Re: illithid phonetics

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Tim Judge, Erion Telepalda wrote:

> I am toying with the idea of a language for use in fantasy stories/roleplay.
> It will be spoken by Illithids or Mind Flayers, ot those not familiar with
> them (I didn't just think them up) they are humanoid amphibian like
> creatures with immense psionic (psychic) powers. They feed by sucking out
> the brains of other intelligent creatures. They have a mouth like a
> lamprey's which is surrounded by 4 tentacles I presume they have a tongue
> and vocal cords. I am trying to come up with a unique set of phonemes for
> them considering their peculiar structure. I am considering using the base
> of the tentacles to forma full series of labial sounds and having a large
> number of vowels.
That sounds interesting, though I wish I knew enough about
sound-production to help you.  Perhaps playing around with squeezable
rubber octopi (I'm not kidding, one of my friends has one) would give you
an idea of the possible sounds.

Hmm.  Do lampreys have tongues?

On a not very related note, Piers Anthony suggests in _Omnivore_ (okay,
it isn't the greatest SF, but it's better than a lot of his more recent
stuff) that a telepathic species would actually have a *dis*incentive to
"invent" (spoken) language.

YHL

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