Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

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pbastronaut
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by pbastronaut »

Vlürch wrote: 19 Apr 2018 11:35 Interesting, and I especially like the idea that there would be widespread folk etymologies. Will you use complicated and/or rare hanzi at all? Not saying you should/shouldn't or that it'd be better or worse either way, just asking.
I already have a few hanzi which appear to be archaic or no longer used in standard Chinese. For example, Amanghu uses 厶 instead of 私, and 弗. It's hard for me to say, as someone who speaks no Chinese and only a little Japanese, what's "rare". Most of the CJK fonts I use have trouble with at least 5% of my lexicon. Just never the same 5%.

I'm still building up simple vocabulary, so at the moment there aren't many very complex hanzi (嗣 is the most complex commonly used one so far). But nothing's off the table. Once I get to specific vocabulary, I'll probably end up with at least a few 30+ stroke characters.
clawgrip wrote: 20 Apr 2018 12:38 I have to say I like how the tenses are represented phonetically through sound changes, but graphically through the use of a separate character.

I did pretty much the same thing in one of my own languages (but for pluralization), but I quite like the way yours works.

Do you have a list of all the sound changes? Are there times when the sound change cannot apply?
There're two tables on this page, but I'll do my best to recreate it here. As mentioned above, past tense lenitions become more sonorized (that is, more voiced) and more debuccalized (that is, more glottised), while future tense lenitions do the opposite.

I've recreated the tables below. Past tense changes the consonant one step right, future tense changes the consonant one step left.

For verbs begining with stops:
/s/ ⇄ /p/ ⇄ /b/ ⇄ /m/
/s/ ⇄ /pʰ/ ⇄ /bʰ/ ⇄ /m/
/s/ ⇄ /t/ ⇄ /d/ ⇄ /m/
/s/ ⇄ /tʰ/ ⇄ /dʰ/ ⇄ /m/
/x/ ⇄ /k/ ⇄ /g/ ⇄ /n/
/x/ ⇄ /kʰ/ ⇄ /gʰ/ ⇄ /n/

For verbs begining with sibilants, affricates, and approximants:
/s/ ⇄ /ʃ/ ⇄ /ʂ/ ⇄ /x/ ⇄ /h/
/t͡s/ ⇄ /t͡ʃ/ ⇄ /t͡ʂ/ ⇄ /k͡x/ ⇄ /h/
/t͡s/ ⇄ /t͡ʃʰ/ ⇄ /t͡ʂʰ/ ⇄ /k͡xʰ/ ⇄ /h/
/l/ ⇄ /ɻ/ ⇄ /j/ ⇄ /w/ ⇄ /h/

There are a couple of exceptions. 嗣 щуıң /ʂɯ̰ŋ/, the copula "to be" doesn't lenite. Nor do auxillery verbs like 應 ҡѡ̎ң /k͡xóŋ/ "should". Verbs begining with /s, x/ don't have seperate future tense forms.
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by Nortaneous »

The concept is interesting -- another weird Sinitic language, like Bai or Wutun. (Bai may or may not be Sinitic, but if it isn't, it's likely the closest relative to Sinitic within Sino-Tibetan, so it might be worth a look for solid etymologies.)

How did the initial mutations develop?

The Cyrillization is pretty unlikely. An important difference between Latin and Cyrillic is that Cyrillic generally prefers new letters over digraphs (except for systematic contrasts, like aspiration -- even then, NWC Cyrillic uses modified forms of the letters rather than NEC Cx digraphs) and digraphs over diacritics.

Specifically, the aspirates would take digraphs, the soft sign would not be used for /j/, nor yu for /ɥ/, and omega would not be used at all. And ш and щ should probably be reversed. If the orthography is pre-Soviet, you might be able to get away with a little more weirdness, but that'd demand a lot of backstory -- maybe missionaries, like Aleut. I'm not sure how omega could be justified even then.
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by pbastronaut »

Nortaneous wrote: 24 Apr 2018 15:44How did the initial mutations develop?
I was inspired by consonant mutations in Irish, and I originally planned to make it much more complex, but that didn't gel too well with my goals. I was thinking they'd have formed from abbreviations of 旦 and 弗, where the nasal at the end of /ɥón/ would "darken" the initial consonant, and the null coda at the end of /ʂo̰/ would "lighten" it. Over time, the sound change would have remained while the particle itself became less frequently pronounced.
The Cyrillization is pretty unlikely. An important difference between Latin and Cyrillic is that Cyrillic generally prefers new letters over digraphs (except for systematic contrasts, like aspiration -- even then, NWC Cyrillic uses modified forms of the letters rather than NEC Cx digraphs) and digraphs over diacritics.

Specifically, the aspirates would take digraphs, the soft sign would not be used for /j/, nor yu for /ɥ/, and omega would not be used at all. And ш and щ should probably be reversed. If the orthography is pre-Soviet, you might be able to get away with a little more weirdness, but that'd demand a lot of backstory -- maybe missionaries, like Aleut. I'm not sure how omega could be justified even then.
This is helpful information. It was very tricky to map Cyrillic to Amanghu. Changing the aspirated consonants to digraphs should be simple enough (and better looking), but what letter would mark the aspiration?

I'm happy to relace <ь> with <ј> but I'm not sure if there is an existing Cyrillic letter for anything close to <ɥ>. <ѡ> is ... admitedly unlikely, but I just love it too much to replace it with boring old <о>. I don't much mind that it's unrealistic. Unless I use both and make their use contextual. Maybe I'll read up on how Old Church Slavonic handles it.

I'm a bit confused by your statement that <ш> and <щ> are the wrong way round. I've just looked it up again, and <ш> is /ʂ/ in Russian and <щ> /ɕ/, and it makes sense to me to simply reduce both to /ʃ/ and /ʂ/ respectively, keeping them the same way around on the IPA chart. I'm also reliably informed that <ш> is often /ʃ/ in other languages. So I'm generally all for replacing <щ>, but <ш> very much feels like it belongs.



I'm aware that I haven't produced any real new stuff in a wihle. I'm working on pluralisation markers and counters, so I should have something soon.
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by Nortaneous »

Could use <x> or hard sign for aspiration. Palochka is generally for ejectives but there might be precedent for it for aspirates.

Cyrillic <j> is rare outside South Slavic -- you probably want <й>. /ɥ/ is <ҩ> in Adyghe but you could use ve + soft sign.

Which of Russian /ʂ ɕ/ would Russian-speaking linguists map to Amanghu /ʃ ʂ/? Probably /ʂ/ to /ʂ/. IPA isn't great with coronal fricatives anyway -- there's a lot of variation. You'll probably have to figure out the actual articulation and phonetics of these sounds.

There are a few available alternatives to zhe for /tʂ/ -- zhe+descender, che+descender, <j>, a few more.
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by sangi39 »

You could go with something like:

/m n ŋ/ <м н ң>
/p b t d k ɡ/ <п б т д к г>
/pʰ, bʰ, tʰ, dʰ, kʰ, ɡʰ/ <пҳ бҳ тҳ дҳ кҳ гҳ>
/s, ʃ, ʂ, x, h/ <с щ ш х ҳ>
/t͡s, t͡ʃ, t͡ʂ, k͡x/ <ц ћ ч ҡ>
/t͡sʰ, t͡ʃʰ, t͡ʂʰ, k͡xʰ/ <цҳ ћҳ чҳ ҡҳ>
/j, w, ɥ/ <й ў в>

You could use <һ> for aspiration instead, or for /h/, if you wanted to write them in two distinct ways, so something like /tʰ h/ as <тҳ һ> or <тһ ҳ>

<щ> vs. <ш> follows a similar pattern to the modern Russian distinction, i.e. /ɕː/ vs. /ʂ/. There's no real equivalent in Russian for the affricates in a single letter, but there's <ћ> in Serbian which you could steal. The only other distinction I could find in the affricates in a language written (or formerly written) in Cyrillic is Abkhaz, and that uses <ҽ ч>, and Macedonian, which uses <ќ ч>. Given that you're already using <ҡ> and <к>, and given the freedom to use other letters, using <ќ> seems like using the same letter as a base too much, and <ҽ>, although fine for Abkhaz, really does look more like a vowel than a consonant (honestly not sure where Abkhaz got this from), so I settled on <ћ>. [:)]



/i, ḭ, í, ḭ́, ɯ, ɯ̰, ɯ́, ɯ̰́/ <и иъ и́ и́ъ у уъ у́ у́ъ>
/e, ḛ, é, ḛ́, o, o̰, ó, ó̰/ <е еъ е́ е́ъ о оъ о́ о́ъ>
/a, a̰, á, á̰/ <а аъ а́ а́ъ>

<ъ> is used to represent things like pharyngealisation in Tuvan and a glottal stop in Tajik, Tatar, Uzbek, Chechen, etc. so extending it to creaky voice doesn't seem unreasonable, and Russian already, on occasion, uses the acute accent, although to mark stress rather than tone, but it doesn't seem like too much of a stress to extend it to tone.
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by Nortaneous »

Wakhi: /tʃ tʂ/ <ч ч̣>
Kalmyk: /tɕ tʂ/ <ч ж>
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by Frislander »

Circassian uses a following <ъ> to mark retroflex fricatives, so you could probably extend that principle to the affricates as well (actually Circassian in general seems to be the unusual case of a Cyrillic orthography which doesn't use any non-Russian letters outside of the Palochka, which is all the more surprising when you remember what NWC phonology is like).
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Re: Amanghu (天語), or Chinese Altaic

Post by GrandPiano »

pbastronaut wrote: 21 Mar 2018 23:54Present tense verbs are unmarked, while past tense verbs are preceded by 旦 юѡ̎н /ɥón/, and future tense verbs are preceded by 弗 щѡı /ʂo̰/.
How did you choose these characters?
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