Re: Chinese-based IAL?

Jörg wrote:
>I became aware
>of the problem when I briefly considered using Chinese roots in my
>very-low-priority 9-phoneme IAL project.  The roots would have to be
>transformed into a very different shape (adding more consonants, or
>making them at least bisyllabic - the only option in the 9-phoneme IAL
>which has only 21 different syllables) which would bend them beyond
>recognition in order to get along without tones
A 9-phoneme lang! That's a bit extreme ... Now what ARE these 9 phonemes?
Seeing that you've got 21 possible syllables, I'd say you've got three
vowels, six consonants and uses (C)V syllables. Dare I guess that the vowels
are /a i u/? Hmm, what consonants? /k/ and /t/ seems likely, as do /m/ and
/n/, perhaps /s/ and /l/ too? How many rights did I get?

                                                    Andreas

PS if anybody wonders how I landed on the 3-vowel, 6-consonants, it's very
simple: 21 factorizes as 3*7. That means that there's only two "slots" in
syllable, which points strongly towards a CV syllable structure, and as
3+7=10, one of these slots can be empty, almost certainly consonant slot.
Three vowels and six consonants seems alot more likely than seven vowels and
two consonants. The actual sounds I suggested are mere guesses of course
(tho' I've guessed on common sounds of course).
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