Re: Futurese

Javier wrote:
>The main goal of futurese is to be as culturally neutral,
>logical and easy to use and learn as possible.
>
>Here's a short summary of some of its main features:
>
>1) Structure: ISOLATING
>
>2) Script: standard 26-letter ROMAN ALPHABET
>
>3) Phoneme chart:
>--------------------------------------------------------
>.............|. labial .| dent-alve | palat-velar | gl |
>-------------------------------------------------------|
>plosives: ...| p .......|. t .......|......... k .|. ' |
>.............| b .......|. d .......|......... g .|....|
>fricatives: .|...... f .|....... s .|. c .........|. h |
>.............|...... v .|....... z .|. x .........|....|
>nasals: .....| m .......|. n .......|......... q .|....|
>liquids: ....|..........|. l .......|.............|....|
>.............|..........|. r .......|.............|....|
>semivowels: .|..........|...........|. j ..... w .|....|
>-------------|-----------------------------------------|
>vowels: .....|........................ i . y . u ..... |
>.............|.......................... e . o ....... |
>.............|............................ a ......... |
>--------------------------------------------------------
>(p, t and k, aspirated; y, schwa)
If I'm reading this correctly, |x| is a voiced palatal fricative! I'd find
that mightily difficult to distinguish from [j], and I bet I'm not alone. In
addition, any language that uses |x| for anything voiced ought to be shot,
IMHO. Unvoiced palatal fricative would be less of problem, but it's not
exactly the commonest phone on the planet either. If nothing else, make [S]
and [Z] legitimate variants.

Of course, if you don't intend |c x| to indicate palatal fricatives this
criticism falls, except I'd still hate |x| to indicate anything voiced.

It's quite obvious you'ven't tried to achieve a maximally universal set of
contrastive sounds, but are real sure your IAL ought to distinguish 'tween
/l/ and /r/? And exactly what kind of "r" are we speaking about? From your
chart above I'd have to guess it's a dental trill.

>4) Syllable structure: (C)V(C)
>(glottal stop inherent in syllable-initial vowels)
>
Does this mean that the glottal stop, in fact, isn't a phonemic consonant?
Otherwise it'd seem you couldn't distinguish, in spoken language, between
f'rinstance /'a/ and /a/.

>5) Basic vocabulary: MONOSYLLABIC
Assuming the glottal stop not to be phonetic, that give you 2646
monosyllables. Should easily suffice for the basic vocabulary I guess.

>6) Vocabulary sources:
>(a) onomatopoeic / expressive
>(b) "inspired" by existing languages (Lojban's method)
You're not going to borrow "international" technical vocabulary?
>
>7) Right-branching
>
>8) Basic sentence structure: theme - predicator - rheme
>
>Any comment? :-)
My initial impression is that this's gonna look like the result of a
run-of-the-mill euroclone IAL secretly dating Chinese. :-)

                                              Andreas

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