Re: Why my conlangs SUCK!!!

Muke Tever wrote:
> Most conlangs have a tendency to start out phonetically spelled, and to
> resist borrowings, and lack extensive dialexy, so the conditions that give
> birth to nonphonetic orthographies just dont occur as often.
My Uatakassi fails to distinguish between several pairs of phonemes,
namely /tS/-/tj/ ([ts]), /dZ/-/dj/ ([dz]), /C/-/kj/, /Ni/-/Ngi/.  This
is due to a long-ago palatization, which created /tS/, /dZ/ and /C/ from
/ti/, /di/, and /ki/, and converted /gi/ to /i/ (hence, /ngi/, [Ngi] ->
[Ni] - not all dialects stopped there, many simply turned that to [ni],
but the dialect that became the prestige one kept it at the [Ni]
stage).  Subsequent sound-changes then recreated the original
environments, i.e., [ti], [di] (which have become palatized themselves
to [tsi] [dzi] for most speakers), [ki] and [gi] (A few speakers have
turned those to [tsi], [dzi]).

Secondary palatization has also added new instances of /si/ and /zi/
([Si], [Zi]), however, the original palatization is still going strong
there, making the new instances also [Si] and [Zi]

One thing I like about Japanese is that the use of its own orthography,
the kana, prevents the temptation to use the native spelling.  :-)  And
even the recent usage of roomaji isn't so bad, as it clearly marks off
foreign words and prevents them from "contaminating" the
(near-)phonemicity of kana.

A neat thing about kana is that, unless there's a change in kana usage,
500 years from now, people will still recognize foreign-origin words as
being foreign-origin, no matter how much they've been integrated into
the language.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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