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
|
Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Sept 17, 2019 9:35:03 GMT -6
Talossan's grammar is already ridiculously simplified compared to any normal Romance language. (also: ew, Esperanto.)
EDIT: As an example: Cases are pretty much non-existent (which is par for the course for Romance languages), genders are almost perfectly predictable and almost meaningless, all verbs (except for ir(h), tir(h) and derivations thereof in writing) end on the same rhyme...
|
|
|
Post by Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun on Sept 17, 2019 10:25:13 GMT -6
How much more simple do you want the grammar to be – I mean, can you give actual examples of what seems complicated to you?
I am actually advocating complicating it a bit to have a more… malleable language? It feels so ridiculously clumsy and clunky when I try to get things across.
|
|
|
Post by Cresti Nouacastra-Läxhirescu on Sept 17, 2019 11:02:46 GMT -6
How much more simple do you want the grammar to be – I mean, can you give actual examples of what seems complicated to you? I am actually advocating complicating it a bit to have a more… malleable language? It feels so ridiculously clumsy and clunky when I try to get things across. Honestly... Maybe it’s just a me thing. Esperanto was the first “foreign” language that I learned to an intermediate/low-advanced level, so I’m quite used to it’s grammatical systems. I don’t know, I’ve attempted to learn basic Talossan in the past and I never could get a good grasp at it.
|
|
|
Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Sept 17, 2019 16:20:42 GMT -6
Does it have to change? Speaking as someone who has trouble with languages and is trying to learn, the prospect of revisions makes me feel like I shouldn't even bother Will what I learn be wrong immediately?
|
|
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
|
Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Sept 17, 2019 16:29:09 GMT -6
Does it have to change? Speaking as someone who has trouble with languages and is trying to learn, the prospect of revisions makes me feel like I shouldn't even bother Will what I learn be wrong immediately? The revisions *I am advocating for (the aforementioned bug fixes, for example) would only make learning Talossan easier, not harder, as it would make word families more consistent. Oh, speaking of consistency: ENGLISH | CURRENT TALOSSAN | consisting of
| qomsistind | consistent | cunsistent | inconsistent
| ziscunvenént
| consistency (1)
| qomsistençù | consistency (2)
| cunvegnhença | inconsistency
| ziscunvenença
|
Isn't that a bit silly? (Not in the quirky/good way either)
|
|
Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN
Seneschal
the new Jim Hacker
Posts: 6,635
Talossan Since: 6-25-2004
Dame Since: 9-8-2012
Motto: Expulseascâ, reveneascâ
Baron Since: Feudal titles are for gimps
Duke Since: Feudal titles are for gimps
|
Post by Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN on Sept 17, 2019 16:40:59 GMT -6
I think we need to sum up the issues:
1) there are already two different spellings of the language. 2) it would be good to have a single spelling, but the most recent efforts to get there broke down 90% of the way. 3) we could continue with those efforts, or make efforts in another direction - eg. the direction of trying to make the language consistent with a Berber-Romance origin. 4) there is also the matter that I don't think has been given sufficient attention - we need a supplement to El Tréisoûr, formally adding all the new words that have been used in el glheþ 2005-2019 which have never been formally added. 5) so whichever road we decide to go down - even the road of not even bothering with orthographic reunision, just continuing with two separate-but-equal spelling regimes - we should make a firm consensus of the speaker community.
|
|
|
Post by Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun on Sept 18, 2019 13:04:51 GMT -6
Does it have to change? Speaking as someone who has trouble with languages and is trying to learn, the prospect of revisions makes me feel like I shouldn't even bother Will what I learn be wrong immediately? The revisions *I am advocating for (the aforementioned bug fixes, for example) would only make learning Talossan easier, not harder, as it would make word families more consistent. Oh, speaking of consistency: ENGLISH | CURRENT TALOSSAN | consisting of
| qomsistind | consistent | cunsistent | inconsistent
| ziscunvenént
| consistency (1)
| qomsistençù | consistency (2)
| cunvegnhença | inconsistency
| ziscunvenença
|
Isn't that a bit silly? (Not in the quirky/good way either) While I understand where you are coming from, I do not necessarily concur wholeheartedly (albeit I do somewhat). See, languages do have synonyms, and differently-nuanced words for the same general idea, and I think some of your above examples are that: synonyms. Also, it is not completely unheard-of that a language have doublets of the same etymon, usually one inherited and one learned. This is especially true for Ibero-Romance languages, consider Portuguese “feitura” and “factura” from Latin FACTVRA, or Spanish “llave” and “clave” < Lat. CLAVIS I agree we shouldn’t have as many doublets and randomly phoneme-shifted etymons, but they are not a bad thing per se.
|
|
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
|
Post by Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on Sept 18, 2019 14:13:42 GMT -6
See, languages do have synonyms, and differently-nuanced words for the same general idea, and I think some of your above examples are that: synonyms. Only qomsistençù and cunvegnhença would qualify as synonyms since theyre both listed under "inconsistency", but the rest arent. The point I'm making is that there should be regular synonyms, *incunsistença or *incunsistent dont exist.
And I wouldnt have a problem with that if there were any inherited Talossan words. As Ben himself said, "every word in the Talossan language is really a foreign loan" (Scurznia Gramatica, page 80) so the comparison doesnt really work. It's all learnt, with no rhyme or reason and only to the detriment of Ladintschen who dont happen to be Ben.
|
|
Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
|
Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Sept 19, 2019 18:10:22 GMT -6
I like this thread. My short answer is “all three, in roughly the order listed.” On mobile now but I’m going to look up a couple of things and post some more detailed thoughts later tonight or first thing in the morning.
|
|
Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN
Seneschal
the new Jim Hacker
Posts: 6,635
Talossan Since: 6-25-2004
Dame Since: 9-8-2012
Motto: Expulseascâ, reveneascâ
Baron Since: Feudal titles are for gimps
Duke Since: Feudal titles are for gimps
|
Post by Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN on Sept 19, 2019 19:41:51 GMT -6
I like this thread. My short answer is “all three, in roughly the order listed.” On mobile now but I’m going to look up a couple of things and post some more detailed thoughts later tonight or first thing in the morning. Cresti, if you're back in action glheþescmînt, I hope you realise that the best thing you could possibly do right now would be to complete your researches into Î, which were the final, missing link to Orthographic Reunision...
|
|
Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
|
Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Sept 24, 2019 14:33:00 GMT -6
King Robert I often talked in his later years in power of wanting to make ár glheþ naziunál more "realistic", in the sense of making it a "believable" modern descendant of North African Romance as spoken by Berbers. He talked about the current language (sorry, don't know the source right now) as a big block of marble out of which he was trying to "sculpt" such a "realistic" language. Yeah, that was his essay ¿Qët Isch el Glheþ Talossán? In that he talks about the different phases of the language, and how if it is to be a reconstructed Berber-influenced descendant of North African then the most closely-related languages would include Sardinian, Sicilian, Mozarabic, and Lucanian. Ben's first attempts at a Berber-Romance vision of Talossan drew largely from Occitan or Rhaeto-Romance, which I believe is the stage reflected in Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ as of 1996, but by the time of the 1997 Treisour he was shifting toward basing Talossan more directly on African Latin, which is reflected in the aforementioned essay and all the words coded "*97al" and "*97u" in the Treisour. Talossan has tons of synonyms reflecting the various stages the language has gone through, and lots of inconsistencies in terms of competing spelling conventions and competing forms of affixes/derivational morphemes. I would like us to pick a vision for the language (whether that be the 1997 Sardinian/African Latin vision or the earlier direction to draw from Occitan and/or Rhaeto-Romance) and gradually try to encourage use of the words and forms that are consistent with that vision and adopt incremental reforms that smooth out the rough edges. But "gradually" and "incremental" are key. I don't want to just throw out everything inconsistent with that chosen vision, which (especially if we go with the post-1997 option) would make much of the materials that are based on 1996 and earlier vocabulary inaccessible. One thought I have had regarding how we could make sense of or retcon many of the apparently inconsistent elements of Talossan, at least to some degree, is to expand on the Berber hypothesis and reimagine Talossan as a koiné language or mixed language that blends multiple different Romance dialects/languages spoken by different communities of Romanized Berbers. You could think of it as Judaeo-Spanish (or Ladino), except with scattered communities of Berbers instead of scattered communities of Sephardim. For example, this is an excerpt from the introduction (which I helped write a lot of) to Hooligan's grammar: To some extent this would involve dialecticisation of the language, at least in a historical sense. Competing forms (to the extent we want to retain both) could be reanalysed as forms inherited from different historical dialects, even if we don't want to split Talossan into multiple live dialects. One place where our decision about a vision for Talossan going forward could have great impact is in selecting a "Basic Talossan" vocabulary that instructional materials should focus on. For example, should the words for "man," "horse," "cheese," and "to help" that students learn first be vür, aic, caisch and axhutarh (all 1997 vocabulary) or cióvec, caval, frumatx, and aßistarh (all pre-1997 vocabulary)? And if we go with the former set, should we keep teaching derived words like aßistançéu ("help" as a noun, from aßistarh) or create new derived forms based on the 1997-era core vocabulary?
|
|
Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
|
Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Sept 24, 2019 14:39:47 GMT -6
Cresti, if you're back in action glheþescmînt, I hope you realise that the best thing you could possibly do right now would be to complete your researches into Î, which were the final, missing link to Orthographic Reunision... I just found the spreadsheet I was using to sort the Î words. Rather than get bogged down in that again, I think the best thing might be to post what I have so far and let people take a look at it and see where they think we should go from here.
|
|
Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN
Seneschal
the new Jim Hacker
Posts: 6,635
Talossan Since: 6-25-2004
Dame Since: 9-8-2012
Motto: Expulseascâ, reveneascâ
Baron Since: Feudal titles are for gimps
Duke Since: Feudal titles are for gimps
|
Post by Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN on Sept 24, 2019 18:53:51 GMT -6
I would like us to pick a vision for the language (whether that be the 1997 Sardinian/African Latin vision or the earlier direction to draw from Occitan and/or Rhaeto-Romance) and gradually try to encourage use of the words and forms that are consistent with that vision and adopt incremental reforms that smooth out the rough edges. But "gradually" and "incremental" are key. I don't want to just throw out everything inconsistent with that chosen vision, which (especially if we go with the post-1997 option) would make much of the materials that are based on 1996 and earlier vocabulary inaccessible. One thought I have had regarding how we could make sense of or retcon many of the apparently inconsistent elements of Talossan, at least to some degree, is to expand on the Berber hypothesis and reimagine Talossan as a koiné language or mixed language that blends multiple different Romance dialects/languages spoken by different communities of Romanized Berbers. You could think of it as Judaeo-Spanish (or Ladino), except with scattered communities of Berbers instead of scattered communities of Sephardim.To some extent this would involve dialecticisation of the language, at least in a historical sense. Competing forms (to the extent we want to retain both) could be reanalysed as forms inherited from different historical dialects, even if we don't want to split Talossan into multiple live dialects. One place where our decision about a vision for Talossan going forward could have great impact is in selecting a "Basic Talossan" vocabulary that instructional materials should focus on. For example, should the words for "man," "horse," "cheese," and "to help" that students learn first be vür, aic, caisch and axhutarh (all 1997 vocabulary) or cióvec, caval, frumatx, and aßistarh (all pre-1997 vocabulary)? And if we go with the former set, should we keep teaching derived words like aßistançéu ("help" as a noun, from aßistarh) or create new derived forms based on the 1997-era core vocabulary? I am in 100% percent with Cresti's vision of the future of the language here. I would plump for shifting in the Sardinian direction. I would also plump for (a) coming to a quick consensus on this (I'll write up a formal "Policy Platform" and put it to a Witt poll soon); (b) moving onto a Basic Talossan vocab which can then be turned into learning materials.
Questions? Comments?
|
|
Sir C. M. Siervicül
Posts: 9,636
Talossan Since: 8-13-2005
Knight Since: 7-28-2007
Motto: Nonnisi Deo serviendum
|
Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Sept 25, 2019 8:07:10 GMT -6
I would plump for shifting in the Sardinian direction. Sounds good to me. (b) moving onto a Basic Talossan vocab which can then be turned into learning materials. I had been working on a basic vocabulary list but got bogged down on questions of word choices. As I noted in a thread I created back around that time, in most languages 2,000-3,000 words account for 90+% of typical texts, so if you're trying to learn a language using a 30,000 word dictionary, you’re probably spending most of your time learning words that you will rarely if ever encounter or need to use. But the difficult part of creating a 2-3k word list for Talossan (as I came to learn) is choosing WHICH words to use. It's relatively easy to come up with a list of basic vocabulary for a language you speak natively because even if it has a lot of synonyms (like English) you intuitively know which is the more "basic" word and which synonyms are formal, archaic, colloquial, etc., so you know which words to choose when speaking to a child or someone who doesn't speak your language well (e.g. 'quickness' v. 'rapidity' v. 'celerity'). The problem for us is that Talossan has lots of synonyms but we don't really grok which are more basic because of the way the language was developed (and the fact that none of us has that much insight into what Ben was thinking). As an example, here are two possible sentences that mean: "The twenty little horses were found by the man." - Els vaintsch aics titeux estevent aflats par el vür.
- Els veint cavais pecheins füvent troveschti par el cióvec.
The only words common across both are "els . . . par el." And here are three sentences that mean: "Ask the young girl with the broken shoulder." - Asca la stuica xhovan dal spaglha caschcada.
- Rogetz la xhuvencula cün el þumbreu zistrumpescu.
- Zemanda la criança txuvencla avetz el þumbreu caßat.
The only word common across all three is "la." Now it's fine to have multiple ways to say the same thing, of course, so it's no problem that these are all proper Talossan sentences (with a potential caveat about the proper translation of "with" in the second sentence). But I do think it's important to know which words a relative novice should be expected to understand versus which words are likely to be recognised only by a proficient Ladintsch. None of the English words is obscure (they're all words you'd expect a young child to know). Some of the Talossan words should be similarly basic (while others are more obscure), but we just don't yet know which ones.
|
|
Istefan Perþonest
Cunstaval to Fiôvâ; Regent of the University of Talossa
Posts: 1,024
Talossan Since: 2-21-1998
|
Post by Istefan Perþonest on Sept 25, 2019 15:48:05 GMT -6
I had been working on a basic vocabulary list but got bogged down on questions of word choices. As I noted in a thread I created back around that time, in most languages 2,000-3,000 words account for 90+% of typical texts, so if you're trying to learn a language using a 30,000 word dictionary, you’re probably spending most of your time learning words that you will rarely if ever encounter or need to use. But the difficult part of creating a 2-3k word list for Talossan (as I came to learn) is choosing WHICH words to use. One seemingly-logical approach would be, when possible, to pick the Talossan synonyms that are the closest cognates of the words in the basic Sardinian vocabulary as the basic Talossan vocabulary.
|
|