Re: Zaik! (Hi there!) - Description of Lyanjen

On Tue, Aug 29, 2000 at 05:17:53AM +0000, Matt McLauchlin wrote:
[snip]
> Vowels are divided into "masculine" (/o/, /u/) and "feminine" (/e/, /i/)
> vowels (/a/ is neuter). The feminine vowels and /a/ change sound when
> they're stressed: e = /E/, é = /e/; a = /a/, á = /{/; i = /I/, í = /i/. U
> and I make diphthongs, but u can only be added to a feminine vowel or A, and
> I can only be added to a masculine vowel or A.
[snip]

Cool idea. In my conlang, every letter has an associated "color", which
carries a lot of concultural philosophical connotations with it.
Consonants are grouped into five color combinations, and ordered by
"hardness" in each group; vowels are laid out into a 3x3 table with each
row/column associated with a "color". Hence, every vowel has one or two
"colors" associated with it, which is interpreted according to the
concultural philosophy.

When forming word stems, the meaning of the word is considered in the
context of the concultural philosophy (i.e., assigned a sequence of
"colors"), and then the vowels and consonants with the equivalent "colors"
are chosen.

This process may sound silly, but it *does* help in making words and also
appeals to me more 'cos it's not completely arbitrary. :-)


T