Languages of Ea

chèmbel time again!

2011-02-07T21:56:00.003-05:00

The five-day intercalary end-of-year chèmbel pëpícümnö has come around again, surprising me since I blogged about it already last time. Niftily, its beginning nearly coincided with Imbolc, the new moon, and Chinese New Year. Today was the fifth day, and tomorrow begins a new alíta, the 64th since recordkeeping began in December 1985.

No Occasional Word this time, sorry. I would have put up "tired", but I don't seem to have it yet, and I try not to coin under the influence of sleep deprivation!

(Um. Anyone who knows me is laughing at this point.)

Occasional Word in Merechi: nípa

2010-11-30T23:50:00.002-05:00

nípa ['nipa] n. baby.

Today's word is nípa, a baby! A new one of which I will have in týat tèpsë-të-shóji, 30 days. The more psychologically significant number to the mërèchi would be a tèpsëty or twenty-day month. Let's hope I don't have this one quite that soon.

This baby will be my àrma; I already have a pèhla, who is my husband's àrma. The new baby will be his nína. (Click for the explanation!)

Now I just need a mërèchi word for "blog hiatus".

Examples:

nípa'aë mèmacüm àgë dísöp'n: My baby is in my body.

nípa, baby; -aë, my; mèma, body; -cüm, in; àgë, my; dísö, to be located; -p, imperfective aspect; -n, 3rd person singular neuter/epicene.

"nípa nipàlipsöp'r", èslet tàch tëtév'r: "The baby is a girl", the seer said.

nípa, baby; nipàlip, girl; -sö, to be; -p, imperfective aspect; -r, 3rd person singular feminine; èslet, see-er (in this case ultrasound tech); tàch, thus; të-, past tense; té, to say; -v, perfective aspect.

Lots of repeated consonants in those examples, and mostly not the kind their alphabet has shortcuts for.

Occasional Word in Merechi: hlí

2010-11-09T14:00:00.001-05:00

hlí ['ɬi] v. drink.

Well, we had lóba, to eat, a while back; now we have hlí, to drink. I was unsure whether to divide up the semantic space this way, and haven't decided for sure where exactly the dividing line between the two words should be. Soup, anyone?

Examples:

nèfrin sóchli hlív'të: Cats drink with the tongue.

nípan màbë'c hlív'të: Babies drink milk.

Occasional Word in Merechi: püài

2010-11-05T14:00:00.002-04:00

püài [pu'ai] adj. sour (to the taste).

Returning to the taste words after an uncheduled blog hiatus, the fourth and final tastebud word is püài, sour.

Examples:

éshirë kúshi të püài týllirisöp'n: A sweet and sour fruit is the best.

pèhla'c àgë cómannö püài pëlóbam tyraisödàv'n: Eating sour things makes my son happy.

Occasional Word in Merechi: chàri

2010-10-12T14:00:00.004-04:00

chàri ['xa4i] adj. bitter (to the taste).

Third of four tastebud words (the mërèchi don't appear to have a separate word for umami), chàri refers to bitter tastes.

Examples:

pëàman lielúcür hlífia'c chàri hlíp'të: People across the ocean drink a bitter drink.

kàshanic chàri ka'lòhlbav'da: Don't eat bitter nuts.

Occasional Word in Merechi: kúshi

2010-10-08T14:00:00.003-04:00

kúshi ['kjuSi] adj. sweet (to the taste).

We continue the taste-words with kúshi, sweet. There's not too much else to say about this word; things tasting sweet is a basic and universal human experience.

Examples:

kúpisha ípshisöp'n të kúshisöp'n: Honey is sticky and sweet.

galàtia'c kakúshi dipàrip'a: I want unsweetened tea.

Occasional Word in Merechi: këràt and kéri

2010-10-04T14:00:00.002-04:00

këràt [ke'4at] n. salt.

kéri ['ke4i] adj. salty (to the taste).

Today I'm striking out into the taste-words. We're starting with kéri, salty.

Examples:

kasàtanic pëlisíröm, lómi'c këràtpli sírösap'da: Using ("making-with") spices, you can make food without salt.

këràt delúsöp'n, ní löbafásap'n: Salt is a rock, but may be eaten.

Occasional Word in Merechi: lóba

2010-09-26T14:00:00.002-04:00

lóba ['loba] v. to eat.

An important food word: to eat!

Examples:

pëlóbamic dipàrip'a: I want to eat!

cúlü'c kilóbav'a: I will eat parsnip(s).

Occasional Word in Merechi: cúlü

2010-09-22T14:00:00.002-04:00

cúlü ['kulu] n. root vegetable native to the mërèchi continent

The mërèchi cúlü is similar to our parsnips, which they call cúlü apatívi "foreign cúlü". They also think of carrots as a type of cúlü, cúlü càli or "red cúlü".

Examples:

cúlüc càli jàni lómbasav'da, ní cúlünic fúi döshërükidàv'da ne döccípav'da: You can eat carrots raw, but you must cook or boil the white cúlün (collective plural of cúlü, so something like "varieties of cúlü").

cúlü kasàtanli hàvai lömitýlsöp'n!: cúlü with savory spices is good food!

Occasional Word in Merechi: làcci

2010-09-19T14:00:00.002-04:00

làcci ['latsi] n. allium native to the mërèchi continent.

Today's word (or rather, yesterday's; sorry for the delay) returns to the subject of food with the name of the native mërèchi allium, làcci (pronounced 'latsi). This word is also used by the mërèchi in noun phrases to describe foreign imports (mostly via shipwrecks or lost ships which were not allowed to return) like onions, garlic, shallots and leeks. The làcci itself is most closely related to onions.

The spelling of the romanization reflects the fossilized spelling convention in the native alphasyllabary, where doubled "c" (pronounced k or k_w) became /ts/. (Similarly, when "k", pronounced k_j or k, in the alphasyllabary is doubled, its sound becomes /kS/ (where S is the CXS code for the "sh" sound).)

Examples:

làcci kúpishali shërúkipi kúshisöp'n: Onion cooked with honey is sweet.

chevàfia làccinö jàni jíkisöp'n: The smell of fresh onion is jíki (a somewhat unpleasant tang).

Occasional Word in Merechi: sànyis

2010-09-14T14:00:00.004-04:00

sànyis ['sanjis] n. quintuple, quintet; five-day week.

For the final day of chèmbel pëpíümnö, we're doing sànyis, a word meaning a group of five or the five-day week of the mërèchi ceremonial calendar. The word is derived from sàn, five, and -yis, "group of".

There is more variation across mërèchi-speaking lands with respect to the names and attributes of the five days of the sànyis compared to those of the lènyis. In the south, they assign colors to the days - atými "gold", làti "green", kúbi "blue", càli "red" and fúi "white" - and consider each day to be associated with one of the Five Useful Things: kshía fire, gúta the reed, ténrëk the pen or stylus, aník the knife and dènti the abacus. In the north, the days are called by the names of five animals: hawk, cat, orca, the ganàki lizard, and the turtle.

Occasional Word in Merechi: lènyis

2010-09-13T14:00:00.002-04:00

lènyis ['lEnjis] n. quadruple, quartet; four-day week.

Today we're doing lènyis, a word meaning foursome, quadruple, quartet - and the four-day week of the mërèchi ceremonial calendar. The word is derived from lèn, four, and the suffix -yis, "group of".

Like the names of the seven tèpsëtyt covered yesterday, the names of the days in the lènyis are not meaningful in the mërèchi language. They are:

nàksü ['naksu]

mètü ['mEtu]

làfü ['lafu]

mëàrüa [me'arua]

Throughout the mërèchi-speaking area, these four days are consistently considered to have the following associations: nàksü, with fire; mètü, with green growing things; làfü, with the wind; and mëàrüa, with water.

Occasional Word in Merechi: tèpsëty

2010-09-12T14:00:00.003-04:00

tèpsëty ['tEpseti] n. mërèchi ceremonial calendar "month" of twenty days, from tèpsë, twenty.

This is the third of five days of the end-of-year intercalary festival chèmbel pëpícümnö, and the third of five calendar-related posts being made to celebrate it.

Today we're covering the tèpsëtyt. The non-solar ceremonial calendar of the mërèchi is composed of seven twenty-day periods called tèpsëty, or "twenty-days". It is thought that the twenty-day period comes from the interaction of the cycle of the lènyis or four-day week running alongside the sànyis or five-day week. The lènyis and sànyis will be the subjects of the next two days of holiday posting, and the last two days of chèmbel pëpícümnö.

The names of the seven tèpsëty are not meaningful in the mërèchi language. They are:

	tèlch ['tElx]
	hàldë ['halde]
	ëníl [e'nil]
	lèchta ['lExta]
	àrdrü ['a4d4u]
	úchar ['uxa4]
	rechít [4E'xit]

Remember, you can see the calendar (the version I have up currently shows the lènyis but not the sànyis) here.

Occasional Word in Merechi: chèmbel

2010-09-11T14:00:00.003-04:00

chèmbel ['xEmbEl] n. festival, holiday.

The two chèmbelet associated with the mërèchi ceremonial "year", the alíta, are the one-day chèmbel ènchënö , or Festival of Half, which is inserted in the middle of the alíta, and the five day chèmbel pëpícümnö , or Festival of Dancing, which occurs in the space between alítat. During these festivals, time is considered to be outside of both the alíta and the current 20-day "month" (about which more tomorrow), and even the days of the 4- and 5-day mërèchi weeks are suspended.

Example:

étial sëlítya pónche chèmbelnö pëpícümnö: Today is the second day of the Festival of Dancing.

Occasional Word in Merechi: alíta

2010-09-10T14:00:00.002-04:00

alíta [a'lita] n. ceremonial non-solar year of 140 days and 6 intercalary days.

Yesterday was the end of another alíta, and today is the beginning of the 5-day end-of-year festival (about which more tomorrow!). Technically only the 140 days grouped into 20-day "months" are actually part of the alíta, so at the moment, we are not in any alíta. Rather odd for a word derived from líta, "circle".

You can see a clickable calendar of the alíta just ended here.

Occasional Word in Merechi: lèl and ccípa

2010-09-09T14:00:00.005-04:00

lèl ['lEl] v. (intrans.) boil (liquids); for a liquid to boil.

ccípa ['tsipa] v. (trans.) boil something in liquid; cook solid food by boiling.

Today's words are presented together because we're about to take a vacation from cooking words. The next five days are the end-of-year intercalary holiday of the non-solar mërèchi ceremonial calendar, and I'll be posting during the holiday on various unrelated topics, to return to the usual 4-day schedule and food-related vocabulary when the ceremonial calendar resumes. (The near-coincidence with Rosh Hashannah is not a recurring feature; the mërèchi ceremonial calendar, which comes from the tropical end of the mërèchi-speaking continent where seasonal factors are not an issue, is only 146 days long. Needless to say, this and the mid-year intercalary holiday were not instituted for the purposes of synchronizing with the sun!)

With the first word, lèl, we have a way to describe a liquid boiling. For the corresponding transitive verb, to boil a liquid, the causative suffix -dà is added, giving leldà. This word could be used in describing cooking some soups or tea.

However, to describe the more frequent cooking-related action of boiling solid food, we would use the naturally transitive word ccípa. A more phonetic, less slavish transliteration of the native writing system would render this word as tsípa. This is the word you would use for boiling meat, vegetables, grain, etc.

Examples:

lièlic leldàhlv'da, hródi mól ccipafàsap'n: Boil the water, so that the grain can be boiled.

apatívi pëàman memètanic chístiv'të pëccípamli: Far-away people clean clothing by boiling.

Occasional Word in Merechi: shërúk

2010-09-05T14:00:00.004-04:00

shërúk [Se'4uk] v. (intrans.) be roasted over fire; be cooked; be fried, baked, toasted.

shërukidà [Se4uki'da] v. (trans.) roast over fire; cook; fry, bake, toast.

Today's word (in both its forms) is one of two basic cooking words in mërèchi. shërúk comes from last week's word rúk, to char, plus the sufficiency prefix shë-, meaning "enough, just the right amount of"; so it adheres pretty closely to the expected meaning "to char just enough, to toast". The transitive is formed regularly by adding -dà.

By itself, shërúk/shërukidà can be a generic word for cooking or mean specifically roasting or toasting. With sàla, oil, and chàkapa, oven, we can get shërúk sàlali, "be fried with oil", and shërúk chàkapadi, "be baked in an oven".

Examples:

làcci shërúkipi kúshisöp'n: Cooked onion is sweet.

calëlómic sàlali ka'shërukidàhlp'da, ní kshíamëa hàhllap'da: Don't cook (fry) the meat in oil, but do it (roast it) over the fire.

Occasional Word in Merechi: rúk

2010-09-01T14:00:00.004-04:00

rúk ['4uk] v. char, to become charred.

Today's word is part of the groundwork for the series on cooking words. mërèchi has a number of different words for burning and the subprocesses in burning: hàca, rúk and pèl. Of these, rúk gives rise to one of mërèchi's two cooking words, which we will cover next time.

Examples:

latèmia rúkn'n, ní àces pèln'n: Wood chars, but embers burn to ash.

rükípia'c àcë tàhlvav'da, hródi ki'tércsap'a: Give me some char, that I may write.

Occasional Word in Merechi: càshi

2010-08-28T14:00:00.005-04:00

càshi ['kwaSi] adj. wet on its surface, dripping.

Today's word completes the quartet of dry/wet adjectives. càshi means wet to the touch, dripping wet, regardless of internal moisture content or humidity. Rain itself is càshi, and the surfaces of things rained on, but rain also makes things síri, which they continue to be after the raindrops dry up and the world is kàli again.

Next time we'll start on the cooking and food words!

Examples:

büràiahla sinítnö, enëtív clinípi ki'càshisöp'n, ní clilíri ki'sírisöp'n: After it rains, things will be briefly wet but remain humid (or hydrated) long.

nèfri càshi ka'týraisöp'n: The/a wet cat is not happy.

Occasional Word in Merechi: kàli

2010-08-24T14:00:00.010-04:00

kàli ['kjali] adj. dry on the surface, not damp or dripping, but not necessarily all dried out.

Today's word continues the dry vs. wet theme of the first two entries. kàli, unlike làri, refers to surface dryness and not dessication; it is the one closer in meaning to our word "dry", but covers a smaller range of meaning. For example, a sponge that is no longer dripping when touched but is not yet dried-up can be kàli.

Examples:

enëtív étial sírisöp'n ní kàlisöp'n: The weather today is humid but dry.

lüpàlta'c lakàhllisöv'da: Dry off the dish.

Occasional Word in Merechi: síri

2010-08-20T14:00:00.005-04:00

síri ['si4i] adj. containing moisture, humid; wet through; not dried out.

Today's word continues the theme introduced in our first word, làri. We have had some rain recently, and in addition to making things wet, rain makes the air humid and the plants hydrated. The merechi have separate words for wet (on the surface) and síri. Humid air would be síri, and well-watered plants and animals, and anything not all dried out.

Examples:

büràiahla sinítnö, enëtív të'sírisöp'n: After the rainfall, conditions were humid.

nëdís síri clinípi ki'lalàrisöv'n: Wet hair will soon dry.

Occasional Word in Merechi: làri

2010-08-16T14:00:00.007-04:00

Hello! I'm jumping on the bandwagon of word-a-day conlangy goodness, sortof, with my new Occasional Word in Merechi series. Herewith the first entry:

làri ['la4i] adj. arid, dessicated; without moisture inside, dried out; used as an exaggeration for "thirsty".

I picked this word to start with because we've been experiencing a bit of a drought and very high temperatures on the East coast. The merechi have separate words for dry (on the surface) and dried-out (through and through). A lack of humidity in the air is làri, dried-out.

Examples:

enëtív jalàrisöp'n: Conditions are recently arid.

shiréata làri ki'màtav'n: The dessicated plant will die.

Coming soon: Occasional Word in Merechi

2010-08-16T12:00:00.002-04:00

Watch this space! The Occasional Word (not quite of-the-day) in Merechi will be debuting here later today!

All, every, each

2010-02-07T22:54:00.003-05:00

I have decided on a simple scheme for non-numeric quantifiers in Mirexu.

It is not the degrees of quantification that I was concerned with. Whether there will be more degrees than "all, none, some" ... "enough"? "a lot"? "few"? ... I can leave till later. The distinction that I needed to figure out how to capture was distributionality. In English, it is the difference between "all" and "each" or "every".

In researching the problem, I came across mention of natural languages which use a single word for both "all" and "every". When it is applied to plural or mass nouns, it means "all", and when applied to a noun in the singular, it means "every". I was prepared to lose some of the distinctions that English makes, but upon reflection, this distinguishes just as much as English does along the distributionality axis (see below, however, about "each" and "every"). After all, in English, we don't use "all" with singular countable nouns (though we do use "all of" with them, but this means "the whole of", a meaning which I can easily capture via "every part of"), and we don't use "every" with a mass noun like "water" (unless making it a count noun via a discretizing noun like "drop (of)"), and cannot use it with a noun in the plural ("every shoes" is just wrong in English). It seems, in fact, like English's distinction between "all" and "every" is rather redundant!

So Mirexu jur, or a word like it (I still have to figure out what part of speech these should be!), will mean both "all" and "every". And, in a turn rather strange-sounding to English ears, Mirexu nus, meaning "some", will work as we expect in the plural, but when modifying a singular noun, will have a meaning closest to the English "each of some of", and not at all like the singular English construction "some man".

(Now what could be the distributive of "none"? Or is that inherently distributive? Heh.)

And as for the difference between "each" and "every"? It turns out that this is a difference of definiteness. Definiteness is very important to English, but not to Mirexu. Mirexu "each" and "every" are the same word.

Drowning in information

2010-01-29T23:57:00.002-05:00

A mërèchi idiom: àgë ràcü càshisöp'n, ní kasírisöp'n. "My brain is càshi but not síri". càshi means wet externally, even dripping, and síri means soaked, saturated or humid; so this translates roughly as "My brain is wet (with information) but it's not soaking in".

Recent developments in Mirexu

2010-01-24T23:35:00.003-05:00

It seems that I haven't written here about Mirexu, mërèchi's sister language. Perhaps there wasn't anything much to write by the time I stopped updating.

Mirexu has been used in two Conlang relays, numbers 15 and 16. The text I produced for Relay 15 was quite satisfying, but inbetween then and Relay 16, I lost my notes on when to use which kinds of complement clause. The resulting text for Relay 16 is painful for me to read; every single sentence ended up being a content-filled subordinate clause and an empty main clause consisting only of a modal verb (sometimes two deep!).

So! In an effort to wrench Mirexu back from the wrongheaded direction it took off the rails over a year ago, I recently resumed development.

Mirexu is meant to be a polysynthetic language. I'm attempting to build it entirely out of inflected forms of noun and verb roots, as Comrie analyzes Tamil to be. I am also drawing upon Abkhaz for inspiration. All of the roots and many of the bound morphemes are imported from mërèchi through a regular sound change process which mainly affects the vowels.

The corrections made so far, on the 19th of January, are:

situational possibility (can, is able to) is to be expressed with the derivational morpheme -se on the main verb, instead of the construction using a complement clause in -i followed by the fully inflected verb aisen, "may"
situational necessity (must, needs to) will use the newly-created derivational morphemes -dju (for positive necessity) and -dar (for negative necessity), instead of the construction using a negated complement clause and the fully inflected verb adarusan, "must not"
epistemic possibility and necessity will probably still use a periphrastic construction, unless I introduce evidential morpemes

Other blemishes introduced by the relay which still need to be corrected include:

create a way to say "always" without using the verb root kumela "to continue on"
create an overall scheme for the treatment of "any", "every", "each" etc. without needing adverbs, adjectives or periphrastic constructions
address conditional statements, both if...then and when...then

There is a lot of work to do!

Thoughts on the seasons

2007-08-23T23:05:00.000-04:00

The original seven-season cycle which interacts dynamically with the mërèchi calendar was as follows:

pëhlètim (frost)
pëfòrnim (snow)
pëgànim (waking)
pëlúthim (flower)
p'élatim (leaf)
pëshírim (growing)
pëníltëm (singing)

and füshín (mild, a condition rather than a season). Except for füshín, which has no beginning or end but is applied to any day that qualifies, each season begins when its namesake is first observed and ends when the next season begins. Some of them, however, are too short, and others make no sense (why flower and then leaf? Flower and leaf of what, exactly?)

So here is a set of seven I am contemplating replacing them with, to better spread out the seasons across my Zone 6 year:

frost
snow
crocuses
green (when most of the trees begin to look green from a distance)
fireflies
cicadas
gold (when the leaves turn)

Grammaticalized adjectives

2007-08-23T22:33:00.000-04:00

Many languages have a small closed class of words or affixes which encode some of the most basic concepts for which we in English use adjectives. For example, Japanese "-i adjectives", unlike their "na adjectives", are a closed class (meaning that new -i adjectives cannot be created any more than English could just up and create a new preposition and have it make sense to anybody). Some of the concepts for which Japanese uses -i adjectives include: small, big, narrow, wide, old, new, red, white, black, dark, good, and bad.

In Mohawk, adjectives are stative verbs; due to Mohawk's polysynthetic nature, they end up looking like suffixes or (occasionally) circumfixes to the noun when used adjectivally. The particular pair that caught my attention was -owanen (big) and ni- -a'a (small, a circumfix).

Putting the two together, I decided that languages in the mërèchi language family needed to have a small, closed class of adjectival operations which would include all sorts of affixes plus possibly suprasegmental operations to boot. As a first step, I designate two classes of adjectives, a more basic first class for the most extreme sorts of word modification, and a tamer, more derivative second class:

First class (orthogonal)
big/small
dark/light
young/old
good/bad
hot/cold?

Second class (can be derived from 1st)
smooth/rough
easy/hard
long/short
wide/narrow
healthy/sick

I will be back later with the mërèchi forms of these adjectives. My goal is to have no pair work exactly the same way as another.

Why are there two different 'k's in mërèchi?

2007-08-16T21:24:00.000-04:00

Well, yes, "because T.E. Hastely spelled it that way," sure. But in the case of 'k' and 'c', he was simply reflecting a distinction preserved in the native orthography. In fact, while the dialect he studied had merged the sounds represented by 'c' and 'k', the distinction was alive and well elsewhere: 'c' is labialized before front vowels, and 'k' is palatalized before back values, giving pronunciations as follows:

Spelling	Pronunciation (mërèchi)	After sound shift (mirexu)
kà	/kja/	/kje/
cà	/kwa/	/kwe/
kè	/kE/	/kE/
cè	/kwE/	/kwE/
ké	/ke/	/ki/
cé	/kwe/	/kwi/
kí	/ki/	/ku/
cí	/kwi/	/kwa/
kú	/kju/	/kjo/
cú	/ku/	/ko/
kó	/kjo/	/kja/
có	/ko/	/ka/
kò	/kjO/	/kjO/
cò	/kO/	/kO/

Note that the mirexu pronunciation which would have sound-shifted into */kwu/ dissimilates into /kwa/, giving a three-way distinction between cí /kwa/, có /ka/, and kó /kja/! Mirexu is also left without a /ke/ or /kju/ sound.

New words for 8/16/07

-dúr: to be anxious about X
yirdúr: to stress over everything
kàkesdür: to stress over nothing at all

-madü: an X which happens regularly or periodically
càlëmadü: menstrual period
yirdúria calëmàdüki: PMS
calëmadüdúria: anxiety about one's period

yirdúria màmi: anxiety of being a mom
mamiadúria: anxiety about motherhood
mamëdúria: anxiety over one's mother!

síri: moist, humid (but not necessarily càshi)
làri: arid, dessicated (but not necessarily kàli)
càshi: wet, dripping (but not necessarily síri)
kàli: dry, can be moist but not damp (not necessarily làri)

Smell words

2007-08-15T22:20:00.000-04:00

New words for 8/15/07

nèlü - plants like rosemary or phlox
rosemary - nèlü sàlmai or (oh dear) salmanèlü
phlox - nèlü küèbi or nèlü lúpi; maybe küembèlü

Smell words

chéva - to smell
chëvàia - sense of smell
chëvàfia - scent, odor, aroma (neutral)
búlj - smell, unpleasant or strong odor, stink, stench
tòron - reek, stench, extremely unpleasant (and usually strong) smell of waste or death
sénë - sweet, floral scent
hàva - savory scent (cooking, garlic)
jíki - tang (mineral/chemical, sea, urine)
sàlma - aromatic sharp clear scent (rosemary, pine, citrus)
tèkshe - spicy scent (cinnamon, sandalwood)

Greetings

2007-08-11T23:54:00.000-04:00

I'll be using this blog to work out changes in my conlangs. Currently the one I'm working on is mërèchi, perhaps soon to be known as mirexu, hence the URL of my all-mërèchi in-language blog: mirexu.blogspot.com.

mërèchi started out life when I was 13, and has been my first, longest-running, and most personal conlang. However, what it has not been is rigorous, realistic, and free from unwanted English influences. So I am trying to take it in a new direction - changing it from a quirky, idiosyncratic, badly-spelled personal language, into more of a LostLang-like form.

In this first post I will briefly outline two fixes for the benighted orthography of mërèchi (to see how, well, naive it is, check out here; ignore the half-baked reform at the bottom). The first is absolutely crucial: a native script. Putting the words in their own native script demotes the orthography to a mere transliteration scheme, and I have already come up with a reasoable excuse for the transliteration scheme: blame dead people! I have invented a 19th-century missionary-linguist upon whose ignorance I can place the blame for the orthography (see here).

But to go further, I feel the need to distance the "new" mërèchi from the old, in order to be able to scrap some of the things that will need scrapping. So there will be some sound changes. In order of certainty (from things I am committed to implementing down to wild speculation), they are:

the endings -i and -a change to -u and -e
other unstressed vowels change cyclically, i -> u -> o -> a -> e -> i
unstressed final ai -> O (this is X-SAMPA for the "short" o, or an aw sound)
unstressed final ue -> we
more restrictive rules for consonant clusters
maybe all the vowels change as above. Note that this still leaves /E/ and /O/ unchanged.
possibly degrade labial consonants: Cp/pC -> p -> b -> v -> w, f -> h -> 0.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more ramblings!