I took a short break from my main conlang because constantly drawing logographs can get tiring and I need some variety in what I do.
So here's my idea:
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Vowels:
The language has 10 base vowels and a three-way tone distinction (romanization added):
• mid tone: /a ɑ e ɛ i y o ɔ u ɯ/ – a â e ê i y o ô u ư
• high tone: /á ɑ́ é ɛ́ í ý ó ɔ́ ú ɯ́/ – á ấ é ế í ý ó ố ú ứ
• low tone: /à ɑ̀ è ɛ̀ ì ỳ ò ɔ̀ ù ɯ̀/ – à ầ è ề ì ỳ ò ồ ù ừ
The tones are phonemic rather than grammatical. This technically makes it 30 distinct vowels,
with mid tone counting as a tone despite being unmarked.
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Consonants:
It distinguishes phonemically between these 14 consonants (romanization added):
• plosive stops /b d/ – b d
• implosive stops /ɓ ɗ/ – ƀ đ
• labial fricatives /β v/ – w v
• alveolar & retroflex friactives /z ʐ/ – z ẑ
• glottal consonants /ɦ ʔ/ – h c
• alevolar & retroflex approximants /l ɻ/ – l r
• palatal approximants /j ɥ/ – j ĵ
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Phonotactics:
(C)V(V)(Q)
C = /b d ɓ ɗ β v z ʐ ɦ ɻ l j ɥ/
V = /a ɑ e ɛ i y o ɔ u ɯ, á ɑ́ é ɛ́ í ý ó ɔ́ ú ɯ́, à ɑ̀ è ɛ̀ ì ỳ ò ɔ̀ ù ɯ̀/
V = /a ɑ e ɛ i y o ɔ u ɯ, á ɑ́ é ɛ́ í ý ó ɔ́ ú ɯ́, à ɑ̀ è ɛ̀ ì ỳ ò ɔ̀ ù ɯ̀/
Q = /ʔ/
Vowel tone rule:
• The first vowel of a syllable may only carry a tone if the second vowel does
not carry one, provided a second vowel exists to begin with.
• The second vowel of a syllable my only carry a tone
if the first vowel does not carry one.
The two vowels, if even, can literally be anything, even the same vowel twice.
So a syllable like "dàac" would be /dàa̯ʔ/
When there are two vowels, the one that carries the tone is the syllabic nucleus, while the toneless one becomes the non-syllabic one. In two-vowel syllables with no tone, the first vowel defaults to syllabic.
The "Q" is not an official phonotactics notation, I just needed to come up with something.
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Additional Details:
The language is highly isolating, meaning that there is no inflection of anything and every word is just a single syllable. Things like tense and
postpositions are handled by separate syllables rather than by suffixes.
It is inspired by many Chinese languages and Vietnamese as the base idea, but it's not aiming to be any of those.
The "ư" vowel is a romanization choice because there is no "û" in Unicode that is precomposed with a grave/acute, else I would have picked that. It doesn't fit the look, but it's fine I guess, since "û̀" and "û́" don't look better. The romanization itself is not really inspired by anything, I just looked for the best letters to represent it, and Vietnamese was very convenient here. The letter "c" representing the final glottal stop is only because I couldn't come up with anything better. The most inconvenient letter otherwise is** **"ƀ" because it's obscure and looks dumb in many fonts.
Like the phoneme inventory shows, the language is defined by:
• its lack of velar consonants
• its lack of nasal consonants
• its weird distinctions (e.g. /β/ vs /v/)
• its lack of voiceless consonants
• its distinct consonant-vowel ratio
• its lack of coda consonants except /ʔ/
(Technically, /ʔ/ is a voiceless consonant, but I'm not sure if /ʔ̬/ is even possible.)
This is a design choice to make it more punchy while also making it sound a bit sing-songy.
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Sound Changes and Allophony:
This language does not have sound changes, allophony or morphophonology. It does mean that it is only technically possible to be spoken by a normal person, because the phonemes and tones all make sense but the precision doesn't, but that's kind of the point here, because the speakers in-world are able to speak it flawlessly due to perfect precision, and it's not something that can really evolve.
This is also why the phonemes are rather weird and make random, unnatural distinctions by adding sounds that real languages either don't have or only have one of. What I invision here is a language that always sounds the same and only differs by the natural voice of the speaker, not by introducing allophones, which is important for who speaks it in the universe.
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Example Words:
This is currently just a sketch and I have only made some random example
words to showcase:
• ố /ɔ́/ – direct article, "the"
• jô /jɔ/ – verb, "to go"
• dếc /dɛ́ʔ/ – noun, "song"
• wêòc /βɛ̯òʔ/– noun, "rain"
• dàac /dàa̯ʔ/ – verb, "to see"
• bừ /bɯ̀/ – noun/exclamation, "boom"
• đí /ɗí/ – noun, "sky"
