Saturday 29 May 2010

The Karvokan and Naupilan Accent

The Karvokes and the Naupiles, who live in my conworld, are by definition luriones, because they speak Lurioneski. They do, however, speak with an accent. Because there is no constant communications between the different cities, the way words are written changes as well. (You might want to have read phonology before continuing.)

The Karvokan accent
The main feature of the karvokan accent is that they pronounce a lot of weak υ's as ц's. For instance:

υ > ц;
Нαυπιᴧα (Naupila; [næʋpila]) is pronounced [nɐvpila] (or [nɐfpila]).
ευтιι ('good'; [ɛʋtii]) is pronounced [ɛvtii].

Another feature is that a lot of silent ε's are dropped:

ε > ';
ᴧυβεр ('book') > ᴧυβр.

The Naupilan accent
As naupiles are merchants, they are very busy men and therefore have no time to pronounce 'all those long vowels' *. The following changes have occured:

ει > ι;
ειδειн > ιδιн ('to see').
ου > ο;
παтрο мου > παтрο мο ('my father').
ιι > ι;
ευтιι > ευтι ('good').
ιι > ι ('he goes').

Also, strong vowel versions (α:, υ:, ι: and ι.) are ignored when vowel assimilation is concerned. E.g.:

ἁοмα > ὡмα ('we have').

Furthermore, υ's are pronounced (but not written) as ι's.
Finally, the ι: is pronounced as the semi-vowel [j] to form more diphthongs:

Λυтια (Lutia; [lytia] or [lytija]) is pronounced [lɪtja].

*This is actually quite paradoxal, because you can imagine how hard it might be to understand someone who speakes with such an accent.

3 comments:

  1. This is great, I quite like it. A little about the Karvokan accent I was imagining. I wonder, is there any kind of Koiné? Or which of the lurioneski languages is used as a lingua franca? That would be very interesting. Kind of what happened with Greek.

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  2. Yes, the Lutian accent is considered the most proper. Two people might however have a conversation each in their on accent, understanding eachother good enough (most of the time).

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  3. Why's there no comment about Dorina? Is their accent the same as Lutian? I would like to know about the Dorinan language, as they are warlike they remind me of my dear Spartans, lol.

    What features do they have?

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