YHXKK VŘḴHẔY (Yaxkik Vřḵaẕī) scratchpad

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Not sure what a scratchpad is, but I assume it where you post idea on your language like a sort of "note to self" thing...


This is sort-of like the Proto-Indo-European of my conworld 3 main languages.
for now will I list the names and order of the letters, and get working on the language's script, and phonetics...

Phonology:

Vowels:

Orthographically they are represented by (phoneme on the left, romanization on the right):

/ɒ/or /a/ - A a
/ɛ/ - E e
/e/ - Ē ē
/ɨ/ - I i
/i/ - Ī ī
/ɔ/ - O o
/o/ - Ō ō
/ə/ - U u
/u/ - Ū ū

In Vřḵaẕī the phonemes /a e i o u/ are considered long vowels, while /ɒ ɛ ɨ ɔ ə/ are considered short vowels.
Also worth mentioning is that <A a> named Al is kept for historical purposes and only occurs word initially.

Consonants:

Orthographically they are represented by (phoneme on the right, romanization on the left):

Ḵḵ - Ḵa - /x/
Vv - Va - /β/
Hh - Hīt - /h/
Dd - Det - /d/
Ḏḏ - Ḏīm - /t͡s~d͡z/
Bb - Bāl - /b/
Ss - Sūm - /s/
Ẕẕ - Ẕat - /ʒ/
Yy - Yav - /j/
Kk - Ka - /k/
Gg - Gē - /g/
Ll - Lam - /l/
Mm - Am - /m/
Nn - Na - /n/
Pp - Pak - /p/
Jj - Jīm - /d͡ʒ/
Rr - Rū - /r/
Ff - Fa - /ɸ/
Xx - Xīm - /ʃ/
Řř - Ř - /r̩/
Ww - Waj - /w/
Tt - Tal - /t/
Ṯṯ or Cc - Ṯī - /t͡ʃ/
Zz - Za - /z/
Ŀŀ - Ŀam - /ɬ/~/ɮ/
Ḻḻ - Ḻom - /ɺ͡r/
Ḫḫ - Ḫak - /χ/

Ṇṇ - SYKRHBH NM Sīkrabo Nam (Syllabic N) - /n̩/
Ṃṃ - SYKRHBH AM Sīkrabo Am (Syllabic M) - /m̩/

unlike Arkhean, Vřḵaẕī does not have palatalized forms of consonants, this is because Arkhean developed palatalized consonants from loanwords of surrounding neighbor nations, as well as it being a now areal feature.

Sound changes that occured from Verkhazhii to Arkhean:
Ḏḏ - /t͡s/~/d͡z/ → splits into separate phonemes /t͡s/ and /d͡z/.
Rr - /r/~ɹ/~/ɾ/ → trilled /r/ is dropped, but [ɹ~ɾ] is kept.
Řř - /r̩/~/ɹ̩/ → trilled /r̩/ is dropped, but [ɹ̩] is kept.
Ḻḻ - /ɺ͡r/ → stays the same.
Ḫḫ - /χ/ → stays the same.
Ŀŀ - /ɬ/~/ɮ/ → debuccalized to /h/~/ɦ/
' - /ʔ/ → dropped

the rest of the consonants have stayed the same, but with the addition that some have gained palatalized forms. they are also orthographically represented differently.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

working on script; 24/27 glyphs
reserved for future posts

[Jess]

Regarding the content:

• -Your consonant inventory is pretty English-reminiscent, exotic (and honestly, very random-seeming) additions notwithstanding
  -Your Romanization uses diacritics rather haphazardly, for instance <č> without <c>
  -It seems you are aiming for an abjad, but why did you use <H> in the thread title when <A> is listed in your "standard alphabet"? Not to mention that it is pretty questionable to reflect the native abjad in your Romanization anyway...
  -Most importantly, do you have any background info on this language? Is there a particular reason the consonant inventory is so Euro-ish? Maybe a broad-strokes description of what the grammar is like?

Regarding the presentation:
It is easier to evaluate these things when they are presented in an IPA-like order:

m n
p b t d k g
t͡s~d͡z tʃ d͡ʒ
..etc

Making letter names and an in-world alphabetical order is all well and good but it doesn't really work as a jumping off point to acquaint others with a conlang. For instance, even if the Verkhazhii (where did that Romanization come from, anyway?) don't write out vowels, you should describe what vowel sounds the language has. Same goes for the conscript really; they're fun to make and can be cool but not a fundamental part of the actual language.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

This is a rough-draft, I have not gotten that far yet, this is only the begginning, as I say up top, I thought a scratchpad was a like a "note-to-self" to post ones progress.

As far as background Info goes this is the ancestor language of Arkéan, it was spoken in my conworld about 10,000 years ago, and the Arkéan language developed 7,000. There is a reason why so long ago; the people there on average live 160 years, due to advanced healthcare, and because of agressive political language preservation groups, so language evolution is fairly slow, but not by much in our standards. Verkhazhii is how a real life person might spell it if they do not know the romanization, and because I cannot type the diacritics so easily.

Yes it is an Abjad, and I think it would do best to show my languages vowels, but I have been working on my Conscript first.
I have not yet organized my languages romanization, so yes the diacritcs are rather haphazard...
The current capitals are not my languages script, and I was looking into having <Aa> representing a glottal stop, like arabic, or it being a preserved letter that only appears word initially...

I might add, the English phoneme inventory does not have an uvular fricative, glottal stop phoneme, lateral trill (or any natlang for that matter), or lateral fricatives, or bilabial fricatives...
Everything else is just average european, it is european-ish because it's descendant language is european-ish, particularly slavic-ish.
This may not be permanent.

[Jess]

This is a rough-draft, I have not gotten that far yet, this is only the begginning, as I say up top, I thought a scratchpad was a like a "note-to-self" to post ones progress.

Well sure, but what I mean is, rough-draft or not, conscript and in-world alphabet just aren't really a good place to start, especially if you want feedback from others, but also as general advice.

I might add, the English phoneme inventory does not have an uvular fricative, glottal stop phoneme, lateral trill (or any natlang for that matter), or lateral fricatives, or bilabial fricatives...

Your consonant inventory is pretty English-reminiscent, exotic (and honestly, very random-seeming) additions notwithstanding

Or in other words, tacking on a few unusual sounds is not enough to keep the overall phonology from seeming English-esque. Also I don't see any bilabial fricatives in your original post anyway.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

the phonology chart didn't look particularly english to me...

but I couldn't change much, as I do not know plausible sound changes that could descend into this:

note that palatalization of the consonants occured from excessive loanword borrowings.
Also The descendant languages chart do not show free variation, but they do exist as is listed by the sound changes above.

so if you could politely recommend what should be removed or add that still corresponds to the descendant languages phonology.

[Jess]

Well, diachronics isn't my own strong suit but you've defnitely got room for a lot more difference between Verkhazhii and Arkhean's unpalatalized consonants.

• -You could say that Arkhean's voiceless fricatives stem from earlier aspirated stops, and the voiced fricatives used to be intervocal allophones of the voiced stops but got phonemicized when following or preceeding vowels were elided.
  -Post-alveolars often stem from combinations of alveolars or velars + j, or alveolars/velars altered by nearby front vowels, or consonant clusters like ks/gz.
  -You could take the lateral trill out of Verkhazhii and say that Arkhean developed it from /lr/ and/or /rl/ consonant clusters.
  -You could fill in a few of the "holes" in Arkhean and then describe phoneme mergers that led to those holes... you could even add a whole 'nother POA and come up with a way for it to merge into one of your current ones, thus disappearing by the time the language becomes Arkhean (a retroflex series would also be a fine source for your postalveolars).

Taking all this together, it wouldn't be implausible at all for Arkhean to stem from a proto-language with a consonant inventory something like this:

m n ɳ ŋ
pʰ p b tʰ t d ʈʰ ʈ ɖ kʰ k g qʰ q
t͡sʰ t͡s
s h
w j r l

But this is definitely not the only option—in fact, I suspect most of my suggested sound changes are a bit on the unadventurous side. For more ideas you should do some research on sound changes that have taken place in natlangs. An easy place to start would be The Correspondence Library.



Re: Englishiness, maybe I should be saying "European" instead, but honestly that is probably splitting hairs. Imo, if your language has all four of the following:

• -voicing contrast
  -voicing contrast as the ONLY phonemic phonation
  -voicing contrast on both stops and fricatives (see http://wals.info/feature/4A)
  -a preponderance of fricatives compared to other MOAs

...then you are already most of the way to a very Euro/English phonology. Of course there is room for a conlang to have these four things without being Euro-ish (depending on phonotactics, POAs, secondary articulation, tonality, vowel harmony, etc) but that is the exception, not the rule. And then there are some more specific things that can increase the European flavor:

• -"The voiced alveolar sibilant is common across European languages but is relatively uncommon cross-linguistically compared to the voiceless variant. Only about 28% of the world's languages contain a voiced dental or alveolar sibilant. Moreover, 85% of the languages with some form of [z] are languages of Europe, Africa or Western Asia." (from Wikipedia)
  -χ without q is pretty unusual (see http://wals.info/feature/6A), but occurs as an areal feature in western Europe.

This doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, sometimes people want their phonology to be very European, but it is often unclear whether someone's conlang is European/Englishy intentionally or because they don't know any other way (hence why some background info is useful for giving feedback). You can learn some more about what makes a phonology seem European over at this thread.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

I don't know how to pronounce many of these sounds, and If I can't pronounce them, then why would I add them?

Also I don't how to unaspirate my plosives, being English, one aspirates their plosives at the begginning of syllables, and they are unaspirated when they aren't.
I do like the idea of retroflex plosives, though not favourable of a velar nasal.

Indeed, they intend to be both Euro-Langs, but I wanted Verkhazhii to be less Slavic than Arkhean, and take some Semitic inspirations...
but no-way can I pronounce pharyngeals, I've tried...
and I don't how to make /q/ either, I've tried doing it, but it still sounds very much like /k/

but all in all, it's not just the phonology that makes a language sound like something, it's also the phonotactics and arrangement (words for example), and maybe grammar too.

Verkhazhii permits any kind of stop + alveolar fricative, though they have to follow voicing patterns of voiceless + voiceless, voiced + voiced.


I was also thinking of adding palatal fricatives, what do you think?

[Jess]

I don't know how to pronounce many of these sounds, and If I can't pronounce them, then why would I add them?

I think the opposite way: why would I ever handicap my conlanging by only using sounds I can personally pronounce?

Learning to produce foreign sounds just takes practice... lots of practice. I used to have a hard time with most of what you mentioned but if you stick with it, it will get easier. And having those sounds in your conlang is a pretty good incentive to practice!

I mean, I can understand taking it slowly; there's a difference between challenging yourself to use sounds you can't say yet and making every word a tongue-twister. Like I said, my suggestion is really just one way to revise your consonant inventory; you don't have to include every difficult sound I suggested but avoiding them entirely is probably not a good idea in the long run (if your eventual goal is to be able to make a wider variety of languages).

For unaspirated initial plosives, I started by saying words like stop, school, spoon etc but dropping the s. At first I would silently articulate the s right before I started speaking, but eventually I was able to do it without that crutch. Conversely, mid-word aspirated plosives are relatively easy if you start out with clusters of plosive+h.

and I don't how to make /q/ either, I've tried doing it, but it still sounds very much like /k/

Sometimes the problem isn't that you are saying it wrong; it is that even if a native Arabic speaker demonstrated a q/k minimal pair, you wouldn't be able to hear the difference. This also just takes practice.

but all in all, it's not just the phonology that makes a language sound like something, it's also the phonotactics and arrangement (words for example), and maybe grammar too.

Phonotactics is part of phonology. What I've been discussing so far is just a phoneme inventory (more specifically, a consonant inventory) because up until now it's been the only thing I have to go off of. In general you probably should not refer to a language's phoneme inventory as its phonology. I don't know what you mean by "arrangement" though, and grammar has no direct impact on how a language sounds.

I was also thinking of adding palatal fricatives, what do you think?

I am more in favor of reducing the number of fricatives.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

about the difficult of hard sound, aye, even I was skeptical of adding /x/ or /r/ for that matter, till I learned how to use them, but pharyngeals I absolutely cannot do them, I feel no distinction of sound in any region between glottis and uvula.

I think my phonology is European Enough, I just don't want people claiming my language is a relex of English or something just by looking at the consonant inventory, but i'm sure I'd make by with it, I might even consider making distinctions between normal and retroflex plosives, but not aspiration.

by arrange I mean words, take for example the difference between YAzyk, J(en)zyk, this languages Yaxkik, and even Arkhean's Jazhyk and langue, lingua, language.
They mean the same thing, but are different, this is what I mean in arrangement of phonemes, for lack of a better word.

[Hallow XIII]

Dear Jess, relax. It's a phonology. It's not actually important (nor all too criticable unless there is no way in hell a natlang would work like that and that applies maybe to 0.5% of nooblangs at most). The only weird thing is maybe: why is there not a voicing contrast in the alveolar affricate?

But anyway I greenlight this phonology, now to more important questions: if this language was spoken so early, how come it has a script? Is your conworld simply more advanced that ours is (I do not think longevity does much to slow technological progress)? Also, grammar. Phonologies and scripts before the grammar is backwards.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

The only weird thing is maybe: why is there not a voicing contrast in the alveolar affricate?

But anyway I greenlight this phonology, now to more important questions: if this language was spoken so early, how come it has a script? Is your conworld simply more advanced that ours is (I do not think longevity does much to slow technological progress)? Also, grammar. Phonologies and scripts before the grammar is backwards.

1) I had a reason, but I forgot why, but most of the time I do not feel a difference between the two (and I think it is rather bad to have phonemes reflect you) Perhaps it might be due to constant unvoicing in fast speech?

Yes, they are more advanced, but they are also equipped with "magic" - a form of reality warping technologies which comes from really dense metals called Augmentium (for lack of better name) which in turn are the corpses of Extra-Dimensional God-Like aliens/dead gods. I know it might sound stupid, but it's really long to tell the whole story, but rest assured, it makes sense in context. This "magic" has helped them do a lot in terms of intellectual and societal advancement, but in the past also some serious damage to the environment, that may or may not have brought them back down a few technological levels.
Overall, technologically speaking, they aren't space-faring, they're interdimensional travellers...


Oh yes, I don't remember seeing anywhere that it was a rule to work on grammar first, maybe a guideline, but not a rule.




also, my Uvular Fricative, might actually be a Pharyngeal Fricative

[Aili Meilani]

This doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, sometimes people want their phonology to be very European, but it is often unclear whether someone's conlang is European/Englishy intentionally or because they don't know any other way (hence why some background info is useful for giving feedback).

Stop presuming guilty.

[Hallow XIII]

There is a difference between presuming guilty and presuming incompetent. Guess what it is!

Perhaps a much better piece of advice would be "hold your horsefeathers". There is no need to latch on to every phonology posted on the board and run off the essay on Europeanness. At worst it'll make you seem like a git, and we don't want that. You can link the europhon thread if you feel like it's necessary, but I am campaigning against bogging people down in phonology even more. It is a curse on conlangers, and it is about time it be lifted.

[Aili Meilani]

There is a difference between presuming guilty and presuming incompetent. Guess what it is!

"Guilty of incompetence" can be a thing, so that's apples and Macouns.
As for the rest of your post, +1.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

It is not to say I'm incompetant, inexperienced yes, but not incompetant...

I could make a non-euro language if I wanted to. Even non european grammar, but that would require some more reading.

I did say in my OP that this language would be like the Proto-Indo-European of my conworlds three languages.

[Herr Dunkel]

This is nowhere near Proto-Indo-European except with some of the barest basics, sorry to burst your bubble.
And what is usually meant with "like the Proto-Indo-European of my conworld" is that it is the motherlanguage of a gigantic phylum, little else.

[Hallow XIII]

Ignore darkgamma, he hates people.

Also we have no idea whether your language is European, we only have an idea of what phonemes you analyze it as having. So before this turns into another clusterfuck where everybody bashes the newbie and the same becomes indignantly defensive, avert your gaze from the evils of this thread and make some grammar.

And also: at the end of the day, it is your conlang. Simple as that.

[Herr Dunkel]

Ignore darkgamma, he hates people.

I do not >_>
I just like the proper usage of terms. But yeah, listen to Hallow; sketch out some grammar

[Jess]

buh? I can understand annoyance at my verbosity/getting bogged down in phonology I guess, but if you see "bashing" in my posts then you're just reading into them something that isn't there. If it were Ahzoh complaining I'd take it more seriously but given that he followed some of my suggestions re: presentation and asked questions in return I have a hard time believing that he found my feedback all that unwelcome.

listen to Hallow; sketch out some grammar

^Yes.

[Hallow XIII]

I do not see bashing in your posts, at all. But it happens here, and there were warning signs present already.

See the ZBB is best treated as a sort of horribly dangerous chemical that is not only incredibly poisonous and corrosive but also explodes when agitated. The seasoned chemist learns to work his way around it but the layman all too easily causes accidents -- which incidentally is a reason why I support the establishment of an amateur pond that would hopefully keep the less mild-mannered people from eating all the new people BUT ANYWAY LET US NOT THREADJACK.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

The true Proto-Indo-European of my conworld is Proto-Se'Ashiran, which is also the name of the continent. It has a rather large tree, not sure how large, but it has 3 daughter languages already.

Anyhow,
I have a rather rough sketch of some grammatical features:

• Morphosyntactic Alignment: Nominative-Accusative.
• Word Order is strict SVO, but may change to SOV for certain semantic reasons.
• Gendered Pronouns, including first person (not sure this one).
• Two degrees of Animacy; Animate, Inanimate, these will also affect pronouns.
• Diminutives and Augmentatives
• Nouns may be categorized by association to Alive or Dead (because my conpeople are so delightfully obsessed with death).
• Three grammatical cases:
  • Nominative
  • Accusative
  • Dative
• Four Tenses with Imperfective and Perfective:
  • Habitual Past
  • Past
  • Present
  • Future
• Tri-Consonental Root System (not really a grammatical feature)
• maybe an ablaut-system

as compared to Arkhean's features:

• Morphosyntactic Alignment: Nominative-Accusative
• Free Word Order, SVO preferred
• Nouns may be categorized by association to Alive or Dead.
• Diminutives and Augmentatives
• Seven or more grammatical cases:
  • Accusative
  • Nominative
  • Dative
  • Instrumental
  • Ablative
  • Genitive
  • Locative
• Four Tenses with Imperfective and Perfective:
  • Habitual Past
  • Past
  • Present
  • Future

Arkhean does not have gendered pronouns, tri-consonental root systems, or Animacy, or an ablaut system.

what's the plausability of this?

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

In regards to Triconsonantal root system, I so far have created grammatical affixes for all persons in present tense, but it looks rather unsatifying...

Tri-consonantal root:
Ḵ-R-V - kill

1st person singular:
Ḵ-R-V-Y
Ūḵarvoye

2nd person singular:
Ḵ-R-V-N
Ḵorvīna

3rd person singular:
Ḵ-R-V-J
Ōḵīrvōja

1st person plural:
Ḵ-R-V-G
Ūḵarvīga

2nd person plural:
Ḵ-R-V-T
Ḵarvīta

3rd person plural:
Ḵ-R-V-K
Ōḵīrvīka

[KathTheDragon]

In my experience, that's not how such systems work. Have a read through this thread. At some point (can't remember where, but I'm pretty sure it's that thread) a near-full list of forms is given for a single Hebrew root (K-T-V).

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

After reading that thread now I've a better idea of what I'm working with;
I tried to make it slavic like, but it's very hard:

Ḵ-V-N - kill
1Sg pres:
CīCCab
Ḵīvnab
2Sg pres:
CēCoC
Ḵēvon
3Sg pres:
CCaCīm
Ḵvanīm
1Pl pres
LūCoCiC
Lůḵovin
2Pl pres:
CīCCafah
Ḵīvnafah
3Pl pres:
YaCCīCōh
Yaḵvīnōh