Re: Tsuhon: tentative phonology

Hi!

Mainly to Yoon Ha:

There is a list with German sound changes here:

http://www.linguist.de/Deutsch/gdsmain.html
(In German).

The problem is that the vowel shifts I searched are not given, i.e.,
those for modern middle German dialects.  But I recall the rule
I wanted to tell you now:

The document states the following shift for New High German
from Middle High German (among others)

   /i:/ > /aI/
   /u:/ > /aU/
and
   /EI/ > /aI/
   /OU/ > /aU/

Saarlandian and Palatinian (maybe others) made the following shifts:

   /i:/ > /aI/
   /u:/ > /u:/
and
   /EI/ > /E:/ or /e:/
   /OU/ > /a:/

Still one diphthong left... :-) There are still other diphthongs as I
said, but this explains why it is `huus' (`Haus') but `baam' (`Baum'):
the Middle High German words were `huus' and `boum'.


Another problem is that in all times, there are (reconstructed)
diphthongs, so your problem remains.  I'd probably go for a
simplification then.  Something like this:

   /au/ >  /a:/
   /aI/ >  /E:/
   /OI/ > */Q:/ > /E:/

or maybe
   /OI/ > /O:/

??

I don't know how likely these are, but in Korean loan words, at least
one is common: Taiwan > tae-man.

Then you'd probably get:
   Haus   > haasu
   Baum   > maasu     (? do you have b?)
   klein  > kuleenii  (if you keep Japanese adjective endings)

I'd also drop final -e from most words (typical for spoken German
anyway):

   Keule > *keul > koolu
                or keelu

Just suggestions of course! :-)

Eerrm, the abstract of this mail would be: I don't know what to do. :-)

**Henrik

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