Re: Language change that complicates the syllable structure

Quoting Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>:

> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Given the ubiquity of vowel elision, consonant weakening and loss of
> > inflections, I sometimes find myself wondering why all human languages
> have
> > not long since devolved into Ugh ...
>
> I think the answer to that is that onsets are generally preferred. The
> question, then, becomes why haven't all human languages long since
> devolved into Ghu.
Are we witnessing yet another IAL split? Isn't it, BTW, interesting that
conIALs seems to be if anything more prone to split into more-or-less
incompatible variants than natural languages?

Seriously, you're right of course.

> > (Ugh is an IAL that have been suggested on this list. It's chief selling
> point
> > is simplicity (as well as bringing about world peace, universal happiness
> and
> > free internet access for all, of course); everything translates into it as
> > _ugh_ [@M\] (that's schwa followed by a velar approximant). In good IAL
> > tradition, it's a radical improvement on its best-forgotten ancestor, Uk.
> Uk
> > chiefly differs by having a velar stop instead of approximate, making it
> > unpronunceable for exactly 0.01034% of the human race - they were so
> > elitistically exclusive in the bad old days.
>
> I would've thought fewer languages had [M\] than [k]?
You infidel reactionary heretic!

(To be honnest, the real reason for the modification was to make the spelling
more appropriate for a mock-IAL. My money would also go on -aj, -oj being more
common than -as, -os, so I think I'm in good company as far as IAL
restructuring goes.)

> > For those having difficulty with the unnatural complications of English
> > phonetics, syntax and vocabulary, or just can't stand the multitude of
> > mutually exclusive reprehensive ideologies built into its grammar, here's
> my
> > entire message in Ugh:
> >
> > ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh
> >
> > ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh [@M\] ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh
> >
> > ughugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh)
>
> Another good one is Chicken. The Parking Lot is Full was a good comic.
> Pity I found it a month before it ended.
>
> (or in chicken: Chicken chicken chicken Chicken. Chicken chicken chicken
> chicken. Chicken chicken chicken chicken.
>
> (Chicken is a hard word to type over and over again.)
Unlike ugh! It's get even easier with the special Ugh Typewriter, which has a
special "ugh" key. In honour of a series of Dilbert strips, it replaces
the "Q" of a standard type-writer.

                                                    Andreas