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I wrote:
> > Grammar stays roughly the same except for
Padraic wrote:
> On that point, Kerno's two registers differ
> considerably. I'm sure to the point of mutual
> incomprehensibility.
I'd be interested in some details. I'll check out the webpage you
mentioned.
> 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.
Good points.
> 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?"
And it seems that in English a lot of this revolves around names for
meats. I can think of some other doublets, although I might be
stretching it a bit:
freedom vs. liberty
cook vs. chef
anger vs. ire
ask vs. inquire
brotherly vs. fraternal
eastern vs. oriental
I think it makes the language quite rich.
> Kerno has a similar set of dual (and often trial)
> food terms:
This inspires me! I like the distinction between raw vs. cooked, and
it reminds me of Japanese.
> 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.
Although this isn't the same thing as ngoko, madya and inggil in
Javanese, or the Japanese polite/informal distinctions. But I could
also be setting myself up for the classic dialect vs. language vs.
whatever argument...
> Romanicised, I think.
Thanks! Duly noted.
> 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!
Fear not... it merely inspired the context which helped me decide on
parametres to guide language development. I make no pretense to
historical plausability...
> 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
On my way!
> 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.
What's funny is that it seems less stilted to say "know ye..."
> Yeah, another boneheaded lack in the supposedly
> logical Latin!
Well put!
> 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.
Intriguing. I've been thikning of ways to preserve a few remains of
the Classical cases (other than in fossilised phrases...)
> I don't have an etymon for cran, but am sure it's
> Celtic. Puleg comes from Latin pulic-.
Milanese also has non ... minga (literally "crumb")
Old French similarly had ne ... mie
Tuscan has non ... punto (just like French ne ... point)
French ne ... guère is interestingly from Frankish ("a lot, much")
Some other interesting negators from Old French include:
amende - almond
gote - drop
eschalope - peapod
beloce - sloe
areste - fishbone
some others are: alie, cenelle, fie, nois, pommes, espi, festu
I find Old French and Old Provençal to be terribly inspirational for
my project. There's something about it...
Cheers,
Eamon