Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)

>On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 Henrik Theiling <theiling@> wrote:
> >
> > Anyway, do others also have such a hard time finding personally
> > pleasing phonologies?  I find it awefully difficult.
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
>Christian Thalmann replied:
> >
> > Not at all, I absolutely love making phonologies.  Disappointingly
> > (?), I usually end up with rather simple vowel systems, and no
> > hard-to-pronounce consonants.  But maybe that's just the recipe
> > for pleasing phonologies?  It seems to work for Quenya, IMHO the
> > hallmark of pleasing phonology.
True, Quenya has a very pleasing phonology, but I really don't think it's
the only method of getting a pleasing-sounding language. I like very much
exploring alternate routes, both for the sake of exploration itself & for
not coming off "n00bish". (I'm starting to think that the phonology for my
first project, uwjge, is too kitchen-sinkish and diacronically contrived.
Maybe I should scale back and transfer sum' parts elsewhere...)

Aspirated plosivs and moderately restricted codas are two features I seem to
recycle from phonology to phonology, but I also like to thow wierd
consonants in from time to time, from clicks to epiglottals... it's good
pronunciation practis, plus they add a definit flavor to the language. A
distinctiv flavor is one of the most important things I'm after, and this
applies both to the sound and the writing.


> > Dirk Elzinga replied:
> >
> > It's a fairly easy thing to collect a list of
> > sounds that are appealing in themselves, but to get them to work
> > together in a pleasing, or at least convincing fashion is the real
> > trick.
I don't start from sounds itself, but rather from words. They tend to
already imply a certain degree of phonology (more so than plain phonemes),
and then it's just a question of figuring out which parts fit together &
filling holes. It takes work, but the results look good.


> > Kate <snapping.dragon@> replied:
(...)
> > What I wonder, is does anyone have the same problem when it comes to
> > morphology, syntax, etc?
Yeah, me. I haven't really been able to get anything interesting done with
either. With syntax it's mostly due to me kno'ing next to about nothing
about the subject, but with morphology I gess I just don't have any good
ideas ... or rather, have visions bigger than I can work out. This greatly
hinders the growth of my lexicons, even if I have plenty of ideas about
_what_ to lexicalize. :(


Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
(...)
>Kate says she tosses a language that, for ten reasons, she shouldn't; but
>for one, overriding one, she does - it offends her sense of beauty.  I
>reckon that is a valid artistic choice. The only fault I could find with
>this procedure is that it's rather wasteful! ;-)
Plus phonology is probably the most independant part of a language and could
relativly easily be replaced with sumthing else, occasionally even in an 1:1
fashion (so you needn't even scrap the lexical entries).

John Vertical