Zompist Bboard Again

Suppose I want to make a conlang that's good for shouting over long distances. What phonemes/distinctions would be suitable?

I guess tone and length might both work well. (Is it weird to have both? WALS doesn't seem to have any map for length.) A few vowel qualities, certainly, but probably not more than a standard five-vowel set. Points of articulation might altogether be hard to hear, as well as voicedness, which I guess leaves us with something like
[a e i o u n s k v r], plus tone/length and diphthongs. Maybe the vowels would also tend towards more openness generally, but it should still be possible to distinguish three degrees, I think.

Opinions?

Having both tone and length is entirely unremarkable.

Is this for a conworld? If so, what is it like? (Extremely windy, for instance? Or with a dense atmosphere? Lower gravity, with higher peaks and deeper valleys, potentially lending better acoustic opportunities for communicating this way?)

And you're talking with human physiology?

Assuming that those questions aren't that relevant to what you're asking, some ideas for you:

Have as many vowel qualities as you like, as long as your 'speakers' aren't expected to 'sing' them too high. (The higher you place the fundamental tone the harder it is to distinguish vowel quality because you're cutting out a lot of harmonics in the core range of the voice.) Avoid diphthongs perhaps, but, just because the vowel sound is travelling over a medium-long distance doesn't mean that it loses the harmonic frequencies that make us perceive its vowel quality. If you get to really long distances then sure, it'll have an effect (with the quieter, i.e. less rational harmonics dropping off first) but I'm presuming you're not talking about the sort of distance that threatens to render the sound mostly inaudible.

In particular play with degrees of rounding which alter harmonic patterns quite spectacularly. You could also include sounds which produce strong multiphonics (watch videos about overtone singing) - i.e. employing funky composite vowels which are open at the back, and closed somewhere higher up the chain, or vice versa (think of a rhoticised [a:] for instance).

Use duration much more than in most spoken languages.

Use really extended pitch ornamentation and complex pitch patterns as units of meaning. (I have a conlang that does this too).

As for consonants, why limit yourself to oral ones? Use body percussion or banging various resonant materials together to make louder sorts of percussive 'articulation'.

In addition to the phonemes you've listed, other sorts of trills are very audible over long distances and distinguishable, particularly bilabial (common singer's warmup). [s] carries extremely well in a wet acoustic, of course, but not so much in a dry acoustic over particularly immense distances... I imagine its white noise profile would get it lost in the wind / tree sounds pretty easily. But let's say your people are 'speaking' at a distance where they can hear [s]. I would guess then that they could distinguish this from let's say a post alveolar or palatal fricative, and if you add rounding into either or both one of those, they could probably distinguish at least four phonemes in the space you've just assumed will be filled by [s] and [s] only. Add voicing in, perhaps with a concurrent alternation of pitch, and you can at least double that. Add degrees of duration in, you can multiply it again. So your phoneme inventory needn't be particularly small, I don't think.

Basically, think about what you can learn about making the human voice travel from singing, rather than just 'yelling', technique.

Final thought - is this a language created in a similar way to sign languages for the sole purpose of long distance communication, or is it going to grow more organically out of a certain register of an existing language?

Also think about how you can overemphasise extreme forms of articulation to help distinguish phonemes like filling cheeks entirely with air before [b], or having [d] always be implosive (or coarticulated in some way). Like how in English [s] and [S] are aided in their distinguishing by the coarticulation/rounding of the latter.

Thanks!

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:24 am Having both tone and length is entirely unremarkable.

Okay, sounds good. Could you give me an example of some major language that has both? My natlang Swedish sort of does, but only a little bit of tone...

mèþru wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 12:50 pm Have a whistled register

Yes, those are really cool too. But I was planning to go with shouting for this one.

sasasha wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 1:31 pm Is this for a conworld?

No, just a loose idea I had. I'm thinking about regular humans on regular Earth. And it should function as a relatively normal spoken language up close as well.

Although, as you say, [s] and such are very audible in some situations, like whispering, I imagine all voiceless sounds would be very weak over the distance. So I figured I can have one voiceless stop and one voiceless fricative, because even if they're inaudible, they'll be heard as a short and a long pause.

Complex tone patterns does seem like a good idea. Maybe also syllabic consonants? That should make sounds like [n] easier to hear, since you can drag them out.

Chuma wrote: ↑Wed Aug 08, 2018 6:50 am

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:24 am Having both tone and length is entirely unremarkable.

Okay, sounds good. Could you give me an example of some major language that has both? My natlang Swedish sort of does, but only a little bit of tone...

Mohawk. Yucatec Maya. Tlingit. Hausa. Xhosa.

Zaarin wrote: ↑Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:57 am

Chuma wrote: ↑Wed Aug 08, 2018 6:50 am

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:24 am Having both tone and length is entirely unremarkable.

Okay, sounds good. Could you give me an example of some major language that has both? My natlang Swedish sort of does, but only a little bit of tone...

Mohawk. Yucatec Maya. Tlingit. Hausa. Xhosa.

Thai. Cantonese.