Re: A New Language

On 08/17 15:52  Mau Rauszer wrote:
> Myáni, (well), what about the speakers (I like ton be informed about the background
> of a lang [if there exists something like that]).
>
They are still emerging from my mind.  The focal point of the language
is a city.  The governor of the city is called the Ninshuhentes, the
Lord Protector in English.  He, or she, is an elective monarch.  They
are a pre-industrial republic and have been so for several hundred
years.  The basic unit in their society is the stumase, which means
household and is a broader unit than the nuclear family.  Any group of
people who share a life together may be called a stumase.  They have an
odd naming rule that a parent's surname can only be passed on to the
eldest surviving child while other children use a patrinomic.
Inheriting a family name is considered prestigious.

> Well, thanks for using it. It means a lot to me. :) I'm gonna put this work into
> my LW folder where I collect all important stuff about it.
>
You're welcome.

> > The verb ending -t is commonly found for the second and third person of
> > the verb.
> >
> > Yahda to ti.mo mulit da curish.en, sa.vo^!
> > CONJ 3s be.NEG occasion INF sleep.INF CAUS.see.IMP
> > But this is not the time to sleep, make like you see!
> >
> > There is no personal pronoun for the third person.  The common
> > demonstrative pronoun 'to' is used instead.
> You mean they don't distinguish the second and third person? Hm. Interestingly
> weird. Just a question: do this lang have gender?
>
hmm, I had better run through a few paradigms to explain.

Let's take the verb curishen, to sleep:

me curish  'I sleep'   meme curishen 'we sleep'
te curisht 'you sleep' tete curisht  'you sleep' (plural)
to curisht '* sleeps'  ga curishen   'they sleep'

* he, she, it, that, this

So the present tense has three endings: -0 for 1s; -t for 2s, 2p, 3s;
and -en for 1p and 3p.  Also if a person said *ga corhyini curishen 'the
kiddies sleep', they would be gently corrected to say ga corhyini
curisht.  The -t ending is also used with plural nouns.

The verb to be is irregular:

me mi 'I am'   memen   'we are'
te si 'you are tete ti 'you are' (plural)
to ti '* is'   gan     'they are'

Five of these pronouns have reduced forms:

me, m 1s   meme, mme 1p
te, t 2s   tete, tte 2p
to, tte 3s ga 3p

The meaning of the reduced form tte is generally clear by context.

[gender]

2.0 has natural gender.  The agent ending -entes is considered to be
strictly epicene.  There may be feminine and neuter forms of the third
person pronoun 'to', but I am resisting it.

> Is the cluster |ny| confluing into /J/ or should be pronounced strictly as
> /nj/? I tried to say like that but it was tiresome for my tongue.
>
/nj/ but don't sweat it.  I think the speakers would understand you if
you used /J/.

> > I like the cluster /kS/.
> Me too. In an older stage of LW I used |sh| for /kS/ but later I found that it
> don't fit into their taste. Hwe, I leave LW alone now 'cuz I'm always talking
> about it.
But the whole point of this list is that it's for people who don't get
bored talking about their languages!

> But aren't the triagraph |ksh| too long for a frequent sound?
>
Only when transliterated into latin letters. :)  Although the original
script hasn't been developed yet.  I have some ideas.

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                         hobbit@griffler.co.nz
alias Mungo Foxburr of Loamsdown
http://hobbit.griffler.co.nz/homepage.html

The tribe need a father who is afraid only of ceasing to love them well.
                                                       - James K. Baxter