Talk:Montreiano

I am working on a grammar of Montreiano, which is intended to be a general grammar, rather than a detailed analysis (as I am not a Linguist). I'm writing it as if it were an actual book, and intend to turn it into a PDF which will be linked from here (hopefully!) Doobieous 04:43, 27 December 2005 (PST)

Update: I've added a link to the grammar I've been working on. The reason the formatting looks strange is due to how I've formatted it on the .doc file that it was originally written. This is more or less to give you an idea of what I've been doing so far. There are of course some inconsistencies and errors, but I'm at the point where I've been doing cleanup. At 36 pages, it's not a quick task! Doobieous 00:01, 20 February 2006 (PST)

Since I codified it on Lla Dafern, for those interested in how I came about in creating Montreiano's sound, here are the sound changes, which began from the time period close to the end of the Vulgar Latin period in Iberia. We can think of Montreiano and Castillian as separating from a common immediate ancestor (well, we could say the same for all of the languages on the Iberian peninsula!)

• Where old Castilian changes the sounds /ts/ and /dz/ to /T/ in modern Castilian, Montreiano preserved /ts/, and /dz/ collapsed into /ts/. Thus, the word nación in Castilian is naçón in Montreiano.
• The sound /ts/ (ç) had the effect of neutralizing the glide /j/ when it follows /ts/, which is why you get naçón /natson/, and not /natsjon/.
• Final e followed the same tendency in Castilian to drop finally in polysyllabic words, except where the word was analyzed as a compound word, like irse (ir se)). ALthough in Montreiano, this became regularlized.
• After final e dropped, it had the effect of changing the sound /L/ (as in calle) to /l/: calle > cal "street", or valle > val "valley".
• Where Castilian has /je/ and /we/, such as the words nieve and cueva, Montreiano settled on /ja/ and /wa/, niav /njav/, cuava /kwava/.
• Montreiano preserves the sound /S/, which is represented by x. In Castilian, this sound evolved into /x/ (or /h/), which castilian represents usually as j as in the word "Méjico". The sound /S/ evolved in Montreiano from other sounds, s before consonants, and sc (so, scença "science" is pronounced /SEntsa/)
• After the effects of the fourth rule, /L/ intervocalically broke apart into /wj/, as /l/ weakened before consonants (including glides). However, for this rule to work, it ocurred later than /l/ before non-glides.
• Before the above rule, and rule 4 ocurred, final l weakened to the glide /w/, so "sol", for instance became /sow/ "sou".
• /B/ intervocalically or before /r/ evolved into /v/. Before other consonants, it weakened into /w/. So, you get words like cavra /kavra/ "goat", and faular /fawlar/
• Ñ moved back further in the mouth to become /N/. In order to preserve the glide which was still there, Montreiano uses "ñi", where Castilian would have just "ñ": cañia /kaNja/.
• Intervocalic and word final d /D/ dropped late. However, a glide was inserted where the result would've created homophones, such as via "way" and vida "life", which became "viya" to preserve the distinction. Where a glide is inserted, a y is used (this is the only real use for y in Montreiano, as the default to represent /j/ is usually i).

Doobieous 22:34, 4 March 2006 (PST)

Question: What are the equivalents of the /je/ and /we/ diphthongs in Spanish *here* in Montreiano? Some parts of the wiki seem to suggest they shifted to /ja/ and /wa/, but others suggest they turned into long /E/ and /O/ instead. Which one is correct? Also, I should note that "Castreiano" is a far less unwieldy word for a Castilian/Montreiano mix than "Montreistellano". Just my two cents. Juan Martin Velez Linares 22:22, 7 August 2015 (PDT)

Examples

They come out almost sounding like portuguese... BoArthur

One of my goals was to make it sound closer to Portuguese, than Castilian, but not exactly like Portuguese. In some ways it reminds me a bit of French. Doobieous 13:55, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

Have you recorded any of it? I'd be interested in hearing a wav or mp3 of Montreiano as you see it... (and see how if compares to French in my head... :) BoArthur 16:02, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

I have not, as I hate recording my voice, plus I trip myself up with all of the vowels. When spoken it doesn't at all resemble French, but visually some of the spellings remind me of it). But, who knows, perhaps I will put some spoken samples up at some point. Doobieous 16:23, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

J

How is the "j" phoneme pronounced in Montreiano? Is it [Z] or [dZ] (X-SAMPA)? Or is it neither? Juan Martin Velez Linares 10:17, 18 September 2015 (CDT)