Re: Uber newbie-conlanger conlang

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.

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