Re: Phonemes

On Wed, Apr 12, 2000 at 09:54:45PM -0400, Dave Mezynski 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?

I'm not much of a conlanger but I'll offer what I have....  If you can
possibly get ahold of "An Introduction to Phonetics" by Catford, whether
at a library, online, or whatever, GRAB IT... it's a set of instructions
for learning to pronounce every major type of sound in the world's
languages.  It teaches you how to control kinds of voice, nasalization,
glottal constriction, different places of articulation -- everything --
by means of well-described exercises.

Ed