Yet another Rom-auxlang (the Interslavic way)
Posted: 25 Nov 2021 05:07
Or, Rom-auxlanging the Interslavic way
(Introduction to come) I have been informed that the name InterRoman has been taken; it will take some while to come up and decide on another name for the language. The language would have to, for the time being, be referred to as 'the language', 'our language', and other hopelessly indescript names.
Orthography and Phonology
Consonants
b c~qu d f g h l m n p r s t v (z)
qu is, as in Latin, an allograph of c before u.
h is always silent.
s may (or not) be pronounced /z/ between two vowels. r may be pronounced as a trill, flap, gutural, or however the speaker sees fit.
Before front vowels both the classical/velar (/k g/) and Vulgar (affricativised) readings of c and g are acceptable. Of the latter the readings /tʃ dʒ/ ,/ts dz/ are preferred over the reading /s z/, unless the consonant system is pronounced in such a way that would not lead into the confusion, say, of ci ce with si se, e.g. if s is pronounced in an apical manner.
((For the sake of minimising confusion it is, however, still advisable to mark velars before front vowels of foreign provenance differently, i.e. Kirov, Chirov, Quirov, C'irov, etc. for Киров; Dombrovski, Dombrovschi, Dombrovsqui, etc. for Dąbrowski; Oquinawa, Ochinawa, Occinawa, etc. for 沖縄. Transliterations of Chinese words are an exception; the ambiguity of the pronunciation of c g allows the transliteration to be read in the manner of Mandarin (i.e. as affricates) or the Southern Sinitic languages (Cantonese, Hakka, etc., i.e. as velars), thus e.g. Pecin for 北京.))
Iotated consonants
lh~ly~yl nh~ny~yn ry~yr
These diphthongs represents combinations of consonants and glides found before final -um. Since the ending is dropped in the language, what remains is the iotated vowel: cony, conh /koɲ/ 'wedge' ; fornary, fornayr /fornaːr(j)~fornɛːr(j)/ 'baker'. NB: palatalisation of ry, yr is optional; perhaps only the Balkan tongues possess palatalised trills/flaps.
Vowels
a, ā - a
e - ie
ē - ei
i - e
ī .. i
o - uo
ō - ou
u - o
ū - u
ae - ae / ie
oe - oe / ie
au - ao / au
The rather incongruous spelling of the phonemes corresponding to Latin front and back vowels are justified by their corresponding reflexes in Romance languages; short e o, which are reflected as open-mid vowels in Western Romance by the time of the Frankish Empire at the latest, develop into diphthongs in the two most spoken Romance languages in the world: /ie, uo > u/ in French, /ie, uo > ue/ in Castillian; ei were then monophthongised into /i/ in Friulian and Dalmatian. Under these circumstances uo and ie would be fairly good orthographical compromises. ē develops into ei > oi in French and o into /oa~ua/ in Romanian when a syllable in /a/ follows.
ao and au are both tolerated, but ao has the advantage of being distinguishable from Latin 'learned' re-borrowings with slightly different nuances. Cf. caosa /kɔsa ~ kʌsa/ 'thing' vs. causa /kaʊsa/ 'cause' (esp. in set phrases such as causa prima).
The speaker, however, is at liberty to pronounce each of these digraphs as their tongues deem comfortable and natural. Some mergers are tolerable: ei to merge with either ie or i, ao with o, &c.
Latin declensional endings -am and -em (in the acc. sing.) are reflected as -a and -e, while -um is entirely dropped, instead of being reflected as -o or -u as in several Romauxlang (though both aforementioned endings may be inserted in poetry when needed to suit the metre). Since the latter ending is the most common one in Latin, dropping it would be, from a economic perspective, expedient. This also pulls the language away from a 'Hispano-Italian bias' in look and sound, and is a neat compromise between the 'North-western' and Balkan tongues on one hand, and the Iberian and Italian ones on the other (cf. Catalan and Occitan, which, to some, may give the impression of sounding somewhere between Castilian and the Langues d'oïl).
Alternative 'simpler' orthography
For a more transparent concordance between sound and phoneme the following can be done:
1. Omitting all instances of h.
2. Replacing intervocalic b with v habere > avere; Fortunati sont spanioli, per que bivere est vivere.
3. ae, oe, ie merged into ie (but ao always kept separate; see Vowels)
Optional etymological orthography
An accent grav or circumflex may, for etymological purposes, be superposed on top of an an a, giving à or â. Their usage, however, are optional; since they are not meant for wider, more common usage writers are advised to use them sparingly.
Principles of word design: roots
1. Where, in expressing a concept, all or most modern Romance languages share a common etymon which differs from the one in Latin, the word in the Language takes
This gives us pairs of Latinate/vulgar lexemes (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_c ... to-Romance), allowing for a variation of lexical register in writing and perhaps in speech if so desired, in imitation of languages that do possess such distinctions: Javanese, Japanese, etc.
e.g. Mary is eating the bread she had cooked in fire.
Maria panes quos igne coxerat edit. (Latin as translated from English by Google Translate; I barely write any Latin and can't assess the veracity of this translated)
Maria pane que in igne habe coct edi. (high register with features, especially syntax, from the Classical tongue, for an 'archaising' style)
Maria edi il pane que habe coct in igne. (high register)
Maria manduca il pane que ha coct in fuoc. (colloquial, standard register)
2. Where Romance languages are evenly spread (by geography; exact criteria, something like the six Slavic dialectal 'subgroups' used in Interslavic lexicography, to be determined later) between two or three Latin etyma, both may be taken as equivalent synonyms; the variation between the latter taken as analogous to dialectal isoglosses, cf. Interslavic flavourisation. For English 'beautiful' one would have the words bell and formous; with the literary/dialectal synonym pulcr accompanying both.
3. Where Romance languages diverge far enough from each other the Latin word may be taken as a compromise, or a form from one of the modern tongues which diverges least in meaning from the Latin word. Consider the following words corresponding to English 'dirty' (gratuitously extracted from Wiktionary, sorted by groups partly geographical and partly genetic):
Oïl:
French: sale (fr)
Norman: sale
Walloon: mannet (wa), måssî (wa), niche (wa), swasse (wa)
Oc:
Catalan: brut (ca), llord (ca)
Occitan: brut (oc), lord (oc)
Iberian:
Asturian: puercu (ast), suciu, gochu (ast)
Galician: sucio
Portuguese: sujo (pt)
Spanish: sucio (es)
Gallo-Italian (incl. Romansh)
Friulian: sporc
Romansch: malnet, tschuf
Venetian: spórco, paẑ (vec)
Italian:
Italian (Tuscan): sporco (it), sudicio (it), lurido (it), lercio (it)
Neapolitan: nzivato
Insular Italian:
Sardinian (Campidanese) feu
Sicilian: lordu (scn), sporcu, nzivatu, loddu
Balkan Romance:
Romanian: murdar (ro), nespălat (ro), jegos (ro)
These deviation between these form is so great that choosing one or two forms would come at the expense of many languages. Our word may have to be derived from the Latin form sordidus: giving us the word sordid; though not found in the 'colloquial' strata of the vocabulary of any of the modern tongues (only existing within in semi-borrowed, learned terms). Alternatively one may take as our word sporc, derived from an etymon, reflected in Italian, Friulian, and Sicilian, which has experienced the least semantic drift from the Latin word.
(Introduction to come) I have been informed that the name InterRoman has been taken; it will take some while to come up and decide on another name for the language. The language would have to, for the time being, be referred to as 'the language', 'our language', and other hopelessly indescript names.
Orthography and Phonology
Consonants
b c~qu d f g h l m n p r s t v (z)
qu is, as in Latin, an allograph of c before u.
h is always silent.
s may (or not) be pronounced /z/ between two vowels. r may be pronounced as a trill, flap, gutural, or however the speaker sees fit.
Before front vowels both the classical/velar (/k g/) and Vulgar (affricativised) readings of c and g are acceptable. Of the latter the readings /tʃ dʒ/ ,/ts dz/ are preferred over the reading /s z/, unless the consonant system is pronounced in such a way that would not lead into the confusion, say, of ci ce with si se, e.g. if s is pronounced in an apical manner.
((For the sake of minimising confusion it is, however, still advisable to mark velars before front vowels of foreign provenance differently, i.e. Kirov, Chirov, Quirov, C'irov, etc. for Киров; Dombrovski, Dombrovschi, Dombrovsqui, etc. for Dąbrowski; Oquinawa, Ochinawa, Occinawa, etc. for 沖縄. Transliterations of Chinese words are an exception; the ambiguity of the pronunciation of c g allows the transliteration to be read in the manner of Mandarin (i.e. as affricates) or the Southern Sinitic languages (Cantonese, Hakka, etc., i.e. as velars), thus e.g. Pecin for 北京.))
Iotated consonants
lh~ly~yl nh~ny~yn ry~yr
These diphthongs represents combinations of consonants and glides found before final -um. Since the ending is dropped in the language, what remains is the iotated vowel: cony, conh /koɲ/ 'wedge' ; fornary, fornayr /fornaːr(j)~fornɛːr(j)/ 'baker'. NB: palatalisation of ry, yr is optional; perhaps only the Balkan tongues possess palatalised trills/flaps.
Vowels
a, ā - a
e - ie
ē - ei
i - e
ī .. i
o - uo
ō - ou
u - o
ū - u
ae - ae / ie
oe - oe / ie
au - ao / au
The rather incongruous spelling of the phonemes corresponding to Latin front and back vowels are justified by their corresponding reflexes in Romance languages; short e o, which are reflected as open-mid vowels in Western Romance by the time of the Frankish Empire at the latest, develop into diphthongs in the two most spoken Romance languages in the world: /ie, uo > u/ in French, /ie, uo > ue/ in Castillian; ei were then monophthongised into /i/ in Friulian and Dalmatian. Under these circumstances uo and ie would be fairly good orthographical compromises. ē develops into ei > oi in French and o into /oa~ua/ in Romanian when a syllable in /a/ follows.
ao and au are both tolerated, but ao has the advantage of being distinguishable from Latin 'learned' re-borrowings with slightly different nuances. Cf. caosa /kɔsa ~ kʌsa/ 'thing' vs. causa /kaʊsa/ 'cause' (esp. in set phrases such as causa prima).
The speaker, however, is at liberty to pronounce each of these digraphs as their tongues deem comfortable and natural. Some mergers are tolerable: ei to merge with either ie or i, ao with o, &c.
Latin declensional endings -am and -em (in the acc. sing.) are reflected as -a and -e, while -um is entirely dropped, instead of being reflected as -o or -u as in several Romauxlang (though both aforementioned endings may be inserted in poetry when needed to suit the metre). Since the latter ending is the most common one in Latin, dropping it would be, from a economic perspective, expedient. This also pulls the language away from a 'Hispano-Italian bias' in look and sound, and is a neat compromise between the 'North-western' and Balkan tongues on one hand, and the Iberian and Italian ones on the other (cf. Catalan and Occitan, which, to some, may give the impression of sounding somewhere between Castilian and the Langues d'oïl).
Alternative 'simpler' orthography
For a more transparent concordance between sound and phoneme the following can be done:
1. Omitting all instances of h.
2. Replacing intervocalic b with v habere > avere; Fortunati sont spanioli, per que bivere est vivere.
3. ae, oe, ie merged into ie (but ao always kept separate; see Vowels)
Optional etymological orthography
An accent grav or circumflex may, for etymological purposes, be superposed on top of an an a, giving à or â. Their usage, however, are optional; since they are not meant for wider, more common usage writers are advised to use them sparingly.
Principles of word design: roots
1. Where, in expressing a concept, all or most modern Romance languages share a common etymon which differs from the one in Latin, the word in the Language takes
This gives us pairs of Latinate/vulgar lexemes (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_c ... to-Romance), allowing for a variation of lexical register in writing and perhaps in speech if so desired, in imitation of languages that do possess such distinctions: Javanese, Japanese, etc.
e.g. Mary is eating the bread she had cooked in fire.
Maria panes quos igne coxerat edit. (Latin as translated from English by Google Translate; I barely write any Latin and can't assess the veracity of this translated)
Maria pane que in igne habe coct edi. (high register with features, especially syntax, from the Classical tongue, for an 'archaising' style)
Maria edi il pane que habe coct in igne. (high register)
Maria manduca il pane que ha coct in fuoc. (colloquial, standard register)
2. Where Romance languages are evenly spread (by geography; exact criteria, something like the six Slavic dialectal 'subgroups' used in Interslavic lexicography, to be determined later) between two or three Latin etyma, both may be taken as equivalent synonyms; the variation between the latter taken as analogous to dialectal isoglosses, cf. Interslavic flavourisation. For English 'beautiful' one would have the words bell and formous; with the literary/dialectal synonym pulcr accompanying both.
3. Where Romance languages diverge far enough from each other the Latin word may be taken as a compromise, or a form from one of the modern tongues which diverges least in meaning from the Latin word. Consider the following words corresponding to English 'dirty' (gratuitously extracted from Wiktionary, sorted by groups partly geographical and partly genetic):
Oïl:
French: sale (fr)
Norman: sale
Walloon: mannet (wa), måssî (wa), niche (wa), swasse (wa)
Oc:
Catalan: brut (ca), llord (ca)
Occitan: brut (oc), lord (oc)
Iberian:
Asturian: puercu (ast), suciu, gochu (ast)
Galician: sucio
Portuguese: sujo (pt)
Spanish: sucio (es)
Gallo-Italian (incl. Romansh)
Friulian: sporc
Romansch: malnet, tschuf
Venetian: spórco, paẑ (vec)
Italian:
Italian (Tuscan): sporco (it), sudicio (it), lurido (it), lercio (it)
Neapolitan: nzivato
Insular Italian:
Sardinian (Campidanese) feu
Sicilian: lordu (scn), sporcu, nzivatu, loddu
Balkan Romance:
Romanian: murdar (ro), nespălat (ro), jegos (ro)
These deviation between these form is so great that choosing one or two forms would come at the expense of many languages. Our word may have to be derived from the Latin form sordidus: giving us the word sordid; though not found in the 'colloquial' strata of the vocabulary of any of the modern tongues (only existing within in semi-borrowed, learned terms). Alternatively one may take as our word sporc, derived from an etymon, reflected in Italian, Friulian, and Sicilian, which has experienced the least semantic drift from the Latin word.