aldersprig | What's your Name or Screen Name in Calenyen? (Lexember sidetrack)

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I've been playing around with language, as you've noticed, and playing with putting people's names into Calenyen phonemes.

In some cases this requires bending the rules. For instance, my name, Lyn, falls entirely within Calenyen phonemes, but L- is not an initial sound.

In others, it requires bending the name:

It's a CV(C)**** language: Underlyingly CVC, but because of degemination very commonly CV(C) in less formal registers, and typically so written (except in formal documents). (hat tip

thnidu)

Adjacent consonants are okay unless they occur within the same syllable

No cl, gr, sk, bl, and so on.

No -io, -ia, like Mario, Maria, either. HOWEVER, to quote

inventrix, "some of the vowel combination sounds can be 'mimicked' by using a palatalized preceding consonant."

And some are nigh on impossible!

How's yours work out?

Calenyen has the following letters:
Consonants
14 that can begin a word:
7 nonpalatalized, or “plain”: K, L, P, T, D, B, G,
7 corresponding palatalized: ky, ly, py, ty, dy, by, gy *
10 that cannot begin a word (non-initial)***:
5 plain: r, z, zh, m, n
5 palatalized: ry, zy, zhy, my, ny
4 non-initial consonants that arose in later days
2 plain: v, s
2 palatalized: vy, sy Vowels

9 vowels**
ai, i, aa, a, e, ie, u, o, oo (see here)

* beginning a noun, even a proper noun, with a palatalized consonant suggests something is without use, worthless. Yes, some people name kids that way.

** you can begin a name with a vowel! It means you're royal, or, at least, you have an Emperor/Empress in your ancestry.

***The Calenyen break this rule, so it's okay if you do! They like stealing names from other languages...

****with some variations, see Imperial names, etc.

If you want, I'll draw your name in Calenyen letters. I could use the practice!

If your screen name involves an word (dragonfly, inspector, thorn, alder), I could be convince (if you ask) to make up that word in Calenyen, too.

Crossposts: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1132810.html

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From:

alexseanchai

I suspect "Alex" is one of the impossible ones.

From:

The closest I could get would be Alek, although looking at your whole screen name makes me want to make it Alekai

From:

alexseanchai

:)

From:

*raises hand* Obligatory Cal-is-being-difficult question! Sounds such as th, ch, and ng are not actually consonants being put next to each other, but rather two letters being combined to represent a specific sound instead of having a letter specific to the sound. For example, if I were to borrow þ from Nordic, bath would be spelled baþ with no combined letters.

So rather, does this mean that none of the sounds that we in English represent with a letter combination exist in Calenyen? And as a side note, I suggest changing your list of examples of consonants-next-to-each-other to ones that aren't single sounds represented by two letters. cl is good, as are gr, sk, bl, etc.

Edited (removed last line because derp) Date: 2015-12-10 06:43 pm (UTC)

From:

On a tangential note: do you think some of the vowel combination sounds be mimicked by using a palatalized preceding consonant?

From:

Yes... and I've done that. Yes, they can.

Second note adding!

From:

thanks for quoting me with my typo and everything ;P xD

From:

Okay, that is a fair point, and it falls between did-I-know-that and did-I-forget that, since I KNOW I knew about Þ.

Most of the sounds we in English represent with a letter combination don't exist in Calenyen, and I'm not sure anyone actually spells Zh, zh.

Changing the consonants example now!

From:

Yeah I think usually in English it's a pronunciation of a j, g, or some unique sound set that I can't think of right now but in the same group of weirdness as -tion.

(I really should have used quotes around mimicked, cough.)

From:

that fits with my experience, too.

From:

In English we use the spelling "zh" to transliterate from other languages, like Russian and Czech. I'm pretty sure it's the newest phoneme in our system, having arisen only a couple centuries ago by palatalization of /z/ before "y"-sounds that merged into it: pleasure, precision. It's our only phoneme that doesn't have a distinct spelling to itself (or shared with a close relative, like <th> for voiceless θ/þ and voiced ð).

Edited Date: 2015-12-11 08:02 pm (UTC)

From:

In English we use the spelling "zh" to transliterate from other languages, like Russian and Czech. Yes. :-P

But do we use it in any English words? Azure has the zh but without an H, for example.

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No, I meant to imply that in the last ¶. is purely a transcription/transliteration spelling.

From:

Aah! That's what I thought.

It's a lovely sound. I like it. :-D

From:

clare_dragonfly

Well, apparently my name in Calenyen is BUNNY. :D

Will you make up the word for "dragonfly" in Calenyen and then draw Kalaar-Dragonfly? :D :D ::flutters eyelashes::

From:

I shall! (gimme a few)

Heheee Bunny Dragonfly :-D :-D

From:

The word for Dragonfly is pailizdanon:

Spear, bright-rainbow, that, ~moves through the air~

From:

Edited Date: 2015-12-10 09:15 pm (UTC)

From:

clare_dragonfly

::squees::

From:

*giggle grin*

Edited Date: 2015-12-11 01:22 am (UTC)

From:

It's not CVC. That would mean that every syllable *had* to have a final syllable, and you couldn't have a single consonant except at the beginning and end of a word, where they'd be required: word-internally, every consonant would have to be next to (immediately before or after) another consonant, though not necessarily a different one.

From the examples I remember (mostly names), Calenyen syllable structure is CV(C):
• (onset) begin with a single consonant*
• (nucleus) that's colored by a single vowel
• (coda) optional: the vowel may, but need not, be followed by a single consonant.
• * Exception: the first syllable of an Imperial name begins with a vowel (zero onset)
The technical names of the parts are in parentheses.

Have I got that right?

From:

Ooh, new terms. *notes*

It's nouns of "beyond use," which include some proper nouns (Imperial names) and some words that are universal by their mindset (sky, river, mountain; their world was very small when their language began)

From:

tho' their non-ending syllables are all CVC except in the afore-mentioned case.
It's just that when there's two of the same consonant in a row they mush them together.
So like Kakkarrat might become Kakarat.

From:

• Enerenarie? (more exactly, Enerenarye)
• Tairikie? (-kye)
• Kyokyoenet (House)? (Hmmm, beyond use?)
• Olimmosamyimosama? s my m s m
• Iesovyenyie? Those are all single consonants, considering vy and ny as palatalized. Hmm... What's the first syllable? The second? And aren't the y and the i closest to the end redundant?

If these are all examples of the royal-name exception, it's not just "the NAME can begin with a vowel", but any syllable in the name. Or there's a whole lotta mushin' goin' on.

Edited Date: 2015-12-12 04:34 am (UTC)

From:

Oh
No, Enrie would be En-ner-=ren-nar-rie (ree, not rye)
And Tair-riek-kie

and so on.

The y marks palatalized all the time. the Ie marks an eee sound.

From:

As I said, there's a whole lotta mushin' goin' on. And (again, unplanned serendipity) right there's an example of it.

We normally write the present participle of English verbs with the suffix ‹-ing›, representing the standard pronunciation /-ɪŋ/, with a velar nasal: the ‹ng› sound has the tongue in the same position as for /g/ and /k/. (Something like those angle brackets is a standard way of showing "This is *writing*, not pronunciation." I'm using those teeny ones because I don't want anyone's browser to think that's HTML and go all apeshit.)

But there's a very common casual pronunciation of those words where /n/ is substituted for /ŋ/. In writing, we show that by writing ‹-in'›, and we call it "dropping the g's". A descriptive linguist has to account for both those pronunciations, and just saying "Oh, it's the same word but sometimes they just drop the 'g'", or rather "they just substitute /n/ for /ŋ/", won't do.

And similarly, it's not enough to just say that Calenyen syllables are CVC (with the exception for "beyond use" names), and relegate that mushing-together (degemination) to a throwaway line -- especially when the degeminated form is the one that dominates in your texts!

From:

All right, how would you phrase it?

From:

Oh Dear! I just reread this thread and realized that I was going all academic-pedantic on your blog, wa-a-ay out of place. I am SO SORRY for the way that must have sounded!!

U-ummm... How's this?:
Underlyingly CVC, but because of degemination very commonly CV(C) in less formal registers, and typically so written (? except in formal documents).

From:

It's okay, I was a little oh-dear-mom's-visiting stressed too and probably came off shorter than I meant to. All good, no worries.

And... /reads over/ yesss, that matches and works and now I know a new word.

From:

Whew! Good!

From:

:-D

I think it's likely that they started writing the double letters as one, and then non-native speakers began pronouncing it that way, but that's back in *handwave* nearly prehistory.

From:

Oho! Are the geminate consonants EVER pronounced or written?

From:

Yesss...

Okay. *pause* Assuming that we are talking about 'ever' in terms of "Edally era", which is approx. equivalent to our ~~steamp~~ Victorian era. A few words still maintain the... "geminate?" Twinned, neat word.... consonant, most of those very very old words, such as "barley," annnnd probably ceremonial words or ceremonial speech, where everything gets suddenly more clipped-sounding.

Just pulled the last bit out of ~~my ass~~ the aether, but it makes sense with what I know of these people.

From:

OK, so the gemination is an archaic pronunciation surviving (Edally-era) only in a few words and circumstances. In general, though, wherever Edally-era Calenyen has a single consonant between two vowels, it's a relic of degemination? (Exceptions for borrowed names, etc.) If so, then Edally Calenyen is CV(C).

. http://X-Clacks-Overhead.dw/GNU-Terry_Pratchett . http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/

From:

Drat, I meant to type FOLLOWED by a single vowel.

From:

I kinda like colored :-D

From:

"Thnidu", pronunciation /'θnɪdu/, would be pretty tough right from the start: Calenyen doesn't have th/θ/þ. But it's (just) outside English phonology too. We have plenty of words beginning with sibilant + nasal: native /s/ + nasal (snake, sneeze, smile, smith), and German or Yiddish loans /ʃ/ + nasal (shnook, Schneider, schmuck, shmear). But we don't have such initial clusters with the other voiceless fricatives, /f/ and /θ/ (or þ), such as Thnidu and fnord.

The best adaptation I can think of is /tənɪdu/ or /sənɪdu/: Tunidoo or Sunidoo, the latter with its initial S obviously a borrowed name. Puh-leeze write them!

Oh! Does Calenyen have stress? Not all languages do, e.g., French doesn't. "Thnidu" is stressed on the first syllable, which becomes the 2nd in Calenyen.

Edited Date: 2015-12-12 04:09 am (UTC)

From:

Calenyen does have stress, yes. Probably because it's being created by me.

I'll write them and scan them this weekend/Monday (Scanner's at work <.<). Maybe then I'll stop completely mispronouncing your name as having two oos in it.

From:

From:

Thank you!

From:

You're welcome! Thanks for all the linguistic help!

From:

Glad to!

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