Phoneme frequency

[Travis B.]

Imterestingly, Urartian is the only non-Semitic language with so-called "emphatic consonants" though the Hurro-Urartian family is also speculated to be related to the Caucasian languages, so that probably tracks.

Remember, though, that Semitic "emphatic" consonants originated as simple ejectives, as still reflected by South Semitic, which are by no means unique to Semitic. Also, a similar outcome of original ejectives has happened elsewhere, e.g. in the Berber languages.

They are called emphatic because they often don't stay ejectives. All we can say is that the speakers distinguished them from plain and voiced counterparts.

And in this case, the nature of Urartians "emphatic" series (likely borrowed terminology) are unknown just like Akkadian's emphatics, so it can't be said if they're ejectives exactly.

If Urartian is para-Caucasian I'd suspect its "emphatic" series is an ejective series, as ejectives are common in Caucasian languages. Also, if they are recorded in cuneiform in a manner common with Akkadian cuneiform, that would give weight to the reconstruction of Akkadian "emphatics" as ejectives as well.

[foxcatdog]

For reference amarin's nasal heaviness makes for a distinct sound

Relative to Old Amarin the sonorant sounds *j and *r are more frequently found and *w, *j and nothing replace all instances of *mp, *nk and *nt respectively

[Ahzoh]

For reference amarin's nasal heaviness makes for a distinct sound

Relative to Old Amarin the sonorant sounds *j and *r are more frequently found and *w, *j and nothing replace all instances of *mp, *nk and *nt respectively

I want to do something like this but I just don't have a large enough corpus or dictionary

[bradrn]

You don’t truly need a very large one. Of course it helps, but a reasonably short sample text can be enough to yield good results.

For reference, foxcatdog (and I) used this website: http://akana.conlang.org/tools/frequentizer.html