Eti, a "birdlang"

[James0289]

Hi all,

I'm currently splitting my conlanging efforts between two projects, one being another Celtic conlang, and one being this.
At the moment, it is not a lot more than a phonology, though a broad, basic idea about the grammar is forming in my head....

Eti is a language spoken by a species of sentient bird-like animals that live on a planet orbiting a star in a co-orbital "horseshoe" cycle (like Saturn's moons, Epimetheus and Janus) with another, smaller planetoid.

The vowel letters are used to write vocal tones of different frequencies -- these being nothing like human vowels, which are shaped using the tongue, cheeks and lips. I have set <a> as being the lowest Eti tone (at about 100 Hz) and <i> being the highest (at about 800 Hz).
The consonants are equally varied, involving the animal's beak, two parts of its tongue, its nostrils and its syrinx ("voicebox"). With these it can produce beak snaps (sharp closures of the mouth so that the beak snaps shut), and numerous clicks, plosives, fricatives, "explosives" (i.e. forceful plosives that sound more like coughs or barks) and a shriek (a semi-vowel).

Essentially, Eti is the product of some research into bird vocalisation and acoustics.
I am rather shaky on the planetary physics at the beginning of the document, this being completely new to me, so if someone could fine-toothed-comb it and make it more plausible, that would be appreciated!

Click below to view the document:

sa pe͠ıx#acs
sa pe͠ı–x–#ac–s
FOC it.ANIM–NEG–be.wug–PRES
'This is not a wug.'

NEW! Now with labelled diagrams of the vocal tract! *jazz hands*

[Znex]

Oh wow, that's all pretty awesome! I'm making a sort of dinobird-lang, although it's rather more based on human physiology than dinobird physiology, because I don't really understand it.

[James0289]

Glad that you like it.
Yeah, I can imagine that learning about dinosaur physiology can be pretty difficult, especially when you are relying on the fossil record to inform your knowledge about how their vocal tracks worked. I suppose by studying bird vocal tract physiology, you're sort of already working with dinosaur physiology, except it's just evolved by a few tens of millions of years.

[Imralu]

This is amazing! So this is why you were reading up about bird vocalisations then.

[Ketumak]

Certainly is amazing! An original idea and well worked out.

[James0289]

Then I shall have to keep working on it since it's proving popular.
I'll try not to get into to much of an Earth-language-ish pattern with the grammar, but being from Earth myself that's going to be tricky to do...

[2+3 clusivity]

I know you have different user accounts, but are you the guy who did Shit Demon Speech? Your names have a similar structure and you both have a predilection for interesting non-human languages.

[James0289]

Nope, that's not me! I've heard of that language before but never seen it.

I'm the guy that does primarily Celtic conlangs but occasionally dabble in a priori stuff as well. Like this.

[jal]

An original idea and well worked out.

I'm pretty sure it's not "original" in the sense that they were the first to think of such a thing. I've myself come up with the likes of this a few times, but it never made it past some vague ideas.


JAL

[James0289]

I got what was meant and appreciated it just the same.