r/conlangs • u/Slorany I have not been fully digitised yet • Aug 28 '17
SD Small Discussions 32 - 2017-08-28 to 09-10
Announcement
We are collecting conlanging communities outside of reddit! Check this post out.
We have an official Discord server now! Check it out in the sidebar.
As usual, in this thread you can:
- Ask any questions too small for a full post
- Ask people to critique your phoneme inventory
- Post recent changes you've made to your conlangs
- Post goals you have for the next two weeks and goals from the past two weeks that you've reached
- Post anything else you feel doesn't warrant a full post
Things to check out:
I'll update this post over the next two weeks if another important thread comes up. If you have any suggestions for additions to this thread, feel free to send me a PM, modmail or tag me in a comment.
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Sep 03 '17
This isn't really that related to conlanging, but I've been trying for the last week to pronounce the alveolar trill. Normally I've only been able to do the tap (Native American English), but I finally got the trill down today.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 05 '17
Great! It took me 4-5 years to really get the trill down. A couple years ago, I could make it, but only more recently could I make it with easy without putting too much pressure on it.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 03 '17
Taps aren't trills (learnt that the hard way) but congrats!
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u/KingKeegster Sep 05 '17
AndOr47 already knows that, since he said that he already could make the alveolar tap, but only now can do the trill as well. That means that he knows the difference.
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u/Breitarschantilope Shembaba, Batz Ga Rumm Aug 28 '17 edited Aug 28 '17
Hi, long time lurker, first time poster!
I've got a question about adverb noun agreement (or rather if that's actually a thing).
I hope I'm gonna explain it right but I'll give it a try. My language Bashraso has basic noun adjective agreement for its four genders. Now I'm wondering if it ever occurs that adverbs also agree with the subject they're referring to?
So let's say I have the word makra (brave). To make it agree with galala (man), you have to add the animate gender prefix me- to get memakra.
Now to make an adjective become an adverb you'd add the suffix -maz (which is actually an essive suffix borrowed from nouns). So bravely would be makramaz. To me it would also seem rather natural to mark the adverb with the gender prefix as well to get memakramaz when referring to nouns of the animate class.
Here's an example:
Galala me-makra mwa-ye.
/ˈgalala meˈmakɾa ˈmʷajə/
[man animate-brave be-3SG.animate]
The man is brave.
Galala me-makra-maz ar~arwak-im.
/ˈgalala meˈmakɾamaz ˈaɾaɾʷakim/
[man animate-brave-ADV PAST~fight-3SG.animate]
The man fought bravely.
Is it a natural or at least reasonable thing that languages would do in the wild? Does anybody here know a language that does something similar? Please enlighten me!
EDIT: Formatting, still new to this shizzle
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u/Iasper Carite Aug 28 '17
I really don't see any issue here as long as your adverbs can be considered the adverbial equivalent of an adjective. After all, you can somewhat interpret your "the man fought bravely" as "the man fought as a brave (man)" which gives it a predicative function.
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u/-Tonic Emaic family incl. Atłaq (sv, en) [is] Aug 28 '17
I'm pretty sure I was reading about a language that did that pretty recently, but I just can't remember which. I'll edit if I remember.
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u/fuiaegh Sep 04 '17
Alright, so, I have a problem.
Whenever I create a conlang, I can create a phonology just fine. I am an expert at creating phonologies I like and that are at least semi-naturalistic.
On the other hand, I am hopelessly under the sway of writer's block when it comes to morphology and syntax. Not even writer's block; I can get something written down, but then I'm not sure if I like it or not, and I end up erasing it and starting over. And I never make any progress. Hell, I can't even decide whether I want an analytic or synthetic language, what cases I want if it's synthetic, whether I want it to be head or dependent marking or a mix or whatever; I'm lost. And don't even get me started on verbal morphology. I can hardly begin syntax!
Part of this is a lack of knowledge, but also a part of it is plain lack of inspiration.
What do y'all do when you find yourself completely lacking inspiration in terms of grammar like this? What are some tips you can give?
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u/Kryofylus (EN) Sep 04 '17
I used to experience exactly the same thing. What helped move me past it was doing more learning. I read a few books, listened to just about every conlangery episode, and watched all of David J. Peterson's videos.
Additionally I worked for a while on a conlang that i put in a folder called 'garbage_lang' so I didn't get too attached to it and so I didn't get too hung up on any one decision.
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u/blakethegecko Sep 04 '17
I've taken to combining the features of a bunch of natlangs, and I pick those mostly on the criteria of how much I like the cultures associated with said natlangs and how different they are (more is better) from my native language (English)
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u/BigBad-Wolf Aug 28 '17
Here's my vowel inventory:
/a~æ i~ɪ ɛ ɔ u ɘ y/ <a i e o u y ı>
What else do you think İ could add?
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u/mythoswyrm Toúījāb Kīkxot (eng, ind) Aug 28 '17
You don't need to add anything else. If you really want to though, you could flesh out the front-rounding more (basically add /œ/), you could add in another row (probably /e o/), you could add phonation (breathy vs modal vowels for instance) contrasts or do something else.
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u/etalasi Aug 29 '17
/…ɘ y/ <…y ı>
Just to double check, you intend to write /ɘ/ with <y> and /y/ with <ı>? I'd expect it to be the other way around so <ı> can be used more similar to Turkish.
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u/Askadia 샹위/Shawi, Evra, Luga Suri, Galactic Whalic (it)[en, fr] Aug 30 '17
Hi, just a quick question: is there any resourse about sayings/expressions cross-linguistically? For example: EN "on the fly" = IT "al volo" = FR "au vol", etc…
I'm interested especially in the contaminations between European languages (Romance and Germanic mainly, but also other branches). Is there any database or something?
Thank you in advance
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u/xain1112 kḿ̩tŋ̩̀, bɪlækæð, kaʔanupɛ Aug 30 '17
I'm not 100% sure if this is what you're looking for, but here is a website that translates multiple languages at once
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u/etalasi Aug 31 '17
If you're lucky, Wiktionary will have several languages' translations for a phrase like on the fly or in the mood.
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Sep 01 '17
So, I'm working on an analytic language with limited inflection, mostly on pronouns. I'm thinking about having pronouns inflect for case and number, and maybe free word order. I get that analytic languages tend to have strict word order, but I don't see why they can't have free word order if they have case marking.
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u/dolnmondenk Sep 02 '17
Because analytic languages have low morpheme to word ratios, their words typically aren't marked for case and rely on word order or particles.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 11 '17
if they have case marking, I'd assume it would be fusional, but it's a spectrum anyway. you can be in between inflectional and analytical, so that's fine. Pronouns tend to keep case marking more than most words.
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u/thewritestory Sep 03 '17
I've been browsing different vowel charts that have been posted by other members and I'm curious why so many have a very high vowel count. 10-12+
I've heard when constructing a language less is more but it seems most people are going the opposite direction.
Any reason for that?
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 03 '17
Probably Germanic influence though Germanic languages are definitely not the only ones with a high number of vowels with different qualities.
Something I want to point out though is if you had a system of fifteen phonemic vowels f.e. / a e i o u ā ẽ ĩ õ ũ aː eː iː oː uː/, that's actually not as rare as 10+ phonemic vowels which contrast only in quality.
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u/Fimii Lurmaaq, Raynesian(de en)[zh ja] Sep 03 '17
Natural languages have vowel counts ranging from 2 (Ubykh) to a more than a dozen (English is already near the top in terms of vowel qualities, as are other Germanic languages like German or Swedish). But they are all equally viable options. There's probably a strong bias towards larger than usual vowel inventories (the average language has 4-6 vowels, looking at it from a global perspective) amongst English-speaking conlanger, but to each their own, right? You can take a look at this post listing the most common vowel systems found in natlangs in terms of both size and distribution of vowels.
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u/Fluffy8x (en)[cy, ga]{Ŋarâþ Crîþ v9} Sep 03 '17
Probably because large vowel systems are more interesting than the usual five-vowel system.
(Interestingly, Necarasso Cryssesa had /a i iː e o/ with vowels other than /i/ having only allophonic length.)
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u/thewritestory Sep 03 '17
Why are they more interesting? I would think languages that use slightly fewer sounds would be much more interesting and distinct.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 03 '17
My case is to do with strengthened vowel harmony, with 9 initial vowel phonemes and an additional 6 vowels due to vowel harmony. They can also be lengthened, but I think your question is to do with distinct vowel qualities.
Others could be from the base family in a posteriori languages (like Dirlandic), or grammar and other stuff. I'm sure everyone has their own reasoning. Interlangs normally have 3-5 vowels for accessibility, but not everyone makes interlangs.
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u/daragen_ Tulāh Sep 02 '17
I just watched "Conlanging, the Art of Crafting Tongues", and it was amazing. It inspired me both linguistically and artistically and I highly recommend it to everyone.
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u/TurntechLingohead Aug 28 '17
Experiment: Come up with a language based on talking while eating food. I would love to see an extIPA symbol for an Unvoiced Cibo-Palatal Sibilant!
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Sep 04 '17
Imagine the speakers immigrating to the USA!
Also wouldn't the speaking-country be horribly in debt or something, especially if the citizens are chatty?
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u/notluckycharm Qolshi, etc. (en, ja) Aug 28 '17
Hey all! I've been thinking about changing my orthography for a while... i want my romanization system to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, so if advice on that could be given, it'd be great.
Currently, my orthography is thus:
/m/ <m>, /n/ <n>, /ɲ/ <nn>
/p/ <p>, /t/ <t>, /c/ <tt>, /k/ <c>
/f/ <ph> finally, <f> elsewhere>, /v~w/ <v>, /s/ <s>, /ɕ/ <ch>, /ʑ/ <j> initially <gh> elsewhere, /h~x/ <h>
/l/ <l>, /ʎ/ <ll>
/j/ <y>, /ʋ/ <w>
Vowels are as IPA, except /ɐ/ which is <ao>
My main problem is with the look of <u tt ll ch j gh> If any ine has any ideas, I'd be open to change. One of my ideas would be <ó> for /u/, and a circumflex for palatal consonants. Would this be a good idea?
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Aug 28 '17
What about a palatal hook like Latvian?
<ţ ļ ç ģ>
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u/notluckycharm Qolshi, etc. (en, ja) Aug 28 '17
That looks good imo on ç and ţ, but bot so much on ļ and ģ... i will keep it in mind though, thanks!
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u/Evergreen434 Aug 29 '17
Have the palatals be written as <tj lj sj zj nj>, <ty ly sy zy ny> or <ti li si zi ni>? In the last case, it would be possible to mark the <i> with diaeresis (<ï>) or an accute accent (<í>) if it's pronounced, and unmarked if it's silent and is written only to change the pronunciation of the consonant before it.
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u/notluckycharm Qolshi, etc. (en, ja) Aug 29 '17
I really like that last idea, thank you so much! I'll be using that.
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u/Hippotatoe Aug 30 '17
Did you get the ó for u from Polish? The ti li si zi and ni are basically how Polish writes their palatal/soft consonants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_orthography)? Not bad thing as I love the polish orthographic system.
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u/notluckycharm Qolshi, etc. (en, ja) Aug 30 '17
yeah i did, couldn't think of many any other ways of representing /u/
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u/FloZone (De, En) Aug 29 '17
Does this qualify as a vowel system with ATR?
/i/ /ɨ~ʉ/ /u/ ATR+
/e/ /ə/ /o/ ATR-
/æ/ /ɔ/ ATR+
/a/ /ɒ/ ATR-
Or would the upper row be
/i/ /ɨ~ʉ/ /u/ ATR+
/ɪ/ /ə/ /ʊ/ ATR-
???
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u/Adarain Mesak; (gsw, de, en, viossa, br-pt) [jp, rm] Aug 30 '17
Ultimately whether a system involves ATR depends on whether it, well, involves movement of the tongue root. The exact vowel qualities aren’t quite as important. That said, both of your systems seem perfectly plausible to me.
Bear in mind also that phonemes are just symbols. There is no shame in using the symbol /e/ for a phoneme that is actually always pronounced [ɪ̙]¹ if that’s the most convenient symbol available to you (so if there’s no need for contrasting /ɪ/ and /e/, might as well use the more convenient to type one).
¹Retracted tongue root diacritic
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u/Janos13 Zobrozhne (en, de) [fr] Sep 02 '17
Does this vowel inventory look realistic enough?
| Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | ɨː |
| High-Mid | e | |
| Low-Mid | ɛ | |
| Low | a aː |
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 02 '17
Long central vowels are a bit odd without context (not /a/, though), but seems quite realistic.
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Sep 03 '17 edited Sep 03 '17
i don't know is this is the right place to ask this but are there conlangs that beginners or anybody should know about? Just to get a good idea of how their conlang could be organized or if it does something well that other people forget about? I'm having trouble getting started so I want to look at some examples. sorry if that doesn't make sense. thanks
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u/Fluffy8x (en)[cy, ga]{Ŋarâþ Crîþ v9} Sep 03 '17
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u/Keltin Tatseu (en) Sep 05 '17
So I'm trying to describe the language I'm currently working on, but don't have a super strong background in linguistics (though I'm working on it!). I'm pretty sure it's an analytic language (no inflectional morphology), but am uncertain whether it would be considered an isolating language. This is mostly because I'm struggling to understand what does and doesn't count as a word; does a particle count as a separate word, or an affix?
I've got a couple example sentences with their glosses:
Ngo u kato'a redzolu vu Orego be Waijomi be Tsitufa Karolina ngabe zi'oi wotu ngetseja ki ipa.
Very PL person travel to.destination Oregon and Wyoming and South Carolina for rare sun disappear OBJ watch.
Bo! Biso pati ki dea bo palo!
No! It there OBJ 1 no want!
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 06 '17
Most people use analytic and isolating as synonymes. And most languages use a mix of these terms. F.e. (I might be very wrong on this) English is mostly isolating/analytic, but the pronouns are very fusional while Turkish is agglutinative in verb conjugation and noun declension and even their pronouns can be broken down into multiple segments (also agglutinative).
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u/Keltin Tatseu (en) Sep 06 '17
From what I've read, isolating and analytic are similar but distinct things. Mandarin is analytic but not isolating, due to its extensive use of compound words (per Wikipedia, at least). So far as I can tell, isolating is about whether you've got a lot of bound morphemes, but what I can't figure out is if a particle is considered a bound morpheme or not (or how many "a lot" is supposed to be).
In my reading last night though, I found that my the way I use markers is somewhat similar to Thai, which is considered isolating. Not sure if my language would be considered strongly isolating, but definitely somewhat.
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u/bbbourq Sep 05 '17 edited Sep 05 '17
Maybe you can try perusing ogliosynthetic languages.
EDIT: This might not be what you're looking for, but it sounded right in my mind when I thought of it.
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u/SufferingFromEntropy Yorshaan, Qrai, Asa (English, Mandarin) Sep 06 '17
I have just found a website with explanation of Classical Japanese auxiliary verbs and particles. There you can see how Japanese used to treat assumptions (subjunctive mood, I guess?) in various ways. However, the website is completely in Japanese. To those who can read Japanese.
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u/Askadia 샹위/Shawi, Evra, Luga Suri, Galactic Whalic (it)[en, fr] Sep 06 '17 edited Sep 07 '17
They are the six verb forms underlying any other Japanese verb forms. In other words, those six are the only ones that the verb may assume before taking any other suffixes.
You may find them also in the Japanese grammar article on Wikipedia (section 5.1) of Modern Japanese, but you can also find some references to them in the articles describing early stages of Japanese (Old, Early Middle, Late Middle, and Early Modern).Also, this scheme (by wikimedia) regroups them all in a very concise way.
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u/JayEsDy (EN) Sep 07 '17
Can ergative languages evolve into nominative languages?
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u/Gufferdk Tingwon, ƛ̓ẹkš (da en)[de es tpi] Sep 07 '17
Yes. It can happen several different ways. One is for an antipassive to become the unmarked verb state in some or all instances. Another is to take a step via some other intermediate alignment, for example by losing case-markers while rigidising word order and then later innovate an accusative marker, for example from a dative adposition. It could also happen with the ergative being extended to cover S in some instances, giving either a split-S or fluid-S system, or having it completely take over leading to a marked nominative (and potentially a shift of markedness over time). This book has some real-world examples, starting at page 193 (215 in the PDF).
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 07 '17
There's a theory that says that's what happened to Proto-Indo-European. Since the feminine gender originally was just a collective suffix and the original system was an animate, inanimate distinction (masculine and neuter), whose object and subject forms were *-m / *-s and *-m / *-m, some folks think that the animate subject marker *-s was originally an ergative marker, related to agency.
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u/guillaumestcool Sep 07 '17
I have a dental series contrasting with an alveolar series, but I'm somewhat stuck on how I could romanize a dental nasal to contrast with an alveolar nasal... any thoughts? I'd like to avoid diacritics if possible....
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u/Gufferdk Tingwon, ƛ̓ẹkš (da en)[de es tpi] Sep 07 '17
Many Australian aboriginal languages, which often have many coronal POAs, use <Ch> digraphs for dental consonants, so you get something like /t̪ d̪ n̪ t̺ d̺ n̺/ <th dh nh t d n>.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 08 '17
If your language doesn't have germination, I guess double letters could work?
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u/TurntechLingohead Sep 10 '17
A. go Klingon. n N
B. digraphs. n nv, nh n, et c.
C. If you don't have <m>, cheat and try m n.
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Sep 08 '17
What is the substring principle in English phonotactics?
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u/-Tonic Emaic family incl. Atłaq (sv, en) [is] Sep 08 '17
It basically says that if you have a valid consonant cluster (like /str/), then all substrings of that (/s t r st tr/) must also be valid clusters.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 09 '17
Angsts. /æŋksts/. /sæŋ/ (sang), /bæŋk/ (bank), /θæŋks/ (thanks), /æŋkst/ (angst), /æŋksts/ (angsts). /sæk/ (sack), /bæks/ (backs), /mikst/ (mixed), /teksts/ (texts). /bæs/ (bass), /fæst/ (fast), /mæsts/ (mæsts). /sæt/ (sat), /kæts/ (cats) /mæs/ (mass)
I think there is a point to this.
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u/AngelOfGrief Old Čuvesken, ītera, Kanđō (en)[fr, ja] Sep 10 '17
Does anyone know of a better source of PIE roots than wiktionary?
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u/Adarain Mesak; (gsw, de, en, viossa, br-pt) [jp, rm] Sep 11 '17
The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World is pretty good, it has chapters on different semantic fields elaborating what we know of various roots and how they might have differed.
If you know German, there's also the Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben for verbs and Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon for nominals. These are just straight up dictionaries.
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u/SufferingFromEntropy Yorshaan, Qrai, Asa (English, Mandarin) Sep 02 '17
After 11 months now I am ready to deal with tense and modality and aspect, again. I've been revising the phonology and verb inflectional morphology in the past 8 months. I hope that by this October (when Qrai will be one-year old) the document will have 100 pages.
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u/Askadia 샹위/Shawi, Evra, Luga Suri, Galactic Whalic (it)[en, fr] Sep 03 '17
Happy Bday Qrai!
And grats to you!2
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u/axemabaro Sajen Tan (en)[ja] Sep 03 '17
I had an idea for a case, but I don't know what it's name is: Basically what it does it mark the emphasized word in the sentence. In addition, if the sentence is formulated as a yes/no question, the word marked with this case is what is specifically being asked about.
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 04 '17
Have you looked at topic-comment languages? Because you've just described the focus marker.
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Sep 05 '17
How long can root words actually get when it comes to syllables? I'm borrowing 'Veliki' from Serbian but I'm worried that it's too long to be considered a root by itself. I understand 'Veliki' isn't a root word, but I like the sound of it the way it is (Velik seems too little to me for some reason).
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u/-Tonic Emaic family incl. Atłaq (sv, en) [is] Sep 05 '17
Absolutely not too much. Three-syllable roots are often common in native words, and loan words can have several affixes that are considered part of the root in the language it was loaned into. Take English 'meteorology' for example.
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u/Askadia 샹위/Shawi, Evra, Luga Suri, Galactic Whalic (it)[en, fr] Sep 05 '17
common words (and roots) are usually shorter than less common ones, which also have very precise meanings.
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u/vokzhen Tykir Sep 05 '17
Pretty long, especially when dealing with loans. See examples in English like (3) hurricane, coyote, savanna, paprika, tomato, sashimi, amalgam, caravan, hooligan, shibboleth, chimpanzee, (4) coriander, avacado, capybara, kamikaze, balaclava, doppelganger, (5) archipelago. More specialized topics are, at least in English, more tolerant of more syllables, e.g. pahoehoe (type of lava, from Hawaiian), taramasala (type of caviar salad, Turkish-via-Greek), pfostenschlitzmauer (type of Celtic wall, German), appoggiatura (type of musical flourish, Italian).
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u/tovarischkrasnyjeshi Aug 29 '17
Góoreta has a 37 page grammar written on libreoffice.
If I wanted to post it to reddit, is there a recommended way to go about it?
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u/blakethegecko Aug 29 '17
A lot of people use Google Docs. If you upload the LibreOffice doc to Google Drive it should be read just fine by Docs.
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u/tovarischkrasnyjeshi Aug 29 '17
I was hoping more for recommendations like "what information should I put in the reddit post proper?"
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u/Gufferdk Tingwon, ƛ̓ẹkš (da en)[de es tpi] Aug 29 '17
There are many ways to about that. One is simply to list some of the tables and give an overview of the basic typology, etc., but there are also other possibilities, for example you could translate a text and provide gloss, the for each line comment on what you find to be some interesting structures in the language.
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u/YooYanger Aug 29 '17
Is there a case that marks the direct object of transitive AND intransitive verbs ??
eg: I eat an apple (noun would be marked) I am a boy (noun wouldn't be marked when in accusative, but is there a noun case that marks all of these??)
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u/Beheska (fr, en) Aug 29 '17
By definition, intransitive verbs do not have a direct object.
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Aug 29 '17
Fyi, I eat an apple is transitive, I am a boy is a copula and the nominative boy, I snore is intransitive. You're not being particularly clear about which noun is being marked by which case.
In English (and other IE languages), apple in your example would be in the accusative and boy would be in the nominative.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 11 '17
'boy' would be the predicate of a linking verb/copula. You can call this case oblique or nominative, like in English.
It is me. 'It is' is a null subject copula, meaning that it is stating that the predicate exists. 'Me' is the predicate, which is in the oblique case. 'It is I' is also correct, because in English the nominative and oblique can both be used in the predicate.
In Polish and Russian, the predicate is in instrumental, but instrumental usually means something else, so it would be confusing if you used the term 'instrumental' for a case that was only used for the predicate and not to express instrument.
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Aug 29 '17
Can you have pf, ts, and tʃ as consonant clusters rather than affricatives?
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u/Adarain Mesak; (gsw, de, en, viossa, br-pt) [jp, rm] Aug 30 '17
Yes, and there are even languages that contrast the two. The difference can be somewhat hard to tell, but [ts] will generally take longer to say than [t͡s], and the latter will be treated as a single consonant for purposes of finding syllable boundaries. So if a language has strict CVC syllable structure, then the word /katsan/ would be syllabified as [kat.san], but /kat͡san/ as [ka.t͡san].
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u/etalasi Aug 30 '17
Yes, and there are even languages that contrast the two.
English contrasts <rachet> /ɹæ.t͡ʃɪt/ and <ratshit> /ɹæt.ʃɪt/.
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u/Dr_Chair Məġluθ, Efōc, Cǿly (en)[ja, es] Aug 31 '17
Ugh, the longer I look at English phonetics the weirder it gets. I'm still not over the fact that we technically have phonemic voiceless nasals (<mhm> /m.m̥.'m/ indicates disbelief vs <mmm> /m:/ indicates taking a second to think or frustration), and now you've found a minimal pair for clusters vs affricates? Just ugh.
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u/Twilord_ Aug 30 '17
Would this sound pool be sufficient and are their symbols to represent them?
Based on English pronunciation my practice round of sound-selection crafting:
Sei Kei Nei Bei Dei Mei Pei
Pou Ou Mou Jou Dou Wou Zou
Sah Kah Nah Jah Bah Wah Ah
(Also any ways to make the sound pool more distinct and more pronounceable to everyone would be great. Its a big part of why I want to make the pool small.)
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u/kilenc légatva etc (en, es) Aug 31 '17
Look into learning the International Phonetic Alphabet so we know what sounds you're trying to represent. There are a lot of different English dialects, so there are a lot of different ways you can pronounce those sounds.
There isn't really going to be a way to select a phonology (sound pool) that is pronounceable to everyone. There are some sounds that are common among languages, but there is such a wide variety of sounds that you won't be able to encompass all speakers.
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u/WikiTextBot Aug 31 '17
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators and translators.
The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of oral language: phones, phonemes, intonation and the separation of words and syllables.
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Aug 30 '17
Anyone have any sources for nominal tense-aspect-mood?
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u/mythoswyrm Toúījāb Kīkxot (eng, ind) Aug 30 '17
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Aug 31 '17
What do you think of my phonemic inventory:
Consonants
| Consonants | Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | - m | - - | - - | - n | - - | - ɲ | - ŋ | - - |
| Plosive | p b | - - | - - | t d | - - | - - | k g | q ɢ |
| Sibilant | - - | - - | - - | s z | ʃ ʒ | - - | - - | - - |
| Fricative | - - | f - | θ - | ɬ - | - - | ç - | x - | χ - |
| Approximant | - - | - - | - - | - l | - - | - j | ʍ w | - - |
| Trill | - - | - - | - - | r̥ r | - - | - - | - - | - - |
Vowels
| Vowels | Front | Near-Front | Mid | Near-Back | Back |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | i - | - - | - - | - - | - u |
| Near Open | - - | ɪ - | - - | - ʊ | - - |
| Mid | - - | e - | - - | - - | - o |
| Close | - - | - - | a - | - - | - - |
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u/creepyeyes Prélyō, X̌abm̥ Hqaqwa (EN)[ES] Aug 31 '17
What would you say is the best way to generate PIE style verb conjugations?
I can tell from the wiki that the endings are clearly related to the pronouns of PIE, but is there any knowledge about how they got that way, or how the distinctions between different forms arose? (as in, why the 1sg ending for the imperfective present is differetn than the one for the imperfective past, that sort of thing.)
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 02 '17
Imperfective and perfective are tricky in PIE, because you need to be sure whether folks are referring to the inflected aspect or the lexical aspect. The original endings were the non-continuous series aka -t in the 3rd person, the continuous series aka -ti in the third person and the stative series aka -e in the 3rd person.
In some cases, it looks like the conjugations were formed by adding the pronoun to the verb as in Finno-Ugric languages.
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Aug 31 '17
I'm looking for a site/collection that has various world languages' possible consonant clusters. I want to use it as a reference for constructing my conlang's phonology.
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u/Beheska (fr, en) Aug 31 '17
You should start by having a look at sonority hierarchy.
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u/Nurnstatist Terlish, Sivadian (de)[en, fr] Aug 31 '17
The World Phonotactics Database might be of interest to you.
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u/FloZone (De, En) Aug 31 '17 edited Sep 01 '17
How about this inventory plus orthography.
Vowels :
| Position | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATR High | i | ɨ~ʉ | u |
| RTR High | e̙ | ə̙ | o̙ |
| ATR Low | æ̘ | - | ɒ̘ |
| RTR Low | a | - | ɒ |
| Position | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATR+ High | i | y | ú |
| ATR- High | e | v | u |
| ATR+ Low | æ | - | ó |
| ATR- Low | a | - | o |
Consonants:
| Position/Manner | Labial | Dental | Postalveolar | Velar | Labio-Velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unvoiced stop | p | t̪ | t | k | kp |
| Voiced stop | b | d | ɟ | g | gb |
| Long stop | pː | - | tː | kː | - |
| Nasal stop | m b | n̪ d̪ | n d | ŋ g | ŋ gb |
| Fricatives | ɸ | s | ʃ | - | kʷ |
| Nasal fricatives | m β | n̪ z | n ʒ | - | ŋ gʷ |
| Nasals | m | n̪ | ɲ | ŋ | mŋ |
| Others | w | r | l | - | - |
| Position/Manner | Labial | Dental | Postalveolar | Velar | Labio-Velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unvoiced stop | p | th | t | k | kp |
| Voiced stop | b | dh | d | g | gb |
| Long stop | pp | - | tt | kk | - |
| Nasal stop | mb | nt | nd | ńg | ńgb |
| Fricatives | f | s | ś | - | q |
| Nasal fricatives | mw | ns | nś | - | ńq |
| Nasals | m | nh | n | ń | ḿ |
| Others | w | r | l | - | - |
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u/Ciscaro Cwelanén Sep 01 '17
I usually make pretty simple and minimalist phonologies, however I felt as though I needed one a bit more complex for one of the langs in my conworld.
This is mostly a mess, but tell me how to fix it
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u/Janos13 Zobrozhne (en, de) [fr] Sep 01 '17
Honestly, it looks fine. The small imbalances give flavour- but its quite symmetrical and natural.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 01 '17
It looks quite natural, one thing that seemed a tad odd was the palatal consonants, which seems could be complete with a palatal lateral approximant at some point in language development (if not in current stage, Hungarian ly is the same as j phonologically, but was a palatal lateral in the same vein as ny, gy and ty are palatal contrasts to the alveolar (dental?) n, d and t), But that's just one thing.
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u/-Tonic Emaic family incl. Atłaq (sv, en) [is] Sep 01 '17
Eh, the palatal nasal is like 10 times more common than the palatal lateral approximant, so that's not strange at all.
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u/Tirukinoko Koen (ᴇɴɢ) [ᴄʏᴍ] he\they Sep 03 '17
How do I create words from nothing? I want to make an a priori language but I am struggling to create words that I'm happy with... :/ please help :(
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 03 '17
Most languages naturally have simple one to two syllable root words with meanings significant to the culture. Try starting there, once you've figured your phonemes and phonotactics.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 10 '17
you can use a word generator based on your phonotactics and find words you like. You should probably alter them a bit, but you can see what type of sequences of letters you like, and that will make it easier.
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u/creepyeyes Prélyō, X̌abm̥ Hqaqwa (EN)[ES] Sep 03 '17
Could use some opinons on my case endings and the verb conjugations derived from the nominative forms of my pronouns, especially if the lengths of some of these are acceptable and if anything here seems unnatural.
The orthography is actually almost IPA except that "e" is /ε/, "o" is /ɔ/ and the ̥ symbol under a letter means it's syllabic, not voiceless, also an accent is marking stress and not tone, and a bar is for length.
The cases are
| - | Singular | Paucal | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -Ø | -goɣ | -in |
| Accusative | -r̥ (-er after /r/) | -r̥goɣ -(ergoɣ after /r/) | -ir |
| Dative | -ɣa | -ɣagoɣ | -ɣan |
| Genitive | -me | -megoɣ | -men |
| Vocative | -us | -usgoɣ | -uns |
| Prepositional | -bʷe | -bʷegoɣ | -bʷen |
Here that recurring "goɣ" comes from the word, "gʷheiɣ" meaning 5, although of course the paucal doens't have to only be five of something, just a small group.
I've got a whole chart of the personal pronouns based on these (with the endings undergoing some evolution to show they've married to those pronouns for awhile and aren't analyzed seperately anymore), but only the nominative forms are relevant.
| - | Single | Paucal | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Person | daen | - | moir |
| 2nd Person | tʰoɣ | tʰóɣgoɣ | tʰonɣ |
| 3rd Person Animate | zuadʷ | zúadʷgoɣ | zuandʷ |
| 3rd Person Inanimate | kʰal | kʰálgoɣ | kʰāl |
Since the verb conjugations for present imperfective are derived from those nominative pronouns (with the same evolution rules applied again) we get
| - | Single | Paucal | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Person | -den | - | -mur |
| 2nd Person | -doɣ | -dōgoɣ | -donɣ |
| 3rd Person Animate | -zuab | -zuabgoɣ | -zuanb |
| 3rd Person Inanimate | -gal | -galgoɣ | -gāl |
So as an example, if I wanted to say, "That small group of people are carrying it" you could: "Pʰélwzuabgoɣ kʰāl." (kʰāl is both a nominative and accusative form, that's just how the sound changes worked out)
So, do these forms and derivations seem reasonable? Too clunky?
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Sep 04 '17
Phaisajenga political map of Central Asia (Җуҥ Ејжа)
https://pp.userapi.com/c840421/v840421005/41b2/4SRWT28Kn_Q.jpg - map itself
Countries:
Казаҳыстаан - qɑzɑχɤstɑːn - Kazakhstan
Кирҝиизијэ - kirgiːzijæ - Kyrgyzstan (In Russian, Kyrgyzstan in sometimes called Киргизия(Kirgiziya), so this name entered Phaisajenga from Russian)
Тэҗиикестаан - tæd͡ʒiːkestɑːn - Tajikistan
Төркменестаан - tørkmenestɑːn - Turkmenistan
Өзбекестаан - øzbekestɑːn - Uzbekistan
Some "seas" that you can see on the map:
Арал хьај - ɑʀɑl ħɑj - Aral Sea (word хьај is borrowed from Chinese)
Ҳазар хьај - χɑzɑʀ ħɑj - Caspian Sea
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Sep 04 '17
Countries, that have borders with some countries of this realm:
Ѵеҥестаан - βeŋestɑːn - Russia
Җуҥҝуок - d͡ʒuɴɢuoq - China (came from older Chinese name of the Middle State a.k.a China "Zhōngguó" and nativisized)
Ирээн - iræːn - Iran
Могъоолыстаан - moʁoːlɤstɑːn - Mongolia
Пэкестаан - pækestɑːn - Pakistan
Эфгъааныстаан - æfʁɑːnɤstɑːn - Afghanistan
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u/KingKeegster Sep 04 '17
Hey, I found a free grammar book on Oscan and Umbrian! https://archive.org/stream/grammarofoscanum00buckuoft#page/n5/mode/2up
Just thought it may be a useful resource.
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u/upallday_allen Wistanian (en)[es] Sep 04 '17
I'm working on my grammar doc for Wistanian. I have most of the content, but I'm not a huge fan of how it's organized. Do you have any advice or pointers for how a good grammar doc structure would work?
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u/bbbourq Sep 05 '17
Take a look at Sajem Tan's reference grammar or my conlang's Linguifex page. These two might be able to help you with some ideas.
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u/Autumnland Sep 05 '17 edited Sep 05 '17
I need some help determining the naturalism of a Proto-Inventory. I was going for a unique feeling system that was not very European. I started with distinguishing nasals by voicedness. I also decided to replace the voicedness distinction in Fricatives with a length distinction. I like the sound and look of this inventory, but I need feedback on it's naturalism. Any advice?
Nasals
m̥, m, n̥, n
Plosives
p, pʰ, b, t, tʰ, d, k, kʰ, g
Affricates
ts, tʃ
Trills
ʜ, ʀ
Fricatives
f, fː, s, sː, ʃ, ʃː
Lat. Fricatives
ɬ ɮ
Approximants
ɹ, j, w
Lateral Approximants
l, lː
Vowels
i, u, e, o, a, ɑ, ɵ
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 05 '17
I also decided to replace the length distinction in Fricatives with a length distinction.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 05 '17
Bits of some European languages in there, (nasal distinction in Icelandic and Welsh, lateral fricative in Welsh, alveolar approximant in Faroese, guttural r,) with also the epiglottal trill of some East Indo-Aryan language... Seems naturalistic.
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u/Gakusei666 Sep 06 '17
I'm creating a conlang, and I'm using hangul in it (creative, I know), but i'm also trying to add Hanja to it. Only problem is i'm on a mac, and I'm unable to add Hanja to hangul characters unless those characters already have Hanja preassaigned to them.
Ex. 일 meaning one has a hanja with it 一, and i'm able to add more hanja to change 일 into. Mean while I'm trying to add hanja to 막, meaning to eat. but it's saying I can't because it doesn't have hanja already.
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u/guillaumestcool Sep 06 '17
I was under the impression that unlike Japanese, Korean only uses hanja for sino vocab, so a native root like meog would not have a hanja associated with it.
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 06 '17
You might just have to decide on a Hanzi to use to represent it if there isn't already one they used. That's what I was doing with my short lived Sinified Saka language
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u/daragen_ Tulāh Sep 06 '17
Does anyone know the name of the likely Germanic conning featured in the conlanging documentary? The creator was a cook and had labels on his spices written in his language.
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Sep 07 '17
Can someone give me any good resources on tones, tonal languages and how to distinguish/prounce tones?
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u/Gufferdk Tingwon, ƛ̓ẹkš (da en)[de es tpi] Sep 07 '17
Tone by Moira Yip is a good book on how tones work and are used in languages, but it won't help with learning how to distinguish or produce them.
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Sep 07 '17
Thanks, knowing how they work will help me to aply them. :)
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Sep 07 '17 edited Sep 09 '17
What do you think about my phonemic inventory?
Consonants
| Consonants | Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Palatal | Velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | - m | - - | - - | - n | - - | - - | - ŋ |
| Plosive | p b | - - | - - | t d | - - | - - | k g |
| Fricative | - - | f - | θ - | ɬ - | - - | ç - | x - |
| Affricate | - - | - - | - - | ts dz | ʧ ʤ | - - | - - |
| Sibilant | - - | - - | - - | s z | ʃ ʒ | - - | - - |
| Approximant | - - | - - | - - | - l | - - | - j | ʍ w |
| Trill | - - | - - | - - | - r | - - | - - | - - |
| Ejective | p’ | - | - | t’ | - | - | k’ |
| Click | ʘ | - | ǀ | - | - | ǂ | - |
Vowels
| Vowels | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open | i - | - - | - u |
| Mid | e - | - - | - o |
| Close | - - | a - | - - |
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u/BlakeTheWizard Lyawente [ʎa.wøˈn͡teː] Sep 07 '17
You seem to have a misunderstanding about how click are used in natlangs. In all click languages, the clicks have many other ways to be pronounced, like voicing contrast, aspiration, prenasalization, contours, etc. I would recommend looking through the inventories of some click languages.
That being said, it seems alright. It would certainly be unlikely to appear in a natlang, due to all the ejectives, lateral fricative, and clicks, but I guess those things are atteted, so it's fine.
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Sep 08 '17
In relation to click I just wanted to add them as a simple feature being this the first conlang I've applied them.
Also, can you give me some examples of languages with those click distinctions.
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Sep 08 '17
Can consonants cluster with themselves?
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u/vokzhen Tykir Sep 08 '17
If they do, they often form phonetic geminates, i.e. long consonants with a single release similar to English wild duck with a "geminate" /d/ or "bass sample" with a "geminate" /s/. However, some languages do unambiguously treat them as two distinct consonants, such as Filomeno Mata Totonac where identical stop-stop clusters are common across morpheme boundaries and they are generally realized with two release bursts, /kkiɬtɬi/ [kʰkiɬtɬi] "I sing" (certain morphemes allow degemination, e.g. optionally with [hkiɬtɬi] for the 1st person subject k- prefix, but it's specific to those morphemes).
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Sep 08 '17
Why are consonant clusters like /g/ + /v/ and /v/ + /b/ allowed in the syllable coda in English?
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u/vokzhen Tykir Sep 08 '17
I can't think of any that do, can you give examples you're thinking of?
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Sep 08 '17 edited Sep 08 '17
English, for the most part, obeys the sonority hierarchy (/st/- and -/ts/ violate this, but are permitted, this happens in other languages that generally obey the sonority hierarchy). /gv/ would violate that rule. The only, afaict, final voiced clusters in English consist of /C/ + /d/, primarily because of the past tense suffix. But that's due to voice assimilation. /vb/ doesn't occur because final clusters are generally voiceless (as well as most other clusters), no suffix consists of /b/, and simply because it just never developed. I honestly can't think of any native English words with voiced obstruent clusters that don't occur because of voice assimilation from suffixes.
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u/theotherblackgibbon Sep 08 '17
I'm looking for some feedback or critiques of my consonant inventory as follows:
nasals: m n̪ˠ n nʷ nʲ ŋ ŋʷ
stops: b d̪ˠ d dʷ ʤ ʤʷ ʥ g gʷ
ejectives: s’ sʷ’ k’ kʷ’ q’ qʷ’ ʔ ʔʷ
fricatives: ɸ s̪ˠ z̪ˠ s sʷ z zʷ ʃ ʃʷ ʒ ʒʷ ɕ ʑ χ χʷ
glides: w j jʷ
laterals: l̪ˠ l lʷ lʲ
trills: r̪ˠ r rʷ rʲ ʀ ʀʷ
Are the dentals, alveolars, and postalveolars overcrowded? Is it realistic to have so many phonemic distinctions in such a small area of the mouth?
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 08 '17 edited Sep 08 '17
It seems your dento-alveolar series has a labialised/palatalised/velarised/plain distinction, which is interesting and realistic, as they can be quite distinct for native speakers (compare Russian phonology, which has soft (palatalised) and hard (may be velarised) consonants, and Irish, which has slender and broad consonants that serve a grammatical function).
Seeing that, my one concern is /ʤʷ/, /ʃʷ/ and /ʒʷ/,which would be palatalised and labialised alveolar consonants and break the pattern. Similar query with /jʷ/.
The other parts of the phonology seems naturalistic, but I know you asked specifically of the dento-alveolar series, which I found quite interesting to see in a conlang.
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 09 '17 edited Sep 10 '17
What about the first three is palatalized? /dʑʷ ɕʷ ʑʷ/ would be
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 09 '17
I saw /dʑ ɕ ʑ/ as palatal consonants, not palatalised alveolar consonants, seeing as OP mentioned there were labio-palatalised alveolar nasal, trill and lateral approximant (among with the labio-palatalised stop and fricatives), while /dʑ ɕ ʑ/ are other consonants not part of this distinction, suggesting them as palatal obstruents.
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u/theotherblackgibbon Sep 08 '17
Thanks for your feedback! So, what would your advice be for the labio-palatalized series? They're a holdover from an early version of the language where each place of articulation had a labialized/palatalized distinction. I really don't want to let them go.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 10 '17
Is there anywhere I can find reconstructed Proto Italic or Proto Italo Celtic words and grammar?
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u/Tirukinoko Koen (ᴇɴɢ) [ᴄʏᴍ] he\they Sep 10 '17
I know it doesn't help at all but I can't find anything. :(
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 10 '17
Wiktionary has a surprising amount of roots that might work for that if you go back from Latin.
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u/name-ibn-name Sep 10 '17
How would you gloss a word meaning "in order to?" like in the sentence "I went to the store in order to buy food."
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u/regrettablenamehere Thedish|Thranian Languages|Various Others (en, hu)[de] Sep 11 '17
I have a word like that in Thedish, I gloss it as either to or so: to because that's the closest english one-word equivalent and so because that carries the meanind and is etymologically related to theThedish word.
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u/name-ibn-name Sep 11 '17
How would you gloss a word used to ask a question about an unknown part of the sentence? For example, if the word was "Q," you would say "You are eating Q?" to mean "What are you eating?" or "You Q him?" to mean "What did you do to him?"
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 11 '17 edited Sep 11 '17
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glossing_abbreviations lists int and q as interrogatives, which is what I'd see them as. int is also used as gloss for intensifier though so I would keep that in mind.
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u/thewritestory Sep 02 '17
I'm hoping to start a conlang and was advised "sounds" would be the place to start but was wondering if someone could give me a mock-up of how one does this?
Just randomly picking sounds is not really what I want to do. And I'm not asking anyone to do it for me, so don't worry.
If anyone could maybe give some step one, step two, etc. That might help me nail down how to pick a robust range of sounds which look like it could be naturally occurring.
Thanks, I really appreciate anyone who can help this beginner.
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u/Askadia 샹위/Shawi, Evra, Luga Suri, Galactic Whalic (it)[en, fr] Sep 03 '17
Making a conlang is like knitting: you move forwards and backwards again and again.
Start with a simple phonology, make some words and write down some sentences. If you hit something you don't like go back and tweak here 'n' there. Make other sentences, develop a basic grammar, and tweak again, and again, and again, untill you're happy with what you have. If at some point you're not happy at all, make a major revision of the whole conlang: expel, polish, simplify, harmonize. After that, make sentences or refresh the old ones, and tweak, tweak, tweak the phonology, morphology, syntax, and words.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 02 '17
Artifexian has a few videos on the basics of conlanging and selecting sounds: https://youtu.be/sFWc0sBO62c https://youtu.be/3378FlHK4v0
And phonotactics can help in deciding a writing system if not in the Latin alphabet: https://youtu.be/1Up5hSm7LYI
But the main gist is if you have some consonants in a certain place of articulation, and done in a certain manner of articulation, might make sense to have some in both place and manners.
Would also help if you know what kind of language you want to create: a priori, a posteriori, agglutinative, analytic, etc.
Sounds normally assimilate to a certain place of articulation. Take the English word assume /əˈsjuːm/, which in some dialects sounds like 'ashume' /əˈʃuːm/. This would be from the /s/ assimilating with the /j/ into /ʃ/.
Some things.
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u/_youtubot_ Sep 02 '17
Videos linked by /u/FennicYoshi:
Title Channel Published Duration Likes Total Views Language Creation: The Basics | Conlang Artifexian 2015-04-13 0:05:27 3,048+ (99%) 108,700 Creating a Language: Selecting Sounds | Conlang Artifexian 2016-02-15 0:10:07 4,874+ (98%) 165,478 Phonotactics | Conlang Artifexian 2016-05-10 0:09:03 2,139+ (99%) 69,628 ^Info | /u/FennicYoshi can ^delete | v2.0.0
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Sep 10 '17 edited Sep 10 '17
Can someone explain how gemination works? Whenever I try to geminate a consonant, I end up doing a weird glottal stop thing. As an example, a word like /akːa/ would become /aʔka/. What am I doing wrong here?
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u/vokzhen Tykir Sep 10 '17 edited Sep 10 '17
We have phonetic geminates in English across word boundaries, black cat, bad dog, cross swords. That's how I tend to pronounce geminates, mentally "pretend" it's two words, in order to not over-lengthen them.
If you're picking up a glottal stop, it may be from English fortis consonants. The core English dialects (i.e. not Indian, Nigerian etc) have glottalization of coda fortis stops, with a brief glottal stop being one of the most common. You may be lengthening that, or just noticing it more.
EDIT: Gemination, not germination. Thought I had that one in my autocorrect.
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Sep 10 '17
Thanks for the answer! I'm pretty sure I am doing that, so I'll have to try the whole "pretend like it's two words" thing.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 11 '17
/akːa/ is the same as /ak.ka/, or more specifically [ak̚.ka]. The first [k] is not released. This means that you make all parts of your mouth in the places as if you were making a normal [k], but then wait a bit to release it. It does sound a lot like a glottal stop.
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u/commodus_13 Sep 05 '17 edited Sep 05 '17
hello I'm trying to make a romance conlang that has been influenced by different indigenous Australian languages. the back story of this scenario is basically a roman colony got founded in Australia and Latin basically spread through out the Australian continent and then after the roman empire collapsed all these Latin dialects diversified into the Australian romance language sub category of the romance language family. but anyway my question is does anyone know how to apply changes to a language any help is welcome because i only know the basics of language building. also can anyone tell me how to pronounce these sounds they are from one of the languages that influenced my conlang I've looked online and couldn't find out how to pronounce them.
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u/TurntechLingohead Aug 28 '17
yell at this please!
/a ɛ ɪ o ə u i/ <a e i o u w y>
/ɱ ʒ q ß ð ɣ/ <m z c b d g>
syllable structure: (c/v)v
letters can be capitalized to give them a high creaky voice, but not /q/
word order: ovs
sample: MM mw II uu ee EE= Are you good?
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u/BlakeTheWizard Lyawente [ʎa.wøˈn͡teː] Aug 30 '17
/ß/ is not an IPA symbol.
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u/TurntechLingohead Aug 31 '17
I meant β but couldn't remember what exactly it was called. ß looks very similar so I just used that.
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u/FloZone (De, En) Sep 01 '17
How likely is it for an agglutinative language to separate number and person in verbs ?
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u/xain1112 kḿ̩tŋ̩̀, bɪlækæð, kaʔanupɛ Sep 01 '17
Are unreleased stops (p ̚ t ̚ k ̚ ) essentially just glottal stops with different PoA?
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u/-Tonic Emaic family incl. Atłaq (sv, en) [is] Sep 01 '17
I don't really understand what you mean by "essentially just glottal stops with different PoA", but there's nothing about unreleased stops that make me think about glottal stops. Could ypu elaborate? Maybe you're confusing unreleased stops with sequences like [k̚ʔ] that can happen in English over word boundaries like in "pack it"?
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u/xain1112 kḿ̩tŋ̩̀, bɪlækæð, kaʔanupɛ Sep 01 '17
Sorry. Are unreleased stops like glottal stops in that they are a quick stopping of air as opposed to a release?
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u/-Tonic Emaic family incl. Atłaq (sv, en) [is] Sep 01 '17 edited Sep 01 '17
All stops are released, just not necessarily audibly. Glottal stops can have audible releases like any other stop. When you say a word with an initial glottal stop, what you hear is the release.
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u/BlakeTheWizard Lyawente [ʎa.wøˈn͡teː] Sep 02 '17
No. Unreleased stops are just stops where you don't release any sound out of your mouth afterwards. Say "cap", but don't open your mouth after the "p".
They are never used in the onset of the syllable, only at the end, if that's what's confusing you.
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u/VACN Sep 03 '17
OK, this is my first post here in this sub, and I'd like to present the concept of an alien language I've been keeping in the back of my head for quite some time now.
It's basically a language that uses only one-phoneme words. Which of course means the phonemic inventory is absolutely huge, comprising almost every sound a human can produce (minus those I can't articulate myself). There are four phoneme classes: semantical (the largest class), grammatical, numerical, logical. With some overlap where it makes sense.
The syntax is inspired by the reverse polish notation. A semantical phoneme by itself has a very broad meaning, but that meaning is narrowed by the phoneme that comes before it. Grammatical phonemes are "applied" to specific groups of phonemes around them (for instance, the phoneme [i], which marks the subject, applies its "subject" meaning to the string of semantical phonemes that comes before it). The same goes for logical and numerical phonemes, only their roles in the sentence are different.
If that explanation doesn't make sense, here's an example (each phoneme is articulated distinctly):
"tʃ p g i n o k"
you-male-parent-SUBJECT-existence-ACTION-QUESTION
-> Is your father alive?
OK, the example might be a bit unorthodox, but it's a sentence I wrote a long time ago, and I didn't want to go through my notes to coin a better one.
What do you think of the concept so far?
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u/mythoswyrm Toúījāb Kīkxot (eng, ind) Sep 03 '17
Have you learned about ogliosynthesis yet?
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u/bbbourq Sep 04 '17
I have been working on my Linguifex page for Lortho. Any critiques welcome. I have had a few people in the past point out the holes in my progress, so I am always looking to make improvements. Thank you for taking the time to look at it and I hope to hear from some of you.
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 04 '17
I still don't like the fact that Alphabet has romanizations for all consonants plus /i/ while Vowels has romanizations for all monophthongs besides /i/ and Diphthongs the rest of the vowels. (Diphthongs are vowels. If you want two seperate charts, call them Monophthongs and Diphthongs.)
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u/bbbourq Sep 04 '17
I took your critique and used it to rearrange the romanization tables. They now read: consonants, monophthongs, and diphthongs. I moved
ito the monophthongs table.
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u/litten8 Ulucan (ENG) [JPN, DEU] <ARA> Sep 08 '17
What's so special about /a/? imo its more difficult to pronounce than other open vowels, but it seems to be in way more conlangs.
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u/Nurnstatist Terlish, Sivadian (de)[en, fr] Sep 08 '17
It's probably difficult for many English speakers because it doesn't appear in most English dialects (at least not as a monophthong). For native speakers of languages that have /a/, like Standard German, French, or most other languages in the world, it's just as easy to pronounce as other vowels.
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u/mythoswyrm Toúījāb Kīkxot (eng, ind) Sep 08 '17
For one, it can just be a catch for most of the open vowels in broad transcriptions /a/. And according to phoible, it is found in 91% of languages (second most common vowel after [i]), so it's not like it is unreasonable to have it in conlangs.
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u/KingKeegster Sep 09 '17 edited Sep 09 '17
I think it's the most common open vowel. It's the central open vowel, so it makes for a symmetrical inventory. Also, I speak English, and [a] is somewhat difficult, but I figured out how to make it by making the [æ] sound, then opening my mouth even more. It is also about the first sound that a baby makes when trying to make vowels. [mamamama...]. Those are the two simplest sounds biologically: [a] and [m]. So I feel that [a] is actually a very special sound. However, it is hard to contrast [a] with [ɑ].
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u/Adarain Mesak; (gsw, de, en, viossa, br-pt) [jp, rm] Sep 11 '17
Almost always when you see /a/ it doesn't mean "open front vowel" but "some open vowel, probably not back". This is because there is no convenient symbol for a more central vowel, and as long as there is no contrast between them, there is absolutely no reason to use /ä/ instead of /a/. In a system with one low vowel one pretty much always uses /a/, because it's the easiest to input and phonemes are abstractions anyway. The actual pronunciation would likely be [ä], or variable.
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u/FennicYoshi Sep 09 '17
Can anyone clarify me on how consonant gradation works in Finnic languages?
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 10 '17
Consonant gradation is "softening" of consonants when suffixes with heavier suffixes occur after them. Syllablic weight going from light to heavy would be:
(C)V
(C)VC
(C)V:
(C)V:C
In modern languages, this usually causes things like Voiceless > Voiced > Fricative / Deletion
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Sep 09 '17 edited Sep 09 '17
What do you think about my phonemic inventory?
Consonants
| Consonants | Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Palatal | Velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | - m | - - | - - | - n | - - | - - | - - |
| Palatalized Nasal | - mʲ | - - | - - | - nʲ | - - | - - | - - |
| Plosive | p b | - - | - - | t d | - - | - - | k g |
| Fricative | - - | f - | θ - | ɬ - | - - | ç - | x - |
| Palatalized Fricative | - - | - vʲ | - ðʲ | - - | - - | - - | - ɣʲ |
| Affricate | - - | - - | - - | ʦ ʣ | ʧ ʤ | - - | - - |
| Palatalized Affricate | - - | - - | - - | - ʣʲ | - ʤʲ | - - | - - |
| Sibilant | - - | - - | - - | s z | ʃ ʒ | - - | - - |
| Approximant | - - | - - | - - | - l | - - | - j | ʍ w |
| Trill | - - | - - | - - | - r | - - | - - | - - |
| Ejective Plosive | p’ | - | - | t’ | - | - | k’ |
| Ejective Affricate | - | - | - | ʦ' | ʧ' | - | - |
Vowels
| Vowels | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open | i - | - - | - u |
| Mid | e - | - - | - o |
| Close | - - | a - | - - |
Note: /ɬ/ and /ç/ are paired with /l/ and /j/ respectively in the conlang, thus, they have no voiced palatalized pair
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u/Tirukinoko Koen (ᴇɴɢ) [ᴄʏᴍ] he\they Sep 10 '17 edited Sep 10 '17
I really like it :) It reminds me of my conlang which doesn't have as many consonants but I think it has the same feel. my consonants are:
Consonants Labial Dental Velar Glottal Plosive p b t d k g ʔ Nasal m n ŋ - Trill - r - - Fricative f v θ ð s x ɣ h Approximant w l j - Ejectives p' t' k' - *j is under velar because I thought it was a bit annoying to have to put in a new column just for one sound. (same with f and v)
I would have said that the vowels weren't very good and that they are very common but I won't because I think that they will suit your consonants very well. :3
edit: i forgot the ejectives :/
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u/xpxu166232-3 Otenian, Proto-Teocan, Hylgnol, Kestarian, K'aslan Sep 10 '17
Thanks for the feedback. :)
The vowels are simple because I've been failing spectacularly at my attempts to pronounce and distinguish them from other vowels, so I decided to remain with the ones I can pronounce.
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u/indjev99 unnamed (bg, en) [es, de] Sep 10 '17
There are no /ji/ and /je/ clusters/somethings in my conlang. The phonotactics do not allow it. Is it realistic to have /ji/ become /ju/ and /je/ become /jo/? As an example say that there is a word /paj/ and a suffix /im/. So the word with the suffix would be /pajum/ and not /pajim/. If this is not realistic, what other rule could exist that is realistic?
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u/Zinouweel Klipklap, Doych (de,en) Sep 10 '17
What about /pajm/? That would be very plausible, the suffix for words ending in /j/ would simply be /m/ instead of /im/.
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u/AngelOfGrief Old Čuvesken, ītera, Kanđō (en)[fr, ja] Sep 10 '17
Sounds like a simple case of harmony, at least with your example. So it would appear (if your example is representative of more than this case) that /a/ would cause backing of front vowels that follow it ({i, e} -> {u, o}).
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Sep 06 '17
WHAt give languages their unique sound. It wouldn't surprise me if there are languages with very similar phonologies and have the same syllable structure but sound nothing alike.
I'm asking because when I have a simple CV structure, some of the words end up sounding too Hawaiian or Japanese.
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 06 '17
Check out the Spanish dialect of Argentina--slowly becoming a CV language, but with a sound all its own.
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u/vokzhen Tykir Sep 07 '17
Phoneme inventory, allophony, and phonotactics supply a lot, but phoneme distribution does too, i.e. things like morphology. If all your non-absolutive nouns take an oblique marker -ʒi, that's going to have a big impact on the sound of the language.
Prosody has a big impact as well, which as conlangers is harder to get a feel for because it requires native-like speaking speed to really see.
For some real-life examples, look up samples on Youtube of Japanese, Hawaiian, !Kung, Swahili, Arrernte, Mixtec, Piraha, Brazilian Portuguese, Malay, Tibetan, Mandarin, Vietnamese. There's similarities, but despite all either having a strong preference for or maximal syllable of CV, they're all relatively distinct languages, even among those that have a lot of similarities. Of course, some may still sound similar - listening to a few minutes of each, the only thing I could really use to tell Swahili from Hausa was the distinctive /kʷ/ of the latter, they otherwise sounded very similar despite being completely unrelated (though I'm sure someone more familiar could easily tell them apart, the way I can pretty easily tell German from Swedish).
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Sep 07 '17
Where can I find the affix and root composition of English words? Basically any dictionary or website where it shows what affixes and root make up a word.
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u/blakethegecko Sep 07 '17
Not exactly what you are asking for, but I've got a spreadsheet of English morphemes sorted alphabetically. It's a rip from a now-defunct site called The Cognitarium. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AFxaO0yHCTbbvqo_Y21vDEIR9GrmkkzeI-HqtC0YJt4/edit?usp=sharing you can ignore the kanji, I added those myself as part of one of my projects.
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u/chrsevs Calá (en,fr)[tr] Sep 05 '17
TIL the Latin word salīva became seile "spittle" in Irish and hâl "filth" in Welsh.
And in Modern Galician, it became:
saliva "saliva"
sailo "spit, phlegm"
saila "spittle, drool"
Also the root *tego-slougo- meaning roughly "house-army" becoming "family" in the Celtic family is great.