Re: nu alltr e gw alltr?

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

On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, John Cowan wrote:

> Well, arguing the general point rather than the specific, the Romance
> languages are full of borrowings from (written) Latin.  Admitted, most
> of these are in open lexical classes, but Italian has borrowed "meco",
> "teco", "seco" directly from Latin, though they have a literary/poetic
> flavor.  The "cum mecum" forms that lead to "conmigo" etc. in Spanish
> were lost in Italian in favor of simple "con me" [kOmme], "con te", etc.
>
Interesting since Brithenig preserves "mecum" as the more regularly used
forms, at least in my idiolect!

Theoretically cum should cause nasal mutation but it's one of the two
mutations that I don't enforce because they were introduced after I had
completed the grammar.  I think I took a aesthetic dislike to such forms
as "cu(m) nhew..." with thine...  Due to Brithenig's heavy use of articles
nouns are not commonly affected by mutation caused by prepositions, but
more often pronouns are.  Time to introduce that rule I think.

The other mutation that slipped quietly away is that the conjunction mai
should cause spirant mutation, yes it's our old friend -s > h- again!

Correctly the infinitive of a verb should also be spirant because, with
the exception of after auxiliaries, it is preceded by the elided
preposition (a), I don't enforce it because most Brithenig composers
don't notice it - language change.

- andrew.

Andrew Smith, Intheologus 			hobbit@earthlight.co.nz
Life is short, so am I!

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