From: "Danny Wier" <dawier@...>
Subject: Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words
> 48 consonants, that's more than most other conlangs I've seen! How many
vowels
> however? Is it like NW Caucasian which has many consonants and only two or
three
> vowels?
There's 7 vowels, 31 possible syllable nuclei (most of the sonorants), so
that's 71,424 possible CVC syllables. And syllables can be a whole lot more
than just CVC! Nowicki would be proud.
> How does that rank among the world's natlangs? There are 14 in the UPSID
survey
> with 40 or more consonants:
>
> !Xu~ 95 (48 clicks)
> Lak 60
> an unidentified variety of Arabic 56
> Panjabi 49
> (the above three have distinctive gemination)
> Kabardian 48
> Haida 46
> Mazahua 45
> Shilha 45
> Irish 44
> Igbo 43
> Tlingit 43
> Sui 42
> Otomi 41
> Hindi-Urdu 40
>
> So you're tied with Kabardian....
If I really wanted to make a language with more consonants, I could, but the
other consonant distinctions didn't have the right feel for what I was
attempting.
> Also, you got both glottalized and ejective consonants. Since ejectives
are a
> subset of glottalized stops/affricates, do you mean glottal tension (as in
> Korean), creaky voice, laryngealization, <'y> in Hausa?
That's a good question. I'm not entirely sure. The only ejectives are
unvoiced stops, while plenty of other sounds are glottalized. It may be
that I'm doing the same thing with both, but with more of the "glottalized"
sound continuing after the glottal stop.
> | It's starting to look a bit like Georgian, but that might not mean much.
If
> | I were to describe what a Georgian word looks like, I'd probably just
say
> | it's a word with lots of consonants. So then any highly consonantal
> | language would look like Georgian to me.
>
> Yeah, and the infamous Bella Coola comes to mind as well. Tamazight is
similarly
> "consonantal" but words tend to be short. My Tech has theoretical words
like
> <mtL`q`ac'`> and <rdZGuTxw> and a lot of one-consonant prepositions, like
the
> aforementioned <d> "from" (it's pronounced [d@] by itself so don't worry
:P)
I've got some examples made up:
Ctewxmg^r. (g^ = g-breve)
/CtewxmM\r\/
I cannot give it to them.
Mburz-kvrg^. (z- = z-acute)
/mb~ur\z\kvr\K\/
I hear that you told it to them.
> | There's something disturbing me when I look at the map of my con-world.
I'm
> | only working on one portion of one continent, and I already have
finished
> | over 30 languages for it. And there's a whole lot of empty space left,
not
> | to mention another 2500 years of history.
>
> So you just recreated the Caucasus? ;)
Well, it's not that small. And many of the groups get pushed aside by the
more successful ones, so in the later periods of history that I've worked up
so far, there are only a few major language families in the region. The
other ones generally have been assimilated into the main cultures, or are
living somewhere up in the mountains. Sort of like the Caucasus.
> | But that's probably a good thing. I might live another 70 years or so,
if I
> | stay in good health, and it'd be nice to have something to do for all
that
> | while. Then again, I might die tomorrow and leave behind all kinds of
> | cryptic notes in unknown languages.
>
> The main purpose of my conlanging is to confuse people, when they rummage
> through my notes and computer files.
I find that I confuse them plenty as it is!