09.6.14.23:59: THE LANGUAGES OF HADANUS: THE OLD DWARANIR BASIS OF ANGLICIZED DWARANIR

I'm going to be away from 6.15 until 6.21, so this is my only post for this week.

Dwaranir names in the Hadanus literature have final consonant clusters and in one case even a vowel absent from modern Dwaranir: e.g. yuld instead of yl. These names are largely based on Old Dwaranir from two centuries ago which

- had no nasal or retroflex vowels; it was possible to have a nasal or an r after a vowel in OD

- had no syllabic liquids: e.g., yuld instead of yl and hyakal instead of hyakl

(The literature favors the New Dwaranir-based spelling hyakl, a rare exception to an otherwise OD-based spelling.)

- had final consonants including consonant clusters

An OD syllable can be created using this chart:

OD initial-medial sequences ty-, dy-, sy- are rewritten as ch-, j-, sh- which can never appear at the end of a syllable.

OD, like New Dwaranir, does not permit the following initial-medial sequences: ww-, wl-, wr-, wy-, ll-, lr-, rr-, rl-, yy-, yl-, yr-.

OD, like New Dwaranir, does not permit two identical vowels in a row: e.g., no aa.

OD has no diphthongs beginning with -i- or -u- other than -iu and -ui. -i- and -u- are rewritten as -y- and -w- before -a, -e, -o: tia > tya > cha 'home' (see the ty-rule above).

6.21.00:27: The use of OD as the basis of spelling Dwaranir English is parallel to the use of earlier Mandarin as the partial basis of Chinese Postal Map Romanization: e.g., CPMR Peking and Tientsin for later Beijing and Tianjin.

6.21.00:59: How to convert OD to Anglicized New Dwaranir:

1. Keep the initial (and medial, if any) intact.

2. Keep the vowel or diphthong intact unless it is followed by l. Delete any vowel or diphthong before l: yuld > yld. Regard this syllabic l as if it were a vowel.

3. If there is only one final consonant

- keep it if it is -m -n -ng (to indicate vowel nasalization in New Dwaranir)

- keep it if it is -r (to indicate vowel retroflexion in New Dwaranir)

- otherwise delete it unless it preceds a vowel-initial suffix:

Sellek (Sellec in the literature) > Slle (-el > -l by rule 2 above; two syllables Sl-le)

but Sellek-a > Slleka 'of Sellec'

yld > yl (l here is like a vowel, so -d is treated as if it were the only final consonant)

but yuld-a > ylda 'of yuld'

4. If there are two final consonants, delete the second consonant. Then subject the remaining consonant to the rules for a single final consonant.: e.g.,

Aireund > Aireun (keep final -n to signify nasalization of eu)

(Although Aireund is not a Dwaranir, he lived among them, and he would be called Aireun in ND by his adopted people.)

Anglicized New Dwaranir would be used for direct quotations of New Dwaranir speech: cf. how in Julius Caesar, the Latin phrase Et, tu, Brute? has the vocative form ending in -e even though the rest of the play has the nominative Brutus. If that phrase were replaced by English, it would be "And you, Brutus?" with the -us form. Similarly, in a New Dwaranir sentence, OD Aireund would be replaced by ND Aireun in isolation or followed by a consonant-initial suffix: e.g., "Aireunnir?" 'The Aireund?' (The OD equivalent might be "Aireundnir?")

Sample passage mixing Anglicized ND and OD:

"Yldanir chanir," said the Dwaranir captive.

"The what of the yuld?" asked the Superior interrogator.

"The cha - the home of the yuld," translated the Drone.

Anglicized OD is written without italics and needs no translation. Anglicized ND is in italics.

6.21.1:18: Why does ND lack final consonants?

Many languages (e.g., French, Mandarin) have lost final consonants (though French retains them in spelling) and my own English dialect drops many final consonants: e.g., I pronounce can in rapid speech as [kæ̃] with no -n (this would sound like ND kaen [kæ̃]) and Aireund as Aireun without -d.

Languages lose initial consonants much less frequently, though it happens: e.g., Irish athair 'father' once had an initial p-. But although some languages like ND have lost all their final consonants, no language has lost all its initial consonants. In other words, there are no languages in which all words begin with vowels.

I thought ND would be especially prone to losing final consonants because of the practice of tree-singing:

Words are sung in increasingly extended, slurred shouts

Suppose Aireund's name were tree-sung. It would sound like this:

Aaaiiirrreeeuuunnnd!

d is a stop and cannot be elongated like a vowel (a, i, e, u), liquid (r), or nasal (n).

The Dwaranir came to recognize this name (and other -nd words) without the d, so they stopped pronouncing it:

Aaaiiirrreeeuuunnn!

Eventually, even the final -n was lost, though it left a trace of nasality on the previous vowel: Aireun [aireũ].

Eeerrrøøø!

[ø] is normally written oe in ND but I have written it in IPA here to make it clear that Eeerrrøøø! has no diphthong [o] + [e].