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Re: Nasalized fricatives ...

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Thursday, December 2, 2004, 18:16
Okay.... I like nasalized fricatives. There. :p But seriously, I like
the idea, and if I ever get the pronounciation of them right then I
might just introduce them into one of my conlangs. :) Do you have any
problems pronouncing them?

>I was reviewing Meghean phonlogy earlier today, and it occured to me that a >series of nasalized fricatives [B~ D~ G~] would be quite the thing to make >would-be learners pull their hair out. They'd occure as initial mutations of >nasal stops, which as an added bonus means the definite form would be less >dysfunctional (indef and def would then only coalesce for words beginning in /s >l r j w i e/). > >Now, this is a non-human (Elvish) language, so I don't care too much about >violating universals and anadewistic precedent (the lang's got [e] and [o] but >no [E] or [O], which is apparently already quite unusual), but I'd anyway like >to know if there's any natlang out there with phonemic nasalized fricatives. >The only lang I can recall hearing of it in is Sindarin, which, in archaic >stages, had a sound described as "fricative m" or "nasal v" - this must mean >[v~] or [B~] (very possibly both along the way, since the starting point was [m] >and the end result [v]). > >Words in which the little monsters would occur include _mhedh_ [B~eD] "the elf", >_nhagh_ [D~aG] "the dwarf"*, and _nhoch_ [G~ox] "the day". By parallel to the >development of oral stops, one'd also expect them to occur medially in some >words, but I think I'll stomp that out with a bit of merging and leveling. > >* It's actually completely by accident that the words for "elf" and "dwarf" are >so phonetically parallel - I hadn't realized it till I was writing this mail. >The words _pera_ "human" and _taea_ "orc" (definite forms _phera_ [Pera] and >_thaea_ [Taja]) - the two other humanoid species of this coniverse - don't >follow the same pattern. > > >Meghean vocabulary of the day: >Verb _guth_ "to die", related noun _guthu_ "death", irreg pl _gunt_. > >Consociolinguistic item of the day: >The phrase _guthu magel_, lit "evil death", a death for which someone bears >responsibility and must be punished. Includes murder, manslaughter, death by >criminal neglect, that sort of thing. > > Andreas > > > >

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>