Post your conlang's phonology

[Tropylium]

2. The distribution of dentals is surprising and one would wonder how it got that way. /tθ'/ might have come from *θ' or something.
3. The absence of /tsʼ/ is remarkable in a Salish-style language, especially considering (2) and the presence of other affricates.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I'd assume something like *tsʼ → tθʼ, probably in conjunction with *s → θ and reintroduction of /s/ from loans or something.

the entire point of the assimilation is to make the sequence easier to pronounce.

He said "alternation", however; and changes may also be a result of a segment affecting the sound of another, not its pronunciation.

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    t    k   ʔ
    d
m   n
  s  ʃ   x
  z  ʒ
    r

Not really much worse than some existing Iroquioan systems, go with it.

[Nortaneous]

Naming lang. The Khoekhoe to Tnerakhii.

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p t  k kp  ʔ   p t  k  kp   x
f s      ʜ h   f s        ħ h
  z              z
 l ɫ ɰ w        l ł gh w

ǀ  ǁ  ǃ  ǂ     c' l' t' j'
ǀʰ ǁʰ ǃʰ ǂʰ    hc hl ht hj
ǀˀ ǁˀ ǃˀ ǂˀ    xc xl xt xj
ǀ͡ʜ ǁ͡ʜ ǃ͡ʜ ǂ͡ʜ    ħc ħl ħt ħj

Vowels: /a e i o u ai ã ĩ õ ũ ãĩ/, written <a e i o u ai ã ĩ õ ũ ãi>, or I might use <y ỹ> because why the fuck not.

An idea struck me for a pretty unlikely but plausible system:

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    t    k   ʔ
    d
m   n
  s  ʃ   x
  z  ʒ
    r

The vowels are a bit more even:

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i  iː         u  uː
ɛ  ɛː  ɜ  ɜː  ɔ  ɔː
a  aː

I wouldn't orthographicise it now, even though it would be easy.
I need your judgement on this: Should I press this on?

I like it.

[Chagen]

So I assumed my previous post was invisible.

[Nortaneous]

c. *unnamed non-SAE*

/m n ŋ/
/t k q ʔ/
/b d/
/s h/
/w l j/

/a ɔ i u/

I like this one. Reminds me a bit of a minimalistic version of my Txeric languages; Hoanu has a similar vowel system (/a ə o i/) and Enzielu has a plosive inventory of /b t d k/.

So I assumed my previous post was invisible.

No, it's just bad. Spend a few hours reading phonologies on Wikipedia and try again.

[Chagen]

No, it's just bad. Spend a few hours reading phonologies on Wikipedia and try again.

"It's bad, but I won't say why"

Ladies and Gentlemen, the average (un)logic of the normal ZBBer.

[----]

Instead of being an asshole you could just say "Well what specifically is wrong with it?"

[Whimemsz]

Aaaaanyway.

One benefit of not telling people every problem with something they share (besides the fact that it takes a lot of time) is that it gets you in the habit of doing work and research for yourself. The general ethos of the ZBB is that people do outside research on their own, and then come to one another for feedback.

That being said: what do you mean by "weak" and "strong" ejectives? From how you transcribed them there's no way to tell...plus breathy-voiced stops aren't anything like ejective stops, so I have no idea how I'm supposed to interpret things like "/cʼ~ɟʰ/". In fact, I'm not positive what you're using "~" to mean at all. Free variation? Or allophones? Or something else?

Either (C)V(C) or crazy Salish shit, I dunno.

Given that those are pretty much exact opposites, there's not much to comment on in this regard!

No natural human language has contrastive ingressive vowels (which is presumably what you meant by "implosive vowel" but again, I'm not positive).

[Chagen]

Free variation? Or allophones? Or something else?

Uh...I've used "~" on the CBB to mean free variation variants all the time. Everyone there does. I thought it was standard transcription style.

That being said: what do you mean by "weak" and "strong" ejectives?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejective#Description

"In the languages where they are more obvious, ejectives are often described as sounding like "spat" consonants; but ejectives are often quite weak and, in some contexts, and in some languages, are easy to mistake for tenuis or even voiced plosives.[2] These weakly ejective articulations are sometimes called intermediates in older American linguistic literature and are notated with different phonetic symbols: ⟨C!⟩ = strongly ejective, ⟨Cʼ⟩ = weakly ejective. Strong and weak ejectives have not been found to be contrastive in any language."

[Drydic]

So...you're admitting your contrast is unattested?

[Chagen]

Just because something is unattested doesn't mean it couldn't happen. One thing I've learned about languages is that there is no such thing as "X will never happen". You search hard enough, you'll a language that does something previously though impossible.

[Drydic]

/ʔⁿ/

[Whimemsz]

This is stupid. The contrast it unattested, and probably unlikely because of how difficult it would be to maintain the contrast. If it were me I'd get rid of it but it's probably not impossible. But a related concern is the large number of phonation contrasts in general. And also some of the weird, unlikely free-variations.

[Chagen]

This is stupid. The contrast it unattested, and probably unlikely because of how difficult it would be to maintain the contrast. If it were me I'd get rid of it but it's probably not impossible. But a related concern is the large number of phonation contrasts in general. And also some of the weird, unlikely free-variations.

I hope you never see this funny little lang called !Xoo spoken in Africa, then. Because if !Xoo can exist, ANYTHING can exist.

[Whimemsz]

I'm aware of the various Khoisan languages, but they do not, in fact, mean that in languages anything can exist.

[Nortaneous]

You shouldn't get too weird until you have a much better idea of what you're doing.

I'm just gonna keep fucking posting this until it sinks in.

[Chagen]

What I mean is that if a lang with fucking 111 click phonemes can exist, then surely one with some ejectives can exist, especially one in a universe that doesn't try to adhere to realism anyway.

[Nortaneous]

There is a very large difference between "some ejectives" and "an unattested contrast".

[Drydic]

What I mean is that if a lang with fucking 111 click phonemes can exist, then surely one with some ejectives can exist, especially one in a universe that doesn't try to adhere to realism anyway.

fallacy

[Whimemsz]

What I mean is that if a lang with fucking 111 click phonemes can exist, then surely one with some ejectives can exist, especially one in a universe that doesn't try to adhere to realism anyway.

That's a non-sequitur, but...okay.

If you don't care about realism, then I suppose it's fine. But anything would be fine in that case. As long as you're okay with that.

[Chagen]

You shouldn't get too weird until you have a much better idea of what you're doing.

I'm just gonna keep fucking posting this until it sinks in.

I've worked on 6 conlangs, I know what the fuck I'm doing.

[Rodlox]

What I mean is that if a lang with fucking 111 click phonemes can exist, then surely one with some ejectives can exist, especially one in a universe that doesn't try to adhere to realism anyway.

and fail on the Lovecraft reference - you got it wrong anyway.

You shouldn't get too weird until you have a much better idea of what you're doing.

I'm just gonna keep fucking posting this until it sinks in.

I've worked on 6 conlangs, I know what the fuck I'm doing.

I've worked on (more than) six conlangs too. the difference is that I know better than to claim I know all there is to know.

[Chagen]

and fail on the Lovecraft reference - you got it wrong anyway.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I have never read a lovecraft story in my life.

The Ngith are a race in my conworld, Techaria, notable for being the best assassians on the whole planet.

[Rodlox]

and fail on the Lovecraft reference - you got it wrong anyway.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I have never read a lovecraft story in my life.

"The most merciful thing about the universe is that we cannot understand it." -Lovecraft.

on the other hand, just because you Chagen do not understand the universe, does not mean it does not make sense.

The Ngith are a race in my conworld, Techaria, notable for being the best assassians on the whole planet.

whupee.

and whom are the best assassins on Techaria?

[roninbodhisattva]

Did not intend the double post.

[roninbodhisattva]

1. Simply using the standard geminate symbol ː would be less confusing, imo. The fact that they aren't really that long phonetically doesn't matter, as you are describing phonemes.

I was describing long phonemes that are realized, most of the time, as long phones. I don't know where you got the idea that I was saying they weren't realized phonetically long. I was just kind of switching it Americanist transcription since I'm used to doing it when dealing with this kind of language.

2. The distribution of dentals is surprising and one would wonder how it got that way. /tθ'/ might have come from *θ' or something.
3. The absence of /tsʼ/ is remarkable in a Salish-style language, especially considering (2) and the presence of other affricates.

This dental affricate/fricative inventory is actually attested in Coast Salish. It comes about from *c *c̓ > θ t̓θ. That's what happened here. Also what happened here was *k k̓ x > č č̓ š.

I like this idea in general. Anyway, [e:r]/[er] is a bit hard to pronounce, and one would expect to keep [i:r]/[ir] in this place (or something like [ɪər] or [ɪːr] anyway). This is attested in Dutch at least. Sure, if you already have a /er/ sequence one could keep it, but assimilation of a vowel to something that is actually harder to pronounce sounds strange to me; after all, the entire point of the assimilation is to make the sequence easier to pronounce.

I don't really understand what you're talking about here.

The position of the glottal sounds a bit weird to me. It would give stuff like kʼaʔk, qʷuːʔq and so.

Yup. That's what I intended. Happens all the time in Salish. It's a common way of forming plurals that goes back to Proto-Salish.