Talk:単亜語
SVO and postpositions
SVO languages predominantly use prepositions. Indeed, there are notable exceptions that employ postpositions. Finnish is a prime example of an SVO language with postpositions, despite its Proto-Uralic roots suggesting a more verb-final structure. In West Africa, several Niger-Congo languages, such as those spoken in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, maintain SVO word order while using postpositions. And Guarani, an indigenous language of South America. However, I do not know any of those languages and cannot speak for them.
Using SVO with postpositions will cause excessive 之’s. The structure ‘推墙的人’ is frequent in Mandarin, where there are no postpositions and ‘的’ undergoes controversial analyses. But it is not elegant to copy the structure in Dan’a’yo as something like ‘毀滅 垣之 人’. ‘人 其 毀滅 垣’ or ‘垣 毀滅之 人’ is much better.
物灵 (talk) 02:46, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
- It's a good suggestion, but Dan'a'yo is aiming for intelligibility across CJKV. Postpositions are not common in Mandarin, but they are everywhere else. --Aquatiki (talk) 16:09, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
My mistake. I have thought there are sentences using 之 like ‘毀滅 垣之 人’ in the sample, but there are not. But should it be ‘毀滅 垣 事者’ or something else? 物灵 (talk) 07:33, 17 June 2025 (UTC)
Differences between ㅂ/ㅍ ㄷ/ㅌ ㅈ/ㅊ ㄱ/ㅋ
An old question, I know. The older Tonuao tried to remove the distinction, which supposedly proved inconvenient. I wonder how they are distinguished now. I have to summarise from existing examples,
- 冬 통, 頭 톳, 発 팓 (常用字/1): why 통 and 팓?
- 鳥 촛 (大学): seemingly omitted from modification, given 天 턴 (should be 댯 I guess — or did 촛 continue Mandarin/Xiang taboo?)
- 題 테, 反 폰 (出身論)
- 飛 피 (周南)
- 鳳 풍 (鹿鳴)
- 帝 테 (単亜語/書経/虞書/尭典)
Most 全濁 initials seem to go into ㅂ/ㄷ/ㅈ, 全清 and 次清 as expected. However I cannot find good explanations for the characters exemplified above.
物灵 (talk) 05:04, 11 November 2025 (UTC)
I guess 鳥 촛 might go after Japanese ちょう non-parallel to 天 てん, but in Dan’a’yo this seems to be expected parallel. 物灵 (talk) 02:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
A reference on the role of sino-xenic morphemes in Japanese/Korean
There is nothing ‘high-’ or ‘low-brow’ for phonetic loans, as is for language itself, nor should those concepts be used in research. However we should recognise that in Japanese, sino-xenic loanwords are not only more ‘internalised’ but can achieve the kind of internalisation not viable for European loanwords. The Chinese–Japanese dictionary, as an example, explains dǎpò as dahasuru. uchiyaru, while sino-xenic dahasuru is explained by Kōjien as uchiyaru. There are many more examples.
Phonetically seen, daha or dǎpò is irrevelant to utsu and yaburu. But why did the lexicographers explain like this? Didn’t this reflect some subconsciousness in them? [The subconsciousness might be that,] da and utsu is somewhat related, so do ha and yaburu [via denoted characters].
音译词本身和语言一样没有高下之分，“高贵”或者“低贱”的概念不该用于研究。但是我们依然应该承认，汉源音译词不仅在日本语体系里更“内化”，而且它本身可借助汉字达到欧源音译词达不到的内化程度。比如我们查词典，汉语“打破”一词中日大辞典解释为“打破する．打ち破る．”，而“打破する”这个汉语借词，广辞苑解释为“打ち破る”。这样的例子还有很多很多。
如果我们只看语音形式，[dähä]或者[täpʰo̞]和[ɯᵝtsɯ]、[jäb ɯᵝɾ ɯᵝ]当然没有半点关系。但是编篡词典的人为什么要这么解释呢？难道这不反映了他们心里的某些潜意识吗？[dä]这个语素和[ɯᵝtsɯ]是联系在一起的，[hä]这个语素和[jäbɯᵝɾɯᵝ]是联系在一起的。
For the development of this language, it is crucial to understand the role of sino-xenic morphemes in Japanese/Korean, since they are not native. I believe the post (though written as a response to an intentionally snarky criticism, and in Chinese), particularly the passages quoted above, is a good start. The fact that da is somewhat related to uchi or yôpsô to hagaki is a groundstone for this language. This also means that how characters/words are perceived in modern languages is more important than how they are used in classical texts.