personal to get
in such a public forum, but then this *is* the forum for such
things, and what we're discussing surely affects other people
here as well.

> It's pronounced a little differently:  imagine "roshenda,"
with an emphasis on the penultimate syllable, and the final
vowel a schwa sound.  Of course I don't know how you pronounce
Rozhendi.

Similarly: /ro'ZEndi/, with a voiced fricative and /i/ at the
end. My Latin transliteration is pretty standard stuff: ch=/tS/,
dh=/D/, kh=/x/, j=/dZ/, sh=/S/, th=/T/, zh=/Z/, qu=/kw/, hw= um,
voiceless w (IPA inverted w), whatever the X-SAMPA for that is.
Vowels are a=/a/, i=/i/, o=/o/, u=/u/, e=/e/ before vowels,
elsewhere /E/. /a/ may become schwa in unstressed syllables; /i/
may
become /I/ in unstressed syllables before consonants. I'm still
not sure about /o/; sometimes it sounds more close, i.e. /o/,
other times more open, i.e. /O/. There's no phonemic opposition,
though, they're just allophones. Maybe something dialectal, I'm
not sure.

> > And interestingly, ruminate (in the sense of "think heavily
over something") is a verb for which I do know the Rozhendi
word: rispartha.

I love your words, Thomas.

Wow, thank you! I like a lot of yours, too. One of my favorites
is fõmp (dust). I don't know why, I just really like that word.
It may well work its way into Rozhendi, though I don't know how
I'd explain it. :)

> They sound like words I'd make up.  Maybe that's vanity
speaking!

No, coming from you that's quite a compliment!

> Maybe we could do some fruitful borrowings, because lately
I've been making up words that don't sound terribly beautiful or
"apt" to me.  Especially the ones made from compounds.

I would love to, though my record of Rozhendi vocabulary (If
only I could find an informant who had a dictionary I could
borrow!) is horribly paltry and meager so far. And then we'd
have to find a way to explain the Rozhen-Teonim interaction...
:) I suppose I'll have to have a peruse of your Teonaht-English
vocabulary page..

> Well, I sometimes wonder how long I can go on doing this and
stay sane.

You're still sane? Lucky you! ;)

> You concentrate on her or him and imagine their face.  You ask
them what a word means and they tell you.  With some practice it
will come naturally.

I will have to try that over the summer. I'll let you know how I
fare.

>  I am taking a brief vacation this week which will end Monday
night, and then I have to put this away and work on other
things.

Oh, too bad. Expected and understood, of course, but your
absence is certainly felt on Conlang when you are away!

> I might even have to go nomail.
I've been nomail for a couple of years now. The volume of email
was just unmanageable. When I have time, I browse the messages
on the listserv archive web site at Brown.

> You must do that.  Remind me of where you live again, and how
far away.

Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod. 438 miles from Rochester, according
to MapQuest.

> If there are any other upstate New Yorkers, we should have a
vlorya (party).

We had a Boston mini-conlang-con last November; Yoon Ha put a
page up about it with a few pictures:
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com/boston1.phtml. Given Cape Cod's
popularity as a summer holiday destination, I wish I could
manage to get a bunch of conlangers from all over out here.
We've got a big living room. :)  Maybe someday we could organize
a New England-New York conlang get-together, maybe someplace
halfway inbetween like Albany or western MA. And of course, if
you ever happen to get out this way for some reason (do you ever
get to the Harvard Celtic Colloquium?) I hope you'll let me
know!

> How interesting!  I almost brought this up in my last email.
Your description of the Rozhendi city reminded me of that scene.
I liked the
Phantom Menace almost entirely for its city and landscapes,

And for the awesome lightsaber fight at the end, and the
Nabooese (Nabooan?) characters on the side of their fighter
ships, and the decent amount of Huttese spoken in the Tatooine
sequences. But you're right, the city and landscapes in the film
were terrific, they were really what caught hold of me as well.
And how wonderful that you thought of it being Rozhen-like too!
I do need to learn more about traditional Rozhen architecture,
city structure, etc.

> and for the clothes that the Queen of Naboo wore (and almost
nothing else!). THOSE DRESSES!  They were very Teonaht, of the
traditional style.

Her clothes were pretty fantastic. I need to learn more
(anything, actually, I really know nothing) about traditional
Rozhen dress. Diaspora Rozhen dress like you and me and everyone
else wherever they may live, save for holidays or special
occasions when they might wear traditional costume, but I think
in Atheléa they take great pride in their traditional clothing
and wear it more often.

> The old Teonaht go in, as well, for elaborate face painting
and mask wearing. The aristocrats, that is.

That reminds me just a bit of a revent novel, called The Chosen
by Ricardo Pinto, in which a superior race of people called the
Masters always appear in public covered head to toe in the
richest and most elaborate vestments, and wear masks over their
faces, and paint their entire bodies lest any portion of their
skin be polluted by touching impure air! I actually only got
about halfway through the book before giving up; I just couldn't
get into it even though I wanted to, and really tried. It had a
conlang in it too, called Quya (author's website:
http://www.ricardopinto.com/quya/), including a whole song (see
Books>Earth Song on the web page).

> Some find this distasteful, especially since the people of
Rordaly do this.

Where can one find out more about Rordaly and the history of
Teon?


> I meant especially the notion of a diaspora; but the dispersed
Teonaht are ordered to regroup and go back.  They have to find
their way
back to the island before it melts.  It will come back again,
even soon, but its time will have changed.

Does this mean that when the island melts and reappears, it
could be a different time period there each time?

> >  The word for computer, for example, is thwelva, which seems
to be a borrowing/mutation of the Icelandic tölva.

> I like the initial consonant cluster "thw."
Clusters consisting of a stop or fricative plus w or y are quite
common in Rozhendi.

> > That sounds like me with all of my languages.
> Why not mix them with the Rozhendi world?  How would that
propel your imaginative processes?

I'm not sure how or if my older languages would fit. Each has
its own particular character or flavor, but they were all a
priori with near-total morphological regularity like Esperanto.
And none of them ever had a people or culture attached to them
the way that Rozhendi does.

> > Firrimby,
> You got it! :)
Um, what did I get? :) "Vyko" and "Firrimby" are the only
Teonaht words I know, which I think I must have absorbed from
your using them in posts on this or other lists.

Thomas