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On 26 May 2009, at 10:37, thomasruhm wrote:
Are other italic conlangs already developed far enough to learn them? When I first read In my latin dictionary that there are more italic languages and I later found out there are not many texts writen in them I thought somebody should make whole languages of what is left. And Padraic (thank you) told me there are languages like that in this forum.
I have a generally Italic conlang that is intended as an "alternative Latin"; it's not terribly well condified, since it was made for a fiction project that I have, and so I tended to illuminate the corners that I need for words and names without putting together a comprehensive description. I've generally aimed for something with an Old/Archaic Latin flavour, pulling in bits from Proto-Italic, Oscan, and even backwards from Vulgar Latin or Romance as necessary. I've tried to excise things that are Etruscan or Greek borrowings (though I admit some Greek-flavoured morphology here and there), though I've sometimes conned entire new words from PIE roots to replace these.
At present (and just as this is not a highly codified system, it is an evolving one) my "alternative Latin" system looks like this: There is an ancestral tongue called Aqileian which is more or less standing in for Proto-Italic. This splits into two main branches, Ausonic and Kuriac, which have slightly different morphology and phonology (and, probably vocabulary). The differences here are not extremely, and one might think of these sort of like the different dialects of Ancient Greek rather than as separate languages. There is always an interface between the two dialects as well, which along with other evolutionary processes in the phonology results in a kind of "koine" (of a Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance type stage) which increasingly becomes daily language of most people within the whole Ausonic/Kuriac cultural matrix. This "koine" then starts to splinter into new dialects/languages (i.e. analogous to early Romance languages).
Of course, when I'm needing a new word or name, Classical Latin tends to be me starting point (as it's a convenient place to start!), but then I do occasionally twiddle bits of the historical evolution of Latin to suit my needs or whims. For example, I let PIE dh- become Kuriac /T/- instead of Latin f-.
Looking at my notes, I found I constructed a version of the famous "through a glass, darkly" phrase of 1 Corinthians 13:12 in my "Imperial Kuriac": Widêmos nuke per spekolom þûmântim (compare the Latin from the Vulgate: "Videmus nunc per speculum in aegnigmate"). Among other things, you'll see that dh- > T- rule there (assuming the "thorn" character survives!) as well as the fact that I've ditched the Helenistic loan "aenigma" with a perhaps somewhat Romance-style declined past participle (also my "nuke" is formed as Latin "nunc" from PIE nu- "now" + PIE particle ke "this", but just directly).
Still, looking at my notes, I think I hadn't decided on a later, "koine" version of the phrase, probably because I haven't gotten around to deciding how to deal with the fate of "nuke". Latin nunc generally being replaced in Vulgar Latin by constructions like hac hora, etc., though hora is a Greek borrowing, and I'd either need to replace it with a more Italic form or keep "nuke", etc.
I'm sure I worked out some declension tables for nominal morphology in my different "alternative Latin/Italic" languages/dialects at some point, but if I found them, I'd have to go back and decide if I still agreed with them. :)
Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/