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--- On Wed, 1/13/10, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@hidden.email> wrote: >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! All true. The same can be said for any conlang that uses some natural language as inspiration as well. Also true is that each conlanger is free to take their sage advice or toss it aside as they see fit! >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 >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 Depends on the underlying design scheme in use. Sure, if your basic plan were to come up with a realistic Romance dialect of central Gaul, or to recreate a now lost form of some early French dialect, then introducing North African sound changes is unrealistic indeed. If your design goal is something else, then all bets are off. If that makes the resultant language "unrealistic", then be that as it may! >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) . For example, Kerno has not completely made the shift (and by now has probably gotten bored and simply given up). Some words show a nice shift: signa > seinya. Others show less than stellar enthusiasm for standard shifts, or else show a shift in some other direction. >That many Romconlangs >disregard this important isogloss is of course a >consequence of Latin orthography, where quantity >is usually not marked. True. One could argue that the putatuve speakers of the conlang simply lost the distinction between long and short vowels or never had it when they were introduced to VL and began turning it into their own dialect of early Romance. For example, even though I studied Latin and Spanish and know that "a" and "o" and "u" are different vowels, I regularly (and unconsciously) treat final vowels more or less as schwas. If I were to pass this kind of Spanish on, it would sound quite different from that spoken in Madrid. It would sound more "grasyes" and "loss ninyus"/"loss ninyes" than "gracias" or "los ninnos"/"las ninnas". >To get it right you need a >good dictionary and preferably Meyer-Lübke's >"Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. It could be argued that such a prescriptive attitude has its place (such as in quasi-historical language (re)creation) but is not necessarily applicable to all conlanging endeavours. In other words, who are we to pass such qualitative judgements on someone else's work? Does Renoir not "get it right" in "The Wave" because his approach is not a photographic one? I'd argue that Renoir got it spot on, because that is how he wanted us to see the wave that he saw. Likewise, Kerno is the Romance conlang I want you to hear, because it's what *I* heard. It may or may not live up to some dusty book's judgement of "correct". But that was never my care or concern in making the language. Padraic