Ancestors of Tceqli — Loglan

Actually, to one extent or another, just about all languages that I know much about can be considered ancestral to Tceqli, especially other artificial languages. Its most direct ancestor is, of course Loglan [link], and Tceqli actually started off as my attempt to reform and "humanize" Loglan. The best way to learn about Loglan is to clich here for Loglan 3. Thought I don't think anything I did made it into the language, I did some work on Loglan twenty-odd years back. The most worthwhile thing I did was graphic work, like the cartoon below.) In trying to reform Loglan, I did away with the (I thought) unhelpful  way they had of creating vocabulary by piecing together letters (or phonemes) from the eight largest languages, thus:
madzo,
mad maz mao <3/3C dzo;  2/3E made;  2/3G mach en

That is, the word madzo, meaning "make" is made up of 3/3 of the Mandarin dzo, 2/3 of English made, and 2/3 of German mach(en). And that's actually not so difficult for English speakers, as it does suggest "make" from its form. But a word like tcali,
cal <2/3E wall;  2/3G wall;  3/5C chiang Meaning "wall," is pretty opaque to speakers of all three source languages.

And also, look back up at madzo, and the entry right after it shows the three "combining" forms, which are to be used in compound words. I think this amounts to memorizing three more words.

Tceqi doesn't do any of this. It just "finds" vocabulary in other languages that fit its word-shape rule, nCnN — one or more consonants followed by one or more non-consonants. And that word is the word itself and also the only "combining form."

For example, the Loglan is:

gudmao - to improve. From gudbi plus madzo. "make good".  Gudbi has the combining forms gud and gub, while madzo of course has mad, maz, and mao.

But the Tceqli is bonkaw, from bon = good and kaw= cause. these words are both words and combining forms.

And the alphabet, as it stands, is almost exactly the same as the Loglan alphabet, at least in the form it had a few years back.

Another point I should make here is that Loglan can be pretty rigid, with no grammatical ambiguity allowed. Virtually every other language, natural and artificial, does allow ambiguity. And Tceqli has, or will have when everybody'd diddling with it, two basic forms or "registers," the "terse" or "ambiguous" form, and the "unambiguous" form, which usually requires more words. For example,

To blu fawl pa kom to pan. The blue bird ate the bread. (terse)
To blu sa fawl pa kom to pan. (unambiguous)

The first one could be read as to blufawl...
which would mean "the bluebird..."  The "sa" keeps the two words from forming a compound word. But in spoken Tceqli you can usually disinguish the difference, and in written Tceqli, the space between does the job.

Someday, a Loglan expert will help me make unambiguous Tceqli, well, unambiguous.

Keeping the semivowels Y and W

                            A-ko              E-ko                   I-ko                      O-ko                       U-ko               

I'm now inclined to think that I should keep y and w as the semivowel equivalents of i and u. For one thing, it's often difficult to determine pronunciation when i and u are used for both. How do you pronounce this?:

uia

OO-yah or WEE-ah?

So if:

y=/j/
w=/w/
q=/N/
c=/S/
j=/Z/

that only leaves x to assign a value to. Should it be a modifier of other characters, as it has been in the past, or should it stand for schwa. I think I should keep it as a modifier, and find something else for schwa. Lojban of course uses y for schwa.

I do want letter name for all but the vowel be the letter plus schwa sound, as I believe is the case in Lojban.

Any thoughts on using an apostrophe for it?
********
Late-breaking news. I just remembered that Gua\spi  [link] uses # for schwa. If I did the same, I'd still have X as a modifier for other letters. Thoughts?

Tradeoffs

Getting the alphabet straight is frustrating. It's a matter of tradeoffs;

For now, I've decided not to use w and y (or j) for the semivowel versions of u and i, but just to use u and i, specifying that they become their semivowel equivalents when next to another vowel. That keeps two letters from going to waste. And I proposed keeping diphthongs from forming by putting a hyphen between the letters. But I could use the Loglan comma instead, as Steve Rice wrote:

If you want to break a diphthong into two separate sounds, put a comma without spaces around it between the vowels when writing them in text. The name 'Lois', for example, would be written Lo,is in Loglan (Without this comma the oi in Lois would be pronounced oy and the name would rhyme with 'Joyce'.).

So it would work the same way in Tceqli.


pai = PIE

pa,i = PAH-ee

kau = COW

ka,u = KAH-oo


I think I like that better than the hyphen.


So that keeps j from being used up that way, and permits it to represent /Z/.

And q can continue to represent /N/.

So with these "changes" (some are just reversions to earlier ideas of Tceqli or Loglan) we have:
from http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/5455985/The%20Alphabet%20and%20Sounds#view=edit

PRONUNCIATION OF TCEQLI

First, an orthography note. Tceqli can be written in all lower-case letters or all upper-case letters. When writing about Tceqli in English, I use conventional English style capitalization, hence "Tceqli" is capitalized. And you can just follow English usage in capitalization if you like. And I use capital letters to show stress on some occasions in what follows on this page.

The Tceqli language uses the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. 13 of them are called cuazim, or "leading letter" (C) in Tceqli:

B as in Boy /b/

C as in SHin /S/

D as in DuD /d/

F as in FluFF /f/

G as in Good /g/

H as in Hat /h/

J as in meaSure, French Jean-luc picard, Je /Z/

K as in KinK /k/

P as in PiP /p/

S as in So /s/

T as in ToT /t/

V as in Victory /v/

Z as in Zoo /z/

X is a special letter used only to form foreign sounds by making digraphs. For example, the English "th" sound in "thin" would be represented in Tceqli by "tx."

The other 12 are called falozim, or "following letters" (N) in Tceqli

six vaul, or "vowels" (V):

A as in fAther /a/

E as in bEt* /e/

I as in machIne /i/

O as in bOAt /o/

U as in bOOt /u/

Y as in bUt, AmericA  [schwa] /ə/

And two poifaivaul, "semivowels" (P):

U as in We, coW /w/

I as in You, boY /j/

(they become semivowels when next to other vowels. to prevent that, insert a comma between them.

fia = FYAH

fi,a = FEE-ah

And three truin, "nasals," (T)

M as in MiM /m/

N as in NooN /n/

Q as in siNG /N/

And two hlar, "laterals" 

L as in LuLL /l/

R as in RoaR (Midwestern American or Mandarin preferred, but any 'r' sound will do.) /r/

N.B: *E is a short sound, as in English bEt, rEd, lEg. Remember to keep it short at the end of a word like "bine" or "twale". Do not pronounce it as in English "hooray". That sound is a diphthong and is indicated by "ey." The sound is common in English, but is seldom found as the last phoneme of a word.  The word deybe is pronounced like English "day bed" without the "d."

Y is rarely written, and the sound is often just an allophone of /a/ in unstressed positions. It's also appended to many letters to give them their names:

"zbano" is spelled zy, by, a, ny, o.

A few of these are unconventional.  Q was chosen to represent the consonant in siNG because it had no other obvious use, and because the NG sound rarely has a symbol in any language. X is used this way in Esperanto, to make digraphs.

U and I make these diphthongs:

ai - as in frY

au - as in cow

ei - as in bAthe

oi - as in bOY

ia - as in YArd

ie- as in YEllow

io - as in YOre

iu - as in YOU

ua - as in WAter

ue - as in WEt

ui - as in WE

When a  comma is interposed, vawl are pronounced separately:

be,o - BE-o

cu,a - XU-a

Stress: If a Tceqli morpheme of more than one syllable ends with a vaul (AEIOU) or poyfayvawl (WY), the stress falls on the next-to-last vaul:

dilna - DILna

pamo - PAmo

zilau - ZIlau

somalay - soMAlay

If such a morpheme has more than three syllables, a secondary stress falls on the fourth-to-last syllable.

tuiamalu - tuyaMAlu

kauelomani - kaweloMAni

If it does not end with a vawl or poyfayvawl, it is stressed on the last vawl: 

diyan - diYAN

cawal - caWAL

femur - feMUR

felin - feLIN

And if such a morpheme has three or more syllables, a secondary stress falls on the third-from-last syllable:

piramun - piraMUN

starloremi - starloreMIN

Finally, any diphthongs that you find difficult to pronounce may be pronounced as two separate vowels, u for u, and i for i, provided that the morpheme is stressed as though the two vowels are a diphthong!

Ceilo - CEY-lo or CE-i-lo, NOT Ce-I-lo

Triphthongs are possible though rare:

iai as in YIkes!

uau as in WOW!

uei as in WAY

iei as in YAY

ioi as in YOIks!

Tceqli morphemes must begin with one or more tcuazim.  But this is an actual language, so there are times when borrowed names do not.  In this case, for the most part, we simply put an 'h' at the beginning if the name begins with a vowel or semivowel:

English > heqlizo      

Al> halzo

Obama > hobamazo

Names beginning with with lmnqr add z:

Lima > zlimazo

Russia >zrusizo

Norman > znormanzo

The names of letters in Tceqli:

A a

E e

I i

O o

U u

Y y

L hly

M hmy

N hny

Q hqy

R hry 

B by

C cy

D dy

and so forth

Note that the falozim group of letters are in violation of the rule that morphemes must begin with a cuazim. Consequently, they must be preceded by a pause or glottal stop.

All the cwazim, on the other hand, have names in the form of the letter itself followed by et, so no pause is required, though it's usually there anyway.

They are also used to spell words, of course, but they are also used as pronouns, or anaphora, to refer back to previously used words, in this way.

Djanzo pa gi kom pan. D pa falfa P. (Prounounced dy pa falfa pə.)

John was eating bread. He dropped it.

They replace da for clarity. To avoid confusion, they are always written upper-case followed by a space, of course.

They are also used for acronyms:

To hanho ze stan hu Hamerihaimzo.  HSH  Pronounced hə-sə-hə

The United States of America. (USA)

Janzo Fitsjeraldzo Kenedizo. JFK  Pronounced jet-fet-ket

And for foreign abbreviations, of course the falozim have to be used, too.

USA pronounced u-sy-a

And to name the chemical elements, both the tcuazim and falozim forms have to be used, of course:

Fe pronounced fy-e, Ag pronounced a-gy, etc.

In mathematical expression, lower-case letter symbols are pronounced the same way:

a+b=c  a plu by kwal cy

Finally, for situations where extreme clarity is called for, the military, or NATO, "phonetic" alphabet is used as is.

ICAO Phonetic Alphabet

Letter	Code Word	Pronunciation
A	Alfa	AL fah
B	Bravo	BRAH voh
C	Charlie	CHAR lee
D	Delta	DEL tah
E	Echo	EKK oh
F	Foxtrot	FOKS trot
G	Golf	Golf
H	Hotel	HO tell
I	India	IN dee ah
J	Juliet	JEW lee ett
K	Kilo	KEY loh
L	Lima	LEE mah
M	Mike	Mike
N	November	NOH vem ber
O	Oscar	OSS car
P	Papa	PAH pah
Q	Quebec	keh BECK
R	Romeo	ROW me oh
S	Sierra	see AIR ah
T	Tango	TANG go
U	Uniform	YOU nee form
V	Victor	VIK ter
W	Whiskey	WISS key
X	X-ray	EKS ray
Y	Yankee	YANG kee
Z	Zulu	ZOO loo

Now — whatever shall we do with "w"?

Re-Loglanizing the Alphabet

Going back to my original inspiration, how about I use the Loglan alphabet, slightly modified:

b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, z all as in English.

c= /S/ as in SHe
therefore tc = /tS/ as in CHeese
g always as in Goat
j = /Z/ as in meaSure
therfore
dj = /dZ/ as in John
q = /N/ as in baNG

So far that's the way I had it in Tjeqli version one. Now for some differences.

Like Loglan, I and U become semivowels when next to other vowels, unless set off with a hyphen:

pia = PYAH, pi-a = PEE-ah
taulo = TOW-loh, ta-ulo = ta-OO-loh

Anybody have a better idea than using the hyphen this way? I was going to use an apostrophe, but I want to reserve that to indicate stress when necessary.

That leaves x, y, and w. X can be used as I said before as a letter modifier as in
tx= /T/. w can be schwa. What can y do?
------------
Input has convinced me that y should = schwa, which leaves w as a free letter.

Dubya

No, not that Dubya. I just had an epiphany, or something. Let's change that rule I mentioned in the last post, and say that both i and u become semivowels when next to a vowel. And if you don't want them to, use a hyphen to stop it from happening:

bua - BWAH
bu-a - BOO-ah

Skia - SKYAH
Ski-a SKEE-ah

And that liberates both y and w for other uses. So let's use w for schwa. And j can indicate the palatalization of the consonant it follows:

sj = /S/ Sji selz si sjelz bai dxw sisjor.
tj = /tS/  (so the language would be Tjeqli.)
zj = /Z/
dj = /dZ/

I know this is an alarming revision, but please don't react like Sensei does in the illustration.

I'm going to go with the revisions in this and the last post unless somebody talks me out of it.

By George She's Got It, She's Really Got It!

A correspondent writes:
Rex, is there a compact list for pronounciation, first row the letter, second row the IPA character(s)? E.g. as at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php...

And he's right, I need to make one, for a number of reasons. But before I do, I have a question. There's the IPA, where you spell the "ch" sound that Tceqli begins with as tʃ. IPA has a bunch of characters like that stretched-out "s" that aren't readily available on your keyboard. I've seen that same sound spelled /tS/ between two slashes like that. I assume this is a system designed for people who can't, for whatever reason, make the offbeat symbols like ʃ.  Anybody know? And know what the system's called, and where I can find a link to it?

Another question. How does this sound to everybody?:

You can symbolize just about any sound you want with Tceqli's 26 letters — 25 letters that have one phoneme each associated with them, and then the X, which is used to modify the other letters, mainly for foreign sounds. 

tx = th as in THin

hx = ch as in BaCH

ux = ü as in Über

You also have the option of replacing letter-followed-by-x with any version of that letter with a diacritic of any kind:

tx > t

hx > ħ

ux > ü (of course)

But that's sophisticated stuff for the future.

And then we have schwa, which won't be a basic Tceqli sound, but which i figure will be in the names of most Tceqli lettersa; ah, buh, shuh, duh, etc.,, and of course in foreign words and names.

The same correspondent writes:

In the Unified Latin Alphabet 2016 (ULA 2016) schwa is <y>. In IPA /y/ is a vowel and using <y> as vowel, allows easy pronounciation of international words like Yttrium.

Letter <y> = IPA /j/ would then be <j> = /j/, i.e. less deviation from IPA. Beside in IPA this is used in several Germanic and Slavic languages languages.

Then Tceqli would need something for /ʒ/. ULA 2016 uses <q>.

Then Tceqli needs something for /ŋ/. Maybe use the modifier here, i.e. Tcenxli.

I really don't want to make all those changes, but y for schwa is tempting. But if y is used for that, it can't be used as the semivowel it represents in current Tceqli. For that I'd have to use j (and then represent /Z/ with a ʒ and /dZ/ with dʒ. Or just go to Russian and use ж. Or, I could replace semivowel y with a simple i, and change the rule so that i next to another vowel behaves as a semivowel.

The trouble with this last is that you can't have a word like dia pronounced DEE-ah. It would be DYAH. One way around that would be to have the i-becomes-semivowel rule, but also have a way to short-circuit it by saying that a hyphen separates vowels and causes them to be pronounced separately. So dia would be DYAH and di-a would be DEE-ah.

Do give me your input on all of this.

That = Ke or maybe Cto

I originally borrowed ke from Esperanto and several other languages to introduce a noun clause. In Loglan, the corresponding "that" is simply le (the) followed by po, which makes the le refer to the entire noun clause. So I'm thinking to follow the Loglan example to some extent, and have ke replaced by a the-word.


An ideal candidate would be the Russian что, which would come into Tceqli as cto, pronounced like the Russian. It has the advantage of looking like it was deliberately derived from to. So

Go djan, ke zi pa kom to pan.
I know, that you past eat the bread.
I know you ate the bread.
becomes
Go djan, cto zi pa kom to pan.
I know, that you past eat the bread.
I know you ate the bread.

What do you all think?

Revision

Latest revision: Do is now only the present tense particle, for it to mean 'when,' or 'at the time of,' it must be followed by 'sa.' Analogously, the same goes for pa and fu, the past and future particles, that now mean before and after when followed by 'sa.' Does anybody see any problems with this change? I could also use ke in place of sa.

More Alphabet Blather

I'm definitely eliminating c= /tS/  No way it isn't awkward.  I can use either x or c for /S/. If I use c, as do Loglan and Lojban, I'll  have x for use in modifying other letters to make foreign sounds. tx could be /T/ for example. The 26 letters just aren't enough to have special characters for both /dZ/ and /tS/.  Depending on which way I go, the language will be either Txeqli or Tceqli.  Your input is appreciated.

And, don't read anything much into the illustrations I use here. I pick them more or less at random for amusement purposes.

Asymmetry in the Alphabet

Ceqli has an alphabetical assymetry:

x = /S/
and
c=/tS/
but
j= /Z/
and
dj= /dZ/

Awkward. I want to eliminate c, reserving it for something else, and spell
/tS/ as tx, to match dj.

If I don't hear any good reasons not, I'll revise the material to reflect this soon. Don't let this shock you. Comment here, or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/The-Ceqli-Language-249301371750083/

The Name Problem

I think I just had a name epiphany. Names are a special POS in Ceqli, behaving like pronouns, so it's a good idea for them to have their own phonemic shape. For some time now, the rule has been that you can convert a morpheme to a name with the suffix -zo.

Jan - know, to know
Janzo - John

And to make names more compact, I decided to allow the sort-of suffix -t to do the same thing:

Janzo = Jant

Bad idea.  For one thing, it messes the phonetics up, requiring a big pause after the -t so as not to blend with any following sounds. For another, it doesn't fit well after q or m, and has to be come -et in such situations, making everything that much more complicated.

Simplifed:

The -zo ending works just fine, and can also accommodate long names with the be- reversal particle trick, thus.

Da bekyam bezo Franklin Delano Rozevelt zo.

Let's say that -zo, in most cases, can be replaced with -z.

Jan - to know
Janzo - John
Janz - John

All that is needed now is a rule that in the morpheme shape nCnF (one or more leading phonemes followed by one or more following phonemes), Z cannot be followed by another C. That means one of my favorite words, zban, has to be dropped. There will be no zb, zd, or zg combos.  That means when you come to a -z, and the next sound is not a following phoneme, you have the end of a word with -z, and that word is a name.

This also has the upside of resembling the Loglan use of -s in the same way, and also the English tendency to make nicknames from sort of a pseudo-plural, like "pickles" or "freckles." I figure that choosing between Janzo and Janz will be a matter of usage.

To replace zban, I propose kel, from Gaelic.  Kel = spouse, keli = wife, kelo = husband.

Elements

I'm trying to decide how to handle the elements of the periodic table. Should they have a characteristic ending? It would be systematic to do it that way, but there are elements, like gold, that would be sort of distorted that way.  How about selecting a word that means "element," like "jen" (from the English ending in oxygen, etc., and then making compounds? As things stand, kin, from Japanese, means "gold". So maybe kinjen would mean "gold as an element." But many elements, if they're derived from other Ceqli words would have to be compounds. I want to preserve as far as possible the similarity of the symbols to the words, so I figure "helium" would be helijen, rather than sunjen, and as yet heli has no meaning in Ceqli. And I think that's okay.  And in Ceqli, "California" is kalifornet (names have to end in -t) but it would drop the -t to make the element. And since it's not really all that useful to have the element name resemble the place name, I'm inclined to want to make it resemble its symbol, Cf, instead, and call it californjen. 

So unless I'm talked out of it, I'm going to go with making the element names first of all suggest the symbols, unless the symbols don't begin with a cwazim, and in those cases I'll either put an h- in front, as in heynsteynjen, or just use a form, like kinjen, borrowed directly from one language or another. I was going to follow the pattern of German, and call hydrogen panijen,  but I think it's more important to follow the symbol, so it will be hidrojen.

Suggestions welcome.

Ceqli Through Pictures

Ceqli through pictures is revised:
Click HERE.
Comments, criticisms, suggestions, etc. welcomed.

Lesson 10 - Jin, Jini, jino, pe, ba, xi, jo

Lesson 10 is up HERE. It clarifies some grammar, and differences between Ceqli and Loglan.

Names Reworked

I believe I have the name problem solved. All names to end in -t. Plus a logical way to show what they are names of without overcomplicating things. Take a look HERE.
Comments and suggestions welcome.

Names

A quick thought about names.  Currently, Ceqli names have the form of a Ceqli morpheme or compound, plus the suffix -zo. This gives clarity, but it makes all names one extra syllable long. Now, the Loglan rule was that all names end in a consonant followed by a pause, and that kept names short. I'm beginning to wonder about that possibility. As of now, before the -zo, all Ceqli names have a falozim —a vowel, semivowel, nasal, or R or L. How about this rule:

All Ceqli names end in -t plus a pause, except when the preceding letter is q, in which case they end with -k, or when it's m, in which case the ending is -p.

We'd have names like:

Tomp Jefersont
Heybrahamp Hlinkont
Jant
Samp
Bilt
Salit
Jerit
Biqk

Or I could make it always -t, and when the preceding letter is q or m, make it -at.  Those above would be
Tomat
Heybrahamat
Samat
Biqat

An advantage to this system, either with t, k, p, or with t, -at, would be that a pause afterwards wouldn't be so crucial, as it's natural for an English speaker, at least, to make a clear disjuncture.  I mean

Jant sa
doesn't sound much like
Jan tsa
at all because the latter is a pretty clear affricate, and the former has little tendency to become one.

All that would work fine with people's names, but it gets trickier with, say, names of things.  Say:

Japant - Japan

But what about Japanese language, Japanese person, etc? Is it ambiguous or problematical to say:

Da Japantjin.  He is Japanese.
Da Japantbol. It is Japanese language.
or
Da Japanthaym. It is Japan.
or
Da Japant sa komxo. It is Japan's (Japanese) food.

With those three endings it isn't, because of course a word can't begin or end with tj, tb, or th, so the morphology still self-segregates. And the sa seems to work okay when I pronounce it.  That is, I clearly distinguish

Japant sa
Japan tsa

At this point, I'm inclined to go with -t, -p, -k.

For foreign names that remain in foreign form, like mine, Rex May, which doesn't fit Ceqli phonology at all, I can use the "article" ta, and to avoid ambiguity, close it with beta:

Go bekyam ta Rex May beta. My name is Rex May. I could also Ceqli-fy it thus:

Sreksat Smeyt

or flat-out translate it, as it means "King fifth-month," as:

Kiqot Fayzemxart

Or, taking "may" as the verb meaning having permission, which is "kuna" from Swedish:

Kiqot Kunat

More Revision

The Wiki

is up to date, and so are both glossaries there. Please point out any errors to rmay@mac.com