Re: Nasalized fricatives ...

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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