Turo

Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
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Turo

Post by Colonel Cathcart »

Turo is something I've been quietly working on for a while now, and it's a concept I don't think I've seen before: an a posteriori language with an a priori superstratum. This thread will not be a well-structured grammar of Turo, just a place where I'll keep track of linguistic and cultural notes and stuff.

For context: This conworld is an alt-earth in which the Indo-Europeans were either assimilated or wiped out early on, leaving the pre-IE peoples to inherit the earth. There are some familiar faces in Europe: the Finno-Ugric family is much more widespread, there is a full-fledged Vasconic family, Turkic languages dominate the Balkans and the southeast, and Etruscan and Punic are now classical languages with whole subfamilies of living descendants ("Etrurian" and "Carthaginian" now refer to heterogeneous cultural-linguistic phyla as diverse as "Romance" or "Slavic" in our own world). There are also dozens of previously unknown isolates and minor families scattered across the European continent. Something unfamiliar is the Icastric family, whose range stretches from the British Isles and all across the northern parts of Western and Central Europe until it meets the Southern Finnic and Kypchak Turkic languages east of the Vistula. The most widely spoken and most culturally dominant Icastric language is Icastrian, the language of Icastria [the British Isles] and the administrative language and lingua franca of her colonial empire, which stretches from Brittany to Denmark and the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula. I've posted a good deal of Icastrian in this forum, but of all the languages I've posited for this world, the only other one I've actually sat down and designed is Turo.

As far as cultural and technology levels go, I don't really know how you classify that, but the setting here is broadly late modern. However, there is a lot of variation in standards of living between the core and periphery of the Empire due to the wealth-centralizing effects of the dominant economic ideology of mercantilism. To wit, if you were teleported to a major metropolitan area in Icastria you might guess you were somewhere between about 1910 and 1930; whereas if you ended up in a remote coastal village in Turoryfn, you might guess you were as far back as the late 18th century.

Now then...

Turo • Vuonakiel • Uyovaƕıεc


Turo (vuonakiel) is a Baltic-Finnic language, the westernmost variant of the Northern Finnic dialect continuum that stretches from the White Sea to the Icastrian Sea [North Sea]. It is spoken by about 400,000 people in Turoryfn (Icastrian pronunciation [ˈtʊɾoɾəʊn]), the northernmost province of the Icastrian Empire, which is largely contiguous with our world's region of Western Norway/Vestlandet. Turoryfn borders the Icastrian province of Iljaryfn to the east and the Sámi Confederacy to the north.

The name Turo is an Icastrian exonym with a Finnic origin. The name comes from the Nothern Finnic term turo, a structure for catching fish built from tree branches. The early Icastrian chroniclers described the Turo as "a coastal fishing people, distinguished by their use of the turo," as the Turo have traditionally made their living as fishermen due to the paucity and expense of arable land in Turoryfn. Of course the Turo were not the only Finnic people who used the turo; they were simply the first ones the Icastrians observed doing so (and nowadays they use woven nets). The Turo refer to themselves as vuonalašt, literally "fjord dwellers" or "the ones from the fjords" (sg. vuonalane), and their country as Vuonamaa "Fjordland" or more colloquially Vuonat "The Fjords." Their language is vuonakiel "fjord-tongue" or simply miedankiel~mierankiel "our language" (though the latter name is more versatile - it may refer to Turo in contrast to Ilja, or to Turo and Ilja together in contrast to Icastrian, etc.).

Turo is a member of the Cisbothnian Finnish dialect group (in Icastrian, iseyn-pohjaförtelais suomia savefold) - the Northern Finnic dialects spoken on the Scandinavian peninsula, as opposed to the Transbothnian group (aseyn-pohjaförtelais suomi), spoken in Finland and Karelia (the directionality of these geographic designations reflects a degree of Icastrocentrism in Northern European linguistics; however all Cisbothnian histories hold that these peoples originally migrated from Finland). The Cisbothnian dialect group also includes the Ilja dialects (spoken in Eastern and Southern Norway), the Härve dialects (spoken in southern Svealand and northern Götaland), and the Salomaa dialects (spoken in northern Svealand and southern Norrland).

These dialects comprise a continuum, and the exact division between Turo and Ilja is more a matter of political geography than linguistic methodological rigor. Complicating matters is the fact that speakers of transitional dialects often call their language vuorkiel "mountain-tongue" or simply miedankiel/meidankiel, and may self-identify as Turo, Ilja, neither, or even both. Turo has no standard dialect, and each speaker speaks and writes according to his or her own dialectal form; all dialects of Turo are mutually intelligible.

Phonologically and morphologically, Turo and the other Cisbothnian varieties share a number of features that set them apart from both the Western Finnish and Eastern Finnish dialect groups. The Cisbothnian dialects retain a number of archaic features that have been lost throughout Finland and Karelia, including a full set of weak-grade voiced stops (actually fortition from earlier β ð ɣ, to which weird stuff happened in Finnish and Karelian) and retention of the reflex of Proto-Finnish *βi in the third singular: Turo tulev "he comes" (cf. Old Finnish tuleu) vs. tulee. However there are also similarities, some of which have arguably arisen by chance: for example ie üö uo from earlier ee öö oo were innovated independently and asynchronously on either side of the Gulf of Bothnia, long after the Cisbothnian migration.

The Cisbothnian vocabulary in particular is markedly divergent, having been heavily influenced by Icastrian through centuries of colonial rule - even in Salomaa, where the Icastrian flag has never flown, Icastrian loans make up a substantial proportion of the lexicon. Dual use of native words and Icastrian loans with similar meanings illustrates the Turo's socioeconomic and political situation as colonial subjects:
  • äänestaa, meaning "to vote" in Finland, means "to petition" in Turo; "to vote" is raštata, from Icastrian hraist-. The Turo can petition the Icastrian colonial government for a redress of grievances, but only Icastrians have the vote (not that there are many elections in the Icastrian Empire).
  • tere, "house" in Icastrian, is "government" in Turo, by synecdoche from the customs house, the seat of the colonial government in the provincial capital of Fôrnafh (Turo Vöörnava, located near our world's Stavanger).
  • tüöda means "to work;" haarata, from Icastrian hár- "work," means "to be employed, to have a wage-earning job" - a more prestigious station than the cottage industry or independent farming/fishing.
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Re: Turo

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Phonology • Äänkuuvo • Ããvƕyyuo


Vowels
short /i y u e ø o æ ɑ/ <i ü u e ö o ä a>
long /i: y: u: e: ø: o: æ: ɑ:/ <ii üü uu ee öö oo ää aa>
  • Turo has a characteristic Finnic vowel harmony system. The front vowels /æ ø y/ and the back vowels /ɑ o u/ cannot coexist in the same word, compounds and loan words excluded. /i e/ are neutral, and may occur with either front or back vowels. A root with only neutral vowels patterns as a front word. The frontness of a root determines which allomorphs of grammatical or derivational suffixes it takes: kastaa "to use" > on kastanut "has used" vs. nähda "to see" > on nähnüt "has seen;" jumala "god" > jumalasku "pantheon" vs. tähe "letter" > täheskü "alphabet."
  • /æ ɑ/ contrast only in stressed syllables; elsewhere they reduce to [a], transcribed <a>: sana "word" [sɑna]; päiva "day" [pæiʋa]. [a] is found in monosyllables in ma "I," sa "you," and ja "and," which do not normally receive stress; when they are stressed (as for emphasis), these become , , and ja [jɑ]. Vowel harmony persists through reduction: elaa /elæ:/ [ela:] "to live" > elanüt ['elanʏt] "[has] lived," not *elanut ['elanʊt]. In pedagogical materials and linguistic texts, underlying /æ/ is indicated with <â> (elââ, mâ, kesâ) and underlying /ɑ/ is indicated with <ā> (jā, ilmā, lihā).
  • In the Northern Turo dialect group - the dialects spoken north of Suurvuona (the Sognefjord) - ää and aa become (reduced ea) and oa: peä, eänestea; oamu, kastoa. This is the so-called "northern drawl" (pohjone venüttamine). This feature is areal, and is also found in northern Ilja and western Salomaa dialects.
  • The high short vowels /i y u/ reduce to [ɪ ʏ ʊ] in closed syllables and as the second element in diphthongs.
  • /e/ is lowered to [ɛ] before consonant clusters or long consonants, as well as before /r/: ver "blood" [ʋɛr], lentaa "to fly" [lɛnta:], mečča "forest" [mɛttʃa]; and reduced to [ə] (or elided entirely) in non-initial unstressed closed syllables: naišen "woman's" [nɑɪʃən]~[nɑɪʃn̩], naišt "women" [nɑɪʃt] (from earlier *naišet [nɑɪʃət]), äänestaa "to petition" ['æ:nəsta:]
  • A characteristic feature is elision of final short /i/: veš "water," nuor "young," täht "star," järv "lake." This may be due to a [re]acquisition and subsequent loss of palatalization; the existence of š is suggestive of this: *vesi > *vesʲ (> *veɕ) > veš, cf. *nuori > nuorʲ > nuor. /i/ is retained where deletion would create an illegal consonant cluster (e.g. kasvi, hetki), and as the past tense marker: meni "went," not *men.
  • A relatively recent innovation, only noted within the last few centuries, is the metathesis of closing ei, öü, ou diphthongs to opening ie, üö, uo: Finnish meidän "our," löytää "to find," koura "fist" vs. Turo miedan~mieran, lüötaa, kuora. An irregularity is the negative verb *ei, which became ii (stem i- or ie- depending on dialect). This shift seems to postdate the loss of palatalization described above: "to stand up" is sieštua, not *šieštua.
  • To help distinguish long and short vowels, a short vowel that is the final phone in an utterance/sentence is partially devoiced: poika "boy" [poɪkaʰ] vs. poikaa "boy (partitive)" [poɪka:].
Consonants
stops /p (b) t (d) tʃ (dʒ) k (g)/ <p b t d č ž k g>
fricatives /s (z) ʃ h/ <s z š h>
approximants /ʋ j l/ <v j l>
trills /r/ <r>
nasals /m n/ <m n>
  • /b d dʒ g z/ exist in native words as the weak-grade forms of /p t tʃ k s/. /b d g z/ are found in roots primarily in loan words: dalata "to elect" from Icastrian dala-; zuu "moss" from Icastrian zhú. Intervocalically, voiced stops typically become approximants: /b/ becomes [β̞], /d/ becomes [ð̞] or [ɾ] depending on dialect and register ([ð̞] is considered the educated or formal enunciation), and /g/ may become [ɰ w j] or a hiatus depending on its phonetic environment: snagat "lobsters" [snɑɰat], lugun "history's" [luwʊn], poigat "boys" [poɪjat], tegen "I do" [te.ən].
  • /tʃ/ corresponds to Finnish /ts/ sequences, though the details of its provenance are unknown: for example it occurs short in sieče "seven" but long in mečča "forest" (but cf. Karelian seiččemän, meččä). It patterns as a stop and has its own gradation paradigm (see below).
  • The phonemic status of /ʃ/ is debatable. In native words it arises from palatalization in /si/-/Vis/ sequences, as well as a later unconditional sound change of final s; the only minimal pairs involve loan words (e.g. saada "get; can, may" vs. šaada, an existential verb borrowed from Icastrian siá-).
Gradation
Turo has a characteristic Finnic consonant gradation system. Select consonants in word-final syllables see their consonants move from the stronger to the weaker grade when the syllable is closed through inflection.

Code: Select all

	pp > p > b	 	loppu "end" > loput "ends"; apua "to help" > abun "I help"
	tt > t > d	 	tüttö "girl" > tütön "girl's"; tietaa "to know" > tiedan~tieran "I know"
	čč > č > ž	 	mečča "forest" > mečat "forests"; lanče "money" > lanžen "money's"
	kk > k > g	 	kukka "flower" > kukan "flower's"; luku "history" > lugut "histories"
	s > z			 	kesa "summer" > kezat "summers"; asua "to live" > azun "I live"
š does not have an unconditional weak grade. In some declension types, it has weak grade ; in one, it has weak grade d:
  • raštaaš "vote" > raštaakšet "votes"
  • kipeaš "ache, soreness" > kipeadet~kipearet "aches"
n does not have an unconditional weak grade, but it has weak grade š in suffixes in -ne:
  • inemine "person, human being" > inemišt "people"
  • ikaštarlane "an Icastrian" > ikaštarlašen "an Icastrian's"
  • hevone "horse" > hevošel "on a horse"
  • but: nena "nose" > nenat "noses" (not *nešat)
There are some words where the weaker grade appears in a final syllable; in such cases the consonant grades in reverse:
  • ahde "hillside" > ahteet "hillsides"
  • kaidaš~kairaš "book" (from Icastrian kaedais) > kaitaat "books"
  • kanalekaš "legal" (from Icastrian kanalykais) > kanalekkaat "legal (pl)"
Gradation of stops persists in sonorant clusters but not sC clusters:
  • antaa "to give" > andan "I give"
  • jalka "leg" > jalgat "legs"
  • kertoa "to tell" > kerdon "I tell"
  • snagastaa "to fish for lobsters" > snagastan "I fish for lobsters" (not *snagazdan)
Last edited by Colonel Cathcart on Tue Dec 17, 2013 12:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Turo

Post by Colonel Cathcart »

Orthography • Kirjutaškuuvo • Kıpɟytaṡƕyyuo

Turo has no official orthography, and may be written in a phonetic "descriptive" orthography (outlined above), an "expressive" Icastrian-based orthography, or some mixture of the two; indeed, only Icastrian officials and the most educated Turo write in "pure" variants. To illustrate the difference, consider some possible spellings for the sentence "in the summer, the man sits in the temple and eats shellfish." All of the realizations below are read ['kezal ˌɪʃtʊʋ se ˌmie̯ʃ ˈɑjaːʃˌtɑlos ja ˌsyø̯ʋ 'æyɾiaʃia].
  • kezal ištuv se mieš ajaaštalos ja süöv äüriašia (purely descriptive)
  • kezhal istuv ze mïes ajáistalos ja züöv äüriaisïa (purely expressive)
  • kezhal ištuv se mieš ajáštalos ja süöv äüriašia (mixed but more descriptive)
  • kezhal istuv ze mies ajáistalos ja züöv äüriasia (mixed but more expressive)
  • kezal ištuv ze mies ajaaistaloz ja züöv äüriaišia ("inconsistently mixed," characteristic of a less educated speaker: some spellings are inconsistent and others are redundant, but the only true misspelling is -taloz.)
NB: The orthographies presented here are transliterations. The Icastrian alphabet, used to write both Icastrian and Turo as well as a bunch of other languages, is a daughter of the Old Icastric script, derived from the Punic alphabet (a younger variant of Phoenician and the ancestor of the modern Carthaginian alphabet). It looks like this:
ikaistari-iirikot.png
ikaistari-iirikot.png (10.24 KiB) Viewed 3597 times
The descriptive orthography uses a slightly modified Icastrian alphabet:

Vowels
short /i y u e ø o æ ɑ/ <ı ỹ y ɛ õ o ã a>
long /i: y: u: e: ø: o: æ: ɑ:/ <ıı ỹỹ yy ɛɛ õõ oo ãã aa>

Consonants
stops /p (b) t (d) tʃ (dʒ) k (g)/ <n 6 t ɤ ṭ ɤ̇ ƕ ɼ>
fricatives /s (z) ʃ h/ <s z ṡ h>
approximants /ʋ j l/ <u ɟ c>
trills /r/ <p>
nasals /m n/ <m v>

In the Icastrian alphabet, the sentence about the man in the temple is ƕεzac ıṡtуu sε mıεṡ aɟaaṡtacos ɟa sỹõu ãỹpıaṡıa in the descriptive orthography and ƕεzhac ıstyu zε mïɛs aɟāıstacos ɟa zỹõu ãỹpıaısıa in the expressive orthography.

The descriptive orthography is the primary orthography taught to Turo children in schools, as its phonetic character is believed to promote literacy; while the expressive orthography is used by Icastrian officials, and is taught to children who proceed beyond elementary education. Public signage may be found in either orthography, though most Turo literacy advocates recommend the use of descriptive-only signage. The expressive orthography is much older than the descriptive, and has traditionally been the preferred orthography in the literary language. However, some national-awakening-type literary and poetic movements have begun writing in the descriptive orthography, preferring its nationalist character to the "foreign" expressive orthography.

In either orthography, spelling is mostly at the writer's discretion so long as it is legibly phonetic according to his or her dialect: hence tiedan, tïedan, tieran, tïeran, tiidan, tídan, tiiran, tíran are all acceptable spellings for "I know" (underlying /tiedæn/), and a writer may even alternate between some combination of those. Glided /g/ is often omitted, especially by less educated speakers, but this is frowned upon because it may cause confusion: for example tegen, lugut, aigan "I do," "histories," "time's" may be written teen/tén, luut/lút, ajan, but these spellings would be read as "tea's" ([te:n]), "bones" ([lu:t]), and "I drive" ([ɑjan]).

Even in inconsistently mixed spelling styles like the fifth example above, the only other true misspellings are those that misrepresent the Icastrian orthography, like the use of <z> in ajaaistaloz "in the temple" above. <s> and <z> have a complex relationship in Icastrian:
  • <s> (in the Icastrian alphabet, <Σ> in majuscule and <s> in minuscule, derived from shin) represents /ʃ/ next to a front vowel or /ə/, and /s/ elsewhere: seyn "side, page" [ʃeɪn], fista "purpose, reason" [fɪʃta]; sama "also, too" [sama], most "town" [most]. "Silent" <i> is used to indicate /ʃ/ not next to a front vowel: ais "and" [aʃ], sió "thing, person" [ʃo:].
  • <z> (in the Icastrian alphabet, <Z> in majuscule and <z> in minuscule, derived from zayin) is used for /s/ when it occurs next to a front vowel: zeym "clean" [seɪm], izker "language" [ɪskər̥]. <z> represented /z/ in Old Icastrian, which merged with /s/ in Middle Icastrian; modern Icastrian /z/ derives from Old Icastrian /ð/ (and is still pronounced that way in some dialects), and is written <zh>.
Thus <s z> are frequently misused by Turo speakers who are not literate in Icastrian; a very common convention is to simply use <s> for all /ʃ/ and <z> for all /s/: kezhal istuv ze mies ajástaloz ja züöv äüriasia. This drives grammarians bananas, but it is becoming more and more popular among the lower classes.
==========
I'll end this installment with a bit of Turo as she is spoke. The passage below is written in a pure expressive orthography, but both expressive and descriptive transliterations are provided for contrast. Loan words from Icastrian are highlighted in green and loans from Sámi languages are in blue.

Myv ıza ocı ıttıɛvavɛ svaƕamïɛs. Hãc sıaı uıvtɛ hïyccamısɛzt Pãɛvɛ ƕyv myv ɛma. Hãv ƕãỹtī ycɼos uyovaɛzɛ ɟa nacatī ƕavs tãỹsïɛv svaƕacyoƕƕyıɛv. Koƕo nɛphɛ tỹõtī ƕopƕāua vɛ zỹõtauıa. Nɛ ƕyoccɛ̄tta mɛ avtatī 6ïɛvaıcɛ ƕosƕa vīta ī havɤɛ zỹõɤa. Mɛ uapaɛtī ɟotaƕyıta zỹõɤaƕsɛmɛ ɟa sıactɛtī vɛ myıta sıocƕapuɛz. Ī sıaı caıav ƕota cavtıɛa myt mɛ ocımɛ ıcoısïa. Myv ıza ɛcı ıƕazɛ Ƶ̈Z uyotıaıs.

Mun iza oli ittienane snakamïes. Häl siai vinte hïullamisezt Räene kun mun ema. Hän käütí ulgos vuonaeze ja palatí kans täüsïen snakaluokkuien. Koko perhe tüötí korkáva ne züötavia. Ne kuollétta me antatí bïenaile koska níta í hande züöda. Me varaetí jotakuita züödakseme ja sialtetí ne muita siolkarvez. Í siai laian kota lantiea mut me olime iloisïa. Mun iza eli ikaze 97 vuotiais.

Mun isa oli iččenane snakamieš. Häl šai vinče hiullamišest Räene kun mun ema. Hän käütii ulgos vuonaise ja palatii kans täüšien snakaluokkujen. Koko perhe tüötii korkaava ne süötavia. Ne kuolleetta me antatii bienaile koska niita ii hande süöda. Me varaitii jotakuita süödakšeme ja šaltetii ne muita šolkarves. Ii šai lajan kota lančea mut me olime ilošia. Mun isa eli ikase 97 vuotiaš.

[mʊn ˈisa oli ˌittʃenane ˈsnɑkamiə̯ʃ - hæl ʃɑɪ ˈʋɪntʃe hiʊllamiʃəst ˈræ.ene kʊn mʊn ˈema - hæn ˈkæʏtiː ˈʊlgos ʋuo̯naɪse ja ˈpɑlatiː kɑns ˈtæʏʃiə̯n ˈsnɑkaˌluo̯kkujən - ˈkoko ˈpɛrhe ˌtyø̯tiː ˌkorkaːʋa ne ˈsyø̯taʋia - ne ˈkuo̯lleːtta me ˌɑntatiː ˈbie̯naɪle koska ˈniːta ˌiː hɑnde ˈsyø̯ð̞a - me ˈʋɑɾaɪtiː ˌjotakuɪta ˈsyø̯ð̞akʃeme ja ˌʃɑltetiː ne ˈmuita ˈʃolkarʋəs - ˈiː ʃɑɪ ˌlɑjan ˌkota ˈlɑntʃea mʊt me olime ˈiloʃia - mʊn ˈisa ˌeli ikase ˌyð̞ɛkʃ.kyˈsie̯tʃe ˈʋuo̯tiaʃ]

My father was an independent lobsterman. He had a boat called Räene after my mother. He would go out into the fjords and come back with his traps full of lobsters. The whole family would work to sort out the ones that were good for eating. The dead ones we'd give to the dogs because you can't eat those. We would keep some to eat ourselves and sell the rest at the market. There was never a lot of money but we were happy. My father lived to the age of 97.

Actually, one more thing - a relevant grammar note for this passage. Turo's morphological passive has become an imperfective: biena süötii, morphologically "the dog was eaten," means "the dog would/used to eat" in modern Turo. Turo forms its passive the same way as Icastrian, through OV word order with zero-subject: e.g. "the lobster is eaten" is snakaa süöv (lobster-PART eat-3SG); "the lobster is eaten by the dog" is snakaa süöv bienalt (lobster-PART eat-3SG dog-ABL).
Last edited by Colonel Cathcart on Tue Dec 17, 2013 2:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Turo

Post by Colonel Cathcart »

Okay, one more thing for tonight.

Numerals

The numerals in the Icastrian alphabet are taken from the Icastrian names of the numbers.

0 - Ѳ for ℓŷstɛ thûste [θyːʃtə] (the name for zero is derived from thûs "empty")
1 - Ƶ for ɟoƕtɛ jokte [joktə]
2 - H for haƕtɛ hakte [haktə]
3 - U for uıstɛ viste [ʋɪʃtə]
4 - T for tavɼɛ tange [taŋgə]
5 - Σ for sam sam [sam]
6 - У for ŷma ûma [y:ma]
7 - Z for zıvtɛ zinte [sɪntʃə]
8 - Ḧ for hasıaƕ hasiak [haʃak], with a diaeresis to distinguish it from 2
9 - Ƶ̈ for ɟosıaƕ josiak [joʃak], with a diaeresis to distinguish it from 1

There are also abbreviations z for thousands (), m for millions (mara), ɟm for billions (jokajarmara) and so on, whose function is somewhere between the comma in English and the <k> in 5k for 5000. So 9,083,563 (josiak mara hasiakomaviste zü samkataûmomaviste) could be written Ƶ̈ѲḦUΣУU, Ƶ̈ ѲḦU ΣУU, or Ƶ̈m ḦUz ΣУU. 5000 (sam zü) can be expressed as either ΣѲѲѲ or Σz.

There are a few cases where a number can also spell a word - for example ZHУ (726) spells zhu "as, than" - but any reader with even limited competence will be able to tell when letters are standing for numbers.

Of course Turo has different names for the numbers, but they use the same numerals as Icastrian, treating them as simple logograms.

0 - Ѳ for tỹỹṡtɛ tüüšte / tŷstɛ tŷste [/i][ty:ʃte]
1 - Ƶ for ỹkṡ ükš / ỹks üks [ʏkʃ]
2 - H for ƕaƕṡ kakš / ƕaıƕs kaiks [kɑkʃ]
3 - U for ƕocmɛ kolme [kolme]
4 - T for vɛcɟa nelja [nɛlja]
5 - Σ for uııṡ viiš / uīs vís [ʋiːʃ]
6 - У for kyyṡ kuuš / kȳıs kúis [kuːʃ]
7 - Z for sıɛṭɛ sieče / zïɛtıɛ zïetie [sie̯tʃe]
8 - Ḧ for ƕaɤɛƕṡ kadekš / ƕaɤɛıƕs kadeiks [kɑð̞əkʃ]
9 - Ƶ̈ for ỹɤɛƕṡ üdekš / ỹɤɛıƕs üdeiks [yð̞əkʃ]
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vec
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Re: Turo

Post by vec »

Very cool concept. I wonder about your choice for orthography though – how are you proposing such a Greco-Romanesque system was developed without the Greeks and the Romans? Through Etruscans? Some of the letters seem decidedly more Greek than Etruscan and some are most certainly later Cyrillic innovations.
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Re: Turo

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I derived the letter shapes (at least the majuscules) directly from Phoenician, but I may have overplayed the "coincidental similarity/convergent evolution" card. On the other hand, Phoenician letters are easy to write and most of them have some obvious directions to evolve in; IMO it's not inconceivable that conservative scribes could have come up with something visually similar to what the Greeks did.

In any case, these letter forms are probably best described as stylized representations of their actual forms (made to look more like letters we're familiar with - e.g. <m> probably does not look exactly like <m>). But I'm not much of a conscripter, and to be honest I mostly wanted something in Unicode because it makes things a lot easier for stuff like I'm doing here. But I'll work on it and try to figure out what the "real" alphabet looks like.
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Re: Turo

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Nice work. Depending on how much work you want to do to reach perfection, you can spend countless nights weeding out all the layers of IE loans. A particular one that jumped to my eyes is ja which in reality is a Germanic loan into Finnic.

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Re: Turo

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You may also want to think about using some of the other scripts that were invented in Europe before the arrival of the IEs. There are some nice archaeological remnants here and there, Linear A and B, the Phaistos disk letters, Vinča, also known as Old European – not to mention the Indus Valley civilization and their writing system and many other coolbeans. I really am fascinated by the concept of purging Indo-Europeans from history. I almost wanna steal it.
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Re: Turo

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If Linear B is pre-IE, how come it came to write Mycenaean?

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Re: Turo

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Yeah sorry, Linear B isn't pre-IE, but Linear A probably is, or if not pre-IE, at least non-IE linguistically.
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Re: Turo

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This looks cool. Also, an interesting idea to wipe out Indo-European.
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Re: Turo

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gach wrote:Nice work. Depending on how much work you want to do to reach perfection, you can spend countless nights weeding out all the layers of IE loans. A particular one that jumped to my eyes is ja which in reality is a Germanic loan into Finnic.
That will definitely be an ongoing sub-project - it's hard to find stuff on Finnish etymologies online, and I'm not about to shell out for Suomen sanojen alkuperä, but I have a few good sources. But there is some stuff I definitely want to keep just because it seems so quintessentially Finnic to me - I've already done some shady stuff like reanalyzing -lainen (Turo -lane) as deriving from -la (cf. Kalevala, Pohjola) + -inen (rather than from laji, which is from Swedish).

Is the original Uralic "and" something like *ta? Because it's da in both Karelian and Mari, which seems like a big coincidence given how far apart they are both geographically and genetically. Either way, I kind of want to keep ja... maybe I'll have it come from one of the Eastern Continental Icastric languages.

(Edit: Here's what I'll do - Icastrian ais [aʃ] comes from Proto-Icastric *ajaz, which in the Eastern Continental family became *ajaz > *ejaz > *eaz > *ea. In some languages this became é, but at least in the languages spoken on the Baltic coast it became ja, from whence it was borrowed into Finnic. Problem solved!)
vec wrote:You may also want to think about using some of the other scripts that were invented in Europe before the arrival of the IEs. There are some nice archaeological remnants here and there, Linear A and B, the Phaistos disk letters, Vinča, also known as Old European – not to mention the Indus Valley civilization and their writing system and many other coolbeans.
That's a really good idea. Given that it seems most probable the Icastrians would have learned writing from the Phoenicians/Carthaginians (maybe through the Vasconians?), I'm also looking at the Paleohispanic scripts and some other offshoots of Phoenician for ideas about plausible directions I could go, rather than just going "well obviously alef is going to become <A>" which is basically what I did before.
I really am fascinated by the concept of purging Indo-Europeans from history. I almost wanna steal it.
Feel free. I've just always had this burning fascination about pre-IE Europe and what it might have become. As far as alt-histories go it gives you a ton of room to play in; you'd probably come up with something very different from what I've done.
Last edited by Colonel Cathcart on Wed Dec 18, 2013 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Turo

Post by WeepingElf »

Colonel Cathcart wrote:
I really am fascinated by the concept of purging Indo-Europeans from history. I almost wanna steal it.
Feel free. I've just always had this burning fascination about pre-IE Europe and what it might have become. As far as alt-histories go it gives you a ton of room to play in; you'd probably come up with something very different from what I've done.
Yes, I am also fascinated about pre-IE Europe and explore it in my conlangs (most notably Old Albic). Where my project (actually not just mine but a collaborative effort) differs from yours is that my conlangs represent leftovers of older linguistic strata surviving in out-of-way corners of Europe such as mountain ranges (why don't the Alps have as many languages as the Caucasus?) and islands, with the major languages of Europe unchanged.
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