Re: Phonemes

On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 21:54:45 -0400, Dave Mezynski <dmezynski@...>
wrote:

>I'm new at this...all apologies if this has been hashed to death.
>
>The advice I have suggests trying to make up new sounds to create a
>language.  This way, it says, you can avoid making too "Englishy".
>
>I've tried using the charts of nasals, fricatives, dentals, etc and making
>new sounds but they all end up sounding like L's or F's.  How did you guys
>start the ball rolling?
Well, I originally started by reading an Encyclopedia Britannica article on
phonetics, and borrowing phrase books of different languages with cassettes
from the library to hear what some of these non-English sounds were like.
When I got to college, I took an articulatory phonetics class, which was
especially useful for the more exotic sounds like clicks and ejectives.

One useful exercise is to pay close attention to the way that familiar
sounds are pronounced in different languages. Not very many languages have
a sound like the American version of English "r", for instance: trills and
taps are more common. Voiceless stops are often unaspirated, as for
instance in French or Spanish. Vowels are often simpler than in English
(purer sounds and fewer of them). Or if you like, the vowel system could be
even more complex.

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