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Hi!
eamoniski writes:
> --- Henrik Theiling wrote:
> > Hehe. One typical kind of words one is busy with. I wasn't very
> > productive today, but 'if' is now (boringly) 'sí' in Þrjótrunn.
>
> I originally had sic, which became "yes," so now "if" is sei, which is
> apparently archaic Latin. Oddly enough I find coming up with these
> kinds of words to be the most interesting.
I am not sure whether I should use a superlative, but I like these
'small words' very much, too. Probably because I learn the weirdest
contractions in Romance from them. Before doing a romlang, I never
thought from which words or phrase some words derive in modern Romance
languages, but this is very interesting information.
> Sometimes the outcome is boring, but other itmes you can come up
> with nifty coinages. I really enjoyed your kviss and hákur!!
Thanks! :-)
> Have you shared Þrjótrunn's sound changes with the group before? I
> went for a long time not checking the messages, so I may have missed
> it...
No, I haven't explicitly given the sound changes here. Mainly because
I would not know where to start. The computer readable form of all
changes can be found on my homepage:
http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/s_02.html#03
The GMP (Grand Master Plan) basically consists of two parts:
a) From the Latin I want to start with, imagine how Germanic
speaking people would have rendered Latin. The goal here is to
have something that fits well into Germanic sound changes in
order to be able to follow them closely, while to not rush one's
fences.
This stage also lead to the selection of the time the Roman's
came to Scandinavia: first century CE, because the sound system
still fit quite well (most importantly, the vowels, which go a
bit haywire in Germanic).
b) The sound changes from Proto-Germanic to Modern Icelandic.
The more detailed, the better.
b) is actually so much that no-one would be listening. I read quite
some books to know what was going on. Some headlines for some
chapters would be:
- a-, i-, u-umlaut
- a- and u-breaking
- syncopes
- simplification of consonant clusters after the syncope period
OTOH, a) is quite short:
/f/ > /T/ but not in /fl/, since Germanic had /Tl/ > /fl/
This introduces characteristic /T/s. The shift
is justified by a different point of articulation
of /f/ in Latin and Proto-Germanic.
/kt/ > /ht/
Happened in Celtic-influenced Romance, too, and
/kt/ quite alien in Proto-Germanic.
/ks/ > /sk/
BPJ had examples where this happened in Romance.
/sk/ is very common in Old Icelandic, so this
quite likely.
A few other minor things change, like diphthongs that don't fit the
Germanic sound system, but that's basically it.
**Henrik