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Re: [westasianconlangs] Sadi

Kataba Adam:

<<Help!  I just realized that I have two different words
in Carrajena (my Romlang set in Carthage) which are
spelled |sadi| and pronounced /'sa.dI/.>>

I'm always puzzled when someone writes in saying something like this.  My immediate response is: Why is this a problem?  I don't think there's a language on Earth (aside from Esperanto) that has no homonymy.  English is a great example of the two types of homonymy you can have.  There's pure homonymy, where the two words are spelled differently, and so are only indistinguishable in speech, e.g. "wait" and "weight", and then there's completely indistinguishability, where both words are spelled the same, sound the same, and are the same part of speech, e.g. "bank" (money-saving place) and "bank" (edge of a river).  This is not the type of thing that should be avoided in a conlang.  In fact, a conlang without any such homonymy would be quite unrealistic. And, in fact, the situation you describe (where you're deriving words from proto languages) is one of the best ways to introduce homonymy.  And, if I'm reading your message right, it would be even more interesting, because they *could* be spelled differently (i.e., if you kept an orthographic distinction between /s/ and and shin, even though there is no phonological [or phonetic, rather] difference between the two).

To reiterate, I'd be very surprised if, in creating words for Carrajena, you didn't come up with a rather large number of homonyms that are either spelled the same or sound the same.  It's not something to be avoided by any means.

-David
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