Conlangs With Non Human Phonology

[DJAlexKidd]

I've tried this a couple times, but they were a mess like a majority of the languages I wrote. The first was that Girataans language I kept redoing before completely abandoning it (had clicking consonants but I dumped them out). The second was a really messy set of clicks and vowels, the third didn't have anything super special other than rising and falling tones for both consonants and vowels. My fourth (and maybe last) has a few clicks and that's it. I've not abandoned that like all the others, but I have only developed an alphabet and forgotten about it.

Nonetheless, I really like the idea of constructed languages with often (or completely) unnatural phonology.

[WurdBendur]

There was someone who was constructing a language where the specie has a hole between the oral and nasal cavity, which made new speech sounds possible. And some have been working on species with several sets of vocal cords.

That was possibly me. The language was called Thént. Unfortunately it's been dead for a long time, but here's an old and inaccurate diagram of the mechanism.



A channel can open in the front of the palate, connecting the oral cavity to a small chamber inside the sinus. The air escaping from it creates a sort of nasal whistle, which can coarticulate with some phonemes, primarily fricatives. Also note that the back of the tongue is very low and unable to reach the velum. I'm not sure how this would impact their ability to swallow.

I also had an experimental language that I didn't develop very far (but I probably will one day because I've reused the race in new stories), spoken by mute aliens who transmit and receive radio signals in the FM range. This creates obvious communication barriers. Radio noise is also very annoying for them, making travel problematic.

[Foolster41]

My conlang, Karathe is spoken by lizardfolk, and since they lack fluid lips they have trouble pronouncing labial sounds, thus no bs,ds and ts. otherwise, nothing very fantastic.

in fact, I think the vowel choices I made kind of sound "plain", and I kind of regret them them and I've been considering changing them. It also has clicks, but since they ended up only being intensifyers, it's kind of meh.

[Pabappa]

A language I worked on in 1999 upbuntil 2002, called Tarise , had 3 positions of velars. It was descended from a much wider phonology that had poa's for 2 bilabials )round vs spread) , 3 velars, a TL ,and only one true coronal. Also all consos, including stops, had 3 tones, and vowels haad 5 tones. It was for humans because I didn't know any better. I want to revive it as a language for snow monkeys.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

As part of a project of mine, I wanted to create an insane written language. In terms of style, it isn't that much different from Chinese Characters. However, the amount of details into one single character would be inflated, as would be the number of insane combinations and relations. Take Japanese-as-she-is-written, turn all the insane characteristic to 11, and take that and do it again. Their spoken language wouldn't be that insane, but would hardly be mastered by any human.

[Anguipes]

I had two vaguely planned for Menducia, Ceteri language(s) along the modified-humanlike-vocal-tract line, and a language for intelligent snakes that was communicated by head motions.

For Vana Gloria I will potentially have to produce a version of a 14 "phoneme" universal language for (at least) each of the sixteen Kinds, so kinesthetic snake languages may be back, along with versions for birds, bats, bears, barnacles...

[clawgrip]

I made one for an insectoid race that had no vocal chords. I even made a greeting for one of the Conlangery podcasts. I was not entirely happy with the sounds I used though, nor some aspects of the grammar, for that matter. It also took quite a lot of time to make the sound files. Various sounds could overlap since they had multiple independent points of articulation.

To quote myself:

Mandibular
single click: k
multiple clicks: q

Maxillar
single click: t
multiple clicks: ŧ
scrape: x
lax fricative: s
hypopharyngealized fricative: ş

Maxillo-mandibular
scrape: y

Labial (Palpic)
single click: c
multiple clicks: r
lax fricative: l
hypopharyngealized fricative: ļ

Labio-labral
plosive: p
lax fricative: f
hypopharyngeal fricative: v

Labio-labro-hypopharyngeal
high-frequency approximant: w

Hypopharyngeal
fricative: ħ

Tracheal
fricative: h

Not quite decided
low-frequency fricative: z
high-frequency fricative: ź

Naturally the fricatives presuppose some sort of circulatory system connected to the mouth, which one wouldn't expect in an insectoid species. I guess it was an adaptation of some sort that I will have to consider as I expand the details of this species. Whatever articulation point I make for the final two fricatives will also require a physiological explanation I have yet to come up with.

Edit: Perhaps some sort of pulmonic system developed as an aid for projectile spraying of a liquid substance out of their mouths.

[Vuvuzela]

I think I might also be the only conlanger on the ZBB with an active clicklang, unless Terpish still has them and Eddy's still working on it.

Recently reworked the phonology of Ludlami, though it's on hold for a while while I work on Ghost Speech and PMvGb

[ekobor]

My old 'lang was based on bird sounds. Different pitches, lengths and quality.
However it was human-ized for sake of building and read/writing. -shrug-

[Cael]

I currently have a rough draft of a conlang for insectoids that distinguishes between phonetic sounds, the sounds their wings make, and the taps that their eight legs make.

[Hallow XIII]

All my non-human intelligent species are an unfortunate product of overactive human imagination and life having evolved to make use of the immense powers of mana to make the world better for itself. Ergo, regardless how non-human they are, and regardless what the underlying mechanism is, they ALL speak, and they all do in the same way humans do (have I already told you that dragons have lips? They have lips.)

Yay for magic.

[Radius Solis]

Here's a question, then, since the phonology side's been answered. Have any of us tried to create a non-human syntax?

[Matrix]

I think that might rely on how you might define a 'human syntax' as opposed to a 'non-human syntax'.

[Hallow XIII]

Wouldn't that by definition be incomprehensible to us?

[clawgrip]

I suppose you could try specifically violating a bunch of universals.

[Radius Solis]

Definition issues? Let's go with: syntax that is clearly alien to anything you find in human language. It may or may not be speakable by humans, but - as with nonhuman phonology - it does not follow that we cannot comprehend or describe such a system.

I ask in part because I'm hoping I'm not the only one ever to try.

[Cael]

Definition issues? Let's go with: syntax that is clearly alien to anything you find in human language. It may or may not be speakable by humans, but - as with nonhuman phonology - it does not follow that we cannot comprehend or describe such a system.

I ask in part because I'm hoping I'm not the only one ever to try.

"Clearly alien" is pretty broad though. Do you mean something that is just a mish-mash of things that you just don't see very often in human syntax or a completely unheard of syntax that isn't present in any human language? The second definition would be hard to describe because humans only know human syntax.

[Ars Lande]

Here's a question, then, since the phonology side's been answered. Have any of us tried to create a non-human syntax?

I've come across two pretty good examples. The first one is Elkarîl, the other is Fith.
I've got a side project myself, where syntax would rely on descriptive phrases ordered according to causation, though I'm still unconvinced by the results.

[Qwynegold]

I also had an experimental language that I didn't develop very far (but I probably will one day because I've reused the race in new stories), spoken by mute aliens who transmit and receive radio signals in the FM range. This creates obvious communication barriers. Radio noise is also very annoying for them, making travel problematic.

Ah, like the aliens in Skyfall.

[Radius Solis]

I've come across two pretty good examples. The first one is Elkarîl, the other is Fith.
I've got a side project myself, where syntax would rely on descriptive phrases ordered according to causation, though I'm still unconvinced by the results.

Ah, Fith is cool. Thanks! And I'd forgotten about Elkaril, though that's a little less adventurous (which is appropriate for the setting, though). On the other hand neither escape our division of information into sentences. It sounds like yours might. I would be interested to see the results, even if you find them unconvincing yourself.


For myself, the alien conlang I've got in mind would organize the information flow of speech in very different ways. Instead of prototypically trying to answer "who did what to who?", it prototypically tries to answer "what changes occurred to the previous/initial state of affairs?". And instead of having discrete packets of speech (sentences) that each answer one instance of the question, it joins all the parts of a communicative event into a single syntactic tree that's potentially of enormous size; while in English we can produce infinitely long sentences in principle, you never find e.g. whole books that are a single sentence - but in the alien language, there would be no other way to write one. Structurally, this looks like massively nested and branched subordination, with more built-in mechanisms for moving around easily within the tree as you speak.

Obviously, people do not have the cognitive equipment to deal with that. But that's not to say some other species might not.

[Ars Lande]

I've come across two pretty good examples. The first one is Elkarîl, the other is Fith.
I've got a side project myself, where syntax would rely on descriptive phrases ordered according to causation, though I'm still unconvinced by the results.

Ah, Fith is cool. Thanks! And I'd forgotten about Elkaril, though that's a little less adventurous (which is appropriate for the setting, though). On the other hand neither escape our division of information into sentences. It sounds like yours might. I would be interested to see the results, even if you find them unconvincing yourself.


For myself, the alien conlang I've got in mind would organize the information flow of speech in very different ways. Instead of prototypically trying to answer "who did what to who?", it prototypically tries to answer "what changes occurred to the previous/initial state of affairs?". And instead of having discrete packets of speech (sentences) that each answer one instance of the question, it joins all the parts of a communicative event into a single syntactic tree that's potentially of enormous size; while in English we can produce infinitely long sentences in principle, you never find e.g. whole books that are a single sentence - but in the alien language, there would be no other way to write one. Structurally, this looks like massively nested and branched subordination, with more built-in mechanisms for moving around easily within the tree as you speak.

Obviously, people do not have the cognitive equipment to deal with that. But that's not to say some other species might not.

There are a few similarities between your ideas and mine.

For instance, your question would be translated as something like this:

1)
Have any of us tried to create a non-human syntax?
someone create / they speak alien / I among-us see Q

other examples:
2)
the cat eats the mouse
cat hunts / mouse dies / it eats

3)
'this is the house that X built'
X builds / house stands here

Each utterance is built of short descriptive phrases. Each phrase could be assigned any of a dozen grammatical persons; to take the second example, that would mean that the hunt could be described in a very detailed way, and additional consequences could be explored (like the cat's owner reaction, or that the cat initially tried to catch a bird, but failed) before the final phrase 'it eats', with the equivalent of 'it' referring unambiguously to the cat.
My hypothetical aliens would not hold conversations; rather each would hold a monologue, referring to elements from the other's speech as necessary.

[DePaw]

Last night I started on a phonology for a reptilian race, and decided to use just the furthest back sounds, that is they speak mostly in the throat.

Here's what I got so far:
<t d k g k' g' q> /ʈ ɖ k ɡ q ɢ ʔ /
<s z> /ʂ ʐ/
<kh gh x h> /x ɣ ʁ h/
<m n ng> /ɳ ŋ ɴ/
<r j rr> /ɻ ɰ ʀ/
<l ll> /ɭ ʟ/
<u a e i o> /ɯ ɑ ə ɨ ʌ/

I may change the transliteration though to allow for more consonant clusters...

[Click]

Here's a question, then, since the phonology side's been answered. Have any of us tried to create a non-human syntax?

Yes, I probably have, except that morphology and syntax are so close-knit that it's useless to speak of them as distinct units.

(yay 500ᵗʰ post!)

[Zaarin]

In terms of phonology, I was once working on a language for humanoid felines that included purrs, hisses, and various meows--but this was also before I had any clear understanding of linguistics. More recently, I'm working on a language that incorporates sign language into regular speech--anyone who can't understand the sign language is only getting half the conversation. Since they teach their oral language but not their sign language, this becomes a sort of shibboleth. Not exactly non-human, but I have another language that is consonant heavy and lacks clear syllable structure much like Nuxálk--and also lacks any nasal consonants.

In terms of syntax, I have a language with a complex system of grammatical metaphors and kennings that make direct speech almost impossible. It was to some degree inspired by the TNG episode "Darmok," though I had already had the idea before watching said episode.

[Cael]

Now that I think about it are there any conlangs that use Stridulation?