Re: Missing parts

>===== Original Message From Constructed Languages List
<CONLANG@...> =====
>Muke Tever wrote:
>>My conlang Trentish /?leJ:VwmAli/ has no voiced sounds
>
>                      ^^^^^^^^^^
>So all that is voiceless??
Tragically, yes.  I'm considering modifying a couple of the back vowels to
make them easier to distinguish.  But this may not be necessary, really (for
*them* anyway)

>>[And now I have to consider the peculiar concultural inversion this makes,
>>as normally the telepathic range of this kind of people is shorter than what
>>can be reached by voice.  Hmm.]
>
>Perhaps your Trents are the same race/species I've conceived as part of the
>Kash/Galactic Unity complex (may I borrow them?)..  Mine are humanoid and
>come from a planet with a just-barely-adequate oxygen level, so their skin
>has a bluish tinge to it.  They are the Master Telepaths of **there**,
>consequently their vocal organs have all but atrophied (they can speak, but
>only a little squeak, embarassing and not at all appropriate to their size
>and power).  Their folk explanation is that they stopped speaking in order
>to save breath........
Well, the trents are not entirely congruent to that...
Trents are a variety of demihumans.  (Demihumans, aka terras or 'monsters',
being a variety of human with minor inherent magical ability and a much wider
variation in physical appearance.  They're all from Earth.)  All (normal)
demihumans have telepathic ability, which basically consists of the ability to
read and write sensory image suggestions (visuals, sounds, etc) into another's
"imagination".  [This is not the same as human imagination, and is also
clearly marked as "from outside", thus not confusible with one's own
thoughts.]  The range of this ability only extends for about the length of a
city block, diminishes with distance, and can only be addressed to one person
at a time [no spamming!].

So there's the practical reasons why demihumans would retain spoken/voiced
language: inter-species communication, addressing groups, and more reliable at
a distance.   [In moderner times we also have the fact that telepathy can't be
distributed as speech can with microphones and telephones, nor recorded as
speech can with written records.  I dont see mass technology being developed
for this within the foreseeable future, either...]

Which still doesnt explain why trents are voiceless.. hmm.. I'm sure a reason
will present itself eventually, even if only a mythical one.  What brought on
this long speech?

     *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/