Re: My conlang Némalo

Hemmo wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>
Hi!

>I created a conlang called Némalo. I don't know much about linguistics, so
>if things are not correct, please say so. Some basic information about my
>language follows.
>
>Pronunciation:
>(I can't read sampa)
>
>
I admit it looks rather difficult to remember all the symbols on an
X-SAMPA chart when you first look at it, but I'm sure you'll find (as I
did) that once you have something in your own conlang that you need to
describe phonetically, that you'll learn it quite quickly. Of course,
it's an asciification (asciiification? hmm) of  the IPA, so you need to
have a basic grasp of the IPA first, but again, if you just study what's
necessary to represent your own conlang, it should come quite easily to
you. I'll even save you some trouble and tell you what you need to know,
or some of it :)

>ŝ (S with ^): like English SH
>
>
That's /S/
(capitalisation is important in X-SAMPA)

>Þ: like English TH
>
>
This is ambiguous. If you mean the voiced sound (as in English <then>),
it's /D/. The voiceless sound of <thin> is /T/.

>X: like Dutch G, Spanish J, Scottish Ch
>
>
As Christophe pointed out, the first two could mean a number of things.
But it's clear enough that you mean /x/.

>AU: like Duch/English OU, German AU
>
>
I'm not going to attempt this one, it could be any number of  sounds!

>W: like Dutch, German, Frisian
>
>
I don't know what this sound is in Dutch or Frisian, but maybe you mean
/v/. On the other hand, is German <w> actually /w/? Is it bilabilal /B/
maybe? [I've been wondering about this for a while, in an attempt to
figure out why Germans have the accent they do in English, when it comes
to pronouncing English <w> and <v>,  and why it's so rare to find a
German without this accent feature]

>R: rolling R
>
>
I'd guess you mean /r/. Could be a number of things.

>Y: like Dutch IJ/EI
>
>
Pass.

>Ú: like Dutch/French U, German Ü
>
>
Arr, that be /y/.

>Ø: like Dutch/French EU, Danish Ø
>
>
/2/ (the inventor of X-SAMPA was clearly running out of meaningful
characters by the time he got to /2/)

>Z: like English J but without the D-sound
>
>
/Z/. Compare with /S/ for the first sound in your list

>E, short: Like short E in Spanish, English, Dutch, but not as a sjwa
>
>
Phew. Could be /E/


>E, long: Like English AY
>
>
Do you really mean that? The most obvious sound that spelling suggests
to this Anglophone is a diphthong like /ai/ or /{i/. But I suspect you
really mean the simple vowel /e/ (which is *not* the sound in, say,
English <day>)


>U: A shorter English OO, French OU, Dutch OE
>
>
Ignoring the shortness, I guess you mean /u/ (simple, eh?). Hmm, does
Dutch really spell /u/ as <oe>? Interesting.

>I: A shorter English EE, Dutch IE
>
>
Ignoring length, /i/.

Maybe you genuinely are referring to length in the previous two, but you
might also be trying to specify the "lax" sounds /I/ and /U/.
("tenseness" - the opposite of "laxness" and admittedly a vague concept,
is often associated with length.)

>O, short: short Dutch O
>
>
?
At a guess, assuming that your lang has fairly cardinal vowels, /O/.

>O, long: like English O as in Open, long Dutch O
>
>
/o/, I suppose.

>A, short: like English A as in America, short Dutch A
>
>
No idea. Again, working on the idea that you're basically using the
eight cardinal vowels, this might be /a/ (if it's front), or /A/ (if
it's back)

>A, long: like above, but longer
>
>
Length is indicated by /:/, so we'd have either /a:/ or /A:/

>Ô: like Afrikaans Ô, like English A as in War
>
>
/A/ ?

>Ê: like Afrikaans/Frisian Ê, French AI
>
>
Is this /{/  (also called /&/) ?

>Other letters are like English.
>
What about j? Did you mean to say that it's /j/ (the sound of the <y> in
English <yet>?)

>The letters Q, F and C are not used.
>
>
Fair enough,  but there might come a point one day when it's necessary
to understand that the sounds of a language are not "letters" but
"phonemes" (at least as far as most of us here are concerned). Letters
are symbols on a page, and need not correspond to phonemes in a
one-to-one manner. This is less pedantic than it sounds :).

Here's an example of an X-SAMPA transcription of your language. There
are many things I don't know, like what <ii> represents (a long <i>? two
syllables? something else?), and where the stress falls and exactly what
the answer to some of my questions above are, but I'll try to make
sensible guesses. Question marks mean 'huh?', not that I think there's a
glottal stop there :)

>viir ilamuiþiþo atrom, ósôgi heo, lo sauþu dáj Grador prinos avt stilos
>
>
/viir ilamuiTiTO atrOm  ?sAgi hEO  lO sauTu d?j gradOr prinos avt stilOs/

>vriþiþybu-watudikus. Johànes hardiþido grevju ke
>
>
/vriTiT?bu Batudikus  jOh?nEs hardiTido grEvju kE/

As you can see, it looks a lot like the native orthography, but with
lots of capital letters. I have a feeling that, like me with my first
conlang, you've tailored the sounds of your language to the description
the IPA provides, at least when it comes to vowels, hence the rather
straightforward X-SAMPA transcription. Nothing wrong with that, but are
you sure you actually pronounce the vowels like that? And in all
positions? In all positions regardless of stress? This needn't matter if
you don't want it to, though it may add flavour to the language
(comparison: in Russian, <o> in unstressed syllables is pronounced
rather differently from its stressed sound - it changes from perhaps /o/
to /V/ or something like that. To me at least, this completely changes
the flavour of the language).

s.
--
Stephen Mulraney  ataltane@ataltane.net  http://ataltane.net
This post brought to you  by the letter 3 and the number 0xF

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