> [mailto:konyalanguage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Yahya
> > > > Hi, All. I foreswore all "rights", to the extent that
there
> > > ever were any, to Konya, Elomi, and ilomi last fall, in a
> > > public posting to the auxlang list server (also to the
> > > conlang list server IIRC). ---larry
> >
> > It's always refreshing to see someone working on something
> > besides Euroclones so I really hate to see projects like
this
> > fade away.

> The only practical difficulties I had with the Konya / Elomi /
Ilomi
> family were that:
>
> 1) many useful words were simply too long (*);
> and
>
> 2) the lack of any vowel harmony rules (or something!) made
quite a
> few particular derived words rather awkward to say without
them
> seeming to morph, will-I, nill-I, into forms with rather more
> internal rhymes.
>
> These carping crticisms aside, I'm confident that the corpus
created
> so quickly - by so few - demonstrated that Ilomi and its ilk
had
> plenty of expressive power and versatility, were relatively
easy to
> pronounce, and would be pretty easy and quick to learn. On
that
> assessment, I don't think we should write the experiment off
just yet.

I don't think vowel harmony is a good idea for an auxlang, but I
agree about the long words in Ilomi. The other thing had to do
with the fact that it seemed to go too far in trying not to be a
Euroclone. It's not something I'd adovcate as a WAL, but I just
though it was a cool project because I liked its aesthetic
qualities. It has a pleasing polynesian flavor to it.

Konya on the other hand, I thought started off well but just
didn't get very far before attention was shifted to Ilomi/Elomi,
which later gave way to Lume, etc.

> (*) This thought, together with some questions asked by my
family
> about the meanings of some common English affixes deriving
from the
> classical languages, made me review the derivation schemes of
Latin,
> which show a surprising economy in the length of derived
forms. And
> the common thread, in many IE languages, of deriving different

> grammatical forms by mutating vowels, shows the value of using
a
> consonantal skeleton to convey a root meaning - a process
taken
> almost to its logical extreme in "West Asiatic" (which ought
by
> rights include most of Europe!), or whatever Semitic languages
are
> now called. But can we have a language with consonant
skeletons
> imparting root meanings, and vowel sequences grammatical
roles,
> without necessarily producing a "Euroclone" or a
"Semiticlone"? YA

Yes, it's fairly common in most languages to favor the consonant
over the vowel to carry meaning.

Esperanto derivation to some extent does what you say. "-Vs"
for active verbs, "-Vt-" for active participles, and "-Vnt-" for
passive participles with the vowel changing beween i, a, or o to
indicate past, present or future.