Re: A new member and a new conlang sketch

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

>Phonology and Phonotactics (X-SAMPA)
>
>p  b              t  d              k  g     ?
>          f  v     s  z     S        x        h
>                   ts       tS dZ
>    m                 n
>                      l
>                      r
>
>a u i e o @
>
>/p t k/ are aspirated.
Doing nice so far. A somewhat European inventory maybe.

>/r/ has [4] as an allophone.
>/dZ/ has [Z] as an allophone.
...on what conditions?

>/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.

>/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?

>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
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/

/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/).

>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.

>A major design criteria in my
>conlanging is to not be biased by my native language, so if it should be easy
>to pronounce for _me_ it seems reasonable that it also should be so for others.
>That's the story about the auxlangishness: an underlying nonbiasedness.
>
>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?)

John Vertical

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