Re: TECH: Syllable generation

On 25 Jan 2005, at 1.34 am, kcasada wrote:

> Hi, y'all,
>
> I am sure that this question is so basic it will give several of you a
> chuckle, but anyway . . .
> Is there a program that will generate basic (written) syllables for me
> if I
> input syllable patterns and a phonetic inventory?
> I have had a little luck with Microsoft Excel, but not much, and was
> told that
> MS Access might work better.
There's an old program for Windows 3.1 (I think) called LangMaker which
you might be able to find somewhere on <http://www.langmaker.com/>. It
can do it (as well as applying soundchanges, though I sometimes got
dubious results with them). You may or may not have some difficulties
on more recent versions of Windows, but I think I did use it on Windows
95 and 98 without problems, so it could be potluck.

> It's not so much that I'm lazy as that I'm busy! (And severely
> hemispherically
> challenged, I suspect! ;] )
I find there's always something lacking when you use LangMaker. You can
make a thousand words in two minutes, but what good is it when they
feel like stainless steel?

But then if I make syllables up they all end up as Englisheqsue
syllables with too many /l/s or /f/s. So these days I just go off and
rip out another language's guts (taking grammar with it, but I see no
reason to not if I wanted to make something exotic).

YMMV, of course, and the feel is probably only because I know how they
were created ... if you gave me two lexicons that one that was and one
that wasn't made by LangMaker, it's more than probable that I wouldn't
be able to tell the difference...

--
Tristan.