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.
Edhuif comes from prefix ed- "off" [from Sindarin], lexeme dov- "home" (< domus) and infix -i- for nominalization, akin to Greek/Latin -ía. So the word word be feminine; a similar word in Catalan would be exdomia.
Jèeeeeeeessssss... –et –ete is, in fact, an Hellesan diminutive, but there are words out there, like aisenete, that aren't real dimins.
Sometimes the –et ending doesn't match at all with the word's meaning, as in pertavet "enlargement" (Cat. "eixample; eixamplament", Cast. "ensanche"). XD
For girl and boy I have ['maɲa] and ['bjaja] respectively, both derived from mother and father roots in the proto lang.
For man and woman I am a bit in doubt, though:
Woman: ['kijvma] or ['kijvza]
Man: ['ganma] or ['gaɲa]
Technically it's /a e̞ i o̞ u/ but I (personally) can hear almost no difference between [e̞] and [ɛ], which makes me guess Greek [e̞] is closer to [ɛ] since I can quite easily hear the difference between [e̞] and [e].
Generally though, yes, Greek and Spanish have the same vowels which make me feel a bit awe every time I hear some Spaniard speaking Greek (words or phrases), cause they pretty much nail the accent! Same goes for most Greeks speaking Spanish of course...
Yes tell me about it; I hear that from my Queen. And it's not only the vowels; the lenition of -b- -d- and -g- also coincides (even word-initially for some dialects like Cuban, not for ours though).
I guess the same thing goes for Spanish <e>'s, I may represent it as /e/ but IDK if it's [E] or [e].
Ean wrote:Yes tell me about it; I hear that from my Queen. And it's not only the vowels; the lenition of -b- -d- and -g- also coincides (even word-initially for some dialects like Cuban, not for ours though).
I guess the same thing goes for Spanish <e>'s, I may represent it as /e/ but IDK if it's [E] or [e].
Well this lady has spent less time in Greece than our previous government, so I'm not that sure about her accent. It must be mostly German and/or Danish influenced.
That /b d g/ lenition is true (and quite odd to be sincere), but at least we don't have that hateful [β] abomination, bastard child of and [v]!
We also lack [ɾ + r], though we have [ɾ ~ r] (usually [ɾ])
Well not always, I was hearing a song and it said "σε ρωτώ" and sounded exactly like I would say se rotó in Spanish [r] (which would mean: it rotated itself).
Ean wrote:Well not always, I was hearing a song and it said "σε ρωτώ" and sounded exactly like I would say se rotó in Spanish [r] (which would mean: it rotated itself).
It's quite common for singers to overpronounce [ɾ] to make it [r] just for emphasis.
Don't trust songs, they lie! Hear the language spoken, not songen!
"R", especially between vowels, is almost never trilled.
"Σε ρωτώ", btw, means "I ask you", but I'm sure you already know that...
L'alphabētarium wrote:"Σε ρωτώ", btw, means "I ask you", but I'm sure you already know that...
I didn't ! I don't speak Greek, sadly.
Another impression I just got from Greek: weird stress patterns... loads of oxytone words and -ía words (which actually we got from you and mangled afterwards, anyways ).
By «Lexicon Building» I mean words in a wide sense, so this is a good place to ask it:
I'm working the toponymy of one of my conworld's cities. I have all 21 districts' names, and almost all neighbourhoods' names (with their respective etymologies and stuff)... but a few remain unnamed and I don't find interesting or suggestive ideas.
So I'm asking for ideas, imaginary or real (from your town or city), to name them. It doesn't matter if they are weird; in fact, it would be desirable, to spice up the matter.
Izambri wrote:By «Lexicon Building» I mean words in a wide sense, so this is a good place to ask it:
I'm working the toponymy of one of my conworld's cities. I have all 21 districts' names, and almost all neighbourhoods' names (with their respective etymologies and stuff)... but a few remain unnamed and I don't find interesting or suggestive ideas.
So I'm asking for ideas, imaginary or real (from your town or city), to name them. It doesn't matter if they are weird; in fact, it would be desirable, to spice up the matter.
I love (town) names with interesting histories, but I'd have to know a little/lot more about your city to be able to suggest anything.
Maybe throw darts at a few words in your dictionary and try to see if it makes any sense if you use that word in a name?
din wrote:Maybe throw darts at a few words in your dictionary and try to see if it makes any sense if you use that word in a name?
I did it a few times, and I must say it's hard to make placenames this way! XD
My problem with Labirença's neighborhoods is that the few that remain unnamed have little urban history, since they were or still are rural or forest areas with some low-density housing.
But instead of taking the "Birch Hill" or "River Oaks" way, I prefer to do something more elaborated, like "Lost Fishers", which is a real neighborhood and has its reasons to be named like that.