Phonology of Latropeth

[Melbcentrix]

Greetings Board from Melbourne Australia
To coincide with my first You tube conlang tutorial on the sounds of Latropeth I though it fitting to post my phonology on the board here.
It's naturalistic so nothing terribly exciting or alien; 17 consonant phonemes and 5 vowel phonemes.
I have just included a phonetic description of sounds and the orthographic symbols I use for a Latin alphabet transcription
which in most cases correspond to the IPA symbols. Feedback always welcomed.

You tube link (the video is designed for non conlangers/ linguists) but you may find it worth watching. Had fun with effects for intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VboCypX1Wog
Full technical Latropeth grammar can be found at
http://melbcentrix.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/78/

CONSONANTS

PLOSIVES
Voiceless
bilabial - p
dental - t
velar - k
retroflex - r
glottal - x

Voiced
bilabial - b
dental - d
retroflex - q

FRICATIVES (all voiceless)
labiodental - f
alveolar - s
glottal - h

NASALS and LIQUIDS (all voiced)
bilabial nasal - m
dental nasal - n
retroflex nasal - v
lateral approximant - l
palatal approximant - j
labiovelar approximant - w


VOWELS (pure - non diphthongized/centralised)

high front unrounded (ee in seed) - i
mid high front unrounded (close to cardinal 2) - e
low back vowel (a in father) - a
mid high back rounded - o
high back rounded - u

In cases where vowels are brought together at morpheme boundaries either a [j] or [w] is epenthesized between them and not explicitly shown in the orthography. There is no hard rule as to which one , [j] or [w], is used when.

ALLOPHONY
Restricted to one case;
dental stop consonants palatalize prior to high front and mid high front vowels; i and e respectively.

[mèþru]

Interesting...
Do you have any other features in your language yet?
I would use a very different romanisation. <r q> are not good choices for retroflex plosives. <x> is not good for a glottal.
I would use <ṭ ḍ ʔ> for /ʈ ɖ ʔ/ or <th dh '> if I wanted to stick to ASCII.

[Zaarin]

<x> is not good for a glottal.

Actually, there are a number of languages that use <x> for /ʔ/.

[mèþru]

I just checked and saw Pirahã uses <x> in that way, but it seems to be an uncommon feature and does not fit in relation to <h>. What other languages use <x> for /ʔ/?

[Zaarin]

I just checked and saw Pirahã uses <x> in that way, but it seems to be an uncommon feature and does not fit in relation to <h>. What other languages use <x> for /ʔ/?

There aren't many and it wouldn't be my first choice either; I was just pointing out that it's attested. Personally I've never used anything but <ʾ ' q> for glottal stops (except in one language where I used <7> because I was imitating the orthographies of Northwestern Native American languages).

[Travis B.]

There is also using just plain ⟨ʔ⟩ therefor, which I have done in some of my languages.

[Chengjiang]

It's naturalistic so nothing terribly exciting

You're either amazing jaded or you're unaware of some of the things natural languages can do.

So you've got some sounds. Mind telling us how they fit together? How do you form a syllable? Are there other sandhi processes besides glide insertion between vowels? Is there anything at all you want to say about prosody?

In cases where vowels are brought together at morpheme boundaries either a [j] or [w] is epenthesized between them and not explicitly shown in the orthography. There is no hard rule as to which one , [j] or [w], is used when.

This isn't how this sort of thing normally works. If there's more than one segment that breaks hiatus there's some sort of pattern to which one is used where. For example, perhaps [j] follows front vowels and [w] back vowels.

Restricted to one case; dental stop consonants palatalize prior to high front and mid high front vowels; i and e respectively.

This is unlikely to be the only significant allophonic process in your language even as you pronounce it right now.

[ivazaéun]

It's worth pointing out that this thread is nearly two years old, and there was nothing but the original post until mèþru necroed it yesterday.

[Chengjiang]

It's worth pointing out that this thread is nearly two years old, and there was nothing but the original post until mèþru necroed it yesterday.

Oh. So it is.

*sigh*