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Re: Some conlang questions

From:Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>
Date:Friday, December 27, 2002, 20:15
On Friday 27 December 2002 01:15 pm, Michael Fors wrote:
> Hello everybody!
Welcome! I see Christophe has already extended his greeting (Jan? You there? :), so you are now officially inducted into (onto?) the list.
> To my questions: > 1. I am having problems with the vowels of my conlang. Since I want to make > a naturalistic language, I want a naturalistic vowel system. The only > problem is that I don't know what that is. I mean, is it natural for a > language to have many front vowels, rounded and unrounded, and two rounded > back vowels? That's one of the questions that keeps me awake at night. =)
Sure. Languages can have really strange and wacky vowel patterns, as well as disgustingly regular ones. I recommend that you check http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/vowels.html for a survey of vowel system. I've found only one (minor) error on the page, in which the author claims that there are no languages with less than three vowels--to the best of my knowledge, Abhaz and Adygh have only one vowel, although some claim that they have two.
> 2. I also want to make "daughter"-languages to my language. I have been > reading some about sound change, but I wonder if there is some sort of a > table for sound changes? So I can see which changes that are likely to > occur and which that are less likely.
A couple of months ago, I considered compiling a list of all known sound changes, but abandoned it because a.) it would require too much time and effort and b.) I have too many other projects that I need to focus my attention on. My recommendation is to find a book on historical linguistics and learn all the ways in which languages change--not only phonological change, but syntactic and semantic change as well.
> Micke Fors > Human
Relieved to hear it, but isn't this slightly redundant? :) :Peter

Replies

Padraic Brown <elemtilas@...>
Pavel Iosad <pavel_iosad@...>
Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>