Sangi: Difference between revisions

The basic letters, i.e. those without diacritics are pronounced as in English, except “j” which is pronounces at a “y” would be and “y” in Sangi is pronounced as it is in Finnish. There is no “k”, “q” or “x” but there are four additional letters. “þ” and “ð” are pronounced as the “th” is in “bath” and “bathe” respectively. These 2 extra letters are more commmonly written as ŧ and đ in more informal writing. A "u" with an umlaut is pronounced as the "u" in RP "but" and "e" with an umlaut is the schwa in "father". An "o" with an unlaut is pronounced as in German. As you can see, even though Sangi is a decendent of English it has developed new sounds which are unfamiliar to the English tongue, including a set of rounded front vowels and a series of retroflex consonants.

An circumflex accent over a vowel makes it long. An grave accent indicates I-Mutation and an acute accent indicates A-Mutation. The letters “a:” and “u:” represent the schwa and the “u” in “but” in RP. There are a few other diacritics for vowels, but these shall be covered in the Vowel Mutation section.

An acute accent over a consonant indicates that it is palatal, so “c”, “g”, “s”, “z” will be pronounced “ch”, “j”, “sh” and “zh” respectively. The Cedilla under the consonants “t”, “d”, “n”, “l”, “r”, “s” and “z” create the “retroflex consonants”. In spite of the name, most of these consonants are true palatal consonants, unlike the “palatal” consonants, which are alveolar-post-alveolar affricates. “t”, “d”, “n” and “l” with the cedilla are pronounced “c”, “ɟ”, “ɲ” and “ʎ” respectively, while an “r” with a cedilla is a retroflex “ɽ”. The pronunciation of “s” and “z” with a cedilla is not generally set, and they can appear as retroflex (ʂ/ʐ) alveo-palatal (ɕ/ʑ) or even velar (x/ɣ). Usually they are pronounced as alveo-palatal consonants before “i” and “e”, velar before “a”, “o” and at the end of a word, and retroflex in other environments. The sound they take when next to a consonant is the one most similar to that consonant, but is more prone to differences between speaker to speaker. They do also appear as “ç” and “ʝ” when in a cluster with true palatals. If a retroflex consonant is created by a following "r" then this "r" is lost completely. If the consonant is created by a preceding "r" then this following "r" is retained as a retroflex one instead.

When creating a new word from an English base, the consonants are changed first according to their environments. Next the vowels are changed. This linear process is followed with only two exceptions. They involve the change of medial and final consonants. If the vowel before the medial or final consonant becomes a vowel followed by a consonant, i.e. r, then this change occurs before the consonant change.

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The letter "ŵ" represents the phoneme /w/, the same as the english "w", and the letter "ĵ" represents the sound sequence "hj" but is, in more careful speech, a voicless counterpart to j.

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Allowed combinations of vowels are very varied and depend on local traditions on epenthesis.

{{main|Sangi/Phonological changes}}

The changes which a sound is subject to are dependent (usually) on its position in the word and the surrounding sounds. There are several exceptions to the position rule, especially governing final "t" and CC and VC clusters involving a final "t".

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When one sound occurs next to another at morpheme boundaries certain sound changes may occur, such as gemination, assimilation and even unexpected forms and combination results. There are only a few sounds which are immune from these processes, but most sounds in Sangi must undergo them.

Some words in English with different sounds merge completely in Sangi. With this in mind, most basic English words will have two or more forms in Sangi, one derived directly from the English form, one derived from the root word plus the actor in the comitative as a prefix and one derived from another word to stave off ambiguity. In reality, either form may be used, somtimes within the same conjugation or declension paradigm, the new form being the basic root and the original being used when sound changes rmove such ambiguity. This, however, is done rarely as it as the tendency to create very complicated paradigms. Because of this, each form is used based on context, i.e. if the maning is easily understood, then the root form is used, if any ambiguity arises then the word is defined using its synonym.

{{main|Sangi Consonant Mutations}}

There are two sets of vowel mutation, both with two further subsets. One set is pure mutation which causes a semantic change is the word. The other is affection, which is caused by pure vowel mutation.

{{main|Sangi/Morphology}}

{{main|Sangi/Morphology#Verbs}}

Verbs are possibly the most important class of words in Sangi. As their conjugation includes different endings for the subject, object and secondary objects, it is possible to drop all pronouns used in a sentence and the sentence will remain perfectly intelligible. This means that the verb is the only part of a sentence truly necessary for a sentence to be considered complete.

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Nouns are nowhere near as complicated, in terms of structure, verbs are, but the number of suffixes available to choose from for certain slots is much higher. They also have a complex set of phonological rules through which number and case are defined. Full use of all slots leads to a number of forms for each noun exceeding fifty-four thousand, more specifically the full number of forms is 54,181. All consonantal suffixes which follow a consonant which do not become geminate or which would change the sound of the suffix itself have an epenthetic schwa placed before it, e.g. top-ma>tomma, toc-ca>tocca, but tob-ca> tobica, not "tobga".

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Sangi adjectives decline similarly to nouns, but for less cases and no number. They have, however, a complex system of comparison and the ability to carry demonstrative and indefinite suffixes in place of the pronouns themselves. With adjectives not declining for cases such as possessive and the like, the total forms available to an adjective tally up to 155 different forms.

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Sangi derivation usually affects verbs morphologically. Nouns and adjectives can be used interchangeably with only a change in how much they are declined.

{{main|Sangi Pronouns}}

There are seven classes of pronoun in Sangi, each one declined as if it were a noun. These classes are personal, demonstrative, interrogative, temporal, spatial relative and indefinite.

The numbers can easily be seen to have derived from English as many of them have the same general sounds.

Unlike in English, the main sentence structure is VSO (verb-subject-object). The sentence is built around the principle of what is viewed as the most important feature first. This means that verbs always come first, nouns afterwards, adjectives come after nouns and adverbs come after verbs. Pronouns are rarely used in written form, but long winded verb constructions mean that in the spoken language they are used for all cases but the nominative. The word order, however, is not fixed and entirely up to the individual, VSO is simply the most common, giving more specific information about what happened as the sentence develops.

The number of intensifiers and pronouns means that the single English phrase “I love you” can be said many different ways in Sangi using a single word “Lawel”. If it is conjugated with the intensive suffix it can mean “adore” if this is then used with the desirative pronoun it can mean something even stronger. If used with the honorific pronoun it can mean “respect” and “love” at the same time. The combinations vary in meaning from person to person as verbs of emotion in any language never convey the actual feeling intended to be described by the speaker. This idea is representative of a large scale phenomenon in which suffix and pronoun choice can affect the overall meaning of a sentence, which occurs most often with verbs of emotion. Overall, this can make describing the exact feeling easier than it is in English.

{{main|Sangi Word Lists}}

Here are the words of the Swadesh list in English and Sangi as well as some other words which are generally used every day.

{{main|Sangi Accents and Dialects}}

There are a number of accents and dialects which differ from standard Sangi with varying degrees of difference, ranging from just sounds, to lexicon and even grammar.

Sangi was developed using my knowledge of phonetics, morphology and linguistic change. I started with a base vocabulary, i.e. English words of Germanic origin and applied a set of sound change rules to these. Next I developed a series of grammatical suffixes influences by Finnish and Estonian. I wanted to add a bit of a natural feel to the language so I developed a set of sound changes to create a degree of spoken ambiguity. For example, plurality was originally marked by the suffix -i or -t depending on the final sound of the word. This later became -[i]t and then the -t was dropped all together. I looked at languages like Welsh and Norse, dropped the -i and developed an i-mutation rule. I added other morpho-phonological rules to cause further changes of the stem based on context. So the language is almost entirely unnatural but the ambiguity in the spoken language gives it a kind of natural feel.

The conworld developed for Sangi is actually a conworld developed earlier which hit a dead end. I used it for a similar purpose, but the overall outcome is different. Originally the planet was inhabited by a non-human species created by mankind as a social experiment, and only 6 languages were used. In its new incarnation, humans were the inhabitants and the original linguistic diversity was much greater.

{{main|Sangi System}}

Geography is a very person by person subject. Serious geography is only studied by few people who usually learn the specifics of their local geography but in broad enough terms for them to apply it anywhere they go. For the majority, they learn simply local weather and geography, as well as its history. Generally speaking, geography is seen as simply knowing where places are. World maps, maps of continents and countries do exist but most people will get by between their home and the local area, following directions to find anywhere else, a nature which has derived from the community spirit, i.e. rather than use a map, ask the people and connect with them.

{{main|Sangi Kinship}}

Sangi culture in general is not unilineal, i.e. patrilineal or matrilineal, but instead but is instead bilinieal in hwich the lineage of an individual is based upon both parents. Kinship groups however more complex than this, involving notions of clans and and phratries.

{{main|Sangi Mythology}}