Melroch @ Random

27 March, 2009

Rhodrese articles and indefinite pronouns

Filed under: Conlanging — Tags: , , , — melroch @ 12:23

Some while ago I had to change my mind on the shape of the plural definite article in Rhodrese. Ever since the inception of the lang I’d thought the plural definite article was il, but with the rule that unstressed e and unstressed i are pronounced alike as [ɪ] a plural il would be homophonous with the masculine el, and I can clearly not have that! Better then to have the plural article as li, with the prepositions + article contractions becoming dilli, alli, polli etc. Needless to say the plural article before words beginning in a vowel remains gl’.

This also offers a clue to the demise of distinct feminine forms, for surely the feminine plural article was originally le but became homophonous with the masculine li. The abolition of le was surely one of Bernual’s reforms.

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12 March, 2008

The Ajchrip alphabet

Filed under: Writing systems — Tags: , , — melroch @ 11:16

This Cyrillic alphabet for a non-Slavic language was created by the 19th century monk Ajchrip (Айхрып) as an improvement of the Cyrillic spelling of his native language previously used by Russian missionaries. To make a long story short the misssionaries’ spelling revealed a thick Russian accent, failing to distinguish sounds which sounded alike to a Russian ear. It is to this day debated whether the missionaries could actually not hear the difference between the sounds in question, or if they were only at a loss how to spell them differently, in each case using the letter for the closest Russian phoneme.

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