Re: On Phonological Constraints: The Long Vowel Rule

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 11:59:45 -0000, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> Poster:       Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>
> Subject:      Re: On Phonological Constraints: The Long Vowel Rule
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Don't let them discourage you from your euphonic rule.  Just
> because something is possible doesn't mean your language
> should allow it.  That's what phonotactics is all about, and
> it flavors your language.  Conlangs often look and sound like
> orc utterances to me -- I wish more people would enforce a
> sense of aesthetics in their langs...
Before I re-vamped Ayhan (From Saalangal), I made sure to set down
allowable consonant clusters, allowable initial consonant clusters,
etc.* Most of the rules are simply what's easy for me to pronounce,
but also to give it the proper flavor.

While some consonant clusters are allowable, sometimes they just don't
sound exactly right with a given vowel following:

Krisara vs Krosara , Pyangga vs Pyengga, for instance, the latter
examples just don't sound "as nice" to my ears, even though they are
perfectly allowable. I usually use the "not so nice sounding" words
for very rarely used words.

It took me a while to figure out all of the possible consonant
clusters, and to eliminate those I thought might either change, such
as a combo like md > nd or were difficult to pronounce bp > p (at
least the way I say it it tends to go that way).

The rules were set because I realized exactly that I hadn't set a
formal way of defining the esthetics as *i* see them. I did know what
sounded right and didn't sound right, but I felt I needed some formal
way which I could refer to to form words.

*I just realized I hadn't set down allowable final consonants.



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