Zompist Bboard Again

Another quick query: while Hanying to the majority of those frequenting the ZBB is likely to be just a distant hope, the information available about it suggests it to be not merely a creole, but one that has evolved over thousands of years, with a fair bit of reborrowing from its mother languages. Are there any resources around wherein such developments might be further discussed? Or is the complete process (creole to full language plus restructuring) entirely new?

Hanying is in fact the Incatena langauge that I decided to develop. I have the basic grammar of the creole stage worked out, but not the final (AD 4901) language.

If you're asking about real-world models... well, always start with Thomason & Kaufman, Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics.

There is probably a real-world analog to Hanying— i.e. a creole that subsequently underwent a thousand years or more of normal genetic development— but we don't know what it is. Most well-known creoles haven't developed for that amount of time, and tend to get overshadowed by their source languages. And if some language developed as a creole in the 800s, it'd be hard to show that today.

Proto-Indo-European?

Mornche Geddick wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:19 am Proto-Indo-European?

No, PIE shows no creole features. It may not be as complex as its immediate daughters in terms of declensions, it still had large amounts of morphology and likely a fair degree of freedom of word order, which are definitely not creole features.

Frislander wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:41 am

Mornche Geddick wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:19 am Proto-Indo-European?

No, PIE shows no creole features. It may not be as complex as its immediate daughters in terms of declensions, it still had large amounts of morphology and likely a fair degree of freedom of word order, which are definitely not creole features.

I thought not, but I just wonder if there's some crank out there who's made it his big hobbyhorse!

I'm pretty sure I've seen it suggested for Old Chinese. Too bad I can't remember where.

Hanying: it's not just a distant hope!

“Meyésapə na yem sənázeyaže boʔ ugiši šo nær toʔ ulorugi,” ləšo, wi mænu ləforəiye læsə bəume yuŋ menso. “Lesəd tedoji vyæžəl bəi dweži… səyonákəyerar wegəl gebəpo mezə́, yə meréš izaf læmi wei fehomo.”

After exhaustive (for certain definitions of exhaustive, anyway) searching throughout the Incatena, I can assert that the above sentence is more likely than not roughly equivalent to the following.


Knowing neither Mandarin nor Portuguese (I'm assuming this comes from Hong Kong and Macau, then?), I can't say a ton about it, but there it is. (Probably.)

I've edited your post to add a More tag, since some people might not like the answer given right there...

I'm curious how you found it so fast!

Yes, I couldn't find it on the Areopolis text adventure until I actually did a search.

The punctuation, mostly. There aren't a ton of ellipses in the Incatena. (In retrospect I realize I hadn't even considered that it might be on the Maraille page... but why would they be speaking Modern Hanying on Maraille?)

Agreed, Arkansas; once you know the punctuation, it's not actually that hard.
I have very limited amounts of Portuguese and (any) Chinese (dialect), but even so, there are a couple of features that stand out: me- seems to be a first person singular prefix (possibly as a genitive as well?), sə- and lə- as second and third person singulars in the same style, toʔ for 'two', yə for 'and', mænu for 'hand' (naturally from the Portuguese)...
And then there's stuff that's largely conjecture, like læ- as a preposition possibly meaning 'upon,on', yuŋ menso possibly meaning something like 'with mind', a possible plural in -i, wegəl gebəpo (meaning unknown) as 'Ngembe Dust', relative clauses by [verb object] verb, šo for 'on' (possibly from 就 jiù?)...

A lot of your speculations are right on track.

Just for fun, though... "menso" does look a little like "mind", but it's "meaning", it's "mean" + "-ção", a typical shameless product of the creole period.

ləšo < Pt. ele/ela + Mand. 说 shuō
wi < Eng. with (??)
yuŋ < Mand. 用 yòng 'use, with'

The le- of "lesəd" might be from 来 lái 'come'.

Ooh, here's a question: will the slang from APAF ('vek', 'kiboize', etc.) be incorporated into Hanying?

Yes, since those words represent the cross-national slang of the late 21C. But the meanings are subject to change. E.g. 'vek' has become vəyéʔ 'person'.

IT`S HERE!

Where are the firework emojis? Quick!

And - wow - I get to post the first errata. In Hanying Creole.

forwan 4000 Should be 40,000
faiklak 50,000 Should be 500,000

tuk pau tri meka ečik 23 = 8 Should be 2^3 = 8

I think I noticed a couple.

Pronounce č as [tʃ], ž as [dʒ].

The table just above implies that ž is [ʒ] and j is [dʒ].

Yu det kan nyuhai.
You did kàn nǚhǎi.
你䙷看奴孩。

Is 奴 supposed to be 女?

Fixed all these so far. Thanks!

You all can just look at the gloss now, but just for fun, here's where people's guesses were off:

Pedant wrote: ↑Thu Jan 24, 2019 9:41 pm wegəl gebəpo (meaning unknown) as 'Ngembe Dust', [...] šo for 'on' (possibly from 就 jiù?)...

wegəl is 'some', from Mand. mǒu + Hindi -wālā; šo is 'speak' < shuō, here used as a coverb.

gebə-po < 'Ŋembe' + po 'powder' < Pt

The initial l- in several words makes a nice red herring, since it often comes from d-. E.g. 3rd person lə < de < English 'they'.