Representation of Alien Phonemes

[Pedant]

Hey up, all! Just a quick request for advice. I've been developing an alien race with, shall we say, nonhuman vocalization methods, and I'm wondering whether anyone's come up with a system to best represent sounds produced by non-human entities in language format. Any thoughts?

[Pabappa]

Im partial to the idea of mixing Roman letters with alien letters, at least if it's for a species that has humanlike phonemes in their repertoire. The result might be quite ugly, but then, that also depends, what kind of aliens are these? Do they have sharp teeth, claws, stylets, or anything else that might make them seem too scary for us humans to live side by side with? I wouldnt really have a good solution for you if you want your aliens to seem cute and lovable.

[zompist]

I don't think there's a universal solution. Probably anything will look weird and be hard to use.

My inclination would be to use letter-like symbols— things like ◦○▽□∩⊜⟐⊓⸗〰⸬⌑⌂. Avoid Unicode points that happen to be part of other languages' writing systems, because that invites confusion. E.g. ヨ is pretty, but lots of ZBB members would immediately take it as /yo/. I would avoid typewriter punctuation like *#$@& as old-fashioned.

Linguistic sounds aren't arbitary, but part of a system. So I'd try to be systematic about the alien phonemes. How can the sounds be grouped together, and can you underline that with graphic similarity, or diacritics?

Whoops, time for dinner, maybe more later.

[bradrn]

On this board, the main alien language I’m aware of is Ars Lande’s Bugs. The linked post outlines the phonetics of their speech; in it, the phonemes are represented by semi-arbitrarily chosen Roman letters. I quite like this approach due to its ease of use. But of course, there is no perfect solution, unless you want to come up with an alien writing system.

[zompist]

Some more thoughts, at no extra charge...

I feel a grammar should spend plenty of time on the more unusual or difficult features. I'd be disappointed to read "Br'g%iph&ian has several alien sounds ' % & # which humans cannot pronounce" and that's it. How are they produced? What do they sound like? What makes them impossible to imitate? Could animals besides humans pronounce them?

Can they interact with the 'human' sounds? E.g. let's say 〰 represents a rattling sound made by running a knobby bit of the tongue against the serrated backs of the teeth. Can this sound be aspirated or nasalized or extended (〰〰)? Can you form a dental stop and then release it into a 〰? Are the alien sounds vowel or consonants or something else?

So overall I think the notation doesn't matter so much as a convincing explanation of what they are and why they can't be represented in IPA.

For a language spoken by dragons, I included two nonhuman features. One was a snap caused by closing the beak, which I represented <. It could only appear word-finally. The other was the use of flame: all vowels could be produced while emitting flame. I used a diacritic for that. (I also omitted the labials, on the principle that the dragons did not have moveable lips.)

[Ares Land]

Hey up, all! Just a quick request for advice. I've been developing an alien race with, shall we say, nonhuman vocalization methods, and I'm wondering whether anyone's come up with a system to best represent sounds produced by non-human entities in language format. Any thoughts?

I can share some of my process in devising a transcription of Bug language.

Basically, I asked myself two questions: how do the aliens produce sounds, and which variables/dimensions do they use? That way I ended up with a chart not unlike a phonemic inventory. Also, what are the constraints?
The second question is, who speaks to the aliens and how do they do so? In my case, it's exobiologists and linguists using spectrograms (though I think you can learn to differentiate the sounds by ear).

Supposedly the transcription is intended as a mnemonic. So, say, tkrta sounds nothing like what the Roman letters usually stand for, but it's short and unambiguous, and no worse than, say, transcriptions of Egyptian. Also, I restricted myself to ASCII so I could work on Bug language pretty much anywhere, but that's for my personal convenience. Exobiologists could come up with special symbols instead. (Though if humans need to refer to a specific Alien place, 'Brin' or 'Tecker-tah' is easier than imitating alien sounds or squiggle squiggle dotted underlined circle).

In real life, entomologists occasionnally use diagrams, or chemical names. Apparently raven enthusiasts use onomatopeia (a raven 'bark' is apparently fairly distinctive.)

[alice]

I would avoid typewriter punctuation like *#$@& as old-fashioned.

Plus, it gives the appearance that the censors have been active lately.