CUG DEBATE

[kri]

Azul!

Tomás wrote:

> Talossan cognates of Latin words with the prefix con- end up in Talossan
> with several different variants: com-, con-, cum-, cun. Do you think it
> would be worth going through these and perhaps regularizing a bit? For
> example, comtribuçar and comvimçar I find rather grating -- cuntribuçar
> and cunvinçar would feel more Talossan to me.

I've thought about this one myself... I really like cün- as the prefix, but early Talossan materials had com- (with the odd 'm') and so that attracts me as well... It might be a little late to standardize all this, I wonder.

> Past participles. The Latin/Sardinian one is -at, which as far as I can
> tell is more common that -escù in modern Talossan anyway. Personally,
> I'd be in favor of officially deprecating -escù and making -at the form
> that should be used. However, several of the irregular verbs -- estarë,<br>> irë, säparë, starë, tirë, vëlarë -- have only -escù (interestingly, irë<br>> has only venescù, but vienarë has both venescù and vienat). So how would
> you feel about forms such as estat, säpat, stat or stânat, tenat or
> tienat, vëlat?

Personally, I think having the -escu as an option is a good idea, as so many documents use it. As for having -at always being available, hmmm... I wouldn't be averse to making it an option, but I'd never use it in the irregular verbs, it just looks weird to me.

> Also, what did we end up deciding -- if we ever did, I can't remember --
> about the rd/rð/dr/ðr thing, and the in/im/în/îm thing?

For the former, rd/dr are now always pronounced [rD]/[Dr] (as in Spanish) and so the eth is suppressed. I'm not sure we ever completely worked out the in/im/în/îm thing. For a long time I've grown weary of the sound [î] and I'd be comfortable abolishing it completely or (better yet) leaving it as an optional variant pronunciation of i before n or m. In words where the sound appears independently (i.e. not under the influence of n or m) it should probably remain. And the graph î should stay in some historic words like în (the preposition). And of course in the present participle where it's pronounced .

Use of î/i before n and m is hopelessly irregular (worse than our reflexes of Latin com- !) and needs fixing. I'm open to dialogue on the con-/com- etc. issue too. :-)

Ben

P.S. I'm going to try and post this to Wittenberg--if I fail (I'm at the public library right now) could you? Let's continue this discussion on Witt and get some activity going there!

[markymark]

I understand that the membership rules are changing for CUG. I have a suggestion, if it is acceptable to the current members...what about having a separate, non-voting membership status for non-Talossan speakers who support the Talossan language and its development? These members could be called "associate members" or something like that. I know there are numerous organizations that have a similar system.

If you do not agree, I understand I just thought I would throw that out there.

P.S.- For those who might be interested in even learning some basic conversational Talossan; has there even been any thought on developing a simple study guide on audio-cassette?

[kri]

>I understand that the membership rules are changing for CUG. I have a suggestion, if it is acceptable to the current members...what about having a separate, non-voting membership status for non-Talossan speakers who support the Talossan language and its development? These members could be called "associate members" or something like that. I know there are numerous organizations that have a similar system.

That's where the dialogue has been going, actually. My personal preference for "full membership" would be that you would have to translate a chapter of Ar Pats into Talossan (to push that project along further... it's maybe 1/5 done already) and thus prove your knowledge of Talossan.

But a subsidiary class of membership for people interested in the language but not yet fluent--that's exactly what we have in mind.

>P.S.- For those who might be interested in even learning some basic conversational Talossan; has there even been any thought on developing a simple study guide on audio-cassette?

Tomás has talked about this from time to time. It's a question of writing a textbook and then having me or him (or Albrec'ht or Francesco, the other people who actually can use the language) record the voice part.

Ben

[markymark]

Excellent! I would be ordering a text book and tape if and when they ever become available! I understand that this would be a huge undertaking, and one that would involve a great deal of work.

[kri]

Another reason why no such works have been completed, is that the people who use the Talossan language are so language-literate to begin with that the Scurznia Gramatica del Glhetg Talossan essentially functions as a textbook already. And that book is still readily available:

www.execpc.com/~talossa/biggram.pdf

The formatting is kind of messy and there are a couple of missing charts, but there it is. It was written with non-linguists in mind, and should be adequate for learning the language.

But you're right, tapes or a CD would be great.

Ben

[gariceir]

MarkyMark said:

>I understand that the membership rules are changing for CUG. I have a suggestion, if it is acceptable to the current members...what about having a separate, non-voting membership status for non-Talossan speakers who support the Talossan language and its development?

This is exactly what I have been pushing for for years. Anyone and everyone who supports the language or is interested in it should be able to join CÚG, but the actual language development should be left to those who have demonstrated proficiency in the language.

(Støtanneu reported that I was in favour of restricting membership in CÚG to just those who spoke the language -- that rag is full of lies, all lies! ;D)

KRI said:

That's where the dialogue has been going, actually. My personal preference for "full membership" would be that you would have to translate a chapter of Ar Pats into Talossan (to push that project along further... it's maybe 1/5 done already) and thus prove your knowledge of Talossan.

I'd go for that -- that way the Ár Päts translation might actually get done someday!

MarkyMarklink=board=general&thread=1094229134&start=2#0 said:

>P.S.- For those who might be interested in even learning some basic conversational Talossan; has there even been any thought on developing a simple study guide on audio-cassette?

I've wanted to do a textbook with accompanying tape for years, but have never had the time to do it. Mind you, if I'd worked on it for even 5 or 10 minutes a day for as long as I've been talking about it, it would probably be done already, but you know...

[gariceir]

KRI said:

Another reason why no such works have been completed, is that the people who use the Talossan language are so language-literate to begin with that the Scurznia Gramatica del Glhetg Talossan essentially functions as a textbook already. And that book is still readily available:

www.execpc.com/~talossa/biggram.pdf

The formatting is kind of messy and there are a couple of missing charts, but there it is. It was written with non-linguists in mind, and should be adequate for learning the language.

One other problem is that there are a bunch of corrections, amendments, etc. that the learner needs to know about. I had a document online on Talossa.com detailing these -- if I send it to you in HTML format could you put it on the ExecPC site?

[kri]

Better yet, I could just update the Scurznia with your corrections and do a .pdf of that. We would need to include the "green sheet" (the pronouns and verbs chart) somehow.

Ben

[gariceir]

The CD arrived in the mail today! So now that I have all the files, I can take care of that, hopefully. I was supposed to be doing the 3rd edition anyway, once upon a time...