protocols

2016-07-01
2016-07-08
2017-02-05
2017-05-04
2017-07-27
2017-10-29

2016-07-01

discussion about better organziation of the development
idea to use GoogleDocs or Etherpads as some kind of protocol to summarize the thoughts, findings and decisions
the protocols should be copied to the Wiki regularly

2016-07-08

idea to create a list with habitual expressions
discussion about /x/ … again :)
- examples
  - [pg] nahts
    - [de] Nacht (/x/)
    - [en] night (|:|)
    - [nb] natt
  - [pg] mahtiz
    - [de] Macht (/x/)
    - [en] might (|:|)
    - [nb] makt
  - [pg] hlahjaną
    - [de] lachen (/x/)
    - [en] laugh (/f/)
    - [nb] le
  - [pg] þauh
    - [de] doch (/x/)
    - [en] though (|:|)
    - [nb] dog (< Middle “Low German” doch, but see Nynorsk)
    - [nn] do
  - [pg] fehtaną
    - [de] fechten (/ç/)
    - [en] fight (|:|)
    - [nb] fekte
  - [pg] rehtaz
    - [de] recht (/ç/)
    - [en] right (|:|)
    - [nb] rett
  - [pg] sehwaną (not for sure that this was spoken with [x])
    - [de] sehen
    - [en] see
    - [nb] se
  - [pg] skehaną
    - [de] geschehen, schicken
    - [en] –
    - [nb] skje
  - [pg] leuhtą
    - [de] Licht (/ç/)
    - [en] light (|:|)
    - [nb] (no descendent)
  - [pg] sihtiz
    - [de] Sicht (/ç/)
    - [en] sight (|:|)
    - [nb] sikt
  - [pg] slihtaz
    - [de] schlecht (/ç/)
    - [en] slight (|:|)
    - [nb] slett
  - [pg] hauhaz
    - [de] hoch (/χ/)
    - [en] high (|:|)
    - [nb] høy (–)
  - [pg] rūhwaz
    - [de] rau(h) (–)
    - [en] rough (/f/)
    - [nb] (no descendent)
  - properties
  - neutral
    - present in Proto-Germanic
  - pros
    - sometimes it is very hard to find a proper replacement
    - „it's vital to distinguish a lot of words and it's beneficial for ppl who want to look at English, German and Scots at least“ -* RayZa
    1. It'll sound cooler and more Germanic :P
      - very subjective (and certainly not to those Germanic speakers who don't have it in their mother tongue, e.g. Norwegians, Swedes, …)
  - cons
    - not all Germanic languages have a sound like that
    - inconsistencies
      - German: [ç] is an allophone and the pronunciation of “ch” depends on the vowel before (not in all varieties though)
      - English: the pronunciation in the descendent words varies and is very different from [x]: |ː|, [f], …
    - written representation not easy
    - maybe hard to produce and cause ambiguity if parties pronounce or perceive /x/ wrongly.
    - the amount of affected words is relatively small and therefore hardly justifies the introduction of the sound
  - options
  - exclusion
    - trying to replace all concerning occurences
      - would avoid several problems
      - some words could get a strange look and/or collide with others
  - inclusion
    - representing it with an unused letter, e.g. “c”, “x” or “q”
      - would keep the good orthography/phonology-mapping
      - since these letters often have no canonic/regular pronunciation in the Germanic languages, the chance is, that people stop reading when encountering one of these letters and find out what it is instead of just listening to “the little kobold/goblin in the head”, who claims to know what it is :)
        
        while possibly not considered “part of the language” there are rules for those letters at least in German anyway as they are considered Latinicisms c (not before e or i) = /k/, c (before e or i) = /ts/, x = /ks, q (especially before u) = /k/
      - is unconventional
      - people may pronounce it wrongly by 'intuition'
      - people might be repulsed by the “un-Germanicness” of it and deem FS not Germanic enough for what it strives to be
    - representing it with “h”
      - breaks the mapping
      - creates ambiguities
        
        German speakers as well as English speakers would see it after a vowel as a modifier of the vowel rather than as a consonant
    - representing it with a digraph like “gh”, “ch”, “kh” or “hh”
      - “gh”, “ch”, “kh”
        
        these digraphs are used by modern Germanic languages (not only Germanic) and are thus more understandable than a priori solutions like “hh” or “x”
        
        for those digraphs () ppl might automagically fall back to /g/ and /k/ if they don't know it's supposed to be pronounced /x/ or if they can't produce the sound naturally
        
        English speakers might realize “gh” as abstract vowel lengthening (|:|), resulting in modern “long vowels” (like /aɪ/ or /oʊ/: sight, though) or as [f]
        
        Non-Scottish English speakers might pronounce “ch” /tʃ/
        
        Some instances of “ch” in Scots are /tʃ/ rather than /x/: brainch (not sure if any of these are of Germanic origin, though -* Espreon)
        
        partially holds for “c” too
      - “hh”
        
        causes ambiguity and would be problematic in non-hyphenated compounds and therefore more complicated (not a whole lot)
        
        isn't a common way to transcribe /x/ even if it might have been used formerly
  - further thoughts
  - „i guess a good step now would be to make experiments; producing small texts while [x] is included; then we can compare the texts, how they look like with the different writings for [x], and assess if [x] is necessary at all“ -* fenris
    - proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goths#Historical_summary
      - „De romanisk skechrid-skrivar Jordanes giv en viktig kveldung fur vetrid um de Gotisk maner ine fra sin buk “Getica”, vilk ar en halv-utdenkt fratelung, skrivt po de sekst hundredjar. Jordanes beskriv de vanderrid av de Gotisk fra süd-“Scandza” (Skandinavia) to “Gothiscandza” — man tru, at dis ar de ned arend “Vistula”-landsdel ine fra de disdagig Pomerania — and fra dar to de küst av de svart sö. Utgravunger fra Pomeranisk “Wielbark”-folk and de “Chernyakhov”-folk, nord-öst fra de ned arend Danuv, vis, at solk en vanderrid skechde santhedig. […]“
discussion about personal pronouns and their derived forms

2017-02-05

discussion about the name of the language
- “Folksprak” might sound strange to some
- other ideas
  - Folkersbrüg or Folksbrüg (~ bridge between people)
  - Brügsprak (~ bridge language)
  - Mansprak (~ human language)

2017-05-04

discussion about /x/…yet again,possible solutions:
- turn it into /k/ or /g/
- delete and lengthen the preceding vowel
- delete it and do nothing

Problems with solution 2
- We have not yet implemented vowel lengths, possible ways to mark long vowels:
  - H after vowels (e.g. de <sehne>)
  - marking with diacritics (Icelandic with acute accent)
  - doubling of vowel letter (Dutch)

2017-07-27

idea of a regular appointment in the IRC channel to discuss stuff
- proposal: every wednesday 19:00UTC

2017-10-29

discussion about strong verbs
- strong verbs seem to be use throughout the Germanic languages even if not very consistently
- having them for the past tenses makes the language somewhat more complex, thus using the regular form instead should probably be allowed
- strong verbs seem to form the base of certain nominalizations and adjectivizations; resorting to not using those (similar) forms could result in comprehension problems and alienation (EN “to sing; sang; sung” → “song”; DE “singen; sang; gesungen” → “Gesang”,“Sänger”; DE “trinken” → “Getränk”,“Trank”,“Trunk”…)
discussion about the comparative and superlative (of adjectives)
- PG features -ōzô and -izô for the comparative but a distinction was lost in quite some languages and from present point of view making a distinction in the Nordic language is not really possible if you don't know it already
- proposal of merging the families of -ōzô and -izô
- proposal of using the suffix -er for the comparative
- proposal of using the suffix -est for the superlative
- proposal of using the descendants of PG maizô (EN more) and PG maist (EN most) in certain to-be-defined cases in which the suffixes wouldn't do)

Table of Contents

2016-07-01

2016-07-08

2017-02-05

2017-05-04

2017-07-27

2017-10-29