Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Uber newbie-conlanger conlang

From:Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 16, 2005, 6:14
On 16 Mar 2005, at 4.29 pm, Herman Miller wrote:

> Include all the unusual sounds found in English but not in many other > languages, like /T/, /D/, and "American R". Be sure to distinguish > between /I/ and /i/. (I knew better than to use American /r/, but for > years many of my languages continued to distinguish between /I/ and > /i/, > and I've always liked to include the /T/ and /D/ sounds. I mean, > they're > not exactly rare sounds; widely spoken languages like Arabic do use > them, but they're more than a little bit unusual.)
Well, I understand Portuguese and Chinese have '"American" Rs', though in the latter they aren't rhotics. And plenty of Germanic langs, at least, distinguish /I/ and /i/, don't they? (Dutch, I'm told, doesn't even have a residual length distinction, with [I] vs [i]!) And I've seen Latin's /i/~/i:/ described as [I]~[i:] (quite specifically stated that it shouldn't be [i]~[i:], though of course we have no ancient Romans left to tell us so I don't know where it came from).
> Recognize that there are sound alternations in languages, but without > understanding why certain sounds are related. Make up rules for sound > changes that don't make much phonological sense. (Some of my early > "Elvish" languages had rules for changing final consonants when adding > suffixes, including such things as /r/ changing to /T/. That sort of > thing is fine if you know what you're doing; I can imagine a sequence > of > sound changes that could have resulted in an /r/~/T/ alternation, but I > certainly didn't have anything like that in mind at the time.)
Doesn't either Jersey or Guernsey French have something like this? I think it was /r/ becoming [T] before a /i/ or /j/ ... a palatal of some sort. Would be fun to use :) Rather than making a conlang that's a parody of early conlangs, it would be fun to make a conlang that *appears* to be a paradoy of earlier conlangs, but is actually quite reasonable upon closer inspection. (Maybe someone's already suggested that ... I've not really been following this thread...) -- Tristan.

Reply

Muke Tever <hotblack@...>