There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
From: Tony Harris
1b. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
From: David Peterson
1c. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
From: David Peterson
1d. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
From: Roger Mills
1e. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
From: Charlie
1f. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
From: R A Brown
2a. Re: Fully featured language
From: <deinx nxtxr>
2b. Re: Fully featured language
From: Vojtěch Merunka
3a. Re: A birthday list?
From: Tony Harris
3b. Re: A birthday list?
From: David Peterson
3c. Re: A birthday list?
From: Tony Harris
3d. Re: A birthday list?
From: Sylvia Sotomayor
4a. The Angosey quotation preposition: is this a realistic exception in
From: Daniel Bowman
4b. Re: The Angosey quotation preposition: is this a realistic exception
From: Patrick Dunn
4c. Re: The Angosey quotation preposition: is this a realistic exception
From: Nikolay Ivankov
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
Posted by: "Tony Harris" t...@alurhsa.org
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 5:58 pm ((PST))
On 12/4/10 10:52 PM, Herman Miller wrote:
>> As I've been going over the Jarda documentation, I've been wondering
>> whether it might be better to use digraphs or extra letters in some
>> cases where I'm currently using diacritics. In particular, I don't see
>> any reason not to use "gh" for [ɣ] instead of "ğ" (it's too easy to
>> confuse "ğ" with "ģ"). And I'm still unsatisfied with the way I write
>> the voiced lateral fricative as "ḽ" (l with a wedge below), but I can't
>> think of a suitable digraph. I can't use "dl" since /dl/ is a valid
>> cluster (e.g. dlôź "month"), and "ll" exists in compounds (e.g. trillaz
>> "Year of the Wren").
>>
>> I've gone back and forth on how to represent the sounds of my languages.
>
Alurhsa, as those who've seen it know, is fairly heavy with diacritics,
yet also has a sizable number of digraphs. The sound system is pretty
rich, with 70 different phonemes, and the native script handles it by
having 70 letters. But when writing the romanized version I had to come
up with something.
I did try using no diacritics, but long, short, nasal, and whispered
vowels were problematic to distinguish. You can just write them all the
same and rely on memory, sort of like the way the Arabic script is used
to write languages like Kurdish and Farsi, and used to be used for
Turkish. But that gets really cumbersome really quickly. I also tried
using digraphs, but very quickly found that writing "aalvaa" for what I
now represent as "'álvá" was, at least for me, aesthetically unappealing.
I also had the issue that I developed a font I could use to print the
Alurhsa script onto paper, but it's a bear to type because of the number
of letters vs. the number of keys on a standard US keyboard. So I
wanted to be able to type a romanized version that would be reliably and
programmatically distinguishable such that I could have a Visual Basic
macro roll through and convert the text properly to the Alurhsa font.
And, I was doing this in the early 1990's when Unicode was a far-off
dream and Latin1 was the best I could work with. And even then, I found
that Latin1 on the PC contained letters like eth and thorn, which other
Latin1 keyboard layouts (like the US-International one on the Mac and on
Linux which I'm using right now) did not.
So, I came up with a system where I'm using diacritics on vowels (acute
for long, nothing for short, circumflex for nasal, diaresis for
whispered, and grave for shifted or other vowel sounds I didn't make fit
in the rest), and ñ for /N/ and ç for /tS/, and then went for digraphs,
and occasional trigraphs and even one quadrigraph, to represent
Alurhsa's rich collection of consonants. It's not always pretty, but
it's better (in my opinion) than the pure digraph/trigraph/etc. version,
easier to read reliably than the no-diacritic version, programatically
convertable to the native font version, and workable to send over the
internet even to people whose email servers, clients or browsers don't
really handle Unicode well and who don't happen to have the Alurhsa
truetype font installed (which is pretty much 99.999% of the population
of the planet...).
Messages in this topic (20)
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1b. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 5:59 pm ((PST))
On Dec 5, 2010, at 5◊46 PM, <deinx nxtxr> <deinx.nx...@sasxsek.org> wrote:
>
> I like <q> for /ŋ/. It's fairly easy to get accustomed to in lower case
> form. I use it like that in SASXSEK but it's not the idea was plagiarized
> from Ceqli.
>
> I can't recall running across any Polynesian languages that have that usage
> (that doesn't mean there aren't any).
Wait a minute; I take that back. <q> is /ŋg/ and <g> is /ŋ/. Close, though.
-David
*******************************************************************
"Sunlü eleškarez ügrallerüf üjjixelye ye oxömeyze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.com/
LCS Member Since 2007
http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (20)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 6:00 pm ((PST))
On Dec 5, 2010, at 5◊46 PM, <deinx nxtxr> <deinx.nx...@sasxsek.org> wrote:
>
> I like <q> for /ŋ/. It's fairly easy to get accustomed to in lower case
> form. I use it like that in SASXSEK but it's not the idea was plagiarized
> from Ceqli.
>
> I can't recall running across any Polynesian languages that have that usage
> (that doesn't mean there aren't any).
As has been mentioned, Fijian has it.
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.com/
LCS Member Since 2007
http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (20)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 7:29 pm ((PST))
--- On Sun, 12/5/10, David Peterson <deda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wait a minute; I take that back. <q> is /ŋg/ and
> <g> is /ŋ/. Close, though.
>
Right, that is Fijian. Samoan, and I suspect other Polynesian lgs. also use "g"
for /N/ (if they have that phoneme). Thus Pago-Pago, Samoa is correctly
/paNopaNo/
Messages in this topic (20)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
Posted by: "Charlie" caeruleancent...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 7:54 pm ((PST))
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "<deinx nxtxr>" <deinx.nx...@...> wrote:
>
> On 12/5/10 11:44 AM, Charlie wrote:
>
> > There are three "weak" vowels used for euphony: /E/, /I/,
> > and /U/. I really wanted to use the<ı> (dotless i)
> > for /I/, but couldn't find two other vowel graphemes that would
> > go well with it. I finally settled on<ë>,<ï>, and<ü>. What
> > do you think of<ɘ> (reversed e) for<ë> and<ɯ
> > (turned m) for<ü>?
>
> Why not <y> for /I/ ?
>
The dotless I for /I/ was the one I really liked! It's the other two with
which I was having problems.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (20)
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1f. Re: Diacritics vs. extra letters vs. digraphs
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 11:47 pm ((PST))
On 06/12/2010 00:53, Charlie wrote:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, j_mach_w...@... wrote:
[snip]
>> But what do you mean by "used for euphony"? If that
>> means they're just allophones, then don't mark them.
>
> 3-consonant clusters are not permitted. When this would
> occur in compound words, an<ë> is inserted: ááȝras
> (morning) + stéres (star) = ààȝrëstéres (morning
> star).
>
> When a word that ends in a palatal consonant is joined to
> a word beginning with a consonant,<ï> is inserted:
> góļes (doe) + léþros (leather) = gòlïléþros,
> doeskin.
>
> When a word that ends in a labial consonant is joined to
> a word beginning with a consonant,<ü> is inserted:
> kířos (saddle) + mákos (bag) = -kìrümákos
> (saddle-bag).
Unless I've missed something, doesn't that mean the color of
the vowel is conditioned by the consonant that precedes it?
I.e. the variation is surely allophonic as mach suggests.
Indeed, as the "weak vowels used for euphony" are,
apparently, 100% predictable, it is IMO arguable whether you
need any symbol at all to mark them. But if you do feel that
as there's a sound there ought to be a symbol then at least
it seems to me to have three symbols is extravagant.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (20)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Fully featured language
Posted by: "<deinx nxtxr>" deinx.nx...@sasxsek.org
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 6:02 pm ((PST))
On 11/25/10 4:38 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:09:36 +0000, Ben Collier wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I was wondering if there had been an attempt to create a language
>> which incorporated as many linguistic features, tenses, declensions
>> etc. as possible, to enable much greater a range of both specificities
>> and subtleties in speech.
>>
>> Has anything like that bee tried?
I have one in the works, but it's a really low-priority so it's little
more than a general sketch.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Fully featured language
Posted by: "Vojtěch Merunka" vmeru...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 11:40 pm ((PST))
Hi!
I suspect something like that was Sanskirt - maybe the first (and very
successful) conlang in the world. It has 8 cases, rich verbal systems
(symmetry between tenses, voices, ...) and a lot of symmetries (betw.
verbs and participles, ...), and well defined rules how to make
nonconforming attribute from subordinate clause and vice versa etc.
My Neoslavonic language (Novoslovienskij jazyk) is not so generally
universal, but our aim was to cover by neoslavonic as well as all
possible grammatical features that occur within the group of Slavic
languages. It contrast to other Slavic conlangs, it does not have very
simplified grammar, because our way was not reduction of everything as
much as possible, but fixing or thinking about symmetries, mutually
intersected declension and conjugation patterns and reduction of
exceptions.
It might be possible to use our conlang as an inter-language tool
enabling lost-less automated translations between slavic languages or as
a receptive learning teaching aid enabling better passive understanding
of some target natural slavic language in conditions, where people do
not have enough of time to learn grammar of this target natural
language. This is why we started practical testing our conlang in
education courses and described the concept of this language in the same
language:
https://sites.google.com/site/novoslovienskij/youtube
http://ec.europa.eu/education/trainingdatabase/index.cfm?fuseaction=DisplayCourse&cid=26829
V.
On 06‐12‐10 02:59 , <deinx nxtxr> wrote:
> On 11/25/10 4:38 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>> Hallo!
>>
>> On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:09:36 +0000, Ben Collier wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I was wondering if there had been an attempt to create a language
>>> which incorporated as many linguistic features, tenses, declensions
>>> etc. as possible, to enable much greater a range of both specificities
>>> and subtleties in speech.
>>>
>>> Has anything like that bee tried?
>
> I have one in the works, but it's a really low-priority so it's little
> more than a general sketch.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*assoc. prof. Vojtěch Merunka, Ph.D.*
vmeru...@gmail.com <mailto:vmeru...@gmail.com>
http://sites.google.com/site/vmerunka
*Department of Information Engineering*
/Faculty of Economics and Management/
Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague
*Department of Software Engineering in Economy*
/Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering/
Czech Technical University in Prague
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Messages in this topic (7)
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________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: A birthday list?
Posted by: "Tony Harris" t...@alurhsa.org
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 6:05 pm ((PST))
On 12/05/2010 08:50 PM, <deinx nxtxr> wrote:
> On 12/5/10 9:23 AM, R A Brown wrote:
>
>>> I ask you how about assembling a list of conlangers'
>>> birthdays? We could, for instance, enter them into the
>>> calendar at http://calendar.conlang.org/ .
>>
>> How about it, the rest of you?
>
> Not that I'm opposed to it the idea per se, but in this age of
> identity theft I prefer not to openly post information like that on
> the web where anyone can see it.
I agree. I don't mind friends or family knowing my birthday, but would
rather not share it with all and sundry for exactly this reason.
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: A birthday list?
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 6:07 pm ((PST))
On Dec 5, 2010, at 5◊58 PM, Tony Harris wrote:
> On 12/05/2010 08:50 PM, <deinx nxtxr> wrote:
>> On 12/5/10 9:23 AM, R A Brown wrote:
>>
>>>> I ask you how about assembling a list of conlangers'
>>>> birthdays? We could, for instance, enter them into the
>>>> calendar at http://calendar.conlang.org/ .
>>>
>>> How about it, the rest of you?
>>
>> Not that I'm opposed to it the idea per se, but in this age of identity
>> theft I prefer not to openly post information like that on the web where
>> anyone can see it.
>
> I agree. I don't mind friends or family knowing my birthday, but would
> rather not share it with all and sundry for exactly this reason.
My birthday's January 20th, 1981.
Come get me, Internet.
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.com/
LCS Member Since 2007
http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: A birthday list?
Posted by: "Tony Harris" t...@alurhsa.org
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 6:11 pm ((PST))
Now here's another reason... it would make me feel old. You, for
example, are my daughters' age, and they (twins) are our youngest.
On 12/05/2010 09:02 PM, David Peterson wrote:
> On Dec 5, 2010, at 5◊58 PM, Tony Harris wrote:
>
>> On 12/05/2010 08:50 PM,<deinx nxtxr> wrote:
>>> On 12/5/10 9:23 AM, R A Brown wrote:
>>>
>>>>> I ask you how about assembling a list of conlangers'
>>>>> birthdays? We could, for instance, enter them into the
>>>>> calendar at http://calendar.conlang.org/ .
>>>> How about it, the rest of you?
>>> Not that I'm opposed to it the idea per se, but in this age of identity
>>> theft I prefer not to openly post information like that on the web where
>>> anyone can see it.
>> I agree. I don't mind friends or family knowing my birthday, but would
>> rather not share it with all and sundry for exactly this reason.
>
> My birthday's January 20th, 1981.
>
> Come get me, Internet.
>
> -David
> *******************************************************************
> "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
> "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
>
> -Jim Morrison
>
> http://dedalvs.com/
>
> LCS Member Since 2007
> http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: A birthday list?
Posted by: "Sylvia Sotomayor" terje...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 6:14 pm ((PST))
He is a mere baby, isn't he?
This is why I want to look into using the exchange.conlang.org site
for birthdays. The information could be made private, and in any case,
it would probably be trivial to leave off the year.
Actually, for the calendar files, too, a year does not have to be
specified. So no one need know how old you are, only that January 20th
is your birthday.
But I do not have time to really think about any of this until next week. :-(
-S
On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 6:09 PM, Tony Harris <t...@alurhsa.org> wrote:
> Now here's another reason... it would make me feel old. You, for example,
> are my daughters' age, and they (twins) are our youngest.
>
>
> On 12/05/2010 09:02 PM, David Peterson wrote:
>>
>> On Dec 5, 2010, at 5◊58 PM, Tony Harris wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/05/2010 08:50 PM,<deinx nxtxr> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 12/5/10 9:23 AM, R A Brown wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> I ask you how about assembling a list of conlangers'
>>>>>> birthdays? We could, for instance, enter them into the
>>>>>> calendar at http://calendar.conlang.org/ .
>>>>>
>>>>> How about it, the rest of you?
>>>>
>>>> Not that I'm opposed to it the idea per se, but in this age of identity
>>>> theft I prefer not to openly post information like that on the web where
>>>> anyone can see it.
>>>
>>> I agree. I don't mind friends or family knowing my birthday, but would
>>> rather not share it with all and sundry for exactly this reason.
>>
>> My birthday's January 20th, 1981.
>>
>> Come get me, Internet.
>>
>> -David
>> *******************************************************************
>> "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
>> "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
>>
>> -Jim Morrison
>>
>> http://dedalvs.com/
>>
>> LCS Member Since 2007
>> http://conlang.org/
>
--
Sylvia Sotomayor
The sooner I fall behind the more time I have to catch up.
Messages in this topic (17)
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________________________________________________________________________
4a. The Angosey quotation preposition: is this a realistic exception in
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" danny.c.bow...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 7:47 pm ((PST))
Greetings, all.
I have a question about how languages handle direct quotations. I would
also like your opinion on if the way my conlang Angosey handles instances of
quotation is consistent with the rest of Angosey's grammar.
First of all, what natlang and conlang systems are in place to handle the
following structures:
He said, "I am a cat."
He said that he is a cat.
An alcohol called gin.
My name is Danny.
Angosey handles all the rest by inserting the preposition "ka", almost as if
it represented quotation marks:
Reya al lay ka: jrenhhaya isa al kata.
He said: I am a cat.
Reya al lay ka ngajrenhhaya lay al kata.
He said that he was a cat.
Au sou ka jin.
An alcohol called "gin"
Sereda issha ka Danny.
My name is Danny.
However, Angosey is solely a postpositional, not a prepositional, language.
In the above examples, though, "ka" is acting as a preposition, if I am
interpreting my own language right.
Some notes:
In Angosey, postpositions agree with their objects, "ka" never agrees with
anything.
"Ka" is used when a quotation is made, an example is given, or something is
explicitly named.
Do other languages often have markers denoting quotation or examples, and if
so, do these markers behave as a category of their own or are they part of
another category (say, adpositions, adjectives, or conjunctions)?
It seems unnatural to me to quote something, then put the adposition behind
what I just quoted. However, that may be simply my English-centric bias,
and I have tried my best to expunge English from Angosey. If the latter is
true, then I will have to make "ka" behave as a postposition to be
consistent with the rest of the language. But if most languages that have
similar markers always put the marker before the quotation, then I'll leave
"ka" in front. That's the decision I'm trying to resolve.
Thoughts?
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: The Angosey quotation preposition: is this a realistic exception
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Dec 5, 2010 7:55 pm ((PST))
Presumably the rest of the language is also head-final? But even so,
languages aren't always consistent in their headedness (take English, for
example, which is head-initial,, except for with adjectives).
If I were to run into this in a natlang, I wouldn't even blink. I'd simply
assume it was a particle indicating direct or indirect discourse. It
wouldn't even occur to me to analyze it as a preposition. I'd be more
likely to analyze it as a complementizer, perhaps, other than in its use for
indicating names. It seems quite naturalistic to me.
But I am very curious to hear how other conlangs handle quotations. I
always find that a sticky bit of syntax. English, as well as most (all?)
Indo-European languages treat quotations as imbedded clauses, but I know
that's not universal. Unfortunately, I don't know any non-IE languages well
enough to offer examples.
On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Greetings, all.
>
> I have a question about how languages handle direct quotations. I would
> also like your opinion on if the way my conlang Angosey handles instances
> of
> quotation is consistent with the rest of Angosey's grammar.
>
> First of all, what natlang and conlang systems are in place to handle the
> following structures:
> He said, "I am a cat."
> He said that he is a cat.
> An alcohol called gin.
> My name is Danny.
>
> Angosey handles all the rest by inserting the preposition "ka", almost as
> if
> it represented quotation marks:
> Reya al lay ka: jrenhhaya isa al kata.
> He said: I am a cat.
> Reya al lay ka ngajrenhhaya lay al kata.
> He said that he was a cat.
> Au sou ka jin.
> An alcohol called "gin"
> Sereda issha ka Danny.
> My name is Danny.
>
> However, Angosey is solely a postpositional, not a prepositional, language.
> In the above examples, though, "ka" is acting as a preposition, if I am
> interpreting my own language right.
>
> Some notes:
> In Angosey, postpositions agree with their objects, "ka" never agrees with
> anything.
> "Ka" is used when a quotation is made, an example is given, or something is
> explicitly named.
>
> Do other languages often have markers denoting quotation or examples, and
> if
> so, do these markers behave as a category of their own or are they part of
> another category (say, adpositions, adjectives, or conjunctions)?
>
> It seems unnatural to me to quote something, then put the adposition behind
> what I just quoted. However, that may be simply my English-centric bias,
> and I have tried my best to expunge English from Angosey. If the latter is
> true, then I will have to make "ka" behave as a postposition to be
> consistent with the rest of the language. But if most languages that have
> similar markers always put the marker before the quotation, then I'll leave
> "ka" in front. That's the decision I'm trying to resolve.
>
> Thoughts?
>
--
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to
window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance. --Arthur Rimbaud
Messages in this topic (3)
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4c. Re: The Angosey quotation preposition: is this a realistic exception
Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" lukevil...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Dec 6, 2010 4:32 am ((PST))
I don't whether it can help, since I don't have any true linguistic
background, but here are some quotation marks from Russian language. These
particles (?) are a feature of informal speech, so presumably they are not
commonly found in manuals.
Nevertheless, there are two words that mark a quotation, which are quiet
synonymic: "de"("де") and "mol" ("мол").
Он де/мо&#1083;
спать
&#1093;отел.
On de/mol spat' khotel.
He - de/mol sleep(INF) want(3PST-Masc).
Approximate translation: "He said that he has been wanting to sleep"
This phrase, in effect, may be a reduction of the following:
[Он] сказ&#1072;л,
мол он / он де
спать хотел.
[On] skazal, mol on / on de spat' khotel.
[He] say(3PST-Masc), mol he / he de sleep(INF) want(3PST-Masc).
"He said that he has been wanting to sleep".
The difference between this constructions and the standard construction
Он сказал,
что [он] хотел
спать.
On skazal, chto [on] khotel spat'.
He say(3PST-Masc), that [he] want(3PST-Masc) sleep(INF).
is that the first ones have a kind of negative attitude of the speaker to
the subject. Such sentence seems not to occur in the beginning of the
speech. It may be an answer to a question, like:
- Where is he?
- He said that he wanted to sleep (but I'm not sure whether he really is in
the bedroom).
or
"He said that he wanted to sleep, but went gambling instead."
The particle "mol" could also mark direct speech, with same negative attitude:
[Он] сказ&#1072;л я
мол тут
самы&#1081; умный,
поэтому...
[On] skazal ya mol tut samyi umnyi, poetomu
[He] said I mol here most clever, therefore...
"He said that he was the most clever (among us), therefore..."
Note that although it is possible to place the particle before the direct
speech, it is common to place it right inside of the speech (I do not know
the precise rules, since it's my mother-tongue). Recently there was a
tendency do replace 'mol' with 'chto' (that), although form the point of
modern Russian grammar it is inaccessible, because it leads to a confusion
(normally such a replacement in the above phrase will mean that the speaker
was said to be the cleverest).
"Де", as far as I know, comes from something like PIE
*dʰeH₁- and is
relative to English verb "do" and Russian
"делать" ("delat'") with the same
meaning. I'm not sure whether it is possible to add Latin "decire" to this
list. The root "mol", as far as I understand, is found in such Russian words
as "молва"("molva") - arch. "rumor",
"молит&#1100;ся" ("molit'sya") -
"to pay",
"умолять"("umol'at'") - "to plead",
and even "молчать" ("molchat'") - "to
be
silent/not to speak".
Again, since I have no proper linguistic education, and I'm talking about my
mother-language this text may contain errors.
Messages in this topic (3)
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