Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial
Batetz las maes, perf. —— Freelance glheþineir (I only accept Worthless Internet Points™ as payment)
Posts: 448
Talossan Since: May 12, 2014
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Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Dec 26, 2016 16:00:05 GMT -6
In the last few days, I've read CÚG chatlogs from late 2012, the time when the "Reunision Arestadă 2012" was being discussed. While I was reading, I came across this passage by Cxhn. Schivâ: "a) As far as I'm concerned, the 2007 Arestadâ was a political rather than a linguistic decision. The choice was deliberately made to "fork" the language - to establish the CÚG, under subjects of King John, as "the" authority over the language, not the Founder nor the books he wrote, for reasons of intellectual property and the legitimacy of the Kingdom under John R. The wishes of others, such as Tomás or els ladîntschen republicáes, were totally ignored.
b) My preferred solution to this problem would be for a new Arestadâ starting from on the pre-2007 version of the language, which might recreate some of the 2007 reforms, but only those approved by a BROAD CONSENSUS of both Reformers and Traditionalists. [...]" ( surçă) The point of this forum post is that it's deeply agonising to see the community of Ladintschen in a continued state of division since 2007, and I've cooked up some possible new reforms (starting from the pre-2007 orthography) that - hopefully - satisfy both sides of the divide and end this weird parallel usage of two different spellings for the same language. As some sort of True Reunision Arestadă for the 10th anniversary of the highly controversial 2007 Arestadă. Before I post my ideas, I wanted to ask if anyone is interested in seeing them - as in: if this is still an issue that needs fixing. It might be that the CÚG has grown tired of orthographic reforms. That's why I'm asking. So. Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN , Sir C. M. Siervicül , Hooligan , Óïn Ursüm , Tomás Gariçéir ? Should I?
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Óïn Ursüm
Posts: 1,032
Talossan Since: 3-10-2009
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Post by Óïn Ursüm on Dec 27, 2016 5:55:37 GMT -6
I am pro anything that gets us all on the same page as far as orthography is concerned, and I have always been of a more conservative temperament in these things. Please post your suggestions here anyway: it may, at the very least, spark some interesting discussions.
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Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial
Batetz las maes, perf. —— Freelance glheþineir (I only accept Worthless Internet Points™ as payment)
Posts: 448
Talossan Since: May 12, 2014
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Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Dec 27, 2016 10:50:17 GMT -6
OK then. - Take the pre-2007 orthography.
- Respell î as i before n or m. [ɨ] becomes an allophone of /i/ before nasals. (s)cî becomes (s')chi and ciî becomes ci in the same environment.
- Respell ii as i in all instances except for fiir, fiis, fiirtà and maritiimi.
- Respell û as u and ø as ö in all instances.
- Respell ë as e in all instances except for the infinitive ending of irregular verbs; -arë and -irë become -ar and -ir respectively. The wort së becomes sè.
- Respell gñh as gnh in all instances. Respell remaining ñ as ng in all instances. Respell nh where it represents the sound [ɲ] as gnh, unless it is the result of an earlier consonant mutation.
- Respell sh where it represents the sound [ʃ] as sch. Respell s-ch as schc before e and i, as schtsch word-finally and as schci anywhere else.
- Replace çh with g in the words abçhad, açharar, açhasour, baba-çhanúxh, Haçhar, isnaçhoçhâ, parpaçhar, praisaçhar, faraçhognhâ and meçháirâ. Respell çh as gh anywhere else.
- Respell â as a in all instances. Replace word-final unstressed a with ă in feminine nouns and adjectives. ă is retained even if suffixes are added or if the feminine word is used in a prepositional construction. (e.g. soleu > solă > solămint; cauçă > per gcauçă da etc.)
- Establish the following stress rule:
Stress falls on the syllable containing the final vowel that is either marked with an umlaut or ring (ä, ö, ü or å) or followed by a consonant, after ignoring word-terminal -s and the word endings -en(s), -ent(s), -er(s), -esch(en), -eu(x), -ică(s), -ic(i), -(esch)laiset(s), -lor, -mint(s), -p(h)äts, and -sqåb(s) (if the word ends with one of these). For the purposes of this rule, an i or u that immediately follows any vowel, and an e that immediately follows an a, are treated as consonants. |
Irregular stress is marked with an acute accent (grave accent if word-final) on a, e, i, u, ä, ö, ü and å and with a circumflex on o. Hiatus between unstressed vowels are represented with an apostrophe. Remove all superfluous stress marks; the words à, àð, àl, àls, là and sè retain their grave accents. - Change the plural form of words ending in -an to -ans.
I hope I didn't forget anything important. (Red marks changed that I'm unsure about)
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Post by Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun on Dec 27, 2016 21:30:31 GMT -6
2. I would be opposed to taking out î and making it an allophone of /i/ before nasals. What etymological and/or phonological basis is there, could you explain? 3. Why the exceptions? Or, why the respelling? 4. I do not understand. Maybe I am unfamiliar with the pre-2007 orthography, but does û not constitute a separate vowel quality from /u/? 5. Would you, then, take the Schwa-sound out of the language? What about /ə/ in monosyllabic (and possibly unstressed) words? There would be no indication as to their actual pronunciation. Again, unfamiliar with the pre-2007 orthography, are irregular verbs still pronounced with a devoiced, possibly fricativised /r/ tending to /ʃ/? What about regular verbs that are not spelt with -<ë>? 7. We all have nicer keyboards, fonts, etc. now. Do you not think that it were time to introduce diacritics to represent /ʃ/, /tʃ/, and /ʃtʃ/? 8. Why are we respelling some words as <g> and others as <gh>? 10. Hiatus should be represented by a Punt Volat, a middle dot.
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Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
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Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Dec 27, 2016 21:45:50 GMT -6
Before I post my ideas, I wanted to ask if anyone is interested in seeing them - as in: if this is still an issue that needs fixing. It might be that the CÚG has grown tired of orthographic reforms. That's why I'm asking. I'm happy to have another discussion. My appetite for discussing orthographic minutiae is almost boundless! I am concerned about a few things, though: First, whether we can expect broad participation. Second, whether it is likely that we will be able to reach a consensus. Third, whether, even if it appears that we have reached a consensus among those who participate in the discussion, it will "stick." Fourth, whether constant changes to the orthography will confuse or discourage learners. I'll try to look at your proposals over the next few days.
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Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial
Batetz las maes, perf. —— Freelance glheþineir (I only accept Worthless Internet Points™ as payment)
Posts: 448
Talossan Since: May 12, 2014
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Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Dec 28, 2016 4:25:01 GMT -6
2. I would be opposed to taking out î and making it an allophone of /i/ before nasals. What etymological and/or phonological basis is there, could you explain? The whole debate started when it was discovered that - for example - the prefix in- is spelled and pronounced în- in some words and in- in others, seemingly without any system behind it. Ben suggsted making /ɨ/ an allophone of /i/ before nasals to fix this issue... but apparently this notion was misinterpreted as "Ben got sick of î so let's erase it completely". I can't find the direct quote right now, but here is a quote from Tomás Gariçéir where he adresses this: I cannot recall Ben ever hoping or trying to get rid of î. He raised a question about whether /ɨ/ could be considered an allophone of /i/ next to nasals, since you find a mixture of words with the sequence în/îm and in/im in the dictionary, but /ɨ/ also occurs in other environments as well, e.g. îrt "art", so there is no question in my mind that it is a phoneme in Talossan, and I always pronounce it where it is spelled. I wouldn't have a problem with allowing /i/ as a variant pronunciation of /ɨ/ before nasals, at least in pretonic position (i.e. before the stressed syllable). Post-tonically (after the stressed syllable) I'm not so sure — here it occurs mostly in the adverb ending -mînt, and pronouncing that as /mint/ feels quite odd to me. I could accept the pronunciation /mənt/, though. ( surçă) "ii" denotes the sound /i/ in stressed positions... in 8 words ( fiir, fiirtà, fuxhitiivi, maritiimi, potencii, sostantiiveu, subversiivi, viitôr). 6 of them have standard stress on /i/ anyway, and the stress rule would mark irregular stress on potencii with a standard stress mark, making this vowel doubling pointless. I decided to keep fiir, fiirtà and maritiimi because those are the most common words that use this vowel doubling (also because province name). <û> represents the vowel [ʌ] in around 7 words ( fûn, lûd, pût, rûgby, rûm, scûncarar, slûts), [u] in words with the root dûc- and [u] in the digraph oû. I would eliminate /ə/ as an independent phoneme. [ə] would become an allophone of /e/ in unstressed positions (similar to /a/ becoming [ə] in the same environment), meaning that unstressed monosyllabic words containing /ə/ would still be pronoounced with the schwa, but for a different reason. All verb infinitives are pronounced /aʃ/. The silent <ë> at the end of some infinitives is only there to show that this verb is irregular (e.g. estarë, tirë, credarë, but trovar, prîndar etc). The infinitives of regulat verbs shouldn't change. Another Gariçéir-quote from the same thread: I can see the thinking behind the change — "the future tense contains -rh- pronounced /ʃ/, and the infinitive is also pronounced with /ʃ/, so we should spell it with rh too" — but but -arh uglifies the language. It's very jarring to the eye. It makes Talossan look like another Romance conlang instead of Talossan.
This is one of those "ain't broke so don't fix it" things. It causes no difficulty or confusion (there's no difficulty in remembering that r is pronounced /ʃ/ only in this one very specific instance, otherwise it's /r/) and the spelling -ar with the pronunciation /aʃ/ goes back to 1981 — virtually the entire literary history of the Talossan language before 2007. ( surçă) One big criticism to the 2007 Arestadă was that its changes were too big and made Talossan look less Talossan. And I sincerely do not believe that we need diacritics for these sounds, especially since it would make it look less Talossan. These 10 words represent cases where the existence of /ɣ/ makes absolutely no sense. For example: Arabic أبجد /abdʒad/ > Talossan abçhad /'abɣad/??; Greek συναγωγή /synaɣo'ɣi/ > Latin synagōga /syna'go:ga/ > Talossan isnaçhoçhâ /isna'ɣoɣa/?? I thought about making the apostrophe standard, and the interpunct an orthographical variant of the apostrophe. I would have no problem in reversing this, though.
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Post by Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun on Dec 28, 2016 9:13:55 GMT -6
Will reply to your reply soon, but why are we keeping an accent on “së”, i.e. ‘sè’?
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Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial
Batetz las maes, perf. —— Freelance glheþineir (I only accept Worthless Internet Points™ as payment)
Posts: 448
Talossan Since: May 12, 2014
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Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Dec 28, 2016 9:22:25 GMT -6
Will reply to your reply soon, but why are we keeping an accent on “së”, i.e. ‘sè’? To differenciate it from se (the reflexive object pronoun)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 10:08:59 GMT -6
How about we take the original first-edition (so to speak) mark 1 orthography and slice that up so that it eliminates all ambiguities regarding how to say stuff?
Also, I suggest replacing "d" with "ð" everywhere the phoneme /ð/ is represented except in the structure V-d-V (e.g. "gaderarh" is spelled the same, but "estadra" becomes "estaðra"). I also support using "ă" to represent /ə/.
On a side note, I don't think it should be a very big priority to eliminate homonyms. I know from experience in studying Japanese (where everything is a homophone) that context is okay to use because we're human beings who can infer stuff based on other stuff.
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Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
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Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Dec 28, 2016 11:57:15 GMT -6
There used to be a number of ðr/rð words, but they were all respelled dr/rd (during Ben's time) on the basis that that's a regular pronunciation of d in that context.
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Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial
Batetz las maes, perf. —— Freelance glheþineir (I only accept Worthless Internet Points™ as payment)
Posts: 448
Talossan Since: May 12, 2014
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Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Dec 28, 2016 11:58:14 GMT -6
How about we take the original first-edition (so to speak) mark 1 orthography and slice that up so that it eliminates all ambiguities regarding how to say stuff? Also, I suggest replacing "d" with "ð" everywhere the phoneme /ð/ is represented except in the structure V-d-V (e.g. "gaderarh" is spelled the same, but "estadra" becomes "estaðra"). I also support using "ă" to represent /ə/. On a side note, I don't think it should be a very big priority to eliminate homonyms. I know from experience in studying Japanese (where everything is a homophone) that context is okay to use because we're human beings who can infer stuff based on other stuff. The thing is: there is no ambiguity. /d/ is always [ð] next to /r/, just like it's always [ð] between vowels. Furthermore, <ă> does not technically represent /ə/; it represents unstressed word-final /a/ (which happens to be [ə]) and also feminine gender. /ə/ which is not unstressed word-final /a/ was written as <ë> in the old orthography and abolished 2007. Also, Japanese might be a suboptimal example for not eliminating homonyms: かう [ka.ɯᵝ] might be spelled 寡雨 ("little rainfall"), 飼う ("to keep an animal"), 買う ("to buy"), 代う ("to exchange"), 交う ("to take turns", "to mix"), 肯う ("to affirm") or 支う ("to lock something") depending on meaning. Sure, in spoken language, context does the trick, and yet there are all these different written representations to eliminate every possible ambiguity (like distinguishing se and sè, which would both be pronounced [sə]).
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Post by Alèx Soleighlfred on Dec 28, 2016 14:17:32 GMT -6
*unexpectedly appearing from nearby* I'm no expert in El Ghleß, but I'm just sticking my neck in to tell that "î" is my favorite sound and it's absolutely loveable! *hiding back*
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Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN
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Post by Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN on Dec 28, 2016 21:21:50 GMT -6
Does Tomás G. know about this discussion? He may not be actively following Talossa any more but he's a Facebook friend of mine, so I could ask him for his input.
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Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
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Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Dec 28, 2016 21:34:47 GMT -6
Does Tomás G. know about this discussion? He may not be actively following Talossa any more but he's a Facebook friend of mine, so I could ask him for his input. I think that's a great idea. I hope he participates!
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Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
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Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Dec 30, 2016 7:58:24 GMT -6
I hope I didn't forget anything important. Well, I can see how a lot of things in your proposals relate to resolutions in the 2007 and later Arestadas, but there are also lots of things in the Arestadas that aren't addressed. I have the same question as Epic about the infinitive proposal: given that you are changing the infinitive ending from -arh back to -ar, and also removing superfluous stressmarks, would there no longer be any written distinction between, e.g., the adjective regular ("regular") and the verb regularh ("to regulate"), even though they are notionally pronounced differently? (In Ben's spelling, the difference was marked by a superfluous accent on the final vowel, even though the pronunciation difference is in the final consonant.) If there would no longer be a difference in spelling, are you proposing to make them sound the same (and if so what would be the now-universal pronunciation of r in the -ar ending)?
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