The CBB

A Diachronic Scratchpad I thought I would start a new thread to keep an assortment of my diachronic sketches in one place. Unlike most of my other conlangs which tend to be pre-planned with certain aesthetic/features in mind, I thought I would take a more “serendipitous” approach and see where soun...

Thank you both - good to know it's not totally implausible. It is a small inventory, so also good to know that such changes happen more commonly in these (Austronesian and Papuan being inspiration). @Salmoneus: I agree with your analysis of /p t z r k/ and [d] as allophone. I should have mentioned t...

I have been considering the following sound change for a diachronic sketch I'm playing with, any ideas on how plausible it is? j > z when it is the onset of a stressed syllable: *járan > záran . Except ji > di , (mostly) unconditionally. Along with ri > di (/r/ does not change otherwise). *káji > ká...

it would be so: a) Aḳālum uśśêkun âdī pariñtu sun-FEM arms-3fs many-MASC vanish-3fs the many-armed sun vanished / the sun with many arms vanished b) Uśśê Aḳālam âdī pariñti arm-CNS sun-FEM many-MASC vanish-3ms the many arms belonging to the sun vanished It is a difference over whether the possessor...

What's going on here? Well, this is an example of a 17th (and early 18th) century avant garde musical genre known as the prélude non mésuré, or 'unmeasured prelude'. They evolved out of earlier French lute music, but later were exclusively associated with the keyboard. Often (as in this case) they ...

Probably getting off topic, but my take: 1) Common grammatical/morphological categories are probably more likely to be represented by the overall more-common phonemes cross-linguistically (not just in "Borean") simply because those categories mean their representative phonemes will appear ...

I think it would be unusual if Arabic music hadn't left *any* trace on music of Iberia, given how long that period lasted...although I think the influence is more broad as Elemtilas mentioned, and overall far less than commonly assumed. After all, Arabic music relies on unfretted instruments and int...

(and within occidental, I'd include levantine). Do you mean Levantine Church music? Surely not Levantine music in general? since the vast majority of Levantine music is firmly within the Arabic tradition. I would actually consider Arabic specifically and levantine generally to be broadly occidental...

elemtilas wrote: ↑19 Mar 2021 15:00 (and within occidental, I'd include levantine).

Do you mean Levantine Church music? Surely not Levantine music in general? since the vast majority of Levantine music is firmly within the Arabic tradition.

Just chiming in to say I am enjoying this discussion a lot, and it was cool to hear your music, Elemtilas! I particularly enjoyed the Tsarqan Rovant. In case anyone is interested in some "very" Arab/less European sounding modes, here are some oud players (it is all improvised, and improvis...

I will unfortunately have to drop out, apologies for any inconvenience, but I look forward to seeing everyone's translations!

Do you have enough for a little (wellish known) text example? Just a little paragraph which gives more of an idea how the language looks overall... A kàlaštar vemà zo i žalmea taksèrasu-s gal ifa vosnà me a durgambra, kanč pirastar k'afla dýmkuta blafnavou hariedu. Čién advagu-s me a n'ifa eargiža ...

I think it, the declensions at least, resemble old Germanic languages. Maybe there are a bit less consonant clusters than in SAE on average, but there are still quite few words. Where did you get the idea of lowering diphthongs? They are common on the east coat of Baltic sea, but not in the prototy...

* the good old fashioned major scale: I don't know if it's a proper universal, but it pops up in a lot of nonwestern traditions. some people claim there are acoustic reasons for this having to do with the overtone series. The major scale using Western intervals is called "Ꜥajam" (literall...

Cool! I love how ouds sound, never seen/heard one in real life but it seems like such a cool instrument. ... Oof, that sounds like even just owning one is kinda risky, like it might break easily in general? Oud (and the Arab musical traditional more generally) are wonderful [:D] With the right stri...

[there's also an oud for under $10, but there's only one and I'm assuming that'll be bid up by the time it the auction's over] I can guarantee you none of the ouds on that site (if we're looking at the same one) would be good for anything other than as an ornament. Also, since we're talking about o...

<bakýlleše> gives me Akkadian vibes, maybe because of long words, gemminates, relatively simple syllables and <š>, whereas <bakylloš> also has some strong Ancient Greek feel, due to <y> and words ending in a variation of <-os>. Ancient Greek is at least IE, so maybe that's closer to the title. Inte...

For some reason, this conlang does not strike me as very SAE, aesthatically at least. Might be the vowel inventory or the word structure, I can't quite pin it down. It has moved away from the aesthetic somewhat, but SAE is still the main inspiration! I am deliberately not using familiar morphemes, ...

Nouns Nominal (and adjectival) morphology in Zouštri is similar to that of many other European languages—nouns inflect for gender, case, and number. There are three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter . Six cases: nominative, accusative, vocative, genitive, dative, instrumental; and two numbers: s...

I think there are a number of ways of looking at it... I suppose, first of all, is to decide how geographically isolated and/or how strong the cultural/linguistic identity of these speakers is, as well as population size. With a strong identity and a big enough population, I don't think it's totally...