Vowel Arrangement

I’ve been trying to expand on my idea from the last post about using the lowered equivalents of raised long vowels to avoid the awkward diphthongs /ai/ and /au/, but I ran into a bit of a roadblock when I realized that that was going to “break” ē and ō, which were already raised from ɛ̄ and ɔ̄. I think I’ve got it solved, though, by giving a little nod to Wulfilas and rearranging my prejudices about diphthongs. So here’s my revised vowel system to Gytc:

Short vowels

i [i]
y [y]
e [e]*
œ [ø]*
a [a]
a [ə]
o [o]*
u [u]

* The short middle vowels o, e, and œ, fall somewhere between [o,e,ø] and [ɔ,ɛ,œ], respectively. Their long equivalents are more closed.

Long vowels

ē [i:]
ȳ [y:]
ai [e:]
œ̄ [ø:]
ā [a:]
au [o:]
ō [u:]

Diphthongs

ī [ai]
ū [au]
ei [ei]*
eu [eu]*

* /ei/ and /eu/ are the i-umlaut forms of /ai/ and /au/, respectively.

Okay, back to work.

So after a bit of a hiatus, I’ve been prompted by one of my conlang groups to keep working on gytc, so I’m getting back to work.

Yeah, um... this:

So that prompted this:

I’ve still got some work to do on it -- finding better unicode letters to represent various letters without mucking around with the whole private use subsets and creating a font and whatnot; finding better transliterations for a couple of characters; reevaluating my phonemic inventory -- but it’s a start.

Otherwise, not much has changed on the Gytc front, except for a sort of wicked idea: I think, to avoid “ugly” orthography like “mains” for [maɪns], I want to pull a page out of the English handbook and use the lowered version of long vowels (except ā) to represent their raised or diphthong equivalents, e.g. “mīns.” Also “hūs” ([haʊs] = house), fōts ([fu:ts] = foot), mēna ([mi:nə] = moon).

I’m still a little non-committal about certain sounds, though. II still have no idea whether /ʒ/, which is intended to be some sort of rhotic, should be [r], [ɾ], [ʁ], or even [ʒ]. I’m not sure I even want to make that determination – I just want to be sure that it’s differentiated from /z/ [z], which has to come from a voices /s/, and /r/ [ɾ] which comes from a “real” Protogermanic /r/.

04.20.13.04.19.09.35

A few more updates. There have been a few new words added, and I’ve rearranged a bit to simplify things. 

Specifically, I’ve replaced /c/ with /k/ and then /š/ with /c/, as i threatened to do in the fall, though i haven’t yet committed to changing /ǧ/ to /q/. Really, these are all just placeholders until i find the “right” alphabet, which i’m coming closer to. I’ve actually made a good deal of progress on this, but it doesn’t quite look “right” yet, so nothing formal so far.

In other news, i added a slightly unorthodox system of deixis, on top of the already questionable system of “ul,” “úli,” and “úlót;” adding the modifiers “la,” for “last” or “yester-” (e.g. yesterday, last night, last year) “ja” for “to-“ or “this” (e.g. today, tonight, this afternoon), and “þa” for “next,” (e.g. tomorrow, next week, next month). I’ll elaborate on these a little more when i’m not busy at work.

04.20.12.11.11.12.53

So, a few updates here.  Some minor vocabulary and some less minor phonological changes (or, rather, clarifications).

Let's tackle the big one first:

Long vowels

For a while now i've thought about adding in some sort of long/short vowel clarification to the orthography, but there is already so much going on with the markers for primary and secondary stress and those annoying letters that don't have a clear equivalent (like š and ǧ), that i wanted to be careful about not introducing macrons or something that would further complicate the orthography, at least until i create a writing system that I'm happy with.

After some thought, i've decided that a simple rule can supplant the need for long and short vowel markers.  Well, i thought it was a simple rule that i could write out with combinations of stressed and tense vowels, but there are, of course, exceptions, so until i work that out more succinctly, here's the bulk of it:

• The vowels e, i, o, ǫ, and u are always long, whether stressed or unstressed, unless part of a diphthong.
• The vowels ɛ and y are always short, whether stressed or unstressed.
• The neutral vowel a is short when unstressed, long when stressed.

There.  No need to add additional diacritics now.

Possible Orthography Change

On the same track, i've been toying with the idea of moving around some letters to get rid of the š and ǧ problem; possibly c > k, š > c, and ǧ > q, but i haven't decided yet.  I don't particularly care for q as a replacement for [γ]. I've also thought about replacing ǫ with w, but i don't really like that either.

New Vocabulary

Finally, i have a lot of new words that i've been adding to the lexicon, many through various translations in random "conlang" groups on Facebook, etc., and most recently by filling out an extended swadesh list.  One day i aspire to tackle the Universal Language Dictionary, but i don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, and if it does, it will be Northeadish before Maltšέgj. In the meantime, i'm going to work on getting the new words added to the lexicon today, but i'm a little distracted with the age-old problem of how best to keep the lexicon updated in a format that I can actually use effectively.  We'll see how it turns out... (For now, I'm creating entries in Word, stripping out the formatting, and then pasting them into Google Sites, which seems redundant and annoying.)

One exciting facet of new vocabulary building that i explored this morning was with familial relationships. Years ago i added the words "adína" (sister) and "ǫ́bri" (niece), after my sister Adina and her daughter Aubrey. I figured i'd continue with that theme, and added "tym" (father - Tim), crýstʌ (mother - Christl), crɛg (maternal uncle - Craig), kyp (paternal uncle - Kip), lýnda (materal aunt - Linda), hɛ́lɛn (maternal grandmother - Helen)... and so on. I don't have any brothers or nephews, so I might have to make something up on those fronts, and I had to choose among family members for who had the most "maltšέgj-able" name, but I thought it was a nice tribute.

04.20.11.11.24.10.16

I’ve recently had a bit of a chance to play around with Maltšɛ́gj in a “conlang” group on Facebook, which hasn’t led to much more than my reviewing some of the finer points of grammar and the creation of the word “djɛ́lyš” (coffee), but I have been considering a slight grammatical shift that could be quite interesting regarding the “free stress” of the language.

It seems that I, perhaps unconsciously, created most verbs with final stress. It’s not exactly a new concept, especially for English, but I think I would like to implement a “verbs have final stress, nouns/adjectives have primary stress” rule, along the same lines as English verbs borrowed from French or Latin, like présent/presént, cóntract/contráct, &c.

So in other words, leaving us with pairs like ðrɛ́pnid (permission) and ðrɛpníd (to be allowed, may); glácsi (memory) and glacsí (to remember); or bjóxɛf (full, complete) and bjoxɛ́f (to fill, to fulfill, to complete).

This would, of course, entail revising the lexicon quite extensively, and maybe modifying some verbs, but it’s just something I’m thinking about at the moment.

Silly things

I haven't had the opportunity to work on gytc for a while, but I was just playing around with some silly phrases and decided to include them here, gathering up a couple of fun new words.

• Flȳgwagnas mains ist ēla fuls! (My hovercraft is full of eels!)
• Ik kann glas itna.  It nī harmiþ mik. (I can eat glass.  It does not hurt me.)
• Ik im jausts. (I am cheese.)

The Jamin & Karen Supper Club: Midori's Floating World Café

Actually, the title is a little misleading: I went to Midori the other night with The Sweeties, not with Karen.  They treated me to what is possibly the only sushi place in the Twin Cities that i haven't been to yet in exchange for some laptop fixin'.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from Midori's Floating World Café, but what i definitely did not expect was how overwhelmingly cute it was!  It's just adorable.

We got some tasty beef pot stickers as appetizers with our drinks, and i was very pleasantly surprised by the delicious peach sake cooler - pretty much a sake spritzer with peach syrup in it.  Very refreshing. Then came little octopus dumplings and some sort of tofu salad.  As cute as they were, i need to accept the fact that i just don't like octopus. 

For an entrée, i got the sashimi and tempura bento dinner, and it was nice enough, pretty; nothing special.  The tempura was particularly good - especially the sweet potato; the sashimi was fine but nothing to blog about... and, having just relearned my lesson for the nth time, i gave the tako to Ms. Fledermaus.

I just killed syllabics :Þ

So I take some of that back.  I've just killed off syllabics altogether, so you can ignore the bit about them being their own letter à la icelandic and all that.

C[+sonorant,+syllabic] → C[-syllabic]a

Syllabic sonorant consonants become non-syllabic and are followed by -a.

swistr → swistra (sister)
rign → rigna (rain)

It also has some interesting implications for verbs:

dūn, stēn, gīn - no syllabics here.  But:

wisan > wisn > wisna
waírþan > werðn > werðna

Here's also a nifty twist for Class 1 weak verbs:

wiljan > wilin

Some new words and rules

I've been playing around with some new words, and by extension, new rules.  I added a rule to "Mora Loss" (which is really just a sort of catch-all bucket for about 30 other rules) to include long vowels:

V [+long]→[-long]/_______## (i.e. a long vowel becomes short at the end of a word or word segment.)

I also added an early rule which may be somewhat superfluous, as I think this already happened in Gothic, but not in the orthography:

b,d→v,ð/V_______V (i.e. intervocalic stops, not including g, become continutant.) 

I think g did this in Gothic as well, but I'm imagining something a little more interesting for g as time goes on...

I also added a bunch of new words, which are in the lexicon, mostly for the purpose of examples in the rules:

dōr n.st.n. door.
dūn v.t. to do.
fūts n.st.m. foot.
gangan v.i. to go. Also gīn.
gēts n.st.f. goat.
gīn v.i. to go. Short form of gangan.
gum n.w.m. man.  
haus n.st.n. house.
hōhs adj. high.
ja itj. yes, yea(h). 
kwīns n.st.f. woman.
lōmyna n.st.n. lightning.
man n.w.m. man, person (not gender-specific).
nī itj.  no, not.
standan v.i. to stand.  Also stēn.
stēn v.i. to stand.  Short form of standan.
þȳþs n.st.m. person.
werðan v.i. to become, to turn into.
wilen v.t. to want.
wisan v.i. to be.

I've also decided that syllabic sonorants can just sit there and be syllabic sonorants, icelandic style (e.g. sivn - "seven", unsr - "our").

Maltšέgj Project Reloaded... (only better than the Matrix)

I suppose this could be considered the first official revival of the Maltšέgj Project.  While codifying these entries into blog format, i've also undertaken to transcribe the lexicon on my linguistics site, and in doing so i've already made some changes, which in the sake of fairness, ought to be recorded here.

In part four of the project, i changed [ʃ] from § to ж, which is just hard to type and weird to look at.  For now, i've transcribed it as š (though i flirted briefly with the idea of ƨ, now that Times New Roman is a little more robust).  I've also replaced λ with ʌ, because it just looks a little neater, and all the various iterations of y and γ into plain old y.  I'd like to change ђ to something else, too, but that can wait... probably ǧ.

Transcribing these entries has reawakened Maltšέgj for me, and this might just be the beginning of a resurgence of the project.  Part Five, anyone?

Some More Thoughts on Rhotacism

I think i've been getting tripped up by other germanic languages when thinking about rhotacism.  In particular, I've been wondering how it would apply to the masculine singular nominative ending, and the fact is that by the time of gothic this ending has already become -s, and as such, rhotacism just can't apply to it.

I would still like to see some sort of rhotacism take place in gytc, but i don't want to see z and r turn into a single letter.  I think what i would like is a sort of runic-style "ʀ" with an indefinite pronunciation until i can come up with something more concrete, so for now i think it's safe to just use the ʒ character, and just wait to decide whether it should be pronounced [r], [ʒ], or, heck, maybe even [ɮ].  (I like ɮ.  It's fun to say.)

So we can put down as a solid rule that z > ʒ, but that this has no effect on s from a former z, and we'll decide what it sounds like later on.  I would also put this in a chronology where this change occurs after the rule in which voiced consonant clusters become unvoiced (e.g. razda > rasta > rast, not razda > raʒda > ract or rart).

I'm going to start a lexicon and rule page for gytc at http://ling.everywitchway.net/germanic/east/gothic/gutish to keep track of these sorts of changes as they occur.

Stay tuned!

Exciting New Merchandise, Gothy and Otherwise, for your Home Shopping Pleasure!

Hi Folks,

I just wanted to post a quick note to let you know about two new merchandising opportunities for you!

First and foremost, i've just about got all the kinks worked out in the Gothic for Goths T-shirt store.  The last kink remaining is that i need to sell ten designs before i can upload anymore.  Brilliant from their perspective; really annoying for me.  I've sold eight so far: I just need two more!  Won't you buy a gothy T-shirt?

There are eight items (two designs) available in all:

• "Sa feina niuja swarta undarhams meins gneidiþ mik" ("My fancy new black underwear is chafing") - T-shirts in black with red or parchment lettering, or boxers in black with red or parchment lettering on the back or on the front left leg.
• "Ōkai, sō dulþs waírþiþ unhráinja. Ik gawasja mik, gagguh háimō." ("Okay, this party's getting dirty.  I'm putting on my clothes and going home.") - T-shirts in black with red or parchment lettering.  "Ōkai, sō dulþs waírþiþ unhráinja" is on the front, "Ik gawasja mik, gagguh háimō," on the back.

So here's the deal.  I need to sell two more of these puppies before i can upload more designs, and i want to have a good, broad selection available before i launch the shop publicly.  Er, ya know, more publicly.  So if you happen to be reading this, go to the shop and buy a t-shirt or some boxers.  I will personally Paypal my commission (negligible though it may be) to the next two people to buy something (or the next two designs sold) - just email me and let me know that you bought it.  This deal is only available until i've reached my minimum to be able to upload more designs and launch the shop publicly, so order yours today!  Heck, i'll pay for your (domestic ground) shipping too. 

(Oh.  And for those of you who are going to tell me, "Just go buy two t-shirts yourself!  Use a different name or something." I already got called out on that.  Different name and address and payment information and everything.  And all I got was a delightfully passive-aggressive note: "Congratulations on your first sale! Did you perhaps order a t-shirt for yourself? For testing purposes of course ;-)"  So, meh.)

In other merchy news, i'm in the process of opening a sort of local shop called Cottage Industries where locals can buy homemade yoghurt, maple syrup, and home-roasted coffee.  It's still in the startup stages, so don't buy anything there just yet (because your order will evaporate into the adminisphere!) but i'll post when it's ready to go.  Yoghurt delivery is local only, of course.  Everything else so far will have some sort of shipping cost associated with it unless you live or work in our delivery area.

Ideally, once i get the hang of the shopping cart systems and shipping and whatnot, i'd like to consolidate the two shops, but for now i'll leave the t-shirt business in the capable hands of the experts at SpreadShirt.  Maybe i could have other neat little shops in there too, like links to Ms. Maus's fabulous gothy yarn and yarnstuffs, or other delightful local products.

So that's all my excitement currently.  Go buy a t-shirt!  I wanna launch my shop!

Articles, Numerals, Pronouns

(from handwritten notes, transcribed)

Definite Article

sa → sə
sō → sə
þata → þat(ə)
þana → þan/þən
þō → þə
þamma → þam
þizai → (do we have rhotacism or not?) → þizə, þiʒə, þerə?

Numerals

áins → ēns
twái → twē
þreis → þrīs(/z/r/ʒ?)
fidwōr → fidər? fidur? fidrə
fimf → fim
saíhs → sēs (seks?)
sibun → sivən
ahtáu → ahtō, ahtə
niun → nȳn
taíhun → tēn
áinlif → ēnlif
twalif → twalif
þrijataíhun → þrītēn, fidratēn, fimtēn, sēstēn, sivəntēn, ahtətēn, nȳntēn

twētigə
þrīxtigə [x = s, z, ʒ, r, or whatever it turns out to be when we decide what we want to do about rhotacism]
fidrətigə
fimtigə
sēstigə
sivəntigə
ahtətigə
nȳntigə
hund

Pronouns

ik - mīns - mik - mis
þu - þīns - þik* - þis* (*not þus, &c.)
īx - īns - īm - īn
sī - īxas - īxa - sī
it - its - īm - it

wīt - unks - unks - unk
jūt - junks - junks - junk

wīx - uns - unsə - unsər
jūx - ixwī - ixwə - ixwər
īx?...