I believe i need to rethink the way certain words are put together, and really come up with something solid as far as sentence structure goes. I’m not sure why, but it’s really been bothering me the last couple of days. I think partly it has to do with adjectives: in particular, the demonstrative kind. So let’s analyze that for moment, if we can...
Let’s see... demon adjectives consist of:
| am | (a) |
| ul | (the) |
| úli | (this) |
| úla | (that) |
| úlot | (the other) |
| calc | (that, which) |
| mlau | (what, which) |
| blεg | (no, none) |
| jơg u | (my, mine) |
| mέlεm u | (your, yours) |
| mεlmíne u | (your, yours) |
| pul u | (his) |
| pεl u | (her, hers) |
| paj u | (its) |
| jalc u | (our, ours) |
| parþ u | (their, theirs) |
My brain is foggy today, and i think i might be coming down with some malevolent virus, so if i don’t make a whole lot of sense, or if i overlook something fundamental, forgive me. However, thinking on a much lower level like this actually opens me up to interesting new ideas, which i’ll most likely have to undo as soon as i’m well again.
My confusion lies herein: if we are to treat these words as adjectives, they should, naturally, follow the noun they modify. However, i have been preceding the noun with most of these, which is fine as long as we can establish a decent rule for it. The problem with the possessives, in particular, is that they contain a pseudo-suffixed preposition, which conflicts with any preposition the noun might be using. So my initial solution is to declare that all demonstrative adjectives precede the noun they modify. So using that idea, let me see what still bothers me about changing around this translation...
nos dyd ðac almítra, “mεn ðac jalc að ðblεucþ έloi.” e dyd bran pul mεs
Well, that looks a little different. New rules: adverbial particles (gads, i can’t even think of the proper names for things... those little end-of-the-sentence things that aren’t quite prepositions) will now DIRECTLY FOLLOW the verb they modify. This being a language with no changeable words, we have to stick related things as close together as possible so we can keep track of them!
Here’s an idea that just seeped out of my addled brain. It might be interesting one day to create an alternative malt§έgj language that would actually incorporate all the adverbs and particles and prepositions into their respective nouns and verbs and pronouns and such... the pronunciation would remain the same, but the orthography would change significantly... for instance instead of
e dyd bran mεs pul ul talp e dyd culóm ut ul ga§ág a, e dyd t§ơ§ am wára parþ ap.
one might write
e dydbran mεspul ultalp e dydculomut ulga§aga, e dydt§ơ§ amwara parþap.
or something vaguely similar that would allow for a slightly less rigid sentence structure. But that’s a project for a different day.
The other thing i wanted to take care of was a standardization of the orthography concerning diphthongs. I’ve been rather wishy-washy about it and i’d like to get something set in stone. I’m just not sure what. I think i’d feel a lot better about it if i had some other vowel that i could use for “y,” because right now it’s [ɪ] and [j] and [i]. The trouble is, i need something that has a full range of diacritics so i can indicate if it’s stressed or not. Perhaps ι? That would at least give me ι, ί, and ὶ, but it looks a little too similar to i, í, and ì. и, и́, ѝ? No. I can use some random character and play around with combining diacritics, too, i suppose. Then again there’s also ê, ế, and ề, but that seems a little excessive on the diacritic front. η, ή, ὴ? Maybe... or υ, ύ, ὺ. Yes, that does bring out that lovely welsh feel to it, even though it’s a greek letter.
Ευρηκα! How about i break a couple rules of what’s supposed to be a consonant and what’s supposed to be a vowel and i just use γ? Perfect.
So... γ will now represent the short i [ɪ], diphthongs will be formed with i, and glides will remain y. Similarly, although this isn’t as i’d planned it, diphthongs will be formed with u and glides with w. So mote it be!
Which means i have to go mess with the lexica again.
Ack. I forgot about the voiced velar fricative. That’s y too, and by rights it should have the first stab at γ. Too late now... that shall become...um...ђ? ג? That might look a little weird. But since i haven’t really used that letter yet that i can remember, i’ll just say that theoretically, should i ever use it, it will be ђ, just because i kinda like that letter. Then again, since it’s a consonant and i really don’t have to worry about diacritics and such, it could be just about anything. ğ perhaps. Actually, i’m not going to worry about it until i have a need for it.
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