Zompist Bboard Again

figured out the basics of a phoneme inventory for an alien species with a bigger mouth than humans so i can use the resulting conlang for background text in a series of comedy sketch videos i'll probably never make (42 vowels and 93 consonants )

Emily wrote: ↑Fri Jun 21, 2024 1:41 pm figured out the basics of a phoneme inventory for an alien species with a bigger mouth than humans

You can’t just say something interesting like that and then not give us any details!

so it's maybe not the most scientifically accurate whatever whatever. basically their mouths are longer front to back than ours, and there's a ridge midway towards the back that essentially divides the mouth more or less in half. so there's essentially two palates and two velums. also they have two windpipes and two glottises, because why not. so front to back you have:

• labial
• labiodental
• dental
• alveolar
• postalveolar
• anteriopalatal
• anteriovelar
• protuberal (directly on the ridge itself)
• posteriopalatal
• posterovelar
• uvular
• anterioglottal
• posterioglottal

two glottises means three levels of voicing instead of two: unvoiced, half-voiced (voicing through one glottis), and fully voiced (through both glottises). i had to do a unicode deep dive just to grab usable symbols for half of these sounds lol

the vowels aren't quite as elaborate, but i have basically five primary levels of frontness instead of three, although i'm only using all 5 for higher vowels

writeup is on anthologica (work in progress obviously)

Does two glottises also mean two f0? So two pitch levels?

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 10:15 am Does two glottises also mean two f0? So two pitch levels?

Default overtone singing? I hope so!

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2024 3:20 am

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 10:15 am Does two glottises also mean two f0? So two pitch levels?

Default overtone singing? I hope so!

In the German D&D-like fantasy RPG Das Schwarze Auge, Elves are characterized as having "two voices". My Elves are of course a different race and have normal human vocal tracts, but some people believe them to have two voices - which is just a mistaken account of overtone singing, an art practiced by the Elves.

Tentatively decided the mediopassive will be indicated by the prefix si- and the stem vowel changes to -u-

Realis / Irrealis / Jussive
si-pruḫ- / -si-pruḫ- / si-pruḫ-u-
si-parruḫ- / -s-parruḫ- / si-parruḫ-u-

Thus:
sipruḫni "I was spoken to"
nasipruḫni "I may/will be spoken to"
tasipruḫni "I shall be spoken to"
yasipruḫni "I would have been spoken to"
sipruḫunni "I must be spoken to"

I have hashed out the phonology and syllable restraints for a naming language I've been meaning to work on. And as a bonus, if I dislike anything (like, since I plan to use it in a story, if I can't make a good Romanization for it), I can always make changes and count it as the proto-lang for the official book language.

/m n ŋ/
/p b t d k g ?/
/ts dz/
/ɸ β s z ɕ ʑ h/
/r l/
/w j/
Q (long form)

/i y u/
/e ø o/
/a ɶ ɑ/
as well as long versions

consonant clusters
l/r/s/t/w/j+any -h
z/d/n+voiced
h+unvoiced
Q+any -(?, h, w, j)

diphthongs (will almost certainly reduce these)
iy, iu, ie, iø, io, ia
ye, yø, yɶ
ui, ue, uo, uɑ
ei, ey, eu
øi, øy, oi, ou
ai, ay, au, ɶy, ɑu

syllable structure
generally (C)V(T)(Q), word final (C)V(T) where C is any consonant, V is any vowel/long vowel or allowed diphthong, T is any of n/t/d/s/z/h/w/j, and Q causes lengthening in the following consonant, if applicable, and disappears if not.

I was shooting for something between Japanese and Finnish, which considering their similarities is a bit of a thin line to walk. I want to keep tone or stress very simple, but I haven't decided if I'm leaning toward Japanese of Finnish on that one. But for name creation I don't think it's much of a concern. I do have ideas for how I'll Romanize things, but it's going to involve diacritics to avoid a situation where /j/ is <j> and /y/ is <y> because most English speakers would pronounce those /d̠ʒ/ and /j/ respectively. This is the first real attempt at a conlanging project I've started in a while, but I think it's working well so far.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2024 3:20 am

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 10:15 am Does two glottises also mean two f0? So two pitch levels?

Default overtone singing? I hope so!

With two glottises that act independently, it wouldn't just be overtones that could be produced. Overtones are multiples of the fundamental frequency (f0) and with overtone singing, all that is happening is that the singer is allowing certain frequency ranges to resonate very loudly, meaning that we hear certain overtones more than others. Two glottises could generate two fundamental frequencies (each of which would have its own overtones). They could sing and speak in chords!

i sat down last night and forced myself to algorithmically generate a small initial lexicon that is, deliberately, phonotactically ugly as hell, no tinkering with sound changes allowed yet. so far i have managed to avoid getting distracted until 3am by fiddling with the phonotactics and instead got distracted until 3am by trying to find my old lecture notes on x-bar theory... BUT tiny speedlang now has a basic syntax, so task failed successfully! thanks a ton to Emily especially for your advice :D