zompist bboard

Sharshali is born out of a revelation I've had about myself—try as I might, I can't succeed at making a continental romlang that's the least bit interesting to me. Whatever believable sound changes I can think of, given the location, have been undergone by a Romance language that already exists. So now I'm trying my hand at a North African romlang, and I'm pretending that the Southern Romance branch extended down into Africa.

Right now, I'm just looking for thoughts, comments or feelings about the premise in general, the phonology I've devised and the sound changes that led to it.

Consonants
Out-of-conworld notes: Such an extensive retroflex series may seem a little bit odd for a Romance language, but I took Sardinian /ɖɖ/ and analogized the changes to create an entire, fully phonemic series of them.

Plosives: /p b t d ts (dz) tɕ (dʑ) ʈ ɖ k ɡ/ - p b t d c z č ž ṭ ḍ k g
Nasals: /m mː n nː ɳ ɲ ɲː/ - m mm n nn ṇ ñ ññ
Fricatives: /f v β θ ð s z ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ x ɣ ħ/ - f v ḇ ṯ ḏ s z ṣ ẓ š ž x γ ħ
Rhotics: /r/ - r
Laterals: /l ɭ ʎ/ - l ḷ ľ
Approximants: /w j/ - w y

Vowels
Monophthongs: /i ɛ a ɔ u/ (tonic), /i a u/ (atonic)
Diphthongs: not really. Maybe from new hiatuses where -d- and -g- used to separate vowels (something like saita from sagittam), but maybe I'll just monophthongize those too.

Random Notes

- Much as the Italian postalveolar and palatal consonants /ɲ ʃ ʎ/ are always geminated between vowels, the retroflex series is also always geminated between vowels. This is because all the retroflex consonants originate in some permutation of /l/ or /r/ plus a coronal consonant. All other consonants besides the nasals are never geminated between vowels. The length distinction on the nasals is truly phonemic; respectively, /mː nː ɲː/ come from the assimilation of earlier /mb nd ɲdʒ ŋɡ/.

- Just like in Sardinian, /k/ and /ɡ/ do not palatalize before /i e ɛ/ as in the other Romance languages. The phonemes /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ come from other sources.

- The pairs /b β/, /d ð/ and /g ɣ/ are only very marginally contrastive. The phonemes /β ð ɣ/ never occur initially, and intervocalic /b d ɡ/ comes from -bb-, -dd- and -gg-, which was rare in Latin (mostly, I'd surmise that the vast majority of instances of these come from the assimilation of the prefix ad- to the following consonant).

- I decided that it's okay to have /v/ (from V. Latin [β]) and /β/ (from V. Latin [p] between vowels) distinct because, apparently, Sardinian does it.

- Sharshali was coaxed into evolving the Semiticky/Berbery consonants /θ x ħ/ under the influence of Punic, the Berber languages and Arabic.

- I don't like retroflex consonants very much, so I'm thinking about shifting them all forward to create a dental-alveolar distinction, or just merging them completely with the dentalveolar consonants. Good/interesting idea?

Sound Changes
I'm just covering the important ones. They might be a little bit out of order; the Master List is in an ugly and unhelpful SCA format.

Late V. Latin Changes
C → 0 / _# (except for s, n)
s → z / V_V
ss → s
d, g → 0 / V_V
i, ɪ, (y, ʏ) → i
e, ɛ → e̞
o, ɔ → o̞
u, ʊ → u
i, e → j / _V
o, u → w / _V
kʷ → p
e → j / VC_#
u → 0 / VC_# (important to note that this occurs before p, t, k lenite)

Anaptyxis
sC → isC

Palatalization
mj → mɲ
nj, ŋn → ɲ
lj → ʎ
kj, kl → tʃ
#j, jj, dj, gj, gl → dʒ
tj, dj → ts, dz
t, d → ts, dz / _i
sj, skj → ʃ
sk → ʃ / _i, e
zj → ʒ

Intervocalic Plosive Chain Lenition
pp, tt, kk → p, t, k → b, d, g ( > β, ð, ɣ)
bb, dd, gg → b, d, g

Retroflex-ization
ll, rl, ld → ɭɭ
str → ʂʈ → ʂʂ
tr, tl, dr, rj→ ʈ, ʈ, ɖ, ʐ / #_
lt, tl, tr, dr, rj, rn, ln → ʈʈ, ʈʈ, ʈʈ, ɖɖ, ʐʐ, ɳɳ, ɳɳ / V_V

Nasal Assimilation Chain Shift
mp, nt, ɲtʃ, ŋk → mb, nd, ɲdʒ, ŋg → mm, nn, ɲɲ, ŋŋ (> ɲɲ)

Syncope
V → 0 / _CV[+stress] (where V₁ ≠ a)

Final Devoicing
β, ð, ɣ → ɸ, θ, x~χ
r → r̥ → ʂ
l, ʎ → ɬ, ʎ̥ (maybe)

Random
rr → ʀ → ʁ → χ (in some dialects), ħ (in other dialects)
ts(j) → θ
#fr, ɸ → fx → ħ or χ
β, v → w / V[+back]_
s → z / _C[+voice]
ʂ ʐ → ʃ ʒ / _#
other retroflex → dentalveolar / _#
ʃ ʒ → ɕ ʑ
tʃ → tɕ
dz dʑ → z ʑ
θ, x, s → 0 / V[+high]_#

Hiatus Resolution
VV → V / if V=V
ai, ae, ei → e
ao, au, ou → o
iV, eV → ijjV, ejjV
uV, oV → uwwV, owwV

Random Vowel Changes
e, o → ɛ, ɔ / _[+stress]
e, o → i, u / _[-stress]
a → ɛ / C[+palatal]_[+stress]
a → ɐ / _[-stress]

Numbers (sample)
Fun fact: Sharshali mimics Semitic gender polarity in numerals 2 and up by analogizing new feminine (or rather, masculine) forms where Latin has none.

un, una
dus, duwwa
ṭes, ṭeza
paṭu, paṭa
pimbi, pimba
šeš, šeša (first š from Phoenician/Punic š-š)
seti, seta
otu, ota
noħ, nowwa
deč, deγa

~~

So, what do you guys think?

I haven't looked at most of your stuff, but you might be interested in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Romance

Well, at least so Wikipedia claims. Still, it also links to this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterran ... gua_Franca) about apparently a Romance-Arabic pidgin. Might be pretty interesting and helpful, I hope.

_________________
I have a blog, unfortunately: http://imperialsenate.wordpress.com/
I think I think, therefore I think I am.

Yeah... I looked up and down for info on African Romance, but I didn't find anything except for a few vagaries along the lines of "It existed, but now it's dead."

I'm interested.

Well you *could* set the language in like a village in the Atlas mountains, like near the moroccan border [some seriously REMOTE paces can be found there, trust me] or something. That way you could argue ISOAN and insert it right into the real world. What are the influences you're planning. Berber? Arabic? What's the story behind the 'lang?

_________________
Articles on Suenu - Amphitrite

It's not too different from Real Life. Phoenicians set up shop in Carthage. The Carthaginians and the Romans fight for hegemony in the western Mediterranean. Eventually, Rome defeats Carthage, and the Southern flavor of Vulgar Latin becomes the superstrate in the area around Carthage while Punic becomes a substrate for the Romance variety that comes together in the area. Carthaginian Romance appropriates some Semitic features of grammar and a lot of Semitic and Berber vocabulary. The Vandals attack but their kingdom doesn't last long; the Byzantines conquer back the area and keep it until the Arabs come in. I dunno what happens then, besides Arabic linguistic influence and Islam.

I think a distinction between [ɕ] and [ʂ] is more stable than between [ʃ] and [ʂ], so I'd at least consider that. It'll probably sound very Indian with all the retroflexes, anyway.

Also I'm more used to people throwing in affricates with plosives in a phonemic chart, because they behave similarly. In this scheme, you would have /ts/ as your alveolar and /tʃ dʒ/ as your palatal stops.

Cool idea, anyway. You would need to give us more words, though. Somehow I can imagine it turning out like Maltese, although with a different balance between the Romance and Semitic vocabulary. If you do it right, of course.

Seems interesting (I'm big ups for anything which puts retroflexes in Latin) but I need more crunch. Let's get some grammar going. How about translating the bear joke (ursus in tabernam introiit et cerevisiam imperavit...)?

Couple of questions:

You have:
Do you mean "t, d → ts, dz / _i" instead?
Even if it's a later change it seems like the existence of a /dz/ phoneme would make it likely for di → dzi rather than tsi.

You have:

Is this saying that the entire class of intervocalic voiceless plosives degeminated and then lenited - twice - before voiced plosives degeminated? Maybe this is attested, but I think a much more likely change would be to have all degemination happen at once. Or to have voiced plosives degeminate first, since they're generally harder to produce.

This could be before, during or after the intervocalic lenition. If it overlaps either, it gives you some nice irregularity in the sound change. If it doesn't, you might be able to get rid of the handful of pesky b, d, g ~ β, ð, ɣ minimal pairs you were already iffy about.

(Then again, if it's grammar driving the retention of the geminate voiced plosives - i.e. they're only retained on morpheme boundaries - I can see where you might keep them around longer than word-internal geminates.)

The history between ca. 400-800 CE is going to be pretty important. It seems like a survival of African Romance in the former Phoenician/Roman colonies in Morocco is likelier than in Carthage itself. Possibly there could have been a large westward population transfer from Carthage at the time of the Vandalic Wars and the Arab conquest.

The big question is: after the Arab conquest, why didn't Arabic become the prestige language for this community, replacing Latin/Romance? Why did Latin/Romance remain spoken given the sociopolitical dominance of Arabic, especially if the speakers converted to Islam? It seems plausible that North African Romance could have maintained prestige if its speakers maintained Christianity (as a Christian minority under Arab rule) and used Latin as a liturgical language.

Even then, it seems like there would be a major lexical influence from Arabic, as in Spanish. Although probably the influence from Berber would be as significant as the influence from Arabic. It might be an interesting idea, a Romance language influenced by Berber in the same way Spanish was influenced by Arabic.

This is a typo. [d] does go to [dz] before [і].
​


I could've written this better. What I meant is, basically, that a consonant in one series lenites to a like consonant in the next series and then stops. So pp becomes p, but it doesn't continue evolving to b.

~~

The sound changes are still being refined, so be not surprised if something major changes.

don't bother with <ç> if you don't have <c>

Here's a bigger taste:

Notes on Location, Development and Lexicon
It's probably best to move the epicenter of the language westward to Caesaria (modern day Cherchell), as minority languages like Berber and Coptic seem pretty much extirpated in the eastern end of North Africa. I guess that entails a lessening of Phoenician influence and a relative increase in Berber and Arabic influence. Because of much earlier contact, Phoenician and Berber words will undoubtedly supplant some very basic Latin items in the Lexicon, whereas Arabic loans will be more supplementary. Latin remains the liturgical language, whereas Arabic provides words related to society and culture. I haven't decided whence should come academic/scientific words, but I guess it'll vary, with earlier scientific words coming from Classical Arabic and later and modern ones from Latin and Greek.

Nouns
Nouns come in two classes, masculine and feminine, and are inflected for definiteness and number. Most feminine words end in -a (< -AM from Latin or -a(t) from Arabic) in the singular, although some other common endings are -ḏá (< -TĀTEM) and -ṯóñ (< -TIŌNEM). Masculine words end with anything, but a common suffix is -u. Very basically, the plural is formed by vowel additions or vowel changes or the addition of [s] after the gender marker, but due to sound change, forming the plural is often considerably more complex.

The plural ending is not obligatory with quantifiers and explicit numerals, although it is more common to omit the ending with the latter.

(Note that this way of forming the plural does not spring from the same source as Italian or Romanian; all nouns, with few exceptions, are derived from the accusative singular and plural forms of Latin. After high vowels, final fricatives besides /f/ were debuccalized to [h] and subsequently elided altogether.)

1. Nouns ending in a vowel followed by a non-retroflex plosives lenite these to voiced fricatives at the same place of articulation (but -č → -γ-), and a suffix -u or -i is appended.

ap 'bee' → aḇi 'bees'
paḷát 'speech' → paḷaḏu 'speeches'
lak 'lake' → laγu 'lakes'
kruč 'cross' → kruγi 'crosses'

2. Nouns ending in the vowels -a, -é or -ó add -s. (I think the latter two endings only occur in loans)

apa 'water' → apas 'waters, seas'
iṣeḷa 'star' → iṣeḷas 'stars'

3. Nouns ending in -i or -u are unchanged in the plural.

paṭi 'part, piece' → paṭi 'parts, pieces'
oču 'eye' → oču 'eyes'

4. Nouns ending in the palatal consonants -ñ and -ľ depalatalize the final consonant before appending -i.

kañ 'dog' → kani 'dogs'
saľ 'salt' → sali 'salts'

5. Nouns ending in -š appear to undergo rhoticism in the plural, but the presence of -r- is a conservation rather than an innovation.

ħoš 'flower' → ħori 'flowers'
iskriḏóš 'scribe' → iskriḏori 'scribes'

6. The feminine nouns ending in -ḏá drop the -á and shift the stress to the preceding syllable before adding -i.

kiḏá 'city' → kiḏi 'cities'
saḏá 'health' → saḏi 'healthy people'

Most loanwords entered the language after sound changes like intervocalic lenition of stops had already taken place. However, while the interiors of these words mostly stayed intact, the changes involving final consonants were extended by analogy to the borrowings. Thus, the Phoenician loanword kukáb 'star, planet, bright spot in the sky' (cf. Hebrew kôḵā́ḇ) maintains internal -k-, but is bestowed with the Latinate plural marker -u (owing to its masculine gender), and accordingly the final -b is lenited to -ḇ-, giving rise to the form kukaḇu.

As a more general note, nouns keep the gender they had in Phoenician or Berber or Arabic, and adopt the plural ending -u if masculine or -i if otherwise.

Nouns are also "inflected" for definiteness. Unlike other Romance languages, Sharshali never developed an indefinite article—Semitic languages, which surround the area where Sharshali is spoken, don't have them. Two distinct definite articles were in the process of developing from IPSU and ILLU: šu/ša and el. When Sharshali was exposed to Arabic, el became favored over šu, and šu and ša are now used only (and always) before names and other proper nouns. El assimilates to the following word if it begins with a nasal consonant, a retroflex consonant or l or r.

(Note that this is the only instance where a dotted consonant letter is doubled.)

Nasal assimilation: el + naz 'nose' → ennáz
Retroflex assimiliation: el + ḍaγóñ 'snake, dragon, lizard' → eḍḍaγóñ, el + sandu 'saint' → eṣṣandu
L or R assimilation: el + luč 'light' → eḷḷúč

Before a vowel or any other consonant, el doesn't change, and is written separately. A feminine form also exists, eḷa, but only exists in the speech of some speakers and is non-obligatory in the standard language. Eḷa doesn't change in any circumstances. There is no distinct plural form of the article.

(As another important note, el and eḷa also combine with a 'to', yielding al and aḷa. While 'the snake' is eḍḍaγóñ, 'to the snake' is aḍḍaγóñ, etc. Di 'of' never comes into contact with el or eḷa; rather, the fossilized forms deš and deša, harkening back to the days when šu was equally viable as a definite article, are used instead.)

Have you considered putting the language somewhere rather remote, like Adrar? Would that work?

_________________



Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/

Very promising looking start! I look forward to seeing more.

_________________
I am Ratatosk, Norse Squirrel of Strife!

There are 10 types of people in this world:
-Those who understand binary
-Those who don't

Mater tua circeta ibat et pater tuus sambucorum olficiebat!

I'm trying to understand some of these sound changes...

Would a word like "interrogāre" → /inne̞χware/? spatula → /ispatulɐ/?

I'm never very good at the syncope and stress based rules

_________________
[bɹ̠ˤʷɪs.təɫ]
Nōn quālibet inīquā cupiditāte illectus hoc agō
Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
Taisc mach Daró

Ask doesn't come from INTERROGĀRE, but rather DĒMANDĀRE, which gives rise to dimannáš. If a descendant of INTERROGĀRE existed in the language, it would be a reborrowing from Latin, and thus something like intirugáš. SPATULA becomes ispaṭa, but some of the sound changes that lead to that haven't been given above.


I guess, but I'd rather have it develop along the coast.

Ooh, tl>retroflex. That's an interesting idea. Although I hate retroflexes.

[I also have a carthaginian romlang, but it's more an ongoing process/game than an actual language]

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

Just have to say I love this language. Just familiar enough to be, well, familiar, and just different enough to be really interesting.

I've been skimming over some of the specific sound change rules, but I love this.

Nice stuff. Romlangs are somewhat overdone, but this one has some original traits.

_________________
...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

@spats, Gojera: Thanks!

@Salmoneus: Truth be told, I don't really like them either. I could end up going with a laminal-apical distinction instead, thought that probably wouldn't be very stable for the stops and nasals. Or I could merge the stops and nasals and keep the fricatives and liquids distinct.

@WeepingElf: Yeah, I know romlangs are terribly overdone. But I've never succeeded at making one that I was satisfied with, so I keep trying again, although this time from a different perspective.

~~

I've got more to say about nouns coming up, but before I do that, do you guys think I should change the orthography? It's got kind of an exotic phonology for a Romance language, but I think I could pull off something that's still unique but also familiarly Romance-looking. I could also keep, I think, the Latin orthography that I've already got, and justify it as a recent invention when Sharshali made the switch from the Arabic script to the Latin.

I definitely need to get around to nailing the history down more concretely. In any case, this is my proposal for a Romance-oid orthography:

(Where there are two graphemes given, the second is used in intervocalic or word-final contexts. Acute accents go on stressed vowels not in the core of the penultimate syllable.)

/p b t₁ d₁ ts t₂ d₂ tɕ k g/ - p b/bb t d/dd tz tr/rt dr/rd ç c g/gg
/m mː n nː ɳ ɲ ɲː/ - m mm n nn rn nh nnh
/f v β θ ð s z ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ x ɣ ħ/ - f v b th d s/ss z/s sr/rs rj ş j rr g h
/r l₁ l₂ ʎ w j/ - r l ll lh u/- y
/i e a o u/ - i e a o u

Iu pallu şarşali. Artu pallas şarşali?
I speak Sharshali. Do you speak Sharshali?

Tu sémmami pirdút. Alhu possu ajdarti ci tu tornas alla cidá?
You seem lost. Can I help you find you get back to the city?

I like both orthographies. It seems likely that Sharshali would have been written mainly in the Arabic script for about a millennium (if it was written at all during this time), so either romanization would have to be a fairly modern creation. The version with diacritics looks like it would have been proposed by linguists to provide a phonemic transcription, while the more Romance-like romanization seems to be better-suited for typing, and also for attaching nationalist sentiments to it because of the link to Sharshali's linguistic relatives. If I were you, I'd test-run a longer text sample (for instance the Babel text or The North Wind and the Sun) in both orthographies and ask the board which version looks and fits better. (Or you could keep both, similar to how there are several different romanizations of Arabic on the web and in the literature.)

Also, I'd suggest merging /v β/, especially as they seem to be distinguished only after front vowels anyway.

Otherwise, this looks like a promising project.

_________________
Blog: audmanh.wordpress.com
Conlangs: Ronc Tyu | Buruya Nzaysa | Doayâu | Tmaśareʔ

I'd say use both.

Both are really pretty, but the second might be easier to type.

I'd go for the first, myself, because I like the look of the diacritics and special characters like <γ ñ ļ>, they seem to fit together in your orthography pretty well.

_________________
[bɹ̠ˤʷɪs.təɫ]
Nōn quālibet inīquā cupiditāte illectus hoc agō
Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
Taisc mach Daró

Other ideas for the retroflexes might be collapse back into a cluster (tl>t'>rt, or tl>t'>tS, perhaps), or changes to surrounding vowels. Or, on the wild side, rhotic vowels - or wilder, rhotic vowels migrating into clusters on the preceding onset? More prosaically, palatalisation?

Examples:
spatula > isparta
spatula > ispacha
spatula > ispaita
spatula > ispatya
spatula > isprata

_________________
Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

Arrgh!!! I just finished translating something and it took me an excruciatingly long time but I was logged out by the end and couldn't go back!!!

Ugh. I'll do it again.

~~

@Salmoneous: I'm putting off the question of how best to dispose of the retroflex series for now, but thanks for the suggestions.

In order to see which orthography The Board thinks best fits (and also to give a much-needed longer sample of the language), I've translated the first ten verses of my preferred book of the Tanakh (Ecclesiastes/Kohelet ) into Sharshali. Down below, you'll see IPA, then Orthography 1, the Orthography 2, then the "literal" translation of the Sharshali text into English, then my preferred translation of the Hebrew text into English.

IPA
1: /kaˈlimas deɕ kowˈwelet fiʎu aɕ daˈvid re iɕ ʑiˈruzalim/
2: /vaˈða di ˈvaði el ˈziɕi ɕu kowˈwelet vaˈða di ˈvaði eʈˈʈot van/
3: /ke pruˈfetu el iʂˈʈata el iˈsan di tot eʈʈaˈvaʎu kel faˈtiɣa ˈsutu eʂˈʂoʎ/
4: /ʑil va i ʑil veɲ j eʈˈʈeχa isˈta a ˈsembri/
5: /eʂˈʂoli ˈlevasi j eʂˈʂoli ˈkesi j el ˈkuχi aɭˈɭoksu kel ˈlevasi di la/
6: /el va al ʑaˈnub j el toɳɳasi a 'ɕamal el ˈvendu ˈtoɳɳasi i el ˈtoɳɳasi ˌoʈʈaˈvetɕ i ˈkirkusu/
7: /ˈtoðas ˈel ˈħumi von ˈal maɕ mas ˈel maɕ nun ˈprena aɭˈɭok ˈkel ˈħumi von aɭˈɭa ˈeɭɭas von ˌnowwaˈmendi aɭˈɭa/
8: /ˈtoðas ˈel kozas ˈkasasi mas niˈsan nun ˈpolu ziɕ el ˈotɕu nun ˈvasi praˈɣaɕ di veɕ j el uˈretɕa nun ˈvasi priˈnaɕ di ˌoˈiɕ/
9: /ɕu kel isˈto ɕu kel va isˈtaɕ e ɕu kel ˈfetɕi ɕu kel ˈvasi faɕ e nun isˈta ˈnaða kel nof ˈsutu eʂˈʂoʎ/
10: /asˈta ˈkoza ke deɕa ˈomi zi ˈveɲ ˈaɭɭa veɕ ki nowwa ˈeɭɭa isˈto ʑa nel aˈsaru di ˈandi nos/

Orthography 1
1: Kalimas deš Kowelet, fiľu aš Davíd, re iš Žirúzalim.
2: Vaḏá di vaḏi, el ziši šu Kowelet; vaḏá di vaḏi, eṭṭót van.
3: Ké prufetu el iṣṭata el isán di tot eṭṭavaľu kel fatiγa sutu eṣṣóľ?
4: Žil va i žil veñ, i eṭṭexa istá asembri.
5: Eṣṣoli leva-si i eṣṣoli ke-si, i el kuxi aḷḷók-su kel leva-si di la.
6: El va al žanúb i el toṇa-si a šamal; el vendu toṇa-si, i el toṇa-si oṭavéč i kirku-su.
7: Toḏas el ħumi von al maš, mas el maš nun prena; aḷḷók kel ħumi von aḷḷá, eḷas von nowamendi aḷḷá.
8: Toḏas el kozas kasa-si mas nisán nun pó-lu ziš: el oču nun va-si praγás di veš, i el ureča nun va-si prináš di oíč.
9: Šu kel istó, šu kel va istáš, e šu kel feč-si, šu kel va-si faš; nun istá naḏa kel nof sutu eṣṣóľ.
10: Astá koza ke deša omi zi, « Veñ aḷḷa veš, ki nowa! »? Eḷa istó ža nel asaru di ándi-nos.

Orthography 2
1: Calimas deş Koelet, filhu aş Davíd, re iş Jirúsalim.
2: Vadá di vadi, el zişi şu Koelet; vadá di vadi, ertót van.
3: Cé prufetu el irstata el isán di tot ertavalhu cel fatiga sutu ersólh?
4: Jil va i jil venh, i erterra istá asembri.
5: Ersole leva-si i ersole cé-si, i el curri allóc-su cel leva-si di la.
6: El va al janúb i el torna-si a şamal; el vendu torna-si, i el torna-si ortavéç i circu-su.
7: Todas el humi von al maş, mas el maş nun prena; allóc cel humi von allá, ellas von noamendi allá.
8: Todas el cozas cãsa-si mas nisán nun pó-lu ziş: el oçu nun va-si pragás di veş, i el ureça nun va-si prináş di oíç.
9: Şu cel istó, şu cel va istáş, e şu cel feç-si, şu cel va-si faş; nun istá nada cel nof sutu ersólh.
10: Astá coza ce deşa omi zi, « Venh alla veş, ci noa! »? Ella istó ja nel asaru di ándi-nos.

"Literal" Translation
1: Words of-the Kohelet, son to-the David, king in-the Jerusalem.
2: Vanity of vanities, he said the Kohelet; vanity of vanities, the-all vain.
3: What profit he extracts the person of all the-work that-he toils under the-sun?
4: Generation goes and generation comes, and the-land stands to-always.
5: The-sun raises-himself and the sun goes-down-himself, and he runs to place-his that-he raises-himself from there.
6: He goes to-the south and he turns-himself to-(the) north; the wind turns-himself, and he (re)turns-himself again in circles-his.
7: All the rivers go to-the sea, but the sea not full; to-(the)-place that-the rivers go to-there, they go anew to-there.
8: All the things tire-themselves but no-person not can-it say; the eye not go-itself placate of seeing, and the ear not go-itself fill of hearing.
9: That that-he stood, that that-he goes stand, and that that-he did-itself, that that go-itself do; not stands nothing that-he new under the-sun
10: Is-there thing that of-her man says, "Come to-her see, because new!"? She stood already in-the times of before-us.

Preferred Hebrew-to-English Translation
1: "The words of Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem."
2: "Vanity of vanities, said Koheleth; vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
3: "What profit has man in all his toil that he toils under the sun?"
4: "A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever."
5: "The sun rises and the sun sets, and to its place it yearns and rises there."
6: "It goes to the south and goes around to the north; the will goes around and around, and the will returns to its circuits."
7: "All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place where the rivers flow, there they repeatedly go."
8: "All things are wearisome; no one can utter it; the eye shall not be sated from seeing, nor shall the ear be filled from hearing."
9: "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."
10: "There is a thing of which [someone] will say, "See this, it is new." It has already been for ages which were before us."

So! Phew! Tell me which orthography you like better, and if you want to comment about the phonology or grammar or anything at all, please, please do!

As a side note, the words for 'words,' 'generation,' 'south,' 'north' and 'ages' are from Arabic. Do you guys think that's a good ratio of foreign-to-Latinate in a text such as this, given the repetition and parallelism and all-around core-ness of the vocabulary? There's also a lot of calquing of Semitic syntax, at least from a Hebrew/Phoenician standpoint...