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Re: Simafira: phonetics

From:Tom Tadfor Little <tom@...>
Date:Thursday, August 30, 2001, 22:00
At 02:40 PM Thursday 8/30/01, you wrote:
>Well, my language is off to a start. It even has a name - Simafira >("sima"=island, "fira"=speech).
Hi Steve!
>For one thing, the script is completely phonetic. (Is this unusual?)
For natlangs, yes. For conlangs, no. ;)
>There are a few sounds missing to try and make the language "flow" >similarly to, but not exactly like, a Polynesian language. Affricates >were done away with, softened to [f] or [Z]. The sound for "r" is [R]. I >also >removed [g], [v], and [z]; [v] was reassigned to [f], [z] to [Z]. Words >themselves are constrained so that they may not end with a stop.
Sounds good. The disappearance of [g] is curious though. The labial, dental, and velar stops are the bread-and-butter of the consonant systems of most human languages, and if (as is often the case) voiced/unvoiced pairs are used, it is quite unusual to lose one stop in a pair but not the other. It's certainly not impossible, but you may find it fun to come up with a plausible explanation. I might imagine that the voiced stops had at one time been voiced fricatives, and the velar voiced fricative might have vanished via weakening to [h].
>Also, somewhat oddly, I lost [T] and [D], since I've heard these used in >enough conlangs to try and soften them that it themeth that everyone who >conlangth is thpeaking with a lithp.
LOL! Yes. These are actually fairly rare sounds in most of the world's language families.
>I also made a weird addition - [K]. This might end up being dropped, >because none of my other speakers can make that sound!
Cool. Maybe [g] is gone because it came from K\, which made speakers who used it gag and drop dead.
>I also tend to drop >into some of my French sounds when speaking it, so [Y] and [O~] may yet make >their way in.
I like both those sounds. They might be an opportunity to make the orthography less phonetic, if you want to be more realistic in that area.
>Cheers, Tom
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tom Tadfor Little tom@telp.com Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA) Telperion Productions www.telp.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~