Re: A new member and a new conlang sketch

John Vertical wrote:
> Welcome, Veoler! I don't think anyone commented anything on your actual
> language so far, so here's a few "start-up questions":
Thanks!


> > [phoneme inventory]
>
> Doing nice so far. A somewhat European inventory maybe.
How to un-Europeanize it? (I don't know if it matters enough, my goal has
never been exoticness in itself.) I know close to nothing about the phoneme
inventories of the worlds languages, what I know are mainly from here:

http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/segmental_phonemes.png

/v/ seems to be the most European phoneme in my inventory. But if you exclude
all Indo-European languages in Europe, what will then be the cross-linguistic
most average phoneme inventory?


> >/r/ has [4] as an allophone.
> >/dZ/ has [Z] as an allophone.
>
> ...on what conditions?
Well, that's mostly from the auxlangishness, to make it easier to people to
pronounce it through allowing variation. But I'm considering to simplify the
description and leave it out. Then you can ignore [4 Z A I].

Maybe it will be [r] in everyday and [4] in fast speech. Nothing fancy.


> >/e o/ are [e_x o_x] (if "_x" is the right suffix for midness).
>
> Actually, that's "mid-centralized", which is more or less the same as
> "reduced". You want "loered", _o. Some, like me, also like to extend
> X-SAMPA with new symbols; I use /e\ o\/ for proper mid vowels when needed.
> (But plain /e o/ usually suffice.)
>
> >/@/ are the mid center one, not the reduced colorless one;
> >normally unrounded.
>
> I don't think those are really distinct in their articulation - but yeah, I
> get what you're saying, ie. /@/ being a "normal" vowel and not something
> found in unstressed syllables only.
/ma.tsa.'s@.fo 'tSu.tai 'lo.tSe/
     show         I       you


> >/a/    [a A]
> >/i/    [i I j]
> >/u/    [u w]
>
> [j w] probably occur when next to other vowels, but again, where are [A I]
> found?
As with [Z 4], you can ignore them. The sound of /a/ is somewhere in between
[a] and [A], the same goes for /i/.


> >Suggestions regarding orthography? (the part of Unicode not universally
> >implemented in common fonts forbidden)
>
> Obvious: p b t d g f m n l r
> Probably obvious: k s z v a e i o u
Yes, those are fixed. I will probable have <x h> for /x h/ as well.


> which leaves /ts tS dZ S x h ? @/ and possibly [Z] to be worked out.
> /?/ is fairly easy - the apostrophe and <q> are the popular choices. If you
> want to be weirder, mark it on the vowel (<à> = /?a/, <è> = /?e/ etc.) /h/
> will probably have to be <h>, an apostrophe or diacritics might not go down
> as well as with /?/. However, your description of the syllable structure
> appears to claim that all syllables must begin with a consonant, so you
> could also leave either unwritten. Writing vowel clusters would not be a
> problem if difthongs are only allowed with /i u/ as either vowel (as I'd
> gess to be the case), because you could employ <y w> to disambiguate:
> <say> /sai/; <sai> /sa.?i/ or /sa.hi/
Yes, all syllables begins with a consonant, except the second syllable in
bisyllabic vowel clusters, as /aio/ = [a.jo], but no such cluster exists yet.
All possible vowel clusters are allowed, except /@/ which only occur alone,
and two identical vowels following each other which make no sense since it
would be interpreted as a long vowel and Raikudu has no lenght distinction.


> /x/ can be <h> if you won't use that for /h/, otherwise <kh> or <x>. I don't
> think there's anything weirder with "universal" support in fonts that might
> be fitting, and stuff like <hc> or <hh> just look silly IMO.
>
> As for the sibilants; I'm partial of using <x> for /S/, but other choices
> might include the classic <sh>, as well as <s> + any diacritic whatsoever.
> There's also <sy>. Similarly <ch> or <c> + diacritic or <cy> / <ty> / <ky>
> (whichever you prefer) for /tS/. The affricates could also be done
> compoundedly: <ts tx dj>, in this case probably furthermore using <j> for
> [Z]. Alternately, the Pinyin-like single-char approach would be <c q j> (and
> <x> for /S/).
/S/ = <sh>, /tS/ = <c>, <ch> hmm..
My tentative orthography in my notes are <' þ c q j y> for /? ts S tS dZ @/.
Maybe I switch to <sh ch>, and keep the rest..

Well, as soon as Raikudu reach sufficient completeness level I will start
developing the native script. Or maybe sooner.


> >The phoneme inventory is intended to be a plausible auxlangish one, but not
> >an ideal auxlangish one. Raikudu is not intended as an auxlang, but I want it
> >to be fairly easy for everyone to pronounce anyway.
>
> A Hawai'ian "everyone" might have problems, but it's nothing too tuff
> otherwise. /x h/, /? h/, /l r/, and /ts tS s S/ would probably be the most
> difficult distinctions in there.
Well, you can't please everyone :) /? x ts @/ is the newest phonemes in the
language. I like them, though my mouth have some problems to get /@/ right.


> >All syllables has the shape CV(V), the roots are either CV(V)CV or CVCV(V),
> >the language uses affixes in the shape of one syllable each morpheme.
>
> >Veoler
>
> So which are the allowed vowel clusters and which way does the stress go in
> them? Also, have you worked out yet where stress goes within the word? Or is
> it pitch-accented? (tonal? foot-accented?)
See above about vowel clusters. The stress is always on the penultimate
syllable of the word. No phonemical tones in Raikudu.


>
> John Vertical

Cheers

/ Veoler