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Hi! I've been working on this conlang for a while now and though I still can't really say I'm all serious about it, it's the one I've payed attention the most. Even the name itself is provisory. I have a tiny list of random words and particles (I still need to work on grammar) and the phonology had been locked but I decided to change some stuff.
close > i y ɯ u <i> <oeu eu> <eo> <u>
mid > e ø (ə¹ ² ɵ²) ɤ o <e> <oe> <aeo aeu ao> <o>
open-mid > ɛ œ ɔ <ae> <ue oae> <oa>
open > a ɑ <a> <au>
/i y u e ø o ɛ a/ can be lengthened, being written <ii éu/oéu uu ee óe oo áe úe/oáe aa>.
- to distinguish vowel combinantions from a hiatus, a diaeresis is used on the second vowel.
• allophones
¹/ə/ replaces /e/ in unstressed positions. to force it not to take place, an inverted acute is used, ex.: deune /’dy.nə/ but deunè /’dy.ne/.
²/ə/ replaces /i/ in closed syllables, while /ɵ/ replaces /u/. to force it not to take place, <u> is written <ou> and <i> is written <ie>.
• /g/ followed by certain vowels turns into the second element of a diphtong.
ai < ai
au < ag
ɔu < og
ei < ei
/b p pʰ m t tʰ d n ɾ s sʰ z l ɕ ɕʰ tɕ tɕʰ ʑ dʑ ʎ j ɲ k x g ŋ w h ʔ/
<b p p’ m t t’ d n r s s’ z l sj sj’ tj tj’ sg jj ll j nn k kk g ng v h ’>
• allophones
- [ɽ] is in free variation with /ɾ/, specially intervocalically.
- /ɾ/ tends to become with /l/ at the end of a syllable
- aspirated consonants become plain ones at the end of a syllable
A B D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V Z
C, Q, W, X and Y are only used in borrowings.
• the sentence’s order generally appears as SOV. Postpositions are added to the respective nouns using a hyphen. They’re often elided if the noun’s function is deductible.
- on / ne: used to mark a subject. “on” is used after a consonant, while “ne” is used after a vowel.
- go / o: used to mark an direct object. “ga” is used after a vowel, while “o” is used after a consonant.
- aesji / vosji: used to mark an indirect. “aesji” is used after a consonant, while “vosji” is used after a vowel.
- mo / am: used to mark the owner of something.
- song: used to mark the instrument used by something.
- songe: used to mark the instrument that affects something.
- par: used to mark what causes the movement of something.
- hug: used to mark inside what something is.
- huloas: used to mark outside what something is.
- henjjo: used to mark above what something is.
- krèjjo: used to mark below what something is.
- dij: used to mark in front of what something is.
- tarè: used to mark behind what something is.
- voukk: used to mark beside what something is.
- nori: used to mark the location out of which something is moving.
- bori: used to mark the location to which something is moving.
- al: used to mark the origin of something.
If you've read this stuff, I'm really thankful. Also, any kind of comment would be immensely appreciated!
Last edited by uriell on Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:34 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Hi uriell. You're not sure how to represent the aspirated consonants. I'd use digraphs with h: ph, th and so on. It's an approach I take in one of my conlangs. You're not using it for anything else and it is kind of intuitive.
Hi, Ketumak. Thanks for the suggestion!
Actually, using those digraphs (ph, th, etc) was my first thought. But <tjh sjh> look a bit of unpleasant to me, and <sh> is sort of strange when not used for /ʃ/ (yeah, I know, those are dumb reasons).
Chinese romanizations will sometimes use <p b bb> for /pʰ p b/, but if /b/ is much more common than /pʰ/ that doesn't really solve anything for you. You could potentially use the Wade-Giles solution of <p'>, or Armenian's <pʿ>, but I dislike those (identical to what's more commonly glottalization for the first, and both easily confused for glottalization and difficult to type for the second). If aspirated stops have a clear diachronic origin, you could potentially mark them elsewhere: tones in Punjabi are still (natively) written just as breathy consonants, English final schwa <-e> being maintained to mark a long vowel, voiced stops written with as nasal-unaspirated clusters <μπ ντ γκ> in modern Greek. Of course this leaves the orthography a bit less shallow than is generally preferred.
I would suggest using an apostrophe for aspiration - while often used for ejectives, apostrophes also have a long history of use in transcribing aspirated consonants, most notably in the Latin transliteration of Armnenian. Thus you'd have p’, t’, k’, s’, sj’, tj’.
This wouldn't interfere with your current use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop, as it only appears intervocalically, and so can't be confused with the apostrophes for aspiration.
I really liked the apostrophe idea! Along with it, I incorporated some new ways to represent a few vowels. Also, at last, I've started to work on grammar.
