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Re: [romanceconlang] North African Vulgar Latin



Eric Christopherson writes:

>I like it! It is possible for /G/ to become /j/. For that matter, it's 
>possible for other very faintly-pronounced fricatives to become /j/; I've 
>heard of /D/ > /j/ before. Also, in Spanish there are some sporadic
>instances 
>of /D/ and maybe /G/ becoming /j/ -- the only one I can think of right
>now is 
>(des)nuyo, but that unfortunately got leveled in favor of the more
>regular 
>desnudo that you hear today.

Neat! Well, i see it eventually going towards /Desnuo/, if intervocalic
and final /D/ drops out totally from colloquial Spanish speech. Even in my
speech if I talk faster it tends to drop out. 
>
>AFMCL, I still haven't found a good solid way to prevent long strings of 
>vowels resulting from sounds dropping. I could even see advocatu-
>becoming 
>/ao"ao/ :) Hmm, Hawaiian Romancelang, anyone? *

I kind of like that though :). Which is why i purposely dropped
intervocalic d (/D/). I think this "softening" of the VL makes Montreiano
soft. I didnt want to go too soft with things like nasal vowels (which i
dont care too much for). 

>Where does the -y- sound come from, anyway?

The y sound (/j/) mainly comes from:

- /G/ turning to /j/ as in the previous: advocatu > avogado > avogáo >
avoyáo /avo'jao/
- palatalized l /l_j/ becoming /wj/*: caballarius > cavallairo >
cavauyairo /kavaw'jajro/
- or simply from its Latin roots: ego > eo > io /jo/

>
I would have kept the original rule of i being used for both i and /j/ in
all instances, but sometimes it could be mistaken as part of a diphthong.
It's mainly aesthetic and functional concerns that goverened that
descision :) (As much as I like strings of vowels, reading a bunch
together can get confusing).
>
>* I believe someone once set out to make a language of Romans who somehow 
>colonized Polynesia, but I don't know any more about it.

Yeah, i remember that. There was this huge buzz about it, and then --
nothing. Hmm. It was a cool project too!