The other day there was an exchange on the Conlang mailing list about hidden references to Tolkien in people’s conlangs.
Garth Wallace wrote:
Daniel Bowman wrote: » For example, Samadurian actually comes » from mangling “cellar door”, > Is that a hidden reference to Tolkien? ;-)
Yes indeed! That’s the only relation, though; the milieu it’s intended for is very un-Tolkeinesque.
To which I replied:
mercurii dies ‘Wednesday’ used to be melcordí in Rhodrese, which of course was an oblique reference to Tolkien (and one which Tolkien would perhaps not have liked very much!). In the current version of the lang the form is meocordí, and thus not that obvious anymore, if you aren’t aware of the change of non-prevocalic /l/ to /w/.
Ah, creative help! The mention of **melcordí gave me a flash of inspiration today how to explain that Rhodanu becomes Rhuodre rather than **Rhuorn or **Rhuorre and Rhodanense > rhodray rather than **rhornay or **rhorray, and so be able to keep the current name of the Rhodrese language without introducing an exception or inconsistencies or implausibilities in the historical phonology.
Since the language anyway has dissimilation of laterals within a word r…r > l…r and l…l > r…l it makes sense if intervocalic /d/ fails to become /ɾ/ in the structure *rVdV,1 so even if vadimus becomes */βaɾemu/ then Rhodanus becomes */rɔːdanu/ due to the initial /r/, with */dn/ later becoming /dr/ and then again the initial /r/ stops */rɔːdrə/ from becoming **/rɔːrə/ when */paːdrə/ becomes */paːrə/.
True /dr/ will still be very infrequent, but I want to keep *pare ‘pair’ distinct from ‘father’ by having ‘father’ keep or get a final *-/ə/ > -/ɪ/ in both the singular and the plural. This will also help to keep ‘rocks’ distinct from ‘feet’:
- petra > pierre,
- petras > pirre,
- pede >pier,
- pedes > pir.
While this would make ‘fathers’ and ‘rock’ identical that ambiguity will be resolved by the articles:
- un/el piarre ‘a/the father’
- eun/li pierre ‘(some)/the fathers’
- (u)ne/la pierre ‘a/the rock’
- eun/li pirre ‘(some)/the rocks’
(Synchronically eun doesn’t mean ‘some’ anymore, but is just really an indefinite plural article. The real expression for ‘some rocks’ is aocheun pirre. Nouns without any article are usually uncountable mass nouns (e.g. addeç sial ‘add salt’). Of course the definite article is used in general statements concerning all members of a class, where Germanic languages would use an indefinite plural: li pirre son deur ‘(the) rocks are hard’.)
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The liquid dissimilation will probably not apply if the first /r/ follows an obstruent, so that fratre > friarre and not **fliarre. Btw friarre and suorre mean ‘monk’ and ‘nun’ — ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ are fradel and sorel. Moreover suorre is really from the nominative, or rather vocative, soror rather than the accusative sororem; **soraur doesn’t exist. As forms of address for church members piarre, friarre, suorre become Piar (Pr.), Friar (Fr.), Suor. Cf. serre ‘gentleman’ vs. Ser (Sr.) ‘Mr.’ vs. segnaur ‘lord’. ↩