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----- Original Message ----- From: "Henrik Theiling" <theiling@hidden.email>
To: <romconlang@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 2:02 PM Subject: Re: [romconlang] Re: Call for opinions: word for "now" They are usually *written* as <b d g>, but the phonemes are /B D G/. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-GermanicDo you know, I'd never picked up on that. You are quite right of course. I wonder where that would leave <-NG-> (/N/), <-GN-> (/Nn/) and <-NQV-> (/Nk_w/)? Unchanged I suppose, except maybe /Nk_w/ becomes becomes /Nkw/ or /Nk.w/?
I often also wonder about the lack of /v/ in PGmc. I presume it must have existed as an allophone of [f], even if it wasn't phonemic.
Anyway, the Institute for Parallel Histories have not yet commented on this very much, but I think the modern orthography must be due to some influencial scholars in the 1600s or 1700s who wanted a distinct look of Þrjótrunn as a North Romance language indicating some Germanic heritage. The rune þ was used for a sound that the Latin alphabet had no letter for.Who'd have thought they had an institute for such things! ;) Personally I too prefer Thorn to the romance preference for <-h>. Must be my Germanic roots... Mind you, <h> seems to have been used an awful lot as a modifying letter because its own sound had been lost in VL. Since a Gmc latin dialect would still need <h> for /h/ (and perhaps also /x/?), then its logical they might have needed an alternative solution to the usual <th> for /T/ or /t_h/. Perhaps at one time before /w/ > /v/ a language like Þrjótrunn would also have borrowed runic wynn for similar reasons?
Well, I am not describing the most *likely* history. From our point of view, that would sure be our own history. I am describing *the* history that led to Þrjótrunn. Likeliness is, well, irrelevant since that parallel history not interconnected with our history in a way that allows reasoning about likelyness. :-) true enough It fully depends on your design goals. I am of no help. If you look at similarly constructed diachronic conlangs, e.g. Brithenig, Wenedyk, etc. you will see that the orthography is similarly 'unlikely'. (And further note that 'Wenedyk' is foreign orthography in Wenedyk, selected because Jan van Steenbergen liked it better).what thoughts and aims did you have in mind when you were deciding your orthography?
Pete