Conlang Random Thread

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I was going for economy, since the sound doesn't exist in English, so whichever is going to be mispronounced by English-speakers no matter what.

[chris_notts]

Or if you want your readers not to be taxed, h for /ʕ/, and ' for /ʔ/. The š is already an unusual letter, and having what look like random question points in fantasy words will probably just confuse the audience (and you can't be sure they'll read any appendix about the language either way).

I would go with this. I like š and the rest seems fine, just not the two most exotic letters.

The other criterion is pronunciation, though. <h> for /ʕ/ is fine, but liable for mispronunciation by the linguistically inexperienced; I can’t claim my alternative of <gh> is much better, but the mispronunciation is at least somewhat closer to the real value. I like <š>, but have seen people mispronounce it without even noticing that they’d made a mistake.

(Also, welcome back to the board after your absence! Glad to see you again!)

Thanks! I just thought I'd check in.

I guess it really depends what you want. I think most "foreign" names in English sci-fi and fantasy are pronounced incorrectly anyway except by the minority who read the appendices. Readers will get the vowels wrong if you go for anything like the ~standard values for ieaou, they'll ignore apostrophes because they're used to them being silent in English and used as pointless decoration in other books, etc. So I would personally aim for something that looks about right and looks nice on the page, and accept the fact that the readers are going to pick their own pronunciations. ʕ and ʔ are the only ones that fail that criterion, because they don't look like proper letters to most English readers with no foreign language or IPA exposure, and do possibly look like punctuation (?).

[chris_notts]

Incidentally, using the same approach of "I just want it to look nice", and taking into account that I hate all the standard options for [j] and [w], I decided to go with î and û in my recent project, which otherwise has a fairly standard orthography. If I use it in a fictional setting, I'm not sure if readers would get the pronunciation right without reading the notes, but it doesn't really matter too much.

(Using i and u as ambiguous signs for vowels and their semi-vowel equivalents is actually pretty common, so the only difference really is using the circumflex to mark their non-syllabic nature)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

My brain, used to a circumflex signifying a long vowel (French and old-style Hepburn being to blame) would misread that even with an appendix, more than likely.

[chris_notts]

And now I've just realised I've managed to create a similar structural almost ambiguity twice

I have:

o = non-specific article
o- = third person possessor on inalienable nouns
o' = deictic enclitic
o'- = reflexive prefix

o vs o-

Stress is final so there's little difference in pronunciation between the first syllable o tacha' "a man" and o-chin "his/her child". If you know the root it's not ambiguous because an inalienable noun needs the prefix he- before it can be non-specific, e.g. o he-chin "a child", and an alienable noun would need different possessive prefixes: û-en-tacha' "his/her man". But it still feels a bit off somehow, that if you don't know the root o + noun could either mean "a (non-specific) X" or "his/her X".

o' vs o'

Normally not ambiguous because clauses are verb initial, so a verbal prefix can't be confused with a deictic enclitic. E.g.

rena' in tacha' o'
3-thither-be DET man DEIC
"The man went"

o'nurenqarubtzín il hemen o'...
REFL-SUBORD-3-thither-dress-have.flexible DET woman DEIC
"The woman having got (some) dresses, ..."

But then in a cleft construction, the deictic occurs before the verb and in some conjugations looks like a reflexive marker:

hi'l hemen o' rinkiqarubtzín
ha'-il hemen o' r-inki-qarub-tzín
CLEFT.DET woman DEIC 3-hither-dress-have.flexible
"It was the woman who brought dresses"

Technically, again, this is probably not ambiguous because if the NP is specific (marked by in~il~...) then it must have an associated deictic enclitic, so a clefted reflexive would have doubled o', and in some conjugations this isn't an issue anyway because the reflexive also surfaces as of- or o- depending on what follows. But still... feels a bit messy somehow.

[Travis B.]

My brain, used to a circumflex signifying a long vowel (French and old-style Hepburn being to blame) would misread that even with an appendix, more than likely.

Same here.

[chris_notts]

My brain, used to a circumflex signifying a long vowel (French and old-style Hepburn being to blame) would misread that even with an appendix, more than likely.

Same here.

The problem is that y, j and w are all very ugly letters. I find representing the semivowels orthographically in a non-hideous way one of the hardest decisions almost every time.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Are they really? I find "y" and "w" quite serviceable myself. I'm not that keen on orthographic "j" for [j] except in the context of some Eastern European languages, though.

[chris_notts]

[]

Are they really? I find "y" and "w" quite serviceable myself. I'm not that keen on orthographic "j" for [j] except in the context of some Eastern European languages, though.

I guess it's just a person idiosyncrasy... I think it's because they're short smooth sounds and y and w especially are angular letters and occupy too much space. Not sure why I really dislike using the letter j as a glide.

[bradrn]

Stress is final so there's little difference in pronunciation between the first syllable o tacha' "a man" and o-chin "his/her child". If you know the root it's not ambiguous because an inalienable noun needs the prefix he- before it can be non-specific, e.g. o he-chin "a child", and an alienable noun would need different possessive prefixes: û-en-tacha' "his/her man". But it still feels a bit off somehow, that if you don't know the root o + noun could either mean "a (non-specific) X" or "his/her X".

This strikes me as an opportunity for reanalysis! If your speakers rebracket that construction as o-he chin — something which seems quite natural to me, given that from your description o + an inalienable noun requires he- always — then that can be extended to all usecases of o, giving a contrast between article ohe vs possessive o-.

Not sure why I really dislike using the letter j as a glide.

For me, it’s mostly because I naturally tend to read it as a consonant /dʒ/.

[WeepingElf]

Not sure why I really dislike using the letter j as a glide.

For me, it’s mostly because I naturally tend to read it as a consonant /dʒ/.

I happen to like <j> for /j/, maybe because <j> originally was a variant of <i>, but then my L1 (German) does it. And IPA does so, too! Also, it frees up <y> for /y/, again as in IPA and its original value.

[jal]

Are they really? I find "y" and "w" quite serviceable myself. I'm not that keen on orthographic "j" for [j] except in the context of some Eastern European languages, though.

Germanic languages except English beg to differ.


JAL

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Are they really? I find "y" and "w" quite serviceable myself. I'm not that keen on orthographic "j" for [j] except in the context of some Eastern European languages, though.

Germanic languages except English beg to differ.

I should probably have said "Central and Eastern".

[WeepingElf]

Are they really? I find "y" and "w" quite serviceable myself. I'm not that keen on orthographic "j" for [j] except in the context of some Eastern European languages, though.

Germanic languages except English beg to differ.

I should probably have said "Central and Eastern".

And Northern.

[jal]

Germanic languages except English beg to differ.

I should probably have said "Central and Eastern".

And Northern.

Basically everything North of the Romance languages and Greek? Slavonic languages, Albanian, Hungarian and Finnish, Germanic except English and Baltic. So the vast majority of Central, Western and Northern Europe.


JAL

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Ahzoh]

I think I'll make voiced fricatives more marginal in phonemicity, mostly occuring as allophones or in geminates

azzalmabas [әz.ˈzɑl.mә.bәs] "tribe, people"
arśa-ḫisūn [ˌɑr.ɮә.xɪ.ˈzuːn] "high-priest" (lit. vessel of gods)
abse-nāpaḫ [ˌɑb.sә.ˈnɑː.pәx] "nightmare" (lit. demon of night)
Esê-Nardin [ә.ˌzɛː.ˈnɑr.dɪn] "Ezehnardi" (lit. Boar of Nardi)

[Travis B.]

I think I'll make voiced fricatives more marginal in phonemicity, mostly occuring as allophones or in geminates

azzalmabas [әz.ˈzɑl.mә.bәs] "tribe, people"
arśa-ḫisūn [ˌɑr.ɮә.xɪ.ˈzuːn] "high-priest" (lit. vessel of gods)
abse-nāpaḫ [ˌɑb.sә.ˈnɑː.pәx] "nightmare" (lit. demon of night)
Esê-Nardin [ә.ˌzɛː.ˈnɑr.dɪn] "Ezehnardi" (lit. Boar of Nardi)

I do have to say that I definitely like the sound and look of your language.

[Man in Space]

hö n. (pl. ohi)

1. brother, male sibling
2. moon, natural satellite
3. (with ikłe + number) isotopic helium

Etymology. From Proto-Beheic *twɛ 'brother'. The first sense is the original, though the second also essentially dates back to antiquity. The twin moons of Íröd were considered to be two brothers, Hö Éĝris (the larger and more distant) and Hö Mïsteḫ (the smaller), in Tim Ar mythology and cosmology; as the science of astronomy developed, the term was extended to cover moons and other natural satellites of other planets and celestial objects. The third sense is influenced by the convention of naming elements and other substances by referring to it as the 'mother' (móm) of something. The use of ikłe X 'X times (over)' specifies the number of neutrons in the atom; therefore, hö ikłe dún 'a brother once over' is helium-3, and hö ikłe hága 'a brother twice over' is helium-4. (For comparison, isotopic hydrogen is móm ikłe dún 'a mother once over' (protium), móm ikłe hága 'a mother twice over' (deuterium), or móm ikłe isë 'a mother three times over' (tritium). Hydrogen and helium themselves are móm ĝ kélen 'mother of water' and móm n ahagün 'mother of suns', respectively.)

[Raphael]

hö n. (pl. ohi)

1. brother, male sibling
2. moon, natural satellite
3. (with ikłe + number) isotopic helium

Etymology. From Proto-Beheic *twɛ 'brother'. The first sense is the original, though the second also essentially dates back to antiquity. The twin moons of Íröd were considered to be two brothers, Hö Éĝris (the larger and more distant) and Hö Mïsteḫ (the smaller), in Tim Ar mythology and cosmology; as the science of astronomy developed, the term was extended to cover moons and other natural satellites of other planets and celestial objects. The third sense is influenced by the convention of naming elements and other substances by referring to it as the 'mother' (móm) of something. The use of ikłe X 'X times (over)' specifies the number of neutrons in the atom; therefore, hö ikłe dún 'a brother once over' is helium-3, and hö ikłe hága 'a brother twice over' is helium-4. (For comparison, isotopic hydrogen is móm ikłe dún 'a mother once over' (protium), móm ikłe hága 'a mother twice over' (deuterium), or móm ikłe isë 'a mother three times over' (tritium). Hydrogen and helium themselves are móm ĝ kélen 'mother of water' and móm n ahagün 'mother of suns', respectively.)

Very interesting etymological development, but I'm not entirely sure I'm following how they got from "mother of" to "a brother" in the case of helium. And while the "mother of" system is very good for elements that were isolated at some point during the development of modern chemistry, I'm less sure about those that were already known in their elemental form in times before the development of modern chemistry, like various metals. Wouldn't these already have have long-established traditional names by the time it became known that they're "elements" in the modern sense?