Mar. 14th, 2003 11:51 pm
Minotaur blues
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckTomorrow I have to be a working fool. I've got a presentation a week from Tuesday, but I'm going to be out of town the weekend right before, so I want as much done ahead of time. Sadly, this means locking myself in on the loveliest day of the year (at least until evening rolls around and I make a break for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rollick's movie party). If I had to spend the day inside working, I'd rather run with my new idea of Antilian Minotauran. My original suggestion (since I was trying to keep work to a minimum) was to use Okhrand's Klingon, which sounds appropriately guttural and clipped. But bunj laments that he doesn't know any and so the Minotaur names he coins all have a Grecian feel. So I thought: Why not give them a Greek-derived pidgin? As if their native language were Klingonesque, but they learned broken Greek during their ancient captivity.
bunj has retained final -os in several names, so I'd have to preserve it. I think I'd like to lose all final vowels, though. This would mean, in effect, that the masculines are longer than the feminines (most of which end in -e or -a in Ancient Greek), which is the reverse of the situation in most Indo-European languages. Not that "masculine" and "feminine" would have much meaning any more, since, as a rule, pidgins don't have grammatical gender.
The Ancient Greek aspirates would all become fricatives, to add to the harshness of the language. So would consonant clusters. I'm thinking that, in general, the first consonant would drop and the second would go fricative, e.g. chtho:n -> thon "earth; ground"; in the case of ps and ks (spelled x), s would become sh, e.g. xenos "stranger" (pronounced [Senos]). In some dialects, /S/ and /X/ would fall together as /X/ (i.e. German Ach-Laut). The voiced stops would become voiced fricatives and ng would vary between [N] and plain [g].
ei and ou would be raised and fall together with u and i, respectively. Vowel length would be lost, but long vowels would bear stress. Final vowels and most initial vowels would be dropped, e.g. agora "market" -> ghor.
Hmmm...maybe I should add a special sound which represents a loud snort through the nostrils.
Drastically simplified, in the manner of all pidgins. There would be singular and plural article, derived from the neuter, i.e. to, pl. ta. Nouns would not be marked for plural, nor adjectives for agreement. One form of each pronoun (probably the genitive) would survive as well as one form of each verb.
Example: "This ketchup screams with the crimson anguish of a thousand tortured souls!"
"To 'rthum ti klag xun to fonix nosos po khilyas kistos xukh!"
Fairly trips off the tongue, don't it?
rollick's movie party). If I had to spend the day inside working, I'd rather run with my new idea of Antilian Minotauran. My original suggestion (since I was trying to keep work to a minimum) was to use Okhrand's Klingon, which sounds appropriately guttural and clipped. But bunj laments that he doesn't know any and so the Minotaur names he coins all have a Grecian feel. So I thought: Why not give them a Greek-derived pidgin? As if their native language were Klingonesque, but they learned broken Greek during their ancient captivity.Phonology
bunj has retained final -os in several names, so I'd have to preserve it. I think I'd like to lose all final vowels, though. This would mean, in effect, that the masculines are longer than the feminines (most of which end in -e or -a in Ancient Greek), which is the reverse of the situation in most Indo-European languages. Not that "masculine" and "feminine" would have much meaning any more, since, as a rule, pidgins don't have grammatical gender.The Ancient Greek aspirates would all become fricatives, to add to the harshness of the language. So would consonant clusters. I'm thinking that, in general, the first consonant would drop and the second would go fricative, e.g. chtho:n -> thon "earth; ground"; in the case of ps and ks (spelled x), s would become sh, e.g. xenos "stranger" (pronounced [Senos]). In some dialects, /S/ and /X/ would fall together as /X/ (i.e. German Ach-Laut). The voiced stops would become voiced fricatives and ng would vary between [N] and plain [g].
ei and ou would be raised and fall together with u and i, respectively. Vowel length would be lost, but long vowels would bear stress. Final vowels and most initial vowels would be dropped, e.g. agora "market" -> ghor.
Hmmm...maybe I should add a special sound which represents a loud snort through the nostrils.
Morphology and syntax
Drastically simplified, in the manner of all pidgins. There would be singular and plural article, derived from the neuter, i.e. to, pl. ta. Nouns would not be marked for plural, nor adjectives for agreement. One form of each pronoun (probably the genitive) would survive as well as one form of each verb.
Example: "This ketchup screams with the crimson anguish of a thousand tortured souls!"
"To 'rthum ti klag xun to fonix nosos po khilyas kistos xukh!"
Fairly trips off the tongue, don't it?