Re: Conlanging masochism ...

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Just a little reflection I thought to share ...
>
> One of my favourite speech sounds is [m]. It happens to be a very common
> sound
> in the world's language, being found in a large majority of them. So one
> might
> expect I should in good conscience stuff my conlangs with it.
>
> Looking at my conlangs, one will however notice that one, Yargish, lacks
> it
> utterly (along with all other bilabials), while another, Tairezazh, only
> has it
> with a strictly limited distribution; initial, and before other /p/ and
> /b/.
>
> Anyone else noticed oddities of this kind in their conlangs?
>
Well, [N] is a sort-of favorite of mine, but Kash lacks it (except in final
position) in spite of having complete _fricative, vl.stop, nasal_ series at
the other POA's.  I think this was a very early decision, probably to keep
Kash from looking _too_ Indonesian. So somewhere along the way *N merged
with **J (ñ) not present in the proto-language, which means there are an
awful lot of ñ's, which is not a particular favorite....