Re: [romanceconlang] Question on Italic languages

From: Adam Walker (carrajena@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 22:19:44 EST


--- Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@yahoo.co.uk>

Tu screvesti:

> I don't really know, but there are some interesting
> websites dealing with the
> other Italic languages, one of which is called
> "Viteliu".
> I would probably start with analyzing them
> thoroughly. Oscan and Umbrian seem
> to be very close to each other, so their
> vocabularies could eventually be used
> complementarily.

Yes, by scrounging through them all you might be able
to put together a more lengthy list, but some of them
are more related to each other than others, no?

The next step would be to determine
> their relationship with
> Latin, which would surely enable us to generate some
> new vocabulary. Let's say,
> that if a word exists both in Latin and Greek (of
> course not in the form of
> borrowings), then it should exist in Oscan/Umbrian
> too. Except for Greek,
> Celtic might play a role too.

Oh, yeah, I completely forgot about Celtic. Gaulic
could be very useful in making comparisons. This is
really starting to sound intriguing. I wish I had the
time/resources to actually take a look at it, but I'm
determined NOT to start any new conlang projects until
I can actually write stuff in C-a.

>
> > Speaking of Greek, there's another pitty. All the
> > varieties of Greek that have died out without
> leaving
> > daughter langs. IIRC Tsakonian is the only
> non-Attic
> > Greeklang currently spoken.
>
> Yes, indeed. BTW, the P vs. Q phenomenon manifests
> itself in Greek too, albeit
> in the form of P vs. T ("tessares" vs. "pisyres",
> the latter is Doric IIRC).
>

What is it with these P-Other voiceless stop splits.
They are way-cool, but wy is it always P that gets to
have all the fun. No fair to the other stops. :)

> > I wonder why, with all the multitudes of us
> constructiong
> > Romancelangs, I'm not aware of anyone doing
> Greeklangs.
>
> I have been wondering about that too, and I think I
> even asked about that on
> Conlang. Nobody really seems to have an answer,
> except for the fact that Latin
> is better known than Greek, and that the presence of
> so many Romance natlangs
> makes the creation of new Romance conlang much more
> obvious than the absence of
> any Greek natlangs other than Modern Greek.
>
> > Is there anyone?
>
> Well, there are two examples I can think of:
> Mesegoika, by Alexis Katsaros,
> which is some sort of Greek-Spanish hybrid. And
> Ferko Valoczy has presumably
> started a new Slavo-Greek language lately.
>
> Jan
>

Well, I'm glad someone's doing it. It sounds like a
fascinating endevor, but again, I ain't got the time
to larn me no Greek.

Ob-Romlang-Q:

How do you say "It's Greek to me!" or suitable
variation thereof in your various Romlangs? I'm
thinking the Carrajena version must be something like:
"Si lovindu al arava."

Adam



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