If natlangs were conlangs

[Kuchigakatai]

Does that paper happen to have description of the phonology? I'm curious to see what the phonetic realisations of /kîɛɛɛr/ and /dɛ̂aaal/ are.

Here is the paper. The author simply says Nuer has three degrees of vowel length, and gives a minimal triplet.

[Moose-tache]

We aim to establish the basic parameters of the Nuer tonal system, such as the number of tonemes.

It's the Year of Our Lord 2020 and they're just now figuring out how many tones Nuer has. And here I thought there were no more worlds to conquer...

[Richard W]

We aim to establish the basic parameters of the Nuer tonal system, such as the number of tonemes.

It's the Year of Our Lord 2020 and they're just now figuring out how many tones Nuer has. And here I thought there were no more worlds to conquer...

Here we're potentially close to hocus pocus territory, where the truth isn't out there, and certainly not if we look for a language's phonemes. Southern Thai is another example, where for tonemes, having minimal pairs can depend on regionally limited consonant mergers, and the whole is probably now complicated by bilinguality with Standard Thai.

In the case of Nuer, there seems to be agreement that there are five phonetic tones. The question is how many tonemes there are.

[Raphael]

From a response Rounin Ryuuji gave to a question about accent marks I asked in the Linguistic Miscellany Thread:

the grave, if I'm remembering right, was used to mark a change from [e] to [ɛ] in the presence of a coda consonant where there had once been a final schwa

Ok, creator of French, you couldn't get any more convoluted, could you?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

From a response Rounin Ryuuji gave to a question about accent marks I asked in the Linguistic Miscellany Thread:

the grave, if I'm remembering right, was used to mark a change from [e] to [ɛ] in the presence of a coda consonant where there had once been a final schwa

Ok, creator of French, you couldn't get any more convoluted, could you?

Yes, they can.

[bradrn]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

[malloc]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

Yeah, the Irish orthography has always left me saying the same thing: "Uh why?"

[Man in Space]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

Yeah, the Irish orthography has always left me saying the same thing: "Uh why?"

Surely you meant “Uh /wiː/?”

[Lērisama]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

Isn't the ⟨bhf⟩ a way of writing the eclipsis of ⟨f⟩, so it's equivalent to ⟨bhaighidh⟩ is /wiː/. Still horrifying but mildly less so.

[linguistcat]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

Isn't the ⟨bhf⟩ a way of writing the eclipsis of ⟨f⟩, so it's equivalent to ⟨bhaighidh⟩ is /wiː/. Still horrifying but mildly less so.

And <gh> is silent between "slender vowels" as is <dh> at the end after slender vowels. Which only leaves the <a> which is only there to show <bhf> is broad (I don't remember offhand what <bh(f)> would be if slender). Hence /wi:/.

[bradrn]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

Isn't the ⟨bhf⟩ a way of writing the eclipsis of ⟨f⟩, so it's equivalent to ⟨bhaighidh⟩ is /wiː/. Still horrifying but mildly less so.

And <gh> is silent between "slender vowels" as is <dh> at the end after slender vowels. Which only leaves the <a> which is only there to show <bhf> is broad (I don't remember offhand what <bh(f)> would be if slender). Hence /wi:/.

Ah — thanks for explaining!

[WeepingElf]

I feel a sudden need to revive this thread, with the observation that Irish bhfaighidh is apparently pronounced /wiː/. My verdict to any aspiring conlanger who tried that would probably be, ‘that’s unrealistic and unusable, try again’…

Isn't the ⟨bhf⟩ a way of writing the eclipsis of ⟨f⟩, so it's equivalent to ⟨bhaighidh⟩ is /wiː/. Still horrifying but mildly less so.

And <gh> is silent between "slender vowels" as is <dh> at the end after slender vowels. Which only leaves the <a> which is only there to show <bhf> is broad (I don't remember offhand what <bh(f)> would be if slender). Hence /wi:/.

Yes, the Irish spelling is not random, but follows clear and logical rules, even if these rules are not always easy to grasp for non-Goidelic speakers, and reflect, more or less, the Old Irish pronunciation.

[bradrn]

Isn't the ⟨bhf⟩ a way of writing the eclipsis of ⟨f⟩, so it's equivalent to ⟨bhaighidh⟩ is /wiː/. Still horrifying but mildly less so.

And <gh> is silent between "slender vowels" as is <dh> at the end after slender vowels. Which only leaves the <a> which is only there to show <bhf> is broad (I don't remember offhand what <bh(f)> would be if slender). Hence /wi:/.

Yes, the Irish spelling is not random, but follows clear and logical rules, even if these rules are not always easy to grasp for non-Goidelic speakers, and reflect, more or less, the Old Irish pronunciation.

I know it's not random, but for the life of me I’ve never been able to comprehend the rules…

[WeepingElf]

And <gh> is silent between "slender vowels" as is <dh> at the end after slender vowels. Which only leaves the <a> which is only there to show <bhf> is broad (I don't remember offhand what <bh(f)> would be if slender). Hence /wi:/.

Yes, the Irish spelling is not random, but follows clear and logical rules, even if these rules are not always easy to grasp for non-Goidelic speakers, and reflect, more or less, the Old Irish pronunciation.

I know it's not random, but for the life of me I’ve never been able to comprehend the rules…

And I can't say I fully comprehend them, but I have a basic idea of them, and could easily follow linguistcat's explanation.

[linguistcat]

Yes, the Irish spelling is not random, but follows clear and logical rules, even if these rules are not always easy to grasp for non-Goidelic speakers, and reflect, more or less, the Old Irish pronunciation.

I know it's not random, but for the life of me I’ve never been able to comprehend the rules…

And I can't say I fully comprehend them, but I have a basic idea of them, and could easily follow linguistcat's explanation.

Oh I'm definitely not an expert myself, and often if I see an Irish word, I have a hard time knowing which vowels are pronounced and which are showing "slenderness vs broadness". This one was actually pretty easy though. And having the actual pronunciation on hand helped as well.

[Travis B.]

Given linguistcat's explanation, this one really does not seem that bad. Like mentioned, my problem with understanding the pronunciation of Irish and Scottish Gaelic words is getting which vowels are "real" vowels and which are only notation for marking slenderness versus broadness.

[malloc]

While most of the blame for Irish becoming endangered undoubtedly falls on the British Empire, the Irish orthography certainly hasn't helped matters.

[Travis B.]

While most of the blame for Irish becoming endangered undoubtedly falls on the British Empire, the Irish orthography certainly hasn't helped matters.

Irish orthography isn't half as bad as Sinitic (yes they've got phonetics and like, but seriously...) but that hasn't stopped Mandarin...

[hwhatting]

Yes, the Irish spelling is not random, but follows clear and logical rules, even if these rules are not always easy to grasp for non-Goidelic speakers, and reflect, more or less, the Old Irish pronunciation.

Nope, they don't really reflect the Old Irish pronunciation; they use conventions established during historical development of Irish orthography in order to reflect current pronunciation.

[WeepingElf]

Yes, the Irish spelling is not random, but follows clear and logical rules, even if these rules are not always easy to grasp for non-Goidelic speakers, and reflect, more or less, the Old Irish pronunciation.

Nope, they don't really reflect the Old Irish pronunciation; they use conventions established during historical development of Irish orthography in order to reflect current pronunciation.

Thank you for correcting me - so I had misunderstood this.