zompist bboard

Phonemically, the difference between p/t/k and b/d/g is voicing. Phonologically, this is realized as: - Voiceless stops (+aspirated accented syllable initially) - Partially voiced stops. Unlike fully voiced stops (French etc) but similar to slack voiced stops (Javanese, Shanghaiese), English voiced ...

Niger-Congo languages sometimes have SOV order, but it's fairly different from Asian SOV languages (and closer to Indo-European languages in some ways). They mix modality with pronouns, with a result somewhat between an aspect/tense-inflected pronoun and an auxiliary verb. They have S-Aux-O-V senten...

Was that supposed to be hard? Well, my real goal here is to tease out which extra phonemic distinction tradeoffs people will go with, and generally how to make large phoneme inventories easier to pronounce. No diphthongs? Or long vowels? I can kind of stretch (no pun intended) the definitions of "v...

Ok, here's a quite nice one from Darvince (who's also working on a conlang with over 200 phonemes!): Consonants: p t c k q ʔ pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ qʰ t' c' k' q' ts tɬ f s x χ h ɬ m n ɲ ŋ w r j l ʎ ʟ k| k! kǂ kǁ k|ʰ k!ʰ kǂʰ kǁʰ k|ʷ k!ʷ kǂʷ kǁʷ k|ˀ k!ˀ kǂˀ kǁˀ g| g! gǂ gǁ ŋ| ŋ! ŋǂ ŋǁ ŋ|ʰ ŋ!ʰ ŋǂʰ ŋǁʰ Vowels: i ...

The challenge is really simple. Create a phonology that has 10000 different syllables. CV syllables only! Your phoneme inventory must have: A) 60 consonants B) 28 vowels C) 6 tones I'll go ahead and start to give an example: 60 consonants: p pf t ts tɬ tʃ k kp q qp pʰ pfʰ tʰ tsʰ tɬʰ tʃʰ kʰ kpʰ qʰ qp...

Lahu /pʰ p b tʰ t d cʰ c ɟ kʰ k g qʰ q/ /f v ʃ j h ɣ/ /m n ŋ/ /l/ /a ɛ ɔ e ə o i ɨ u/ /˧ ˩ ˧˥ ˥˧ ˧˩ ʔ˥ ʔ˩/ ɔ˧˩ kʰɨ˧˥ pɨ˩ tʰa˥˧ kaʔ˩ Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ cɔ˧˩ ta˩ ve˧ jo˧˩. Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ o˥˧ ve˧ ɣɨ˧˩ɕa˧ gɛ˧ cʰɛ˥˧ lɛ˧ Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ o˥˧ ve˧ lɛ˧˩, ɣɨ˧˩ɕa˧ pʰɛʔ˩ ve˧ jo˧˩. Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ o˥˧ ve˧ lɛ˧˩, ɔ˧˩ kʰɨ˧˥ pɨ˩ tʰa˥˧ ka...

Lahu /pʰ p b tʰ t d cʰ c ɟ kʰ k g qʰ q/ /f v ʃ j h ɣ/ /m n ŋ/ /l/ /a ɛ ɔ e ə o i ɨ u/ /˧ ˩ ˧˥ ˥˧ ˧˩ ʔ˥ ʔ˩/ ɔ˧˩ kʰɨ˧˥ pɨ˩ tʰa˥˧ kaʔ˩ Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ cɔ˧˩ ta˩ ve˧ jo˧˩. Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ o˥˧ ve˧ ɣɨ˧˩ɕa˧ gɛ˧ cʰɛ˥˧ lɛ˧ Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ o˥˧ ve˧ lɛ˧˩, ɣɨ˧˩ɕa˧ pʰɛʔ˩ ve˧ jo˧˩. Tɔ˥˧ kʰɔ˥˧ o˥˧ ve˧ lɛ˧˩, ɔ˧˩ kʰɨ˧˥ pɨ˩ tʰa˥˧ ka...

Phonology should be formatted as a table: (btw, are t'/s' ejective, palatalized or velarized/pharyngealized?)

Consonants: /p t ts tʃ k/ /b d g/ /ᵐb ⁿd ᵑg/ /f s ʃ x χ/ /v z ʒ ɣ ʁ/ /m̊ n̊ ŋ̊ ɴ̊/ /m n ŋ ɴ/ Semivowels: /w j/ /ɥ wˤ ɰˤ/ Vowels and tones: /i y ɨ u ɯˤ ʊˤ/ /e ø o ɤˤ/ /ɛ ə ɔ/ /æ ɑˤ/ /a/ /ĩ ỹ ɨ̃ ũ ɯ̃ˤ ʊ̃ˤ/ /ẽ ø̃ õ ɤ̃ˤ/ /ɛ̃ ə̃ ɔ̃/ /æ̃ ɑ̃ˤ/ /ã/ /a˥ a˧ a̤˨ a˩/ /a˧˥ a˥˧ a̰˩˧ a˧˩/ Syllable structure: (C)(S...

Implosive fricatives?

Rough ratings from about 1 to 5: Morphological complexity (amount of agglutination) (1) no verb conjugation, noun gender, plural, etc, lots of word types, lots of small tool words (isolative) (5) extremely complex verb conjugation, sentences have few words, but words are longer (polysynthetic) Engli...

Well, cartoons are all voiced by the same guys, so if a couple of them decide to go for high pitched, you end up with a lot of falsetto.

Tried Spanish, German and Chinese. Easiest by far was Spanish, but it's related to my native language (French). It's generally considered to be easy for English speakers too. I wonder if Asians find it hard to learn. Didn't find the difference in difficulty between German and Mandarin to be that lar...

L1: French
Ancestry: Mostly French, some English (which I speak fluently but with an accent)

Guitarplayer wrote:[BAR GRAPH]

The above chart doesn't distinguish varieties, hence English comes out as 2nd worst (if you consider plus votes, 2nd worst in a tie with Russian).

Holy shit, French really gets hammered in there. Wonder why.

I've seen a similar hypothesis using latitude, correlating languages with simpler syllable structure on average to more equatorial zones (see: niger-congo, austronesian families, meso-american languages) and languages with more complex syllables to more polar zones (northwest american coast language...

Hmm, never heard that one. "Pays" (/pe.i/) and "Péri" (/peRi/) are not pronounced the same. Maybe I'm mistaken but I think that's just a normal hiatus.

[C] [/j,w/] V [/j,w/] T

C: Consonant
- p b t d k g
- v s ʒ ʁ
- m ɱ n ɲ ŋ ɴ
- w j

V: Vowel
- i ĩ ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ
- e ẽ ə ə̃ o õ
- a ã

T: Tone
- High, medium, low

Pi damp gitavauk yî nyîvon teiva'ng du gikîsöü'n. Nein mîja ot aüj va eik o'njan vüji. Osentöün'ng me ak dü vüju mentakwüd. Vük bwi mok mwin yö. Mo'ng ka vüsek bwink. Vü oish nwantauj. Yatwant penk. Dü. Otikaunkwi eita yi va ot aivake'ng at yî. Yöü mev benyö giken mo dîvev o'n. U mîtî'n nakîvain'nos...

Kebap illunn yyen owein ngohhua unngiyen zhullaral iyyenillaral lluruyyena llurul kebapa oyyenu yenowein ngohhu shayyena kebab. Akebapa ollarallaralowein ngohhu wwozzh ish yyena ishakebab. Zhiyyena ishing uyen ishayyenowa iwwein ngohhu v’uwein ngohhi shiyyena hhough ikkebab. Kebap ikebab. Shillaral...

Nortaneous wrote:What's the best way to derive a set of affricates along the lines of /tsʰ ts tɬʰ tɬ tʂʰ tʂ tʃʰ tʃ/?

Palatalization.

Personally I consider /ɕ/ as a /ʃ/ but with a "lighter sound" (the frequency of the noise you hear is higher), where /ʂ/ has an even darker sound. I think this sums it up quite well. About [ʂ], isn't Mandarin [ʂ] laminal? Or is it not actually [ʂ]? Hmm, I have no idea actually... I use an apical ar...

ɕ sounds like a cross between ʃ and ç. or it does to me. that doesn't necessarily help in making it though. but kinda halfway between, sorta Yeah, that's about how I consider it. The difference between /ɕ/ and /ç/ is not completely clear to me, and UPSID has a different way to divide those sounds t...

I'd say the hardest aspect depends from person to person. That older vietnamese lady at work had pretty good pronunciation of French, but she couldn't link together a bunch of clitics to form syllables, and overall her grammar was terrible, sometimes applying asian grammar (like [number][counter wor...

In Mandarin, 1 morpheme = 1 syllable. Like some other languages, Mandarin has a tendency away from V and/or VC syllables, so it tends to fill in a consonant - /j/ before /i/ (yi, yin, ying) and /y/ (yu, yun), /w/ before /u/ (wu), sometimes glottal stops for other vowels (a, ai, an, e, er...) but I'm...