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thedudeatx skrev: > --- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Benct Philip > Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote: >> Henrik Theiling skrev: >>> thedudeatx writes: >>>> ... http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Iermansc >>> I like it! Especially the irregularities, the >>> syncope of penultimate when a syllable is >>> added to a bisyllabic stem (feels like >>> Russian, and German has that, too), and the >>> vowel shifts. > > Yeah, i was definitely going for a German feel > with that. > >> I like those features too, and the _sc/sch_ >> orthography. There must have been Anglo-Saxon >> missionaries involved when the orthography was >> established ;-) > > My thinking on that is because of SC > /ʃ/, > but SCH > /ʃk/. of course there's also X > > /ʃ/, so that's an alternative possibility. > i didn't want the orthography to be too German- > looking, seeing as it should more closely > resemble French or Italian... Yeah I thought about _x_ for /S/ too. Old and Middle Rhodrese used that spelling since Rh. had the soundchange VL /ks/ > /sk/ and then /sk/ > /S/ before front vowels. A 16th century grammarian named Grieur (< GREGORIUS) succeded in having _x_ for /S/ replaced by _sç_, since he thought that replacing _x_ with _cs_ in more recent Latin and Greek loans was a "perbarbarica scriptura". However the spelling _tx_ for /tS/ stuck and continues to this day despite Grieur's attempt to have it replaced by t-cedilla, which simply hadn't any tradition at all behind it. This _tx_ is quite common since Latin CT, soft CC and some other combinations regularly become /tS/, so ECCE HANC NOCTEM > _txanotx_ 'tonight' (French _ça nuit_), CALCIARE > _caltxiar_ etc. In the universe where Rhodrese is spoken the spelling systems of Romand (OTL aka Arpitan/Franco-Provencal, in western Switzerland) and Romantx (OTL Romantsch/ Rhaeto-Romance in central/eastern Switzerland) are directly and indirectly influenced by Rhodrese, so they also use the _x_ /S/ and _tx_ /tS/. However in Old English inherited vocabulary _sc_ (< West Germanic *sk) was /S/ in all positions, and since it is well known that English missionaries were rather ubiquitous in Greater Germany in Merovingian and Carolingian times I can well imagine Iermánsc picking up _sc_ /S/ and _sch_ /Sk/ under such an influence. (BTW how common is /Sk/ for _sk_ among German speakers? I always found it kind of funny when my mother says 'schkelett' "skeleton" even in Swedish! :-) >> The articles are reminicent of Rhodrese: >> >> un huom 'a man' el huom 'the man' eun huem >> 'some men' il huem 'the men' >> >> na feme 'a woman' la feme 'the woman' eun fim >> 'some women' il fim 'the women' >> > > Quite similar! is Rh. eun < UNI? like Ie. ne? Yes. Rhodrese has i-umlaut rather like German although later un-German-like sound changes rather obscure the results: ### Rhodrese i-umlaut Rh. VL Old Rh. Mdn Rh. ---------- ---------- ---------- e i i ei (e:) i i ie (E:) i i a e e ae (a:>&@) ea /E@/ ie u: iu /y/ eu /y/ ou (o:) eu /2y/ eu /y/ o oe /2/ e uo (O:) ue /y2/ ue /2/ The long Vulgar Latin vowels resulted from early Vulgar Latin vowels in open stressed syllables quite like in French or Italian. I've tabularized the whole thing at <http://wiki.frath.net/User:Melroch/Vulgar_Latin> The plural of nouns and adjectives and the second person singular present of verbs is normally marked by i-umlaut only, which makes the article extremely important for sorting out number and gender (although there is no gender in the plural article), hence the survival of the plural indefinite article. Rhodrese also has a-umlaut which caused i > e and u > o and shows up e.g. in *POR‑UNA > pona, and u-umlaut which caused a > o and a: > oa > ua and shows up mostly in the first person singular present of verbs, e.g. AMO > huam, cf. AMAS > hiem, AMAT > hiámet. /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*, c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)