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Essence of Elvishness

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Friday, February 17, 2006, 20:27
Andreas Johansson wrote:
>I wanted to take the opportunity to take a bit about elflangs and >"Elvishness" as regards conlangs.
>I doubt >we'd perceive a language with a general sound of "Khuq-khaak-zbnug" as >particularly Elvish, so the debt to JRRT is hardly the whole story. > >So, is there some set of features that have established themselves as >"Elvish"?
Here's a few I can think of: +Elvish: <c> for /k/ Coronals Acutes, breves Open syllabes Approximants Moderate amounts of nasals Diftongs and vowel clusters <h> digraphs -Elvish: <k> for /k/ Gutturals Circumflexes Obstruents, especially in clusters and codas Of course, this cannot be exhaustive - Latinate words like "auditorium" can fit the criteria but still avoid appearing +Elvish. All IMO of course. John Vertical

Replies

Kris Kowal <cowbertvonmoo@...>
R A Brown <ray@...>