Re: Vowel Harmony Asthetically Pleasing?

Hi!

"Adam F." <hypaholic@...> writes:
> I am looking for opinions. Who finds vowel harmony in general to be
> asthetically pleasing and what do you think of my sketch? I am working on a
> conlang that has vowel harmony as follows:
>
> i[1], e[@] are neutral
>
> í[i], é[e], á[a] are front vowels and can only be in words together or with
> the neutral vowels
>
> u[u], o[o], a[A] are back vowels and can only be in words together or with
> the neutral vowels
Aesthetically, I like languages that only have one open vowel, so I'd
collapse [a] and [A] and probably make it neutral as well.

Technically, I think the difference in rounding is not typical for a
vowel harmony: I'd, therefore, have front and back rounded and
unrounded variants.  Some very interesting vowels like [7] will be
used then. :-)

In total, to make your system please my personal taste, I'd modify
as follows:

   [1, @, a]    are central neutral
   [i, y, e, 2] are front vowels
   [u, M, o, 7] are back vowels

You can then have endings agreeing with the stem, e.g. endings like

   -un / -yn   for back / front words
   -Mt / -it   for back / front words
   ...

**Henrik