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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]>


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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


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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


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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


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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


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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)


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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.


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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]


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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


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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


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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


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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


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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.


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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.


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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


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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


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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.


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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.


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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


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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.


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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)


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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.


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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


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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
>


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