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On 2010-01-13 Padraic Brown wrote:
> --- On Tue, 1/12/10, Capsicum <thomas@hidden.email> wrote:
>
> > >I would like to know what is typical for
> > >african romance languages. Is >the african
> > >latin dimunitive suffix '-�cca' in use? Are
> > >those languages >similar to Spanish, Sicilian
> > >and the like?
>
> > >*smile*
>
> > >Capsicum
>
> Adam Walker has been working on a North African
> Romance language for a while now, called
> Carraxena (Carthaginian, as I recall). He
> usually uses some Bible passage as a .sig, for
> example:
>
> "Nivechigadu ul omu fi nu nul cunsiju djuls
> �mfius avevad amvuinadu, fi ni nal via djuls
> pecadorus avevad pedizadu, fi ni nul sedigu
> djuls zagagadus avevad xedjidigadu. Saumu 1:1"
How much Romconlangs set in a particular area
resemble each other or the Vulgar Latin of that
area is of course a function of how much scholars
know or thinc they know of the distinctive traits
of the local VL, how much the conlanger knows of
what the scholars know, and how much the conlanger
cares about the pronouncements of the scholars!
AFMOC Rhodrese started out as a personal language,
*my* ideal mix of Italian and French, but when it
got an imaginary location in south-eastern Gaul
that did to some degree influence its development.
Already the original premise of a French/Italian
mix made it rather like Proven�al; now the
challenge is rather to make it a plausible Gallo-
Romance language while not to similar to any of
the three Gaulish Romnatlangs. Alas it all too
often feels like "Proven�al with diphthong-
ization", and I feel that I need to come up with
something innovative in addition to Germanic-style
umlaut, but the important thing is that the lang
feels right to me, and so far it does. (One trait
which probably is totally unrealistic is that C^
(soft C) next to a consonant, including the
geminate C^C^ like in ECCE, doesn't become [ts] >
[s] but remains a palatal and becomes [tS], so
that e.g. ECCE ILLU > _txel_, and *CALCIARE >
_caltxiar_, while CAELU > _cieo_ and *ALTIARE
> _alciar_. Another is that the treatment of
secondary final -L and -LL is reversed
compared to French: CAELU and *BELLU become
_ciel, beau_ in French but _cieo, bel_ in
Rhodrese. These are not bugs but features, and
I'm not going to change either *because I like
them as they are*!)
We know at least one thing about African Latin
from the contemporary tesimony of St. Augustine,
namely that it merged long and short vowels just
like Sard did:
# "Afrae aures de correptione vocalium vel
productione non iudicant". Augustine De doctrina
christiana 4.24
See my pagelet on Rmc vowel systems:
<http://wiki.frath.net/BPJ_on_VL>
Adam did (fortuitously, IIUC) apply this in
Carraxena, which makes it different from most now
existing Romnatlangs. For languages set in other
areas such a merger would be unrealistic since in
most areas short _i_ merged with long _e_, and
short _u_ merged with long _o_ (except for Balkan
Rmc. where short _u_ did merge with long _u_ just
as in African/Sard). That many Romconlangs
disregard this important isogloss is of course a
consequence of Latin orthography, where quantity
is usually not marked. To get it right you need a
good dictionary and preferably Meyer-L�bke's
"Romanisches Etymologisches W�rterbuch. You can
with luck find an expesive copy in a used books
shop, but luckily the first edition (which
scholars would frown on but romconlangers smile on
:-) is available online; follow the link at the
FrathWiki link collection:
<http://wiki.frath.net/Romanisches_Etymologisches_Woerterbuch>
* * * *
Thought: one possibly realistic but in
Romnatlangs unprecedented change would be the
reverse of the Balkan situation, i.e. that {)i}
merges with {|i} but {)u} merges with {|o}!
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient
� la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil
ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*,
c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)