Re: stunt phonology

Andrew wrote:


>On 12/08 19:41  Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> That's my reading of it too.  Strange indeed, but it's neat, and why
not!?
>> Essentially 3 front V, only 1 back-- possibly a first in Languages of the
>> World! My guess would be that historical *u and *o merged somewhere along
>> the way. Maybe /o/ has [u] allophones. ...
>I had thought one idea for an alien language would be one that had no
>cardinal vowels.  On a whim I visited
>http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html and listed all the
>non-cardinal vowels.  The resulting table looks like this:
>
>     1  }
>I Y        U
>     @\ 8
>       @
>     3  3\
>{      6
>
>Hmmm.  It definitely looks unnatural to me.  Everything shifts towards
>the centre of the mouth.  I wonder if distinction between all those
>vowels bunched in the middle could be maintained?  There are some vowels
>there that I haven't pronounced since phonology classes.  Even so it
>could be worth further investigation. :)
>
By all means, do.  Even as I was writing that reply, it occurred to me-- you
could have  perfectly nice 5-vowel systems consisting of only front or back
vowels.  Somewhat easier to distinguish, I suspect, than you basically
central system (which would certainly be difficult at least for this
Terran's ears.  But they're aliens after all.....)

i I e E &  (You could even get six by throwing in "Bostonian "a(r)" between
E and &.  Or devise an even wider-open &....

u U o O Q.