"Padraic Brown" <elemtilas@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:kr86f3hgevsncokmve6p54nhn6foq6phli@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:55:38 -0600, "Logan Kearsley"
> <chrono.surfer@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>>>I can pronounce a lot of clicks in isolation, but integrating them
into
>>>>words is... non-trivial.
>>>
>>> I rather doubt people whose languages involve clicks find them
>>> "non-trivial" at all! It's just a matter of perspective. They might
>>> even find a clickless language as extremely odd.
>>
>>Learned natively, I'm sure they're no harder than any other sound.
That's
>>not of much help when trying to design an auxlang not intended to be
>>anyone's native tongue that's universally easy to pronounce, though.
>
> My point is simply that "universally easy" is all a matter of personal
> opinion.
"Easy" is a matter of personal opinion. "Easy for a particular group",
much
less so. I'm just choosing the "particular group" to be "the largest one
you
can assemble".
>>(which would be the official phonological description
>>anyway), but that don't work for initials. If nobody gives strong
sup****t
>>for putting in initial clusters, I'll probably just forget about it.
>
> You can introduce a weak vowel (a schwa) in sup****t of the word intial
> cluster. Kind of like how Spanish has estado where English has state.
That would require allowing initial vowels (in fact, it would be implied
by
allowing initial vowels). I don't really have a problem with that, though,
so I might just go ahead and do it.
> Will your language have word final clusters at all?
Almost definitely not.
>>I tried to stuff everything that an English speaker
>>would be likely to turn into a schwa into the E category.
>
> That's just about everything!
Touché.
>>(Perhaps that's
>>being overly anglocentric, but AFAICT, it shouldn't cause problems for
>>speakers of other native languages; am I wrong about that?)
>
> What, schwaifying everything? This language seems to be all about
> allophones, so why not?
>
>>>>o - [o]
>>>>u - [u], [y], [U]
>>>>And diphthongs:
>>>>ai - [ai], [Ai]
>>>>ei - [ei], [Ei]
>>>>oi - [oi]
>>>>ao - [ao], [au], [Ao], [Au]
>>>>
>>>>Lots of allophones. And we currently have more vowel sounds than
>>>>consonants;
>>>>that bothers me a bit, though I'm not sure why.
>>>
>>> As far as I can see, you really only have five vowel categories, each
>>> having several allophones. I think it's arguable whether diphthongs
>>
>>Yup. Except for I and O; they seem a bit lonely. Not entirely sure what
I
>>could/should add or move around.
>>
>>> are individual vowels or are composed of two discreet vowels. Since
>>> this is an auxlang and not a naturalistic conlang with a history
>>> behind it, I don't think this is such a problem.
>>>
>>>>I suppose it's OK. 'ao'
>>>>seems sort of like the odd-diphthong-out. Anything that should be
>>>>rearranged/added/excluded?
>>>
>>> Why only one vowel+O diphthong? What about EO / EU; OU or UO. Why no
>>> vowel+A diphthongs at all?
>>
>>Because I'm not terribly familiar with vowel+A diphthongs; It's possible
>>that I'm just being stupid about it (which is why I'm posting here, for
>>other people to examine), but I couldn't think of any examples in
>>languages
>>I know / know about when making the list.
>
> It's a matter of spelling, but words like "was" and "wasp" could
> arguably be considered UA diphthongs: uasp, etc.
Hm. I suppose you could spell it that way. I percieve a definite
distinction
between how I pronounce [ua] vs. [wa], but since we're all about
allophones
here, might not be a problem. I'll see what the group thinks about adding
them.
-l.
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