Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 11:50:59 -0500 (EST) with NJE id 2288 for CONLANG@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 11:16:56 -0500 ; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 11:17:26 -0500 (EST) X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.33) Message-ID: <1CEA2D112F@mail-gw.uclan.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 16:12:33 GMT+0 Reply-To: Constructed Languages List Sender: Constructed Languages List From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Un-phonetic conlang To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3120 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Dec 17 11:51:06 1997 X-From-Space-Address: owner-conlang@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU James (Campbell): > Quoted From: And Rosta > > Josh Brandt-Young asks: > > > I've suddenly gotten the inspiration for a conlang that's written > > > with a non-phonetic alphabet (rather like English). I'm not sure why, I > > > think it's an effort to produce a conlang that's as irregular as > > > possible. > > [...] > > > This is an idea that never even occurred to me before. Is anyone > > > else doing anything like this? > > > > Leo Marshall's Namyuan (nowadays pronounced [DOw~Z]) has the most > > irregular unphonetical orthography of any conlang that I know. > > This discussion (from about 3 weeks ago) prompted me to rethink certain > parts of Rahha. I had already been worrying that the way it sounded, and > the way it looked in Latin transcription, seemed a little dull - childish, > even. Without changing the alphabet (cos I did like that bit), I've tweaked > the orthography and pronunciation a bit to introduce some irregularities > and add some flavour. The result has cheered me up no end about the > project. Thanks for the inspiration/nudge. Thanks for the thanks. I probably said it in the message you quote, but the reason that Namyuan is like this is that it is constantly evolving and has been in existence a long time (just a little longer than my own Livagian, whose evolution has been much more catastrophistical). Since experience shows that it is possible to spend years and years incrementally creating a single language, I find that this is one of the things that I look for in a conlang: I prefer those languages that live with their inventors always, to be tinkered at and endlessly embellished, rather than those that are sketched and tossed off [not in the impudibund sense of that idiom]. For example, while I have not yet become enchanted with Aluric, I am enchanted by the way it is so much part of Tony's life and soul. > BTW, is there any Namyuan online? Alas no. Its inventor does not even own a computer, despite years of proselytizing by me. However, I did some more Namyuan fieldwork in October when a Namyuan speaker came to stay with us for the weekend. As a result of this, I am planning to at least produce a document on Namyuan script. It can then be submitted to the Conscript Unicode Registry, and anyone who wants to put the document on-line (perhaps as gifs or jpgs) will gladly be permitted to do so. I might add that, much as Tony has reported is/was the case with him & Aluric, the inventor of Namyuan tends to *know* the language more than *know about* the language. So neither he nor I can currently say, for example, how many phonemes there are. (For an earlier stage of the language I did know: when a first year undergraduate, I submitted an essay on a generative phonology formalization of sandhi rules in Sanskrit and Ajitolujan [as Namyuan then was]. For this essay I was given the lowest possible mark short of an outright fail, though I perceive that this was motivated by the bemusement of the marker rather than by any worthlessness of the essay or its object of study.) Anyway, enough anecdotling. --And