Zompist Bboard Again

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:50 pm

Vijay wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:46 pm I don't understand why that's a problem.

Well, if you have a sequence like ⟨aoi⟩, is this supposed to be /a/, or /o/, or /i/, or /ai/, or /ao/, or /oi/, or /aoi/, or /awi/, or some other random combination I didn’t list? Simply put, how do I know which vowel, if any, is silent?

But you have the exact same problem in English, and the answer isn't even always the same! Sometimes <oi> is something like /oj/, sometimes it's more like /wa/.

EDIT: And in the case of <aoi> in Irish, it actually makes a lot more sense. It has to be one of /a/, /o/, or /i/ (okay it's actually /iː/ but you get the idea), because Irish doesn't have diphthongs (EDIT2: okay, it does, but not many, and they don't occur that often). It doesn't begin with a front vowel, therefore the consonant before it must be broad. It's unlikely to be /a/ or /o/ because there are other ways of writing this after a broad consonant, whether there aren't other ways of writing /i/ in such a way as to ensure that the next consonant is also slender.

Vijay wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:56 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:50 pm

Vijay wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:46 pm I don't understand why that's a problem.

Well, if you have a sequence like ⟨aoi⟩, is this supposed to be /a/, or /o/, or /i/, or /ai/, or /ao/, or /oi/, or /aoi/, or /awi/, or some other random combination I didn’t list? Simply put, how do I know which vowel, if any, is silent?

But you have the exact same problem in English, and the answer isn't even always the same! Sometimes <oi> is something like /oj/, sometimes it's more like /wa/.

Yes. Objectively, English has an extremely irregular orthography, far more so than Irish. But I know English spelling already, but I don’t know Irish. And out of the orthographies which do follow regular rules, Irish is probably the most impenetrable. (French probably comes second.)

(And it’s only /wa/ in French loanwords.)

EDIT: And in the case of <aoi> in Irish, it actually makes a lot more sense. It has to be one of /a/, /o/, or /i/ (okay it's actually /iː/ but you get the idea), because Irish doesn't have diphthongs (EDIT2: okay, it does, but not many, and they don't occur that often). It doesn't begin with a front vowel, therefore the consonant before it must be broad. It's unlikely to be /a/ or /o/ because there are other ways of writing this after a broad consonant, whether there aren't other ways of writing /i/ in such a way as to ensure that the next consonant is also slender.

Thanks for the explanation! But how do you know that it’s actually /iː/? Do you just have to memorise that ⟨aoi⟩ corresponds to /iː/, or is there some general rule?

My understanding was that ao was originally invented to write the sixth vowel of Irish, similar to Welsh y, and that they didnt use Y because the handwriting they used didnt really accommodate having a Y-like letter in the alphabet. I dont think there was a time when it was pronounced /ao/.

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:14 pmDo you just have to memorise that ⟨aoi⟩ corresponds to /iː/, or is there some general rule?

Not sure. I guess I just memorize it (or hear it enough that I know that's how it's pronounced).

Vijay wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:23 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:14 pmDo you just have to memorise that ⟨aoi⟩ corresponds to /iː/, or is there some general rule?

Not sure. I guess I just memorize it (or hear it enough that I know that's how it's pronounced).

Oh, do you hear a lot of Irish? That would explain how come you know so much about it! Unfortunately, I live in Australia, where there aren’t too many Irish speakers, so do you have any idea how I could learn how to pronounce it?

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:50 pm Well, if you have a sequence like ⟨aoi⟩, is this supposed to be /a/, or /o/, or /i/, or /ai/, or /ao/, or /oi/, or /aoi/, or /awi/, or some other random combination I didn’t list? Simply put, how do I know which vowel, if any, is silent?

This sequence can be worked out. A 'silent' vowel would be distinguishing the type of the adjacent consonant. As 'a' and 'o' both imply that the adjacent consonant is broad, 'a' must be working to show the vowel sound. One thus deduces that there is a digraph 'ao', though logic does not preclude a trigraph 'aoi'. Now, in Scot's Gaelic, 'ao' is a long central vowel, so in origin it's not perverse.

bradrn is correct that it's sometimes not intuitive for a learner which vowel letters are silent.

However, <aoi> is a bad example, because <ao> is just a digraph of its own, representing /i/ in Ulster and Connacht and /e/ in Munster (and in derivatives of aon). So in <aoi>, it's actually the <ao> that you pronounce, and the <i> is silent, indicating a following slender consonant.

Actually, the worst bit is the way that the meaning of certain vowel sequences changes depending on the surrounding context - <oi> can mean any of seven different things, and although the rules are mostly regular, you still have to learn them all. [and in this case, although <oi> can sometimes be <o>, and sometimes <i>, it's actually mostly a way of spelling <e>...]

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:04 am

Vijay wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:23 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:14 pmDo you just have to memorise that ⟨aoi⟩ corresponds to /iː/, or is there some general rule?

Not sure. I guess I just memorize it (or hear it enough that I know that's how it's pronounced).

Oh, do you hear a lot of Irish? That would explain how come you know so much about it! Unfortunately, I live in Australia, where there aren’t too many Irish speakers, so do you have any idea how I could learn how to pronounce it?

I've heard some Irish at least. There aren't that many Irish speakers anywhere in the world, really, but the audio for books like Colloquial Irish helps, and songs can also help. I also used to go to grad school with an Irishwoman who spoke it non-natively and learned a little bit from her.

Someone needs to tell the guy who made Middle Persian that you can't just take someone else's conlang and use it as a logographic script.

Having worked with Irish orthography a bunch for an althistory, it's actually very regular and straightforward

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Sat Nov 09, 2019 6:05 amActually, the worst bit is the way that the meaning of certain vowel sequences changes depending on the surrounding context - <oi> can mean any of seven different things, and although the rules are mostly regular, you still have to learn them all. [and in this case, although <oi> can sometimes be <o>, and sometimes <i>, it's actually mostly a way of spelling <e>...]

Yeah, I would say that this is the most problematic digraph. To compound matters, there are cases where <ai> behaves like <oi> due to dialect-specific raising rules.

That's part of the reason Irish orthography is as complex as it is: It's intradialectal, the dialects diverged a long time ago, and there hasn't been much convergence in recent years. The 20th-century spelling reform had to privilege certain variants in order to introduce simplifications and the choice of which was often fairly arbitrary, even when there wasn't a proliferation of forms as with deartháir and deirfiúr (simplified from dearbhráthair and deirbhshiúr, respectively).

As for diphthongs, Old Irish was rich in them but they had simplified by the Middle Irish period. However, the vocalisation of lenited medial consonants led to the creation of new ones, which explains orthographically complex sequences like <oighi> (Modern Irish loighic being transparently derived from Latin logica, for instance). As for the number of apparently doublets, well, some of them represent obsolete contrasts. <mh> historically contrasted with <bh>, but by the early 20th century, the only relic of this was nasalisation in Munster dialects of diphthongs involving <mh>, e.g. amhras [ˈə̃ũɾˠəsˠ] "doubt" vs. abhras [ˈəuɾˠəsˠ] "yarn". It was regressive even then and is probably gone today, apart from a few revivalists.

Speaking of Irish, have you guys ever looked at the diachronics of it? They are just nuts. Like, kudos for effort, but no one could really speak this!

Neon Fox wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:55 pm Speaking of Irish, have you guys ever looked at the diachronics of it? They are just nuts. Like, kudos for effort, but no one could really speak this!

I linked to that already in my original post. And it does actually say at the end:

Sigh. By around 900AD, dissention was growing in the ranks at having to write and speak this horrific language. Things started to collapse. The linguistic centre could not hold. Infixed pronouns began to be jettisoned, in favour of independent object pronouns like English or Latin. The absolute:conjunct distinction was gradually, painfully abandoned, with many strong verbs being remodelled as weak verbs on the basis of their verbal noun. Compound verbs became locked in their prototonic forms. Some of the wilder tense formants were discontinued. The entire island breathed an enormous, heartfelt sigh of relief.

So when you say that ‘no one could really speak this’, you were right!

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 7:02 pm

Neon Fox wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:55 pm Speaking of Irish, have you guys ever looked at the diachronics of it? They are just nuts. Like, kudos for effort, but no one could really speak this!

I linked to that already in my original post. And it does actually say at the end:

Sigh. By around 900AD, dissention was growing in the ranks at having to write and speak this horrific language. Things started to collapse. The linguistic centre could not hold. Infixed pronouns began to be jettisoned, in favour of independent object pronouns like English or Latin. The absolute:conjunct distinction was gradually, painfully abandoned, with many strong verbs being remodelled as weak verbs on the basis of their verbal noun. Compound verbs became locked in their prototonic forms. Some of the wilder tense formants were discontinued. The entire island breathed an enormous, heartfelt sigh of relief.

So when you say that ‘no one could really speak this’, you were right!

Oh jeez. I guess I haven't looked at the first post in a while.

Neon Fox wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 7:13 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 7:02 pm

Neon Fox wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:55 pm Speaking of Irish, have you guys ever looked at the diachronics of it? They are just nuts. Like, kudos for effort, but no one could really speak this!

I linked to that already in my original post. And it does actually say at the end:

Sigh. By around 900AD, dissention was growing in the ranks at having to write and speak this horrific language. Things started to collapse. The linguistic centre could not hold. Infixed pronouns began to be jettisoned, in favour of independent object pronouns like English or Latin. The absolute:conjunct distinction was gradually, painfully abandoned, with many strong verbs being remodelled as weak verbs on the basis of their verbal noun. Compound verbs became locked in their prototonic forms. Some of the wilder tense formants were discontinued. The entire island breathed an enormous, heartfelt sigh of relief.

So when you say that ‘no one could really speak this’, you were right!

Oh jeez. I guess I haven't looked at the first post in a while.

No, it’s fine. And Old Irish is perfectly suited to this thread!

Neon Fox wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 7:13 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 7:02 pm

Neon Fox wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:55 pm Speaking of Irish, have you guys ever looked at the diachronics of it? They are just nuts. Like, kudos for effort, but no one could really speak this!

I linked to that already

Oh jeez. I guess I haven't looked at the first post in a while.

In any case, thanks to both of you for getting me to read it again. I was already aware of it, but reading it again made me realise that some of the things in it may be ideal for a language I'm starting to think about making...

Malay language is an underrated source language for creole. But, Papuan Malay creator, please at least learn some Malay grammar first. You can't just flip the order of possessor and possessee. Also, in Standard Indonesia, (or at least the Javanese dialect of Indonesia) "Buku punya saya hilang" means "My book is lost", not "Book's I am lost"

Also, why you don't have applicatives? Indonesian has benefactive applicative -kan. So does typical Papuan language. So, why not?

Xwtek wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:49 amBut, Papuan Malay creator, please at least learn some Malay grammar first.

This is literally the opposite of how every creole ever works.

Vijay wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 3:57 pm

Xwtek wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:49 amBut, Papuan Malay creator, please at least learn some Malay grammar first.

This is literally the opposite of how every creole ever works.

The problem is the possessive construction in Papuan Malay. Apparently Papuan Malay uses "Possessor Possessee" syntax, sometimes without divider. The problem is the same syntax is interpreted as "Possessee Possessor" by the rest of the archipelago. That's like an English creole decides to use -ed suffix as a past active participle.

I checked Sasak people on WP as it was mentioned here, and found this:

There are also a number of Sasak dialect in various regions such as Kuto-Kute (North Sasak), Meno-Mene (Central Sasak), Mriak-Mriku (Central South Sasak), Ngeno-Ngene (Central East Sasak, Central West Sasak), Ngeto-Ngete (Northeast Sasak) and so on.

Lol. The creator of this has gone too far trying to make these place names sound quirky.