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There are 23 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Re: History of constructed languages From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2. Lunar Cycle was Subterranea From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3. Re: Subterranea From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4. Words for smells From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5. Re: History of constructed languages From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 6. Re: Words for smells From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7. Media: BBC Radio 4 Invented languages discussion From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 8. Re: Words for smells From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9. Re: Subterranea From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10. Re: History of constructed languages From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11. Re: Words for smells From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12. Re: Lunar Cycle was Subterranea From: Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 13. Re: History of constructed languages From: BP Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 14. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 15. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 16. New stuff about Taruven now online From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 17. Re: History of constructed languages From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 18. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 19. Re: History of constructed languages From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 20. Re: History of constructed languages From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 21. Re: New stuff about Taruven now online From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 22. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey From: JS Bangs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 23. Re: Words for smells From: Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 21:17:45 -0400 From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages ----- Original Message ----- From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Muke Tever skrev: > > >> I _do_ remember this. Hmm. Let me look it up. >> >> It was in Acharnians; Pseudartabas has the line: >> "Jartaman exarx 'anapissona satra." (or: exarxan apissona?) >> >> The English version at Perseus bears a footnote "Jargon, >> no doubt meaningless in all languages." >> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristoph.+Ach.+100 >> >> *Muke! > > It certainly does have an Old Persian look and feel. > I guess OP was the barbarian language par preference > for Athenians at the time. Here seems to be a better link, for those of you who, like me, couldn't access this page ("The page you are trying to access has not been published yet." :-(> tongue sticking out) http://library.beau.org/gutenberg/etext05/7rst110.txt The note is 167, and the "jargon" is: Jartaman exarx 'anapissonnai satra, uttered by a certain Pseudartabas, whose name seems to hint at something false. What's the rest of it mean? Not up on me ancient Greek, and too lazy to transcribe the characters for the Internet on-line dictionaries. Sally ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 04:38:38 -0000 From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Lunar Cycle was Subterranea --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Not all that arbitrary. It makes perfect sense to divide a lunar >cycle in to a bright period and a dark period; both of those are >about 14 days long. If you subdivide that further in to "bright >growing brighter", "bright growing darker", "dark growing darker" >and "dark growing brighter" phase, you end up with a month consisting >of four seven day weeks. This seems to make the lunar phases more regular than they really are. In the time between the new moon today & the new moon On Jul 6, i.e., 12 phases, the length between each of the phases is, in days, 8, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 6, 9, 7, 6, and 8. I assume, e.g., that, by "light growing darker" you mean last quarter to new moon. In that particular instance there are 7, 6, 8 days in the time frame mentioned. Sometimes the phase can be as long as nine days or as short as five days. The time from NM 4/8 to NM 5/8 is 30 days; from NM 5/8 to NM 6/6 27 days; from NM 6/6 to NM 7/6 30 days. The lunar phases cannot be used to form regular seven-day weeks. Charlie http"//wiki.frath.net//user:caeruleancentaur ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 01:36:30 -0400 From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Subterranea On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 16:21:07 -0700, B. Garcia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Some even phosphoresce, along with some species of fungus. Not sure >how much light energy they can provide, though. > Oh yes. I'm generating a fairly diverse fungal flora, some of which is phosphorescent, and several types of bacteria, some of which are also phosphorescent. I'm not convinced they'd produce enough light of the right wavelengths to grow conventional plants, but there may be one or two. I'm basically having to reverse the polarity of surface languages when it comes to words for Kingdom Plantae and Kingdom Fungi. Most surface langs have dozens of words and names for plants, but only a handful for fungi (witness tree, grass, bush, shrub, flower, conifer, oak, ash, holly, rose, fruit, bamboo, vine, etc. vs. mushroom, toadstool, mould ("mold" if you're American), fungus). Oh, and rocks... Geoff ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 01:46:42 -0400 From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Words for smells Another consequence of a subterranean existence... Odours are rather more significant to the Noygooros (lit. "Underworld.people") orcs as a means of recognition and even getting around in the dark. I'm thinking about trying to group odours into a spectrum or array of some form similar to what people do with colours. I mean, there are a large number of different shades that can all be lumped together as "blue"- cobalt, royal, sky blue, turquoise, denim, and so on. Can you do this with odours? What odours would you use as the "cardinal odours"- the categories like blue, red, green and so on that can be broken into different shades? Help! I feel like I've let my imagination take a leap that my logic can't keep up with! Geoff ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 08:33:27 +0200 From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages Sally Caves skrev: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >> Muke Tever skrev: >> >> >>> I _do_ remember this. Hmm. Let me look it up. >>> >>> It was in Acharnians; Pseudartabas has the line: >>> "Jartaman exarx 'anapissona satra." (or: exarxan apissona?) >>> >>> The English version at Perseus bears a footnote "Jargon, >>> no doubt meaningless in all languages." >>> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristoph.+Ach.+100 >>> >>> *Muke! >> >> >> It certainly does have an Old Persian look and feel. >> I guess OP was the barbarian language par preference >> for Athenians at the time. > > > Here seems to be a better link, for those of you who, like me, couldn't > access this page ("The page you are trying to access has not been published > yet." :-(> tongue sticking out) > > http://library.beau.org/gutenberg/etext05/7rst110.txt > > The note is 167, and the "jargon" is: Jartaman exarx 'anapissonnai satra, > uttered by a certain Pseudartabas, whose name seems to hint at something > false. What's the rest of it mean? > Not up on me ancient Greek, and too lazy to transcribe the characters for > the Internet on-line dictionaries. > > Sally > > The name Artabas sure looks Persian too; _artavaan_ would be "righteous" in Old Persian. -- /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 20:41:57 +1200 From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Words for smells On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:46, Geoff Horswood wrote: > Another consequence of a subterranean existence... > > Odours are rather more significant to the Noygooros > (lit. "Underworld.people") orcs as a means of recognition and even getting > around in the dark. > I'm thinking about trying to group odours into a spectrum or array of some > form similar to what people do with colours. I mean, there are a large > number of different shades that can all be lumped together as "blue"- > cobalt, royal, sky blue, turquoise, denim, and so on. I would associate smells with recognizable emotional states. Eg, fear, joy, expectancy, anger, irritation, contentment, hunger, thirst, pain, pleasure, etc. Eg, "Li' La'onao should've smelt frightened by the news, her brother thought, but instead she smelt excited - and worried. He worried himself he smelt too nervous for the meeting - particularly as he wanted to impress the new midwife's assistant ... " > > Can you do this with odours? What odours would you use as the "cardinal > odours"- the categories like blue, red, green and so on that can be broken > into different shades? Cardinal emotions. See above. But also safe and unsafe environments - eg, "the river smelt bad to Li' La'onao and that annoyed her. When the river smelt bad, the fish couldn't be eaten. But it didn't smell ghastly, the way it did that time of the landslip in the mountains, when the dead of several villages upstream had been trapped in the water and had rotted where they were trapped." > > Help! I feel like I've let my imagination take a leap that my logic can't > keep up with! Think of a dog. Imagine how he or she smells the world. Try to see/smell things from his point of smell. > > Geoff Wesley Parish -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 08:57:35 +0000 From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Media: BBC Radio 4 Invented languages discussion Dear all, as promised, the link to the interview I took part in on invented languages. Not much of real interest to Conlangers, I wouldn't think, but here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/index.shtml Click the link to the sound file: "latest edition" at the time of writing (Friday a.m. UK time), but will be archived as the Thursday edition for a week. The interview is about 15 minutes in. Mark Mark J. Jones Department of Linguistics University of Cambridge http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 01:53:04 -0700 From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Words for smells On Apr 7, 2005 10:46 PM, Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Can you do this with odours? What odours would you use as the "cardinal > odours"- the categories like blue, red, green and so on that can be broken > into different shades? > Earthy - earthy smells are things like wet soil, some sands, rotting forest litter, etc. Metallic - I know that copper coins (or at least American coinage) can have this distinct smell. You could break it further into smells like "rust" Sharp - acidic things would give this smell sense Acrid - bitter smelling Smoky - from organic matter musty/moldy - the smell of mold and mildew Rotten - This might be broken into rotting plant matter and rotting flesh Sulfuric - possible Just a few ideas :) -- Kiwasatra ay tepan ura nga garu kucaku songa majenyora bilat maacaku lawan ku saal Tal sora inumyara nga sepotyal ngaruan ura nga puka ku matambiryay ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 9 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 12:47:22 -0000 From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Subterranea --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Oh yes. I'm generating a fairly diverse fungal flora, some of which >is phosphorescent, and several types of bacteria, some of which are >also phosphorescent. In my conworld (planet Earth at the end of the last Ice Age), the Children of Stone (who are remembered by humans as dwarves) live in caverns. They are skilled in fungiculture (I made that up, but it looks good to me!) and have produced mushrooms et al. with all different kinds of sizes, colors and flavors. They are a staple in their diet. They have also developed several species which phosphoresce in different colors which are used to illuminate the various subterranean passages. The phosphorescent light is not brilliant but enough for them to find their way, especially considering that they have a tapetum as do many nocturnal mammals. Charlie http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 10 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 09:46:26 -0400 From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages ----- Original Message ----- From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Here seems to be a better link, for those of you who, like me, couldn't >> access this page ("The page you are trying to access has not been >> published >> yet." :-(> tongue sticking out) >> >> http://library.beau.org/gutenberg/etext05/7rst110.txt >> >> The note is 167, and the "jargon" is: Jartaman exarx 'anapissonnai satra, >> uttered by a certain Pseudartabas, whose name seems to hint at something >> false. What's the rest of it mean? >> Not up on me ancient Greek, and too lazy to transcribe the characters for >> the Internet on-line dictionaries. >> >> Sally >> >> > > The name Artabas sure looks Persian too; _artavaan_ would > be "righteous" in Old Persian. So, "falsely righteous!" Do you have a sense that the Persian is gibberish? Sally ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 11 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 09:58:23 -0400 From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Words for smells ----- Original Message ----- From: "Geoff Horswood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Another consequence of a subterranean existence... > > Odours are rather more significant to the Noygooros > (lit. "Underworld.people") orcs as a means of recognition and even getting > around in the dark. > I'm thinking about trying to group odours into a spectrum or array of some > form similar to what people do with colours. I mean, there are a large > number of different shades that can all be lumped together as "blue"- > cobalt, royal, sky blue, turquoise, denim, and so on. > > Can you do this with odours? What odours would you use as the "cardinal > odours"- the categories like blue, red, green and so on that can be broken > into different shades? > > Help! I feel like I've let my imagination take a leap that my logic can't > keep up with! > > Geoff Wesley and Barry have made suggestions I would have thought of, too: Carnal smells-- meat to be eaten, not to be eaten, corpses Could fall into several categories: appetizing, irritating, repulsive Sexual smells-- female, male, orkish, other Could induce desire, aggression, jealousy, danger Natural smells--earth, water, air, stalk, leaf, root, fungi Could induce comfort, thirst, feelings of energy Mineral smells-- granite, quartz, gold, fool's gold, etc. Could induce a sense of industry, curiosity, greed, calculation Just some thoughts! Sally ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 12 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 07:21:36 -0700 From: Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Lunar Cycle was Subterranea > --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>Not all that arbitrary. It makes perfect sense to divide a lunar >>cycle in to a bright period and a dark period; both of those are >>about 14 days long. If you subdivide that further in to "bright >>growing brighter", "bright growing darker", "dark growing darker" >>and "dark growing brighter" phase, you end up with a month > consisting >of four seven day weeks. > > This seems to make the lunar phases more regular than they really > are. In the time between the new moon today & the new moon On Jul > 6, i.e., 12 phases, the length between each of the phases is, in > days, 8, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 6, 9, 7, 6, and 8. I assume, e.g., that, > by "light growing darker" you mean last quarter to new moon. In that > particular instance there are 7, 6, 8 days in the time frame > mentioned. Sometimes the phase can be as long as nine days or as > short as five days. The time from NM 4/8 to NM 5/8 is 30 days; from > NM 5/8 to NM 6/6 27 days; from NM 6/6 to NM 7/6 30 days. The lunar > phases cannot be used to form regular seven-day weeks. True, which is why the seven day week is not universal through human cultures. However, a period of time ranging from 5 to 10 days is found pretty much everywhere, with 6 to 8 days being most common. The link between this time period and the quarter phases of the moon seems pretty strong, just as the link between our 30 day months is strongly linked to a lunar cycle that typically lasts only 28 or 29 days. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 13 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 16:53:48 +0200 From: BP Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages Citerar Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >> Here seems to be a better link, for those of you who, like me, couldn't > >> access this page ("The page you are trying to access has not been > >> published > >> yet." :-(> tongue sticking out) > >> > >> http://library.beau.org/gutenberg/etext05/7rst110.txt > >> > >> The note is 167, and the "jargon" is: Jartaman exarx 'anapissonnai satra, > >> uttered by a certain Pseudartabas, whose name seems to hint at something > >> false. What's the rest of it mean? > >> Not up on me ancient Greek, and too lazy to transcribe the characters for > >> the Internet on-line dictionaries. > >> > >> Sally > >> > >> > > > > The name Artabas sure looks Persian too; _artavaan_ would > > be "righteous" in Old Persian. > > So, "falsely righteous!" Do you have a sense that the Persian is gibberish? > > Sally > The endings are real, but I can make no sense of the stems, nor of the whole. The verb seems to come in the middle, ('anapissonnai) while both Greek and OP were verb-final... It could well be that it is a gibberishification (word?) of one or more real OP utterances in the original. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 14 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 17:17:14 +0200 From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey On Thursday 07 April 2005 21:11 CEST, Roger Mills wrote: > (Most of our conlangs, Ayeri included I think, also boast > orthographies with near one-to-one correspondence. > Maggel excluded...) Well, at least the romanisation of it. The writing system I recently came up with for example usually does not indicate |a|'s respectively the lack of them. And the letter for -Vi or -Vy is always written to the *left* of a consonant, not to the right, although the system is other wise strictly left-to-right[1]. That certainly mixes up beginners very much. First, you have to know where there is an <a> and where not, so you need to learn the look of words and then, you also need to understand the context to interpret them right. A primer would of course have either all a's indicated or use the virama very much until a certain level. The writing system is not completely phonetic because they'd write for example _Añ sil·vyin ayon:ris·_ instead of "Ang silvayin ayonáris". Leave out the raised dots for adults. Carsten [1] This raises a question: The Proto-Semitics, were they mostly left-handed, or why are semitic languages written from right to left? It would be more natural for a left-handed person. I guess left-to-right became the standard direction in Europe because most people are right handed and writing is easier for them that way. -- Edatamanon le matahanarà sitayea eityabo ena Bahis Palayena, 15-A8-58-1-3-14-14 ena Curan Tertanyan. » http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 15 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 17:39:13 +0200 From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey Hi! Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > And the letter for -Vi or -Vy is always written to the *left* of a > consonant, not to the right, although the system is other wise > strictly left-to-right[1]. WAAAH! Noooo!!!111111 Please!!! Don't change that! I *love* it! I really do love this nice thingy on the left. It's great, it's life, it's beautiful, it's elegant how the base character gets surrounded by the vowels. It's so nice! Please don't change it! <%-o > That certainly mixes up beginners very much. I consider it a minor issue: learning to read/write does not take very long compared to usage of the script during a lifetime, especially since it's an abudiga and no moster script taking years to learn. Therefore, niceness is a more important issue, I think. Again, *please* don't change the -Vi/-Vy. Please, please, please don't! Please, Carsten, don't! :-) > On Thursday 07 April 2005 21:11 CEST, Roger Mills wrote: > > > (Most of our conlangs, Ayeri included I think, also boast > > orthographies with near one-to-one correspondence. > > Maggel excluded...) > > Well, at least the romanisation of it. The writing system I > recently came up with for example usually does not indicate > |a|'s respectively the lack of them. If you intend to add a few dots for children, left out by adults, this would fix it, no? I feel it's quite natural as it is. Are you thinking of a virama? > First, you have to know where there is an <a> and > where not, so you need to learn the look of words and then, > you also need to understand the context to interpret them > right. A primer would of course have either all a's > indicated or use the virama very much until a certain > level. > > The writing system is not completely phonetic because they'd > write for example _Añ sil·vyin ayon:ris·_ instead of "Ang > silvayin ayonáris". Leave out the raised dots for adults. Ah, ok. I'd use a virama to make it look natural, so you get an abugida -- scripts of this type look like abugidas. With a dotted a, it'd be very close to an alphabet. > [1] This raises a question: The Proto-Semitics, were they > mostly left-handed, or why are semitic languages written > from right to left? It would be more natural for a > left-handed person. I guess left-to-right became the > standard direction in Europe because most people are right > handed and writing is easier for them that way. I thought about this as well, especially when considering how some left-handed pupils turned their sheet by up to almost 90 degrees to actually be able to *see* what they had written. I doubt it, though. Righthandedness is not what I expect to be culturally different too much, but rather I'd expect a universal distribution. **Henrik ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 16 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 18:24:16 +0200 From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: New stuff about Taruven now online The newest topic is on relative clauses in Taruven. Beware of colorful examples! t. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 17 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 12:40:51 -0400 From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages Gibberification! I love that!! Let's coin it. We can ask Adrian Morgan how his gibberification is going. Or we could "engibber" a language: Moi, le souflie lisont commun bizarreque de mon soult que m'a falsige' la saussuretique en tous cas. N'est-ce pas? Vow, tivver's embassy had um guestification waaaaay bad arm an doctology, doncha? Gotcha! Way! Being bean. ;);) I know these are LEGION. I've listened to Garrison Kiellor and "Cafe Boeurf." And engibberings of German are hilarious. I'm sure that Aristophanes was up to something like that with the barbarous Persian, so it has a funniness that is lost to us now. S. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > It could well be that it is a gibberishification (word?) of > one or more real OP utterances in the original. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 18 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 13:48:38 -0400 From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey 2005-4-7 i, {Carsten}-ram {Becker}-sqam tu-i kriq-zox: > On Wednesday 06 April 2005 21:45 CEST, Patrick Littell > wrote: > > One thought: I've been learning Tzeltal, a Mayan language > > of Chiapas, and the wonderful manual I've been reading > > uses a somewhat different, slightly simpler orthography > > than other works, or the "official" orthography if there > > is one. In it, multi-morpheme words are often broken up > > and it's pretended that they're separate, independent > > words. > That'd be a possibility, putting mid-dots or hyphens in > between, if not even spaces. Though usually, two same > sounds are reduced to one, with vowels getting an acute > accent. The combination is not necessarily pronounced > differently. The phonetic mutations at morpheme boundaries would complicate things slightly, I guess, but hyphens or dots would still probably help children and foreigners learning to read an agglutinative language. A few Esperanto textbooks and readers have (or used to have) apostrophes or hyphens in compound words (though not, I think, at every morpheme boundary: e.g. mar'bestojn rather than mar'best'o'j'n). In my orthography for gjax-zym-byn, I use hyphens at all morpheme boundaries which are also syllable boundaries (as in the language name two lines above, e.g.; but not in postpositions like "vin", v+i+n, "touching the front of"). This feature of the orthography was originally intended as "training wheels" for my use while developing the language and learning it, but after seven years, though I'm reasonably fluent in the written language, I still haven't dropped the hyphens. Maybe it's time to drop them for a few weeks, then look back and see if my diary entries in that period are significantly harder to read than the earlier ones that use hyphens. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 19 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:17:28 -0400 From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>> Inferno - >>> Canto VII, line 1: Papè Satàn, papè Satàn aleppe! >>> Canto XXXI, line 67: Raphèl may améch zabì almì! >>> >>> (Note: à = a-grave; è = e-grave; ì = i-grave) >> >> And few can decipher these utterances. > > Yes - but they do not agree with one another :) > >> Some say that pape and aleppe are >> distorted Greek--papai, "ye gods"; I'm less certain about aleppe; > > _papaî_ is an exclamation in Classical Greek, showing either pain (whether > mental or physical), surprise or scorn. It is found in the works of > Aiskhylos (Aeschylus), Aristophanes, Herodotos and Plato. In Dante's time > it would have been pronounced /pa'pe/ but I doubt very much that the word > had survived in spoken Greek. Whether Dante knew the word or not depends > upon how likely he was to know about the Greek Classics. I wonder if it can be read ambiguously as a distortion of _papa_, "Pope," thus introducing blasphemy: Pope Satan! Pope Satan! Or Father Satan! Even if not, the suggestion is there. My only dual language edition merely says that it is "apparently a threat against the travellers and a warning to Satan below." Must get new edition. But if Satan is a kind of anti-Pope, as he is the anti-Christ, this make some sense as a possible meaning--the word distorted to express the degeneration of language and theology in hell, and Dante's own reluctance to use such a revered word. > As for _aleppe_, those who adopt a Greek decipherment take the word as > _alhpte_ (where h = 'eta') = 'not to laid hold off, incomprehensible, not > to be chosen' [masc. sing. vocative]. There are a few problems with this: > 1. the word is pretty rare in Greek; > 2. in Dante's time it would have been pronounced /'alipte/, which is at > odds with the medial -e- in Dante's word (Dante would not know about later > reconstructions of pronunciations of different ancient Greek dialects); > 3. there is no obvious reason to change -pt- to -pp-. > > And at least one commentator has seen these words as distorted French: > "Paix, paix! Satan! Paix, paix! Satan! allez!" Ha! I've seen that, too. But I can't remember what source I was looking at. Do you have it at hand? Or are you operating from memory? Sally No disrespect to the Pope, today, on his funeral. Pax. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 20 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 22:02:30 +0200 From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: History of constructed languages Sally Caves skrev: > No disrespect to the Pope, today, on his funeral. Pax. In any case Dante was referring to an earlier Pope, now long dead, and they weren't all saintly you know. -- /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 21 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 23:54:44 +0200 From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: New stuff about Taruven now online * taliesin the storyteller said on 2005-04-08 18:24:16 +0200 > The newest topic is on relative clauses in Taruven. Beware of colorful > examples! Oops... see http://taliesin.nvg.org/taruven/topic.html t. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 22 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 16:58:37 -0500 From: JS Bangs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey > > (Most of our conlangs, Ayeri included I think, also boast > > orthographies with near one-to-one correspondence. > > Maggel excluded...) > > Well, at least the romanisation of it. The writing system I > recently came up with for example usually does not indicate > |a|'s respectively the lack of them. And the letter for -Vi > or -Vy is always written to the *left* of a consonant, not > to the right, although the system is other wise strictly > left-to-right[1]. That certainly mixes up beginners very > much. First, you have to know where there is an <a> and > where not, so you need to learn the look of words and then, > you also need to understand the context to interpret them > right. A primer would of course have either all a's > indicated or use the virama very much until a certain > level. > > The writing system is not completely phonetic because they'd > write for example _Añ sil·vyin ayon:ris·_ instead of "Ang > silvayin ayonáris". Leave out the raised dots for adults. Aha, so your writing system is the only one that I've seen that approaches what the Yivrian system is: an abiguda and an abjad. Normal writing is without vowels marks, but even in fully voweled writing there is no symbol for /a/ (except word-finally), and there is a virama to compensate. And there are no spaces for words. All vowels are spelled differently word-finally. And as with most abjads, there are also silent vowel carriers and vowels that require both a point and a full letter--it's a fairly complex native system, although not as bad as, say, English. The romanization, OTOH, is completely straightforward. Roman: Ala torefayaas lai el anyaa elé. Native (w/o vowels): 'latwrfj'sly"l'nj'a"ly (Using |y| for the i-vowel marker and single- and double-quote for the vowel carriers in this transliteration.) -- JS Bangs [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://jaspax.com "I could buy you a drink I could tell you all about it I could tell you why I doubted And why I still believe." - Pedro the Lion ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 23 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 18:31:17 -0400 From: Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Words for smells [gmail header warning] Given that the two senses are fairly related, it might be worth it to look into how tastes are classified (http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html). Also, it may be worth while to look into references related to the fragrance industry -- don't they employ professional smellers? There must be a jargon associated with it. -Andy. On Apr 8, 2005 9:58 AM, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Geoff Horswood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Another consequence of a subterranean existence... > > > > Odours are rather more significant to the Noygooros > > (lit. "Underworld.people") orcs as a means of recognition and even getting > > around in the dark. > > I'm thinking about trying to group odours into a spectrum or array of some > > form similar to what people do with colours. I mean, there are a large > > number of different shades that can all be lumped together as "blue"- > > cobalt, royal, sky blue, turquoise, denim, and so on. > > > > Can you do this with odours? What odours would you use as the "cardinal > > odours"- the categories like blue, red, green and so on that can be broken > > into different shades? > > > > Help! I feel like I've let my imagination take a leap that my logic can't > > keep up with! > > > > Geoff > > Wesley and Barry have made suggestions I would have thought of, too: > > Carnal smells-- meat to be eaten, not to be eaten, corpses > Could fall into several categories: appetizing, irritating, repulsive > Sexual smells-- female, male, orkish, other > Could induce desire, aggression, jealousy, danger > Natural smells--earth, water, air, stalk, leaf, root, fungi > Could induce comfort, thirst, feelings of energy > Mineral smells-- granite, quartz, gold, fool's gold, etc. > Could induce a sense of industry, curiosity, greed, calculation > > Just some thoughts! > Sally > ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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