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--- eamoniski <robertg@hidden.email> wrote:
> --- Padraic Brown wrote:
>
> > Always a good idea. The first iteration of
> Kerno
> > turned out to be the literary register; the
> > spoken (and anymore written) register is
> quite
> > radically different.
>
> Grammar stays roughly
> the same except for
On that point, Kerno's two registers differ
considerably. I'm sure to the point of mutual
incomprehensibility.
> It reminds me of the question I once
> read, that was along the
> lines of "if King Solomon suddenly appeared in
> our times would he be
> able to understand Modern Hebrew?" If Julius
> Caesar suddenly appeared
> today what do we expect his understanding of
> modern Romance languages to be?
Dunno about Solomon, though I would suspect "not
without help" at least. As for Caesar, I'm quite
sure he was an adept at the VL spoken commonly
among his troops, even if his writing was
schoolbookish. He might recognise some of the
more transparant forms of Romance (perhaps
Spanish at least) as being akin to his soldiers'
language.
> Of course all language do it to some extent,
> and the choice seems to
> be etymological (like preferring French-derived
> lexica in English for
> certain situations, and Germanic for others).
Interesting about that. While it once probably
was a matter of register -- only the nobility
would have known what "beef" or "venison" are,
the rest of the folk would have said "hwaet?"
Anymore, "beef" and "pork" and similar are
perfectly good, totally native English words.
Some national livestock group used to advertise
on tv, using a good solid western American
(probably cowboy) voice: "Beef, real food for
real people". It is no longer the foreign name it
once was!
Kerno has a similar set of dual (and often trial)
food terms:
pig: muccouws
raw pork: porkows (also porcs)
cooked pork: pouerc�
cow: bos
raw beef: beofs
cooked beef: martys
chicken: yarrows
raw poultry: poula
cooked poultry: pulti�
Etc.
> But in the East they
> seem to have raised it to such an art form and
> indeed a vital part of
> being able to properly use the language.
Well, similar thing happens here where you have
all sorts of, mm, "low prestige" dialects and
accents in apposition to the standard (either
written or spoken. Do you think a US newsreader
would either get or retain for long a job on an
ABC national news programme if he did his reports
in Spanglish or BAE? In this culture, it is
deemed "vital" in order to succeed to use
something closely approximating the standard
language.
[snip]
> heavily Romancised (is that a word?) variety of
Romanicised, I think.
> That's the basic run-down; you may be able to
> tell I as taking a year
> of Western Civilization at uni when I got the
> idea...
I like the premise, even if it were far-fetched!
Though I hope you weren't trying to pass off this
monestary's interlingua as the Carolingian
Reformed Latin! Those reforms were intended to
expunge non-classical forms and tendencies and
restore to the language its ancient written form.
> Vocabulary samples to follow shortly.
Yay! I should note that I have a lexicon for
Kerno on-line. You can get to it and a short
grammatical sketch via www.bethisad.com
> Right. The phonology is essentially that of
> Ecclesiastical
> Latin/Italian. That makes [x], for example,
> something to deal with,
> and I think it usually becomes [k].
I concur.
> > You could. You could also use Greek or
> Sanskrit
> > or Gothic or any other natural language.
> You've
> > chosen to invent your own language, though.
>
> I've never been able to satisfy myself with a
> language as-is. :) I
> have to personalise it. Even one of my first
> conlangs (circa age 10)
> was formed after discovering Esperanto,
> deciding it needed
> personalisation, added a lot of German,
> Russian, Czech vocabulary,
> changed the alphabet to Cyrillic...
>
> > That's OK. Grammar changes, too! It wasn't so
> > long ago a simple question like "Do you like
> red
> > or green?" would be met with a blank stare
> (back
> > when "do" was not used to form questions).
>
> I didn't realize that about "do!" What
> timeframe did the change take place?
I don't know off hand, though I would hazard 17th
century at the latest. That we can still
understand a question like "Know you who that
woman is?" means (at least to me) that we're
still capable of forming questions that way; we
just don't do it that way anymore. It sounds kind
of stilted.
> > Probably. I guess it might have allowed Greek
> > philosophers a certain amount of specificity
> that
> > Latin would have lacked.
>
> One of the reasons I imagined my scholars
> adding articles. I've read
> that Abelard, when he wrote Sic et Non, was
> discontented with Latin's
> lack of a oui et non. (Indeed, my language has
> sic and non; Old Latin
> sei takes over the role of "if.")
Yeah, another boneheaded lack in the supposedly
logical Latin!
>
> > Indeed. Though Kerno retains some fragments
> of
> > other cases.
>
> I think the genitive and locative will find
> itself in place names and
> words derived from them.
The dative plural still has a fairly active form
(in -ib or -iv); a possessive plural can be found
in many names; the locative can sometimes be
found fronted in its clause.
> > Cran is something Celtic (I don't have the
> > etymology at hand); puleg is, as I recall, a
> > flea. I'll look them up later.
>
> I think that Milanese uses "non ... flea"
> (whatever flea is, I can' remember), as well.
I don't have an etymon for cran, but am sure it's
Celtic. Puleg comes from Latin pulic-.
Padraic
> Cheers,
> Eamon
>
>
Camifi, Marusi, teterani, tester fuferios asteros; tamenio
vem Persaecion empuriase ed ec pasem emduriase!
--Pomperios Perfurios.
--
Ill Bethisad --
<http://www.bethisad.com>
Come visit The World! --
<http://www.geocities.com/hawessos/>
.