Re: Mormonides

[Andrew Smith <hobbit@mail.earthlight.co.nz>]

On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, Padraic Brown wrote:

> > How could we 5 learn Brithenig together?   I'm certainly up for it!
> > 
> > Thoughts, gentlemen?
> 
> 100% agreement with the "conversational ability" bit.
>
It's always worth trying.  Do we have enough vocab in the homepage
lexicon?  At a pinch we can mark a word as provisional until we discover
its correct form.
 
> I do like the idea of TY books, and indeed have several.  I think a good
> first step would be the preparation of a decent quality Grammar and some
> sort of dictionary.  By "Grammar" I mean a book that does the traditional
> thing: history of the tongue, sound system, orthography, morphology and
> syntax; just like Smyth's Greek or G & A's Latin Grammars or Wright's
> Germanic Grammars.  This will provide the necessary foundation upon which
> to build the TYB; and would serve as the definitive source therefor.  I
> firmly believe that such a foundation is vital as; it will codify all the
> linguistic and philologic bits that are currenly breeding in our
> notebooks.  It will also become the ultimate authority for figuring future
> bits out and a general reference. 
>
We could have fun divising a tongue-in-cheek, but internally accurate,
history of the tongue by the details we know of Welsh and Romance history.
Much of the rest is worked out on the homepage, it waits the imaginative
effort required to create dialogues and exercises.  I haven't attempted
that.  I believe that Padraic may have made some starts on doing a
grammar.  It would be interesting to see what he has done.

Note to Ray: I don't read Auxlang.  I consider Brithenig a Constructed
National Language (ConNatLang), not an Auxiliary Language.  Rumours that
leak out of that list make it sound like a rather volatile list.

Another letter has turned up in my inbox from a spaniard praising the
Brithenig Homepage.  He pointed out that across Romania there is a group
of common *-er verbs that have -i- for their root vowel, ie, diger -
digif.  I shall have to look into correcting this. 

- andrew.

Andrew Smith                                  <hobbit@earthlight.co.nz>
Life is short, so am I...