Re: Click consonants

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 14:25:38 -0600, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

> Actually, there aren't many conlangs that are described in enough detail
> to
> learn to speak like a native. Completeness is an ambitious goal, and not
> everyone's going to want to fill in all the details for each of their
> languages. And since very few people expect that anyone's going to
> actually
> want to learn to spéak their lang, it's understandable that descriptions
> of
> conlang phonology are far from complete.
>
AFMCL, Thagojian is described as a written language only, whose
pronunciation varies on an almost daily basis. Especially, the glyphs from
{zeta}, {psi}, {ksi}, which are sometimes /ts/, /ps/, /ks/ and sometimes
/t_j/, /p_j/, /k_j/ or /tj/, /pj/, /kj/ -- as well as other sloppy-mouthed
variations. Sometimes, intervocalic {s} and {ss} are /z/ and /s/, and other
times they're /s/ and /s:/, and likewise for the other fricatives.
Sometimes "mid-harmony" vowels are /1/, /@/, /6/ and sometimes they're /y/
~ /M/, /2/ ~ /7/, /9/ ~ /V/ (allophonically depending on surrounding vowels
-- worse, sometimes surrounding vowels condition the rounding and sometimes
the fronting).

Basically, I don't think there's a single hard-and-fast rule about the
pronunciation of Thagojian. It's pronounced instinctively, most of the
time.





Paul