Corumayas wrote:Zhen Lin, those text files don't display properly for me-- all the diacriticked characters come out as things like á, î, ī, and so on.
Change encoding to UTF-8, of course.
- Adāta words can only be stressed on the initial syllable or a non-initial long vowel; so loans from Faralo with non-initial stress should probably either have the stress revert to the first syllable, or make the stressed vowel long. (This also means that there's no need to actually indicate stress except when it's on a non-initial syllable).
I don't see why this should be a problem - English once also only permitted stress on initial syllables (root-initial for verbs, word-initial for nouns, IIRC) but has since evolved to have free stress. That said, lengthening stressed vowels does make sense, although, for Ayāsthi I will keep them short.
-There's also no /w/ in Adāta.
Call it /u/, then.
-Some of the loans seem unlikely for cultural reasons. The Dāiadak strike me as a nation very proud of their own culture and institutions. Would they really adopt foreign words (from a bunch of infidel barbarians no less) to designate their glorious state and its highest offices? Wouldn't they instead use native words with new, specialized meanings, or coin new words from native roots?
Yes, that is a problem. However, look again at the Fáralo - ethnically Edak, but they claim Faraghin heritage to the extent of calling their language Faraghin as well. One possible rationalisation is that the empire consciously modelled itself on Huyfárah, which, regardless of national pride, was the greater power at the time. Or perhaps, some Etúgə priests came over and converted the leader of the time, thereby triggering the imperialist expansion in the first place. (After all, Etúgə emphasises action...)
That said... it is possible to calque some of the Fáralo loans via Ndak Ta, though that would obviously cause collisions - for example, the verb
epé (to meet, of councils) would merge with
ápe (to sit), and the noun
léga (law, decree) would merge with its cognate
lezê (word).
Following up on this, I wonder how the political system you describe (which I like) evolved from the governmental systems of the city-states. Athalē was one of the more democratic ones (though not as much so as Khalanu), so the emperor probably isn't descended from a traditional hereditary monarchy. Maybe the empire was founded by a Pericles-like leader, who came to power through the traditional politics of the city-state. The position of "emperor" might then become an office elected (as well as advized) by the khiara and/or zāthar of Athalē.
Or, it could be a Julius Caesar scenario. Actually, one element I forgot to mention was the option of having a theocratic element. After all, Athalē is the hometown of Zārakātias.
At first glance, I also thought: "The Rathedān is where iron-working was invented, and the Dāiadak are more-or-less direct descendents of the Gezoro who invented it. Why would they need to borrow the Faralo word for iron?" The answer seems to be, because Dewrad didn't provide a native word. Which seems odd, after all that he wrote about it in the culture notes. The Faralo lexicon gives an etymon of "ginig", but no such word appears in Ndak Ta so maybe it's from Faraghin. Anyway, there must surely have been a Gezoro word for iron, probably with an Adāta reflex; but maybe we could come up with a good reason why it was lost or replaced.
Hmm, yes.
I just had this idea: I think that in some iron-age cultures, the working of iron was a kind of religious secret, with smiths acting as shamans. Maybe there was such a cult in the Rathedān until Zarakātias' time, surviving from Gezoro times, and the word for "iron" was also the name of a god; and maybe this name was even taboo for religious reasons. And maybe this cult was antithetical to Zarakātias' reformation, and was wiped out; the old word for iron might then become taboo (even if it wasn't before), and a new word would be needed. Though if so, it seems doubtful they'd go to Faralo, a language also associated with an unholy religion. Maybe we could coin a word for it, like the taboo-avoidance words for "bear" in different IE language families...?
One of the main gods is the smith-god, so it seems unlikely that iron would be a taboo divine name.
Or maybe the word "ginig" is Ndak Ta, and we could derive a regular Adāta reflex of it (I think it'd be "ianix").
Replacing it with a reflex seems like a good idea. I'm not sure whether it should have a final /x/ or /g/ - one of the Gezoro words to do with metalworks that did make it through has a final /g/ instead of /x/.