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--- In romanceconlang@yahoogroups.com, Jan van Steenbergen
<ijzeren_jan@y...> wrote:
> --- Christian Thalmann skrzypszy:
>
> > It involves a reduction of unstressed endings (/@/ ->
> > nil except where required to break up ugly consonant
> > collisions, and /@n/ -> /@/ except where required for
> > liaison between vowels), as well as a simplification
> > of noun declinations (nouns and adjectives are always
> > in the nominative form, leaving the case inflections
> > for articles and pronouns).
>
> You don't mention the fact that Standard Jovian doesn't have the
article at
> all. Or have I been terribly misguided?
No, you're right. High Jovian uses the indefinite
article |u a un| rather sparingly, and the definite
article technically doesn't even exist, though you
can use the third person pronoun |is ja id| in an
article-like fashion, but the result is going to be
strong emphasis rather than just definiteness.
> The change /@n/ > /@/ is very common in Dutch, even to such an
extent that
> pronouncing the /n/ would sound like either hypercorrection or a
dialect. But
> we don't pronounce it before a vowel. Instead, either we glide from
the schwa
> to the following vowel, or we insert a glottal stop. Could be an
idea for you
> too, perhaps?
Actually, I even considered keeping the [n] audible
when it mutates with the following word, e.g.
|uenun frizun| ['y@n@m 'pri:z@] "cool wine", but
since |-a| and |-u| are now silent, it wouldn't be
too ambiguous to use [@] here: ['y@n@ 'pri:z@]. Note
how the mutation effect remains even without the
nasal...
I find that pronouncing a glide from the schwa to
another vowel to require more effort and deliberation
than the insertion of a binding [n]. This is also
the reason why final schwas get elided in High Jovian
when a vowel follows.
This might be a Swissism; we use [n] to bind two
vowels even if there is no underlying aequivalent
form on -n in German, e.g. [dAs voni gsajt ha] "what
I've said", with the German aequivalents "das wo ich
gesagt habe" (which would be very bad German ;-).
The glottal stop would be a possibility, but it
requires quite some effort to pronounce too, and it
seems weird to resort to it rather than the
etymologically obvious [n], especially seeing as
High Jovian doesn't have glottal stops anywhere
else.
> > Old:
> > Feima bella da doemo seini pixen friscun.
> > ['fejm@ 'vell@ da 'dAjmA 'zejni 'piS@m 'priSk@n ]
> >
> > New:
> > Ja feima bella da ei doemu seine un pix friscun.
> > [j@ vejm vel da e zAjm sejn @m 'biS 'friSk@]
>
> Is this a difference between Old and New or rather between "Standard
Civilized
> Jovian" and "Uncivilized Jovian Slang from the Streets and Gutters"?
I contemplated both, but decided on the latter, since
I kinda like the flowing structure of spoken High
Jovian with its many final vowels. Unfortunately,
it's precisely this ubiquitousness of unstressed
final syllables in all inflected nomina which make it
very hard to write lyrics for a song requiring
stressed final syllables! =( My attempt to word
"Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen" in Jovian has stalled
due to that.
> Very cool. I especially like the article. Could you elaborate a bit
on its
> forms?
It's basically the third person pronoun, derived from
Latin "is, ea, id". Its forms are available at
http://www.cinga.ch/langmaking/jovian.htm
under Declination -> Pronouns. Hmmm... I really
ought to make a linked table of contents for this
page someday. I even have one for Oro Mpaa! =P
-- Christian Thalmann