Talk:Iermansc 1.0

Good work
Very interesting so far, I like it. I would like to disagree a bit. If Latin and German got together to form this language, I would think the comparisons would have remained a bit more synthetic, ie, keeping -er and -est (and perhaps the Latin -issimus in some way). This would also serve to distinguish this language from all other modern Romance languages. Keep it up! --JJohnson 16:46, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic idea! So maybe the comparative is a relfex of the -IOR ending and the superlative of -ISSIMUS. -IOR would probably be an undressed /-jǝr/, which is interesting, because the /j/ can cause umlaut in /u o/ and palatalization in /t k/ and sometimes other consonants. An example would be "strong":

Lat. FORTEM > forþ Lat. FORTIOR > fercier Lat. FORTISSIMUS > forðén/forðéna

Or something like like that. Let's see, the irregulars could be along the lines of:

BONUS > bon MELIOR > melier OPTIMUS > eften

MAGNUS > main MAIOR > maier MAXIMUS > mascen

I'll have to work this out and type it up when I have more time, I have a very demanding job right now...

--thedudeatx 2:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello! I'm not much into conlangs, but I found this really interesting. Well done. :-)

I wondered if the pronominal "one" should be "om" rather than "in". cf. German /man/, and French /on/ (possibly from Old French /om/, latin /homo/?).

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=one

Oh, I didn't get ljur/liur for melior, but the rest seemed pretty straightforward. I like the idea above.

79.69.241.127 13:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC) (Tom)

you raise a very good point, and "one" should indeed be "om". i thought it came from UNUS instead of HOMO for some reason.

"liur" was just a shorted form of "meliur" < MELIOR. but as it will be revised out of existence i guess it's a moot point. thanks for the suggestion/correction!

--thedudeatx 2:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Phonology
Uhm, do you know any language with /ʒ/ > /j/ mutation? Usually it works in the opposite direction. — Hellerick 16:51, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that the sounds are so close that either way is possible. I know in Old English /j/ and /dʒ/ are allophones, for example. Also, some dialects of Spanish have ʒ where the standard variety has /j/ (though in this case /ʒ/ is indeed an innovation).

I also believe that somewhen between proto-Germanic and English /g/ before a front vowel become /j/ in the modern language. For example, "yesterday":

O.E. geostran dæg, from dæg "day" + geostran "yesterday," from P.Gmc. *gestra- (cf. O.H.G. gestaron, Ger. gestern "yesterday," O.N. gær "tomorrow, yesterday," Goth. gistradagis "tomorrow")

Now, it could be that went from /g/>/j/ without going through /ʒ/, but that route seems likely to me. Would it be more strigihtforward to just say that /ge gi gj/ > /je ji ji/ or some such?

The idea behind this sound change is that the Germanic dialect (pre-OHG) of the natives which was alive in the area in the chronology up until ca. 400 AD did not have /ʒ/. at this time palatalization was occurring in Romance. the /ʒ/ resulting from /ge gi gj/ was analyzed as /j/.

It's kind of inspired by the way some speakers of German or Scandinavian tongues will pronounce the phoneme /ʒ/ as /j/. Also, /j/ just sounds "more German" which is a big part of the artistic consideration of phonetic flavour. I like correspondences such as

It. giorno Ie. jurn "day" It. Giovanni Ie. joan "john"

Thanks for your comment, let me know what you think.

Thedudeatx 17:39, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I still believe that most phonetic mutations are one-way roads. I know many examples of /j/ > /ʒ/ and /j/ > /dʒ/ mutations, but I don't know any examples of the opposite. I know that /g/ may become /j/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /x/, /z/... but the sound /g/ nevear appears on their place. The post-alveolar sounds (/ʃ/ and /ʒ/) seem to be... hm... more stabilized than other sounds and they nearly never become anything else.


 * I believe that direct /g/ > /j/ would be more natural, especially in a Germanic language.


 * On the other hand the theory of the linguistic substratum can explain such things. When some people are trying to perceive alien pronunciation anything can happen. But to explain it, you have to presume that /g/ > /ʒ/ mutation already happened in the local variant of Latin (which is rather unlikely). But if it already happened, we have to presume that its "twin" mutation /k/ > /ʃ/ already happened as well.


 * BTW, /j/ and /dʒ/ weren't allophones in Old English. /j/ and /g/ were, while /dʒ/ already was independent from them. (At least in the period of written lnanguage) — Hellerick 18:02, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Alright, I hear you on the first point. Though I can think of at least one example of /ʒ/ changing, namely to /x/ in Spanish.


 * Is the substrate explanation really that far-fetched? Do we know when exactly palatalization from /ke ki/ and /ge gi/? In the 1.0 version I had assumed that it had started fairly early on.  That it occurs in practically every Romance language (apart from Sardinian and a a few other dissenters) to me argued that it was a pretty early change.  As far as the twin mutation thing goes..it would be /k/ > /tʃ/.  so maybe the change should be /g/ > /dʒ/, and resultant dʒ is interpreted as /j/ or possibly /dj/ > /j/?


 * As you can see I'm a big fan of this particular sound change. I don't believe proto-Germanic had anything like /dʒ/ or /ʒ/ and that /j/ is a reasonable approximate in a language contact situation. --Thedudeatx 22:14, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, actually there is nothing to invent here, we know how it actually happened in the real world. Here are the change-chains of the Romance languages:

(Not all of these chains are realized completely in the real languages of course, e.g. /tʃ/ > /ʃ/ mutation is restrained in Italian by the fact that the language already has /ʃ/ sound from another source; some languages had two types of palatalizations during different ages.) As you can see /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are late links of the chains, e.g. French still did not have them in the 11-12th centuries (otherwise the word change borrowed in that time would be pronounced /ʃænʒ/ in the contemporary English).

It's really much easier to get /j/ sound immediately from /g/. E.g. if we presume that Old English had many Romance borrowings before 800 CE (the invasion of vikings and influx of Scandinavian words with hard g was one of the reasons of why /g/ and /j/ became separate phonemes) then it would be likely that /g/ of Romance origin would go through the same changes as /g/ of Germanic origin, and therefore would ultimately become /j/. Cf. English word cheese from Latin caseus (through Old English cese), this is a very old borrowing and it features Germanic /k/ > /tʃ/ mutation, despite not being Germanic (while German still keeps in the form close to the original: Кäse). — Hellerick 05:06, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Verb 'to know'
Germanic languages typically had 'cnáwan' (Icelandic kná, Old High German knajen) and 'witan' (German wissen, Icelandic vita) a preterite-present verb (OE: wát, wást, wát singular, plural witon; OHG: wizzun, wizzet, wizzunt). Would one or both of these survive into your language? --JJohnson 01:51, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

re: "to know"
well, as the core of the language is Romance and these are pretty common verbs, something tells me these two verbs would derive from Latin SAPERE (a save) and COGNOSCERE (a conúsce).

though influence from Germanic KNAJEN might cause anything from a cnusce to cnaisce to cnaie to cnue or cnausce...

Thedudeatx 05:20, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Old High German
I found the Wright's OHG Primer here. It's now public domain, so feel free to use it as a basis to work off of for Version 2.0. --JJohnson 01:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

re:OHG
This is a great resource, thanks! What I really need to do now is pin down the semantic categories which use Romance sources and the ones with use Germanic. Any suggestions along those lines? The history is such that there is a Romance state left after the fall of the empire, but Germanic tribes invaded as in Our Timeline - so really there are quite a few sources:


 * Vulgar Latin regularly evolved by sound changes
 * Pre-Old High German also evolved by sound changes
 * Later Germanic borrowings from invaders unaffected by sound changes
 * Learned or semi-learned borrowings from Latin, affected by only limited sound changes

Each of these should affect logical sections of the lexicon, i'm just not sure which should be which!

--Thedudeatx 20:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As for this language being affected by OHG invaders to a Latin base, perhaps a few big effects on your language:


 * retention of -er / -esme comparative superlative endings, maybe as iro and ismo? This would differentiate it from all other Romance languages, and German is a notoriously conservative language in its tendencies.
 * retention of at least the second person singular ending as -es or even -est. This is an ending that is strongly preserved in most Romance and Germanic languages
 * perhaps strong/weak adjective declensions in some manner (o/a for masculine/feminine without the definite article, but -e after any article)
 * preservation of one or more cases - my favorite is the genitive case, while leaving the preposition 'de' for other uses.
 * Keep up the good work!