Talk:Woltu Falla

Cool stuff so far!

Incidentally, I sketched a bit of a Fáralo descendant for the Čisse area in the east about a year ago, with even more Doroh influence than Woltu Farla. It was actually quite similar to your project; apart from a different vowel shift in the beginning, my SCs were mostly going into the same direction as yours, and the morphology also became quite accretive, slightly more so than what you have shown so far. Maybe I should revisit this project; the main issue would be figuring out how to resolve the fact that I created both a phonemic dental-retroflex-palatal distinction and phonemic front rounded vowels, which didn't seem to go together well. Maybe something like a word-level front/back harmony would work, affecting not just vowels but consonants as well... Cedh 16:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Cedh! I set out working from the information on Namɨdu (the dialect groupings, some shared sound changes) and Radius' ideas for Buruya Nzaysa (the SOAuxV word order) as well as what we know of Doroh. Oh, I also knew that the language had retained long vowels, from the name Hajū ;)

It's not wildly different from Faralo, as you see; the idea was for something a little like Italian, with heavy assimilation and gratuitous use of articles. It would be cool to see a more innovative descendant like your one for Čisse - vowel and consonant harmony would certainly be interesting... Thedukeofnuke 17:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"Vowel and consonant harmony" would most likely mean something like this: /t c/ appear only in words with front harmony, /ṭ k/ appear only in words with back harmony, while in words with only neutral vowels both sets may appear, but not a mixture of both. Which is in fact little more than conditioned allophony. But maybe there's a way to keep the distinction phonemic on the segmental level... Cedh 17:42, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Good work! I had been itching to see another Fáralo descendant. My original intention was for Hajū to be derived from Hagíbəl, which I'm not getting from these sound changes - but it was just sort of a placeholder name anyway. So, we could get rid of that name, or simply derive it from something else... --Dunomapuka 00:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see. Hagíbəl ends up as the rather unexciting Hagibal if we use the , and as it happens the sequence jū doesn't appear in the wordlist - the closest is jömū "hunt". Some (perhaps rather contrived) alternatives, derived from Fáralo compounds - I like the first two in particular:

• Šesülaš "crowning-land"
• Woldulaš "inheritance-land" or "rights-land"
• Nadlaš "lords-land"
• Bōkkalaš "commander-land"

Thedukeofnuke 17:03, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, a while ago I was thinking about what kind of names Huyfárah's regions/provinces might have had, and I came up with Lu-Kənat ('the barons') and Lu-Haran ('the Faraghin') as possible names for the "home counties" of Huyfárah. It looks like those would become Luŋkat and Luran with your sound changes.

(Maybe we should check with zompist before assigning Fáralo names like that... on the other hand, by your period the region could well have a new name.)

Woldulaš looks like a pun on the river name... I kind of like that. (Maybe just Woldu-- or V-Woldu or Lu-Gwoldu, if I'm forming those correctly-- could work as well.)

Corumayas 01:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I like. The names sound good, and it's high time Huyfárah had provinces to match those of Athalē - although I agree that we should check with Zompist before writing more about the classical period.

FWIW the Woltu Farla reflexes of those names would be Lunkat ['luŋkat] and either Luaran [lu'aran] or Varan ['varan] depending on how liberal you are with the order of sound changes. The definite forms of Woldu are V-Oldu ['vɔldu] and Lu-Gwoldu [lu'gwɔldu] "the inheritance, the inheritances" - almost what you have, but maybe I should clear up the morphology section ;P

Thedukeofnuke 03:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)