Re: Esthetics

>How do you all determine the aesthetics of your conlangs? Do you have a
>formal system of rules governing combinations of vowels, consonants,
>diphthongs, etc. etc.? Or do you just go by "feel"?
For me, it depends on several things:

If I'm trying to develop a descendant from a living or extinct nat-lang
(I've done this only twice: one from Re n Kamt and one from Pali) I read as
much as I can find about both formal and colloquial versions of the
nat-lang, and try to apply natural phonetic and grammatical drifts.

If I'm trying to develop a "unique" con-lang, I decide the physiology of
those who would speak it as a nat-lang (lips, teeth, tongue, mouth-shape,
etc. etc.), and catalogue the sounds they're most likely to make easily. I
trim this catalogue guided by how difficult or easy I wish the language to
be phonetically (e.g. if the language is capable of bilabial plosives, does
it have just /p/    or /p/, /p_h/,  and /p_>/) . Grammar further affects my
choices in the phonetics of a con-lang. Finally, I worry about graphing it.


Where I to rely solely on those sounds which are most sonorous to me, all of
my con-langs would be agglutinating with /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /p/, /p\/,
/k/, /K\/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /N/, /h/, /X/, /q/, /r/, /s/, /S/, /t/, /T/, /ts/,
/tS/, /w/, /W/, /j/, /?/.

Ultimately, is any of this totally void of my own inner aesthetics? I doubt
it.