Re: Tsuhon: tentative phonology

On Thu, 3 May 2001, SuomenkieliMaa wrote:

> --- Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> wrote:
> > What works, works.  :-p  I can attest that my
> > spelling in Korean is atrocious, so at least
> > you'd've spelled things right.  =^)
>
> Really?!! <puzzled>  I've read that King Sejong
> thoroughly derived Hangul so as to be a logical way of
> writing Korean.  Of the little Korean I know, isn't
> the writing of characters quite simple (and visually
> aesthetic!)?  For example, "kam-sam-ni-da" would be
> something (in the Hangul characters) like:
Well, you've already seen Henrik's correction.  :-p  I tend to use
"ko-map-sum-ni-da" myself, but as far as I've ever been able to tell, the
two are interchangeable.

The thing is, Korean is easier to learn to *read* than it is to *write.*
That's because there are a ton of mutations/assimilations that are
reasonably figure-out-able, especially once you become somewhat
conversant with the language (I can read Korean just fine...but slowly,
because I'm so out of practice, and I'm not fully fluent).  The problem
is, if your knowledge of grammar and root forms is poor, you end up not
knowing which particular mutation is going on.  I just give up and spell
the dumb obvious phonetic way, which is usually wrong.  (The mutations
mean that, in certain contexts, there are a multiplicity of ways to write
the same sound.)

> I just have not come to understand the variations that
> occur at the end of some words.  Don't have details,
> just heard that once...  Well, in Japanese they have
> the small kana "tsu" intercept in the event you want
> to make the following syllable's initial consonant
> doubled.  So, "matto" is spelled with the small kana
> "tsu" after "ma" and before "to" -- and the double "t"
> would be said with aspiration prior to it.  Now, that
> to me is (among other things in J.) atrocious!
<blink>  No clue.  I haven't had time to bone up on basic Japanese
lately.  :-(

End-of-word variations might be dialectal (I've heard Chejudo jokes...)
*or* degrees of politeness levels, which give me a headache.  :-p  I'm
great at colloquial, informal Korean, the kind that will get me whacked
without fail by my Korean relatives....

(I am ethnically Korean, but was raised partly in Korea and partly in the
U.S.; went to English-speaking schools all my life; am a U.S. citizen,
though my parents, who were also U.S. citizens when I was born, both
reverted to South Korean citizenship some time ago; have lots of Korean
relatives in Korea; and was raised in a household where my mom spoke to
me in Korean--even though she taught me to read in English *and* Korean,
though I've lost most of the latter--and my dad spoke to me in English.)

> > <rueful look>  I want mainly-Japanese grammar
> > for this...trying to port gender into that would be
> > messy.
>
> Ouch! Really?! Even many of my Japanese friend (in mid
> 20s) have complained about the uselessness of some of
> those too-formal-for-formal
> not-so-easy-to-figure-out-and-slightly-incomprehensible-or-vague-at-time
> Japanese grammar rules.  Has anyone here learned
> "keigo"?  (If so, are you non-Japanese?)  That may put
I'm Korean.  <shrug>  I like the grammatical structure.  I will probably
simplify and butcher and mutilate *lots* of things to bring the Japanese
structure a bit closer to the aspects of German structure I like; and
a lot of this will happen because I only have some vague poor knowledge
of Japanese.

> a different light on the matter.  YHL, is the
> mainly-Japanese grammar for an IAL or artlang?  I
> suppose it won't be intended for easy (ie, quick)
> communication, if you plan on spouting all sorts of
> 'hierarchies' of formality.  Well, best of luck on it!
Definitely artlang.  In fact, anyone on this list can assume that
anything I'm working on is an artlang until further notice, not that it
matters.  I'm just uninterested in the whole IAL thing.  I fully expect
no one will ever try systematically to learn Tsuhon even if I get a
substantial grammar and text written; but that isn't the point of the
exercise.  :-)

YHL