Re: Brr (was: Re: A few questions about linguistics concerning my new project)

Hallo!

On Thu, 2 Aug 2007 15:17:01 +0100, R A Brown wrote:

> ROGER MILLS wrote:
> > Ray Brown wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Thinks: How does one give a language that Brr factor?
> >
> > Back in the 70s, my Natl.Public Radio station ran a series produced in
> > Alaska-- folk tales of the Aleut (IIRC) people. The title ("The things
> > that were said of them") was given in the language, as were the names of
> > course and occasional phrases. It was all spoken very quietly and was
> > full of [q]s and [?]s, and perhaps [x]s and [G]s.  Somehow it felt
> > "cold"*-- I imagined that the language had evolved that way so that the
> > people wouldn't have to open their mouths very wide in the freezing
> > cold  :-))
>
> Interesting idea   :)
>
> Yes, not only the three vowels, but also[q], [?] and velar (or possibly
> uvular) fricatives.
>
> If one created a conlang that had a similar sort of resonance with Inuit
> as Sindarin has with Welsh, then maybe one gives the language a certain
> brr factor - but, of course, only if a person is vaguely familiar with
> Inuit in the first place!
Perhaps I'll do that in some Albic colonial language in Iceland
or Greenland in the future :)

> (Sindarin must have a quite different feel for those who have no
> knowledge whatever of Welsh than the language has for me, for example).
I knew Sindarin before I got acquainted with Welsh; and indeed,
back then I couldn't say it felt "Celtic" to me, but definitely
"otherworldly".  (And Quenya felt more Latin-like to me.)

> > *maybe too, because of the subject matter,
>
> I think that is the important factor.
Yep.  Though many think of languages of tropical paradises as being
like Polynesian - lots of vowels and few consonants - and Eskimo
is indeed phonologically about as far away from Polynesian as it
could be.

> -------------------------
>
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> [snip]
>  > Icelandic does it with a lack of voiced stops,
>  > lots of strong aspiration and preaspiration
>
> Scots Gaelic's like that also - we southerners find it quite cold up
> there in Scotland    :)
The northernmost dialect of Old Albic, spoken in what is now
Scotland, has only three vowels without quantity distinction,
strongly aspirated stops contrasting with unaspirated ones,
and no voiced obstruents.

>  > and most importantly voiceless sonorants.
>
> Voiceless sonorants are not too common, but are they really more
> prevalent in languages from cold climates?
>
> Again one could, in order to give the language a Brr factor, construct
> one with a vaguely Icelandic feel - but again it would, of course, be
> completely lost on those who know nothing of Icelandic.
>
> Personally I doubt very much that any phonetic or phonological system is
> "cold language" per_se.
Concurred.  We perhaps associate the kind of phonologies found in
Eskimo-Aleut languages with a friggin' cold environment, but that's
just because these languages are spoken there.  Brad Coon's Feorran
( http://www.lib.montana.edu/~bcoon/feorran.html ), which is meant
to be spoken in Antarctica, has a phonology not much like Eskimo-Aleut.

>       To give the language a Brr factor, one surely
> needs to have its literary texts dealing quite a bit with its snowy, icy
> environment in which the language is spoken.
Verily so.

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