Re: Futurese

Well, here you are the first part of those promised justifying
comments to the phoneme chart:

> c) PHONOLOGY
>
> Josef said:
>
> Dear Javier,
> As you know some sounds are difficult in some countries. As you know
> (you speak Spanish) Spaniards find it hard to say a "V" they say "B"
> instead. The Chinese find it hard to say "R" they might say "L". It
> seems the Japanese have the opposite problem. Using tones in words is
> difficult for most Europeans, but not for the Chinese...and so on.
> There will not be many sounds left if you consider that some sounds
> are difficult... or you have some difficult sounds instead, who are
> going to be the victims? ...
>
> And I replied:
>
> Dear Josef,
>
> I clearly see your point, but it seems also that you have already
> noticed that if you start considering local habits of pronounci-
> ation there won't be many sounds left to choose from. And at this
> point, I'm sure the following data will serve to clarify the
> question.
>
> Several years ago, The University of California, Los Angeles Phono-
> logical Segment Inventory Database, made a famous linguistical sur-
> vey (known in short as the UPSID survey) in which they analyzed the
> phoneme systems of 317 languages, chosen so as to include one repre-
> sentative member from every main language grouping recognized. The
> results showed that the following were the most frequently encount-
> ered consonant sounds:
>
> Lab. Dent./Alv. Pal. Vel. Glot.
> Ocl. p / b t / d k / g '
> Affr. ch
> Fric. f s sh h
> Nas. m n ñ ng
> Liq. l / r
> Aprox. j w
>
> It was also found that the language with more sounds was !Xu, of
> the Khoisan family of Southern Africa, with 141 sounds (95 conso-
> nants and 46 vowels). On the opposite side, the language with the
> lesser number of sounds was that of the Rotokas of the Pacific Is-
> lands, with an extremely poor sound system of only 11 segments.
> But between those extremes, 70% of the languages used between 20
> and 37 sounds, with an average of 22.8 consonants and 8.7 vowels.
> Among the consonants, the majority used between 5 and 11 oclusiv-
> es, 1 and 4 fricatives, 2 and 4 nasals, and 4 others. Among the
> oclusives, 99% used at least 3 points of articulation: bilabial,
> dental/alveolar and velar. Some languages as Hawaiian didn't dis-
> tinguish between /t/ and /k/, while others, such as those of the
> Australian aborigenes, distinguished up to 6 points of articul-
> ation. 92% of the languages used voiceless oclusives and 67% also
> voiced ones. Then 29% use aspirated, 16% voiceless glottalized
> and 11% voiced implosive oclusives. In the realm of fricatives,
> 93% of the languages used at least one (excluding from this the
> /h/), and this was usually /s/, then came /S/, /f/, /z/, /x/, /v/
> and /Z/. /h/ in turn was used as a fricative consonant by 63% of
> languages. Then the nasals, at least one was found in 97% of the
> languages, being /n/, /m/, /ng/ and /ñ/ the most frequent in that
> order; but some as language of the Rotokas didn't include any. As
> for the liquids (/l/ and /r/), 96% of the languages used at least
> one, 72% used more. The approximants (semivowels) were found at
> the following rates: /j/ in 86% of languages and /w/ in 76%.
>
> And as a final and very revealing result, they also found that
> NONE of the sounds was found in every language. What this means is
> that ANY sound you choose to include in an IAL is likely to be
> found "difficult to pronounce" by the speakers of some or other
> language, because the sounds people find difficult to pronounce
> are not something that can be objectively be proven to be so, but
> simply and precisely those that are not already in use in their
> mother tongue and thus they're not used to pronounce. So, if in a
> certain language such as that of the Rotokas, there aren't any
> nasal consonants, they will find it "quite difficult" to pro-
> nounce /m/ or /n/, while the speakers of that other inmense amount
> of languages in which those sounds are present won't find anything
> particularly difficult in them at all; it is quite rare that a
> native speaker of a language finds a sound of his/her mother
> tongue difficult to pronounce (you'll have to think of, say, such
> rare cases as Czech "r^"), while it's very likely that he/she
> would see it as a difficulty having to pronounce sounds he/she is
> not used to pronounce because they are not already found in his/her
> native tongue.
>
> It's essential also that you become aware that the sound systems
> used by the thousands of different languages of the world display
> an incredibly astonishing degree of variety, and for that reason
> you can't base the choice of sounds for an IAL on local habits of
> pronounciation, but rather you'll have to look at those features
> most frequently encountered at a global level.
>
> And the merging of L/R into one single phoneme (usually a middle-
> sound between the lateral L and the rolled R, called a flap), is
> not the rule but the exception, because, as you have just seen, L
> and R are distinguished in aprox. 72% of the languages at a global
> level. Where you're most likely to encounter languages that merge
> L/R is around the Time Date Line, that is, in parts of East Asia
> and Oceania, and the speakers of languages from other areas ins-
> tantly identify the merging of L/R as a local habit of that geo-
> graphical region. Then, why should an IAL merge L/R? Some will
> say that to make its pronounciation easier for the speakers from
> that mentioned geographical area. But if you chose to do so, what
> you'd be doing in fact is to grant a privilege to the inhabitants
> of that region if you didn't include also the local pronounciation
> habits of the inhabitants of other areas. If you ignore the main
> trend of having at least two liquid sounds, L and R, clearly dis-
> tinguished, on the argument of helping the speakers of a certain
> group of languages in pronouncing the IAL, then the rest of the
> inhabitants of the world would have all the right to protest and
> ask for their own habits of pronounciation to be taken into ac-
> count, so that they too had the privilege of having the task of
> learning to pronounce the IAL equally simplified. But then, just
> think of what would happen: you would merge L/R, but then, you
> would find that in some languages there isn't any of them, so
> you'd have to take them away altogether; then, the speakers of
> Polynesian languages would require that you also abolished the
> distinction between T/K and the Rotokas would tell you to take
> away all the nasals too, while the speakers of those languages
> originated in the Iberian Peninsula (Spanish, Portuguese, Basque
> and Catalan) would urge you to merge the voiced fricatives with
> their oclusive counterparts, because that kind of lenition is a
> local feature of all the languages in that area (but again is
> very rarely found outside there); then, no voiced fricatives,
> but neither voiceless ones, because several languages lack them
> all, and neither glottals nor semivowels, that aren't used by
> several others, and then you should do the same with almost very
> vowel. The final result: the sound system of your IAL based on
> local habits of pronounciation would be this: /a/, /p/, /t/, and
> that given that you allow for an enormous degree of allophone
> variation, if not, the number of common remaining segments for
> that reason likely to find no kind of opposition would come to be
> reduced to just: 0.000000...
>
> Well, somebody has already proposed to create a language based
> on just one consonant and one vowel. Having two consonants (P,
> T) and a vowel (A) would greatly increase the possibilities, but
> just think of how any such language would look and sound: PA TA
> PA TAP PA TA TAT PAT TA PA TAT PA PA TA TA... Maybe you'd like
> that (mainly if you're a devotee of Morse code), but I'm sure
> that, quite on the contrary, most people around the world would
> consider the idea of a language with only 3 sounds to be the most
> laughable one they've ever heard.
>
> So, as you can see, when designing the sound system of an IAL it
> is not possible that you take into account such local habits of
> pronounciation as the merging of L/R, of B/V or T/K in order to
> make its pronounciation supposedly easier (it would be easier,
> of course, but just for the speakers of that regional area in
> which that local habit of pronounciation is found, not for the
> rest of the world).
>
> Well, maybe somebody is thinking: Why not choosing for the IAL a
> very simple sound system --as, say, those of Japanese or Samoan--
> so that it will be very easy to pronounce for most people?
>
> ---
> Those languages I've just cited have very poor sound systems:
>
> * JAPANESE (quite poor): 11 consonants, 5 vowels and 4 diphthongs
> (with long and short varieties), vocalic nasal and glottal stop.
> Syllable structure (C)V('), being C={h/f-p, b; t/ts/ch, d/j; k,
> g; s/sh, z/j; m, n; r}, V={i,e,a,o,u,ya,yo,yu,wa;î,ê,â,ô,û,yâ,
> yô,yû,wâ;n}, ' glottal stop (spelled in transliteration by
> doubling the following consonant)
>
> * SAMOAN (even poorer): 10 consonants, and 5 vowels (10 counting
> long and short). Syllable structure (C)V, being C={p,t,'; f,s,v;
> m,n,g; l} and V={i,e,a,o,u; î,ê,â,ô,û}
> ---
>
> Mmm... it seems like Japanese and Samoan must be VERY EASY LANGUAGES
> TO PRONOUNCE!!, most desirable models to be imitated by the IAL's
> sound system!!, right? ...Then I'm sure you've never tried to
> pronounce such memorable everyday sentences as:
>
> * JAPANESE (poor sound system = of course, VERY EASY to pronounce):
>
> -Anata ga kono otoko no ko to ikitakunakatta ne.
> (You didn't want to go with this child, right?)
>
> ...my tongue is starting to get dizzy!!
>
>
> * SAMOAN (perfect example of extremely poor sound system = of course,
> this one must certainly be DEAD EASY to pronounce):
>
> -O fea e fa'atau ai se fuâlâ'au? (Where can I buy a fruit?)
> -'Ou te lê mana'o 'i le mea lena. (I don't want that)
> -E fia le tau aofa'i? (How much is all of this?)
> -E mafai ona 'e fa'epa'û la'itiiti i lalo?
> (Can I have it at a cheaper price?)
>
> ...MY OUTRAGED ACHING TONGUE IS CLAIMING FOR REVENGE!!!
>
> As you see, having a poor sound system doesn't turn a language into
> an easy one to pronounce, but quite on the contrary, because having
> so little to choose from, the same sounds and syllable structures
> have to be used really frequently thus turning simple sentences into
> annoying nearly-unpronounceable tongue-twisters. That's why most
> languages choose not to use so extremely poor sound systems, but
> prefer medium-sized sets, of an average around 25-35 phonemes.
>
> The sound system I propose has 26 phonemes (thus an average-low
> number), is perfectly suited to be written in that script everybody
> has easy access to for word-processing, printing and databases and
> that has the largest and most varied amount of available fonts, and,
> as you will see, has a high degree of internal logic.
To be continued...

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