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--- On Wed, 7/1/09, thomasruhm <thomas@hidden.email> wrote: > I only started doing more conlanging this year and I want to know more > about other peoples projects. Carl Anderson sent me some information > about Aqilonian, what he is working on. He says that it is based on > archaic latin. Well, one of mine, way out in far left field, is the Common language of the Westlands in the World. It seems to have started life as a lingua franca of the various Mediterranian countries a number of centuries ago and has since creolised into a fairly stable language that is now spoken from Carcarus and Ultramauritania in the west and down to Axum and Nubb in the far southeast. Its basic lexicon is Hellado-Italic though has absorbed a large number of words from Punic, Coptic and other languages around about. Can't really say it's a "Romance" language by grammar, though it has retained some Romance morphology. It tends to be rather liberal with that morphology, though. So, an old favourite: Enam vaser uganiier, coudeya: naser abba verver antam an noummener-ant; an nomon tina verver hagnas; az' thayat al zilcas tina; uttet l' alfas tina; ntiru-na-swe nnoummenebas-na-swe; dada hotim azza naser al puntis tineacas; nas demeter-swe icii-icii an namadera demete-swe naser an namadera; ni duca naser ntemptazo-na; da demete naser estam dara-sta. Enam vaser uganiier, coudeya: when you pray say naser abba verver antam an noummener-ant; our father who (are) above the heavens-above an nomon tina verver hagnas; the name thy which (is) sacred az' thayat al zilcas tina; to come(subj) the kingdom thy uttet l' alfas tina; do(subj) the will thy ntiru-na-swe nnoummenebas-na-swe; in-earth-in-as in-heavens-in-as dada hotim azza naser al puntis tineacas; give today to us the bread daily nas demeter-swe icii-icii an namadera demete-swe naser an namadera; we wipe clean-if them-of the -ness bad wipe clean-so our the -ness bad ni duduca naser ntemptazo-na; not lead us in-temptation-in da demete naser estam dara-sta. but free us from evil-from Typically the language is SVO; has minimal tense and mood forms, no verbal morphology to speak of, and may prepose or postpose (or, as is often the case, ambipose) its adpositions (with a few excceptions). Reduplication plays a much larger role, and not just in verbs (where it still shows past tense in many instances); in pronouns it indicates plurality; in present tense, it indicates immediacy. -ar and -er are present time; -at and -et are subjunctive; -a and -e are imperative. Nominal morphology is a little more complex in that there remain some case and number distinctions. In the given text, -s is nominative singular of the -o/-a stem class, while -a is the accusative and -u is the dative, -ebas is the dative plural. There is typically no adjective-noun agreement, though it's met with on occasion. Lexically, Italic (which here would include Latin proper, Oscan and Umbrian, Etruscan) and Helladic form the basic corpus of words. Punic (and the Sumerian words imported via Punic) forms the second largest segment of the lexicon. Sometimes a word can be found duplicated (or even triplicated) from different families. One example is holy or sacred, which has forms from Italic, Illyrian and Helladic. Quite probably, there are subtle differences between them. > Thomas Padraic