Re: Simafira: phonetics

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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~