Posted by Frank Legros on 21:43 5/28/02
In reply to: Kanaran posted by Julao XXXIV Kanari on 16:16 5/20/02
When I discover a new language, I usually have a first "aesthetic" impression. I remember how, when I was 16, I discovered Esperanto. My first impression was strange: although it was intellectually attractive, Esperanto was phonetically dull, somehow brownish in colour... a communistic language. German, which I began learning at 13, was full of wonderfully diverse colours and shapes. Verdurian had all the appeal of my native French, but without its oddities: nasal vowels and bizarre consonant clusters. Just think that French "arbre" is pronounced "arhbrh"...
Kanaran, on the other hand, is tidy. Phonetics is neat, grammar is precise and regular, a pleasant mix of Latin and Esperanto. Kanaran seems to be remotely Indo-European (madera ke pader = father and mother), a language spoken in a place like India: the Kingdom of the Elephant. I wonder where most of the vocabulary comes from? I guess I understand why a tiger is a jonathano in Kanaran!
Wouldn't it be great, Julao, if we could safely derive new words from Proto-Indo-European roots? Madera and Pader indicate that in Kanaran PIE [t] becomes [d] in intervocalic position, syllabic [r] becomes [er], and long vowels are shortened. It would be easy, with more rules like these, to create whole dictionaries.
Emena alia suro, Julaol!
I have a similar reaction to Esperanto... all those k's and j's. A Bulgarian friend, however, told me that he prefers k's to c's, perhaps because to a Cyrillic-trained eye, c looks like it should always be soft.
Say, while you're on the line, how do you pronounce "Le Pen"? Does it rhyme with "Adrien" (nasalized è), or with "bon" (nasalized o)?