Re: Naming the conlang

On Sunday, July 11, 2004, at 06:19 , Scotto Hlad wrote:

[snip]
> Vystoulor
> V = v the same everywhere
> y = the u umlaut in German or the u in French
> s = the s that so many languages use (not like the s in Hungarian)
As both [s] and [z] are very common pronunciations of |s| in English,
French, German and many other languages, I think you need to clarify this.

> t = the t that some many languages use
> ou = a diphtong giving the Omega sound of Greek
Eh? Greek omega is not and never has been a diphthong. Do mean 'digraph'?
Also what sound do you mean by Greek omega? In Modern Greek both omega &
omicron have the same sound, namely [O]. In ancient Greek of the 5th cent.
  BC it was probably [O:] everywhere, but [o:] is likely to have been
common in the Hellenistic period.

> l = l that is the same everywhere
It has two different sounds in English, the 'light' sound in 'light' and
the 'heavy', velarized sound in 'field'.  French & German, on the other
hand, have only the first of these two sounds. Some other languages, e.g.
Russian, have both of the English sounds as two separate phonemes.

> o = a short o. think in terms of the Czech or the omicron (Not "ah")
Do you mean the Brit short 'o' in 'not' as opposed to the American
pronunciation?

> r = also a lightly trilled r
Please, I do not want to put you off - I'm actually trying to be helpful.

It is notoriously difficult to describe sounds of a language (whether it's
a natlang or a constructed language) in terms "sounds like", especially if
you choose English or an ancient language as the example. The problem with
English is that even within the British isles, there is wide variation in
the pronunciation of many sounds, and world-wide there's even more
variation. The problem with using an ancient language, e.g. ancient greek,
  is that we simply have no way of knowing how you pronounce it & other
people will be using different pronunciations. I'm afraid _all_
pronunciations of ancient Greek are artificial & conventional.

I strongly advise you to learn the IPA (International Phonetic Association)
  symbols for representing sounds unambiguously (the are several web-sites
about this) and then, because of the limitations of ASCII, learn the
'Conlang extended SAMPA' CXS system used by most people here. I know it's
a bit of work but, believe me, it really is worth it. It'll mean that you'
ll be able to describe your sounds far more accurately and that you'll be
able to follow various discussions about pronunciation that occur from
time to time on Conlang.

Happy conlanging!

Ray
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