more amiu - little rowboat

[pauraque_bk]

At lolaraincoat's request:



nello "little rowboat"

The written form is transparent: It's a boat with an oar on the water, and a small circle to represent the "little" inflection.

n as in no
e as in pet
l as in look -- it's geminated here, pronounced like a double consonant in Italian
o like the vowel in caught (in those dialects which distinguish caught from cot)

The whole word should be said in a low, even tone.

I took this opportunity to settle some things about the way the size inflections work, since they were a bit vague before. This is a good example, because it demonstrates one of the main features of Amíu inflection: Regular vowel mutation.

There are twelve vowels in Amíu, six tense and six lax (for the purposes of vowel mutation, anyway -- if you count the low-pitched vowels, there are twenty-four altogether).

Tense series:

back				front
high	ú		ý		í
		ó		é
low			á

Lax series:

back				front
high	u		y		i
		o		e
low			a

The "little" inflection does two things:

1) Adds a suffix (-final consonant + first vowel if the word ends in a consonant, or -j + first vowel if the word ends in a vowel). So in nol "rowboat", the suffix is -lo.

2) Moves the first vowel closer to the front of the mouth. Pitch and tenseness stay the same. The movement is one "notch" over, thuswise:



So in nol "rowboat", o becomes e, giving us nello "little rowboat".

Vowel shifts like this are common throughout Amíu inflection, moving forward, back, up, or down. The "big" inflection is just like the "little" one, except that it shifts the first vowel back instead of forward, giving us nullo "big rowboat".

The u in nullo is pronounced as in "put".

Next up, "linguist" for ellen_fremedon. Any questions, anything you'd like to see written, explained, or iconized, just let me know.

[Edited because I can't count.]

Comments

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

So if my name is a dimunitive of "Aodh" fire, it'd be "leylla"?:


And, just because I can, my name in Serela, or close as I can get with Classical Serela's phonetic and morphological constraints:

(<-)"Etênte Wilêle" or "Etênte Kethrynêse Wilêle" (->) if I'm feeling presumptous.



I was thinking about doing yours, but I'd need more information. Prefered name, for one, and father's name for a complete name (and/or significant other if applicable).

[pauraque]

So if my name is a dimunitive of "Aodh" fire, it'd be "leylla"?:

Yes, you're quite right. It's always neat to see someone else write in your script. :)

I was thinking about doing yours, but I'd need more information. Prefered name, for one, and father's name for a complete name (and/or significant other if applicable).

I like to be called Eo or Eodrakken. My father's name is Joe or Joseph (yes, I'm a 'junior').

I've always liked the way Sêrela looks. Would this be right for 'Eo' /i1jo3/?:

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

Would this be right for 'Eo' /i1jo3/?

Yeah, nice. Only thing is, the first vowel should be at more like 45° and the strokes closer together:

Since I only know anything about Classical Written Serela, not about any of the vernaculars, I tend to only write formal things in it. And formal, Classical names follow the nominal morphology, so here's what I came up with, I¹jalw⁴ Sho¹sê³tê³se²: