Re: sabyuka : consonants, orthography, and a few things more

En réponse à julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>:

> Hello,
>
> I would like to share what should be the definitive phonological
> system
> of the conlang I am working on. It's name is composed of |sab| (the
> first syllable of Sabrina, my girlfriend who'll design the alphabet),
She's also been bitten by the conlang bug? You're lucky!

>
> /saby-u-kà/
>  know-DAT-RM
> where DAT is Dative and RM is Reference Marker.
> The glosis would be "the thing to knowledge", or something like that.
> The idea is to create (the outline of ) an associated conculture,
> where
> the Society would be organized around language. Language would be some
> kind of God's gift, and would have to be adorated as so. Political
> authority would be given to the best grammarians.
How do you rank grammarians? On what criteria? Sorry to ask those questions,
but I don't even see how that's possible...

 That explains the
> name
> of the language.
>
Where would conlangers fit in such a society? Would they be hunted and
persecuted, considered to pervert the gift of God, or would they be praised and
revered like prophets, considered to have been given a special talent by God to
replicate its own gift?

>
> Notes :
>   - /ts/ is really problematic to me, because I want my system to be
> first aesthetic, /ts/ might be in every position, especially final. I
> had thought of |ç| and |z|, but I finally decided for |tz| : please
> tell
> me if you have any better idea :)
I think |z| alone would fit, but |tz| is okay too. It makes the language look a
bit like Basque or South American languages, both of which I find quite
aesthetically pleasing.

>   - doubling a consonant is made by writing the consonant twice (!) In
> the particular cas of a digraph, such as |tz, th|, only the first one
> is
> doubled (e.g. |ttz, tth|)
I find that pretty logical, and though I don't have any example I'm sure it's
backed up by the use in natlangs.

>   - in ambiguous cases, such as |th| (/t+h/ or /T/?) I use an
> apostroph
> (') to indicate that the two consonants are different, so that :
> |t'h| is read /th/, or [tx].
>
Pretty straightforward.

>
> Here is the transliteration of the vowel system :
> /i/ --> |i|
> /e/ --> |e|
> /ei/ --> |ê|
> /@/ --> |à|
I kind of find it strange to use an accented letter to mark the schwa. The
schwa is to me the quintessence of the unstressed letter, and marking it with
an accented letter is to me contradictory with its very nature. I'd rather see
the schwa marked with a non-accented letter. The choice would be thus:
- whether to switch |a| and |à|,
- or to use another letter for /@/.
For the second possibility, you could use |y| as proposed (if that wouldn't
make any ambiguity with /j/ - although you may want to add a little ambiguity,
to add some theological discussions and disputes :)) -).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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