Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words

From: "Joseph Fatula" <fatula3@...>
Subject: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words


> I'm working on a new conlang (after all, it's a new week), and it's
unusual
> in having 48 consonants.  There are prenasalized stops, glottalized
> consonants, ejectives, and plenty of those are possible syllable nuclei.
> What I wanted was a language where I could encode a large amount of
> affixation into a single syllable.  The best way to do that (I was
thinking)
> was to have plenty of consonants that could add on, with many consonant
> clusters being allowed.
(There's something wrong when I'm responding to myself.)

One problem I'm having, that I'm hoping this intrepid bunch of linguaphiles
could help me with, is that I don't have a very good ASCII representation
for this language.  I don't mind that too much normally, but I'd like to be
able to describe it without resorting to letters like r^' all the time.  And
no, Christophe, I don't want to drink from the fount of maggellitinousness
on this one.  Here are the consonant phonemes I've got now, in X-SAMPA:

p_>   t_>   k_>
p   t   k
b   d   g
mb~   nd~   Ng~
m?b~   n?d~   N?g~
w   l   r\   M\   ?\_o
f   T   K   s   s\   S
C   x   X
v   D   K\   z   z\   Z   Z`
v?v   D?D   K\?K\   z?z   z\?z\   Z?Z   Z`?Z`
m   n   m?m   n?n

I think I'm describing them correctly.  Here's how I'm writing them
currently:

p'   t'   k'
p   t   k
b   d   g
mb   nd   ng
mb'   nd'   ng'
w   l   r   y   g-breve   `
f   thorn   l-cedilla   s   s-acute   s-hachek
c   x   q
v   edh   l-slash   z   z-acute   z-hachek   r-hachek
v'   edh'   l-slash'   z'   z-acute'   z-hachek'   r-hachek'
m   n   m'   n'

This may not even be the best representation in Roman characters, but it's
what I've got so far.  I'm particularly not satisfied with the lateral
fricatives, but I don't know what else to do.  Consonant clustering makes it
difficult to come up with digraphs that don't conflict with actual clusters.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Joe

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