Hive English Orthography

Greetings, Earthlings.
We will do you no harm.

Inspired by a couple of the Norwescon panels, I came up with yet
another conlang idea.

The syllable structure is strictly (C)V (but maybe word-final (C)VC).

Consonants:
* Voiced: b, d, g, m, n
* Voiceless: p, t, k, q (= [?]), h

Probably, p, t, k are aspirated. They are also the consonants that
could occur word-final.

Vowels:
v  [v]   [f]
z  [z_m] [s_m]
s  [z_a] [s_a]
r  [z`]  [s`]
i  [j\]  [C]
u  [G_w] [x_w]
x  [R]   [X]
l  [l]   [K]

The first phone for each vowel is used after a voiced consonant, the
second after a voiceless consonant. I'm not sure if I have the CXS
exactly perfect. The _a phones are intended to be narrow deeply
grooved "whistling" sibilants, and the _m phones are intended to be
wide shallow sibilants. Optionally, a fricative could be used instead
of [l].

It's not clear if |h| is actually pronounced, or just indicates
voicelessness.

I'm using "Hive English" as a temporary working title because:

1) I want to use English as a lexifier, if I ever figure out how to
convert English phonemes to the aforementioned. Low vowels are an
especial problem.

2) Just the sound of the language spoken should give people the
hives.

Comments?

Jeff (or dsirhf ?)



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