How Uncle Angel spends his Sundays
Or, Little to show for it.
Since MSN is out to lunch at the moment, I may as well post an entry here. Since it was rather cold today, accompanied by very light snow, I spent my time watching The League of Gentlemen and listening to sound files of examples of Piedmontese. I found this site (English version) just recently which has a detailed amateur description of the language. Because I found the rather eclectic Phonetical Symbology [sic!][1] to be annoying, I thought I'd see whether I could make head or tail of the symbols being used.
The vocalic inventory includes shwa /ə/ (U+0259), /y/ and /ø/, as well as the usual Romance distinction between high mid and low mid vowels. Vowels are lengthened under stress, but this doesn't appear to be genuinely phonemic. The /a/ of quàder "painting" sounds longer than its unstressed counterpart, a feature which is probably only noticeable because of the use of accents marking stressed syllables in certain instances. In other words, the use of the accent mark has been mistaken for a special quality of the vowel.
The status of diphthongs is a little questionable since words such as càod /kaud/ "warm" sound disyllabic. Possibly I'm being mislead by the presence of [+ATR] vowels in the diphthong. Causset "stocking" is a little odd in two others ways. One is that the digraph -au- sounds like /au/ instead of the expected /ay/; the other is that -ss- isn't geminate, which, with other examples, suggests that -VVCC- is simplified to -VV.C-. On the whole, the rounding of /y/ is less distinct to me.
The consonant inventory includes geminates, unlike Venetan or Occitan, although the examples don't include geminate /f/, /v/, /g/ or /l/. For various reasons, it'd seem that instances of geminate /v/ are unlikely. Geminates occur word-finally, but it sounds like they're followed by an epenthetic vowel, hence magg /madʤ[ə]/ (U+02a4; U+259) "May". n is pronounced as /ŋ/ between vowels (e.g. luna /lyŋa/ "moon"), and word-finally (e.g. povron /puvruŋ/ "pepper"). It also seems to affect n in composition, hence an-namorà /aŋnamura/ "in love". But note also zanzìva /zaŋziva/ "gum". In Piedmontese orthography, the velar nasal is usually written n-, but the practice doesn't seem to be applied consistently. Curiously, minca "all" sounds as if it's pronounced /minka/ rather than /miŋka/, but va' ncora /vaŋkura/ "goes again" has the velar nasal.
I also finished off Neverwinter Nights and have made a start on Shadows of Undrentide. I've learnt one thing from this. Don't play as a gnome because there's too much decent kit which the size of the character precludes you from using. I'm also regretting going into SoU with my character, because at the moment, all the monsters are pretty much CR 1. It's nice to be able to take something out first time with my +3 sword.
Notes.
1. The Italian version of the site has the title Simboli fonetici and the Piedmontese version Simboj fonétich, which is, all things being equal, exactly what the English version should have.
Since MSN is out to lunch at the moment, I may as well post an entry here. Since it was rather cold today, accompanied by very light snow, I spent my time watching The League of Gentlemen and listening to sound files of examples of Piedmontese. I found this site (English version) just recently which has a detailed amateur description of the language. Because I found the rather eclectic Phonetical Symbology [sic!][1] to be annoying, I thought I'd see whether I could make head or tail of the symbols being used.
The vocalic inventory includes shwa /ə/ (U+0259), /y/ and /ø/, as well as the usual Romance distinction between high mid and low mid vowels. Vowels are lengthened under stress, but this doesn't appear to be genuinely phonemic. The /a/ of quàder "painting" sounds longer than its unstressed counterpart, a feature which is probably only noticeable because of the use of accents marking stressed syllables in certain instances. In other words, the use of the accent mark has been mistaken for a special quality of the vowel.
The status of diphthongs is a little questionable since words such as càod /kaud/ "warm" sound disyllabic. Possibly I'm being mislead by the presence of [+ATR] vowels in the diphthong. Causset "stocking" is a little odd in two others ways. One is that the digraph -au- sounds like /au/ instead of the expected /ay/; the other is that -ss- isn't geminate, which, with other examples, suggests that -VVCC- is simplified to -VV.C-. On the whole, the rounding of /y/ is less distinct to me.
The consonant inventory includes geminates, unlike Venetan or Occitan, although the examples don't include geminate /f/, /v/, /g/ or /l/. For various reasons, it'd seem that instances of geminate /v/ are unlikely. Geminates occur word-finally, but it sounds like they're followed by an epenthetic vowel, hence magg /madʤ[ə]/ (U+02a4; U+259) "May". n is pronounced as /ŋ/ between vowels (e.g. luna /lyŋa/ "moon"), and word-finally (e.g. povron /puvruŋ/ "pepper"). It also seems to affect n in composition, hence an-namorà /aŋnamura/ "in love". But note also zanzìva /zaŋziva/ "gum". In Piedmontese orthography, the velar nasal is usually written n-, but the practice doesn't seem to be applied consistently. Curiously, minca "all" sounds as if it's pronounced /minka/ rather than /miŋka/, but va' ncora /vaŋkura/ "goes again" has the velar nasal.
I also finished off Neverwinter Nights and have made a start on Shadows of Undrentide. I've learnt one thing from this. Don't play as a gnome because there's too much decent kit which the size of the character precludes you from using. I'm also regretting going into SoU with my character, because at the moment, all the monsters are pretty much CR 1. It's nice to be able to take something out first time with my +3 sword.
Notes.
1. The Italian version of the site has the title Simboli fonetici and the Piedmontese version Simboj fonétich, which is, all things being equal, exactly what the English version should have.
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