Too many vowels

[rr]

One of my conlangs, Flitiane, has way too many vowel sounds; at least, that's what I think. Is it possible to have too many vowels sounds? Or is it too many vowels versus too little letters?

I love the language, its grammar is my favorite of all of my conlangs, and I find large words to be pleasing at times.
Flitiane has 12 vowel sounds but only 4 vowel letters. I know this is like how English is, but I find that Flitiane is quite hard to read.

Plus, with Flitiane's already large words, I identify sound changes with an apostrophe and two vowel letters.
So, a word such a botza'ito'ityvo, I could represent it as botzātutyvo, but those letters aren't in Flitiane.

I guess it was already a bad idea to have only twelve letters, but the large inventory of sounds is too complex.
Even if it's unique, which it is, it wasn't a good idea to represent it the way I did.

These are Flitiane's vowels:
In Flitiane: y, i, a, o, a'o, o'y, y'i, a'i, o'o, o'a, o'i, a'y.
Vowels IPA: ɪ, i, æ, o, aʊ, ʊ, aɪ, eɪ, u, e, ə, ä.

Where did I go wrong, and what should I do?

[kanejam]

You only have 9 vowels and 3 diphthongs. While this is large, it is by no means huge and could work perfectly well if you just cleaned up the orthography. For starters, the apostrophes have to go. After that it's up to you. I would add in other vowels; here are a few alternatives:

/ɪ, i, æ, o, aʊ, ʊ, aɪ, eɪ, u, e, ə, ä/
<i ih a o au u ai ei uh eh e ah>
<î i e o au û ai ei u é ë a>

Try posting this along with the consonant inventory to the romanisation challenge thread.

[Drydic]

Yeah my first question is "why are you not using the other vowel(-ish) letters?". This could help us understand and hopefully help you better.

[rr]

Yeah my first question is "why are you not using the other vowel(-ish) letters?". This could help us understand and hopefully help you better.

It was one of my first conlangs. I barely knew anything about linguistics about the time, and I wanted to try limiting the size of the alphabet.
I should not have made three times as much vowel sounds as vowel-like letters. Luckily, I fixed this in later conlangs.

You only have 9 vowels and 3 diphthongs. While this is large, it is by no means huge and could work perfectly well if you just cleaned up the orthography. For starters, the apostrophes have to go. After that it's up to you. I would add in other vowels; here are a few alternatives:

/ɪ, i, æ, o, aʊ, ʊ, aɪ, eɪ, u, e, ə, ä/
<i ih a o au u ai ei uh eh e ah>
<î i e o au û ai ei u é ë a>

Try posting this along with the consonant inventory to the romanisation challenge thread.

I love the first romanization example you gave. It lets me keep a similar amount of letters (I don't mind adding three letters and deleting another) and looks like it would read easily.
So, botza'ito'ityvo is now botzeitetihvo. Fytiad'oa, the native name of Flitiane, is now Fihtiadeh. It also gives these words a more foreign feel.

This is not Flitiane.

So ni gratula.
со ны гратула.
Am I grateful.
Thank you.

[Pole, the]

> Too many vowels

Then you haven't seen that.

[finlay]

That's nothing - some of us made a phonology with 50,000 vowels, including tone and other supersegmental features. (We never made up any words, though, so it'd be disingenuous to call it a conlang.

In this case I think I want to discourage you from using digraphs of vowel+h. It displeases me. (Sometimes people use it for Japanese, especially personal names, eg Ōyama becomes Ohyama. I hate that because it looks like /oh_jama/)

[Curlyjimsam]

Real languages with lots of vowels have a certain tendency not to distinguish them in writing at all, e.g. Latin didn't distinguish long vowels from short, and it's not always clear in English what vowel is meant from the spelling. Obviously it can be helpful as a conlanger to have a perfectly unambiguous orthography, though, even if this isn't necessarily very realistic.

Is there any particular reason why you need the apostrophe? I'd recommend getting rid of it and just having <y i a o ao oy yi ai oo oa oi ay> or something for /ɪ i æ o aʊ ʊ aɪ eɪ u e ə ä/, though I'm not sure those particular letter combinations are the best ones to use.

You could also try doing what English does and represent different vowels through varying neighbouring consonant letters in at least some instances: e.g. doubling or not doubling a consonant might mark the difference between /æ/ and /ä/: <at> /ät/ but <att> /æt/.

[rr]

Real languages with lots of vowels have a certain tendency not to distinguish them in writing at all, e.g. Latin didn't distinguish long vowels from short, and it's not always clear in English what vowel is meant from the spelling. Obviously it can be helpful as a conlanger to have a perfectly unambiguous orthography, though, even if this isn't necessarily very realistic.

Is there any particular reason why you need the apostrophe? I'd recommend getting rid of it and just having <y i a o ao oy yi ai oo oa oi ay> or something for /ɪ i æ o aʊ ʊ aɪ eɪ u e ə ä/, though I'm not sure those particular letter combinations are the best ones to use.

You could also try doing what English does and represent different vowels through varying neighbouring consonant letters in at least some instances: e.g. doubling or not doubling a consonant might mark the difference between /æ/ and /ä/: <at> /ät/ but <att> /æt/.

The apostrophe indicated sound change, and even without it, I made diphthongs that looked like the represented a different sound. I had the apostrophe because without the apostrophe, those vowel clusters were possible, and exist in current words.

My romanization with apostrophes: botza'ito'ityvo, sva'ybofys, vay'b py'itist fo'o.
My romanization without apostrophes: botzaitoityvo, svaybofys, vayb pyitist foo.
kanejam's romanization: botzeitetihvo, svahbofihs, vahb paitistih fuh.

You tell me which is easier to read.

And to finlay, I think I'm going to keep the vowel+h digraphs. This is my conlang, and I very much like the new romanization.
However, I'll make a possible romanization without vowel+h digraphs and put it here.

/ɪ, i, æ, o, aʊ, ʊ, aɪ, eɪ, u, e, ə, ä/
<i ii a o au uu ai ei u e eu aa>

Maybe I'll use this if perhaps I create another dialect of Flitiane.
However, as you can see, this language will never have any diacritics.

[Drydic]

That's nothing - some of us made a phonology with 50,000 vowels, including tone and other supersegmental features. (We never made up any words, though, so it'd be disingenuous to call it a conlang.

In this case I think I want to discourage you from using digraphs of vowel+h. It displeases me. (Sometimes people use it for Japanese, especially personal names, eg Ōyama becomes Ohyama. I hate that because it looks like /oh_jama/)

And then there's Eeeish.

(To all you noobs, it had one phoneme: /i/.)

[Jipí]

Real languages with lots of vowels have a certain tendency not to distinguish them in writing at all, e.g. Latin didn't distinguish long vowels from short, and it's not always clear in English what vowel is meant from the spelling.

And while German's sound-letter-correspondence system is usually said to be quite sane – compared to the notorious offender English is held to be – even German's orthography doesn't distinguish long and short vowels in all contexts (e.g. Wal /vaːl/ : Wald /valt/), spells some vowels "wrong" according to actual etymology (e.g. cases where <ie> for /iː/ is not from MHG /iə̯/; or <e> instead of <ä> for historical i-umlaut of /a/), and spells some diphthongs according to etymology (e.g. <eu> for /ɔʏ̯/) or function (e.g. <äu> for /ɔʏ̯/ from umlaut of <au> /ao̯/), rather than according to the sound the spelling represents. And even where long vowels are indicated, some words are spelled with <Vh> and others with <VV> (though that's more rare), besides the previously mentioned <ie> for /iː/ (no <ii> in native words, and <ih> only occurs in pronouns).

Oh, and note: Standard German is analyzed as having /iː ɪ yː ʏ eː ɛ (ɛː) øː œ (ə) aː a oː ɔ uː ʊ/ + /ae̯ ɔʏ̯ ao̯/, which is also a whole bunch of vowels, but at least they mostly come in neat pairs of [+tense +long] : [–tense –long].

[finlay]

Actually my other pet hate is ppl using ä as an ipa letter *grumble grumble*

[Pole, the]

Actually it is a kind of IPA letter.

[finlay]

And yet here I am, still hating it.

It's just only used by people who never got the memo that there's never any need to be that specific. If it's meant to be central, that's usually clear from context, and not using the diacritic lets it potentially vary more - like what language with a central a wouldn't interpret a back a or a front a as their a? (The other one is using a "lowered" e/o when e/o would and should suffice for a languages with only one mid vowel. I think the chart is partly to blame, as it makes people think the IPA should be used with great precision all the time when that is false.)

[Jipí]

like what language with a central a wouldn't interpret a back a or a front a as their a? (The other one is using a "lowered" e/o when e/o would and should suffice for a languages with only one mid vowel.

It would make sense if people were using those with [] (and even then it would often be more specific than necessary), but they usually write them in // even though there's no frontness or height contrast with other a- or e/o-like sounds. It's just plainly unnecessary to look up the Alt codes (or what have you) for <ä> and <̞> every time you mean /a e o/. Just use the most straightforward symbols.

[communistplot]

One of my conlangs, Flitiane, has way too many vowel sounds; at least, that's what I think. Is it possible to have too many vowels sounds? Or is it too many vowels versus too little letters?

I love the language, its grammar is my favorite of all of my conlangs, and I find large words to be pleasing at times.
Flitiane has 12 vowel sounds but only 4 vowel letters. I know this is like how English is, but I find that Flitiane is quite hard to read.

Pfft, my native English 'lect distinguishes 16 vowel sounds. And in generally it's only the western and southern American dialects that have less than 14 vowels, everywhere else has between 14 & 20 IIRC. Germanic languages on the whole tend to be vowel heavy.

As for fixing your stuff up, diacritics are your friend. You can get Microsoft's keyboard layout maker and make a nice little layout with all the keys you need.

[rr]

Flitiane is not supposed to have diacritics. I specifically want this language to only have digraphs, not diacritics. Also, my first post wasn't worded correctly. I wanted to redo the digraphs and still keep a similar amount of letters.

[Pole, the]

/i u/ ‹ie ue›
/ɪ ʊ/ ‹i u›
/e ə o/ ‹ia e ua›
/æ ä/ ‹ae a›
/eɪ aɪ aʊ/ ‹ei ai au›

Something like that?

/i u/ ‹ii uu›
/ɪ ʊ/ ‹i u›
/e ə o/ ‹ai e au›
/æ ä/ ‹ae a›
/eɪ aɪ aʊ/ ‹ee ei eu›

Or that?

[Nortaneous]

æ a e ə o ɪ ʊ i u aɪ eɪ aʊ

<ae a e eo o i u ii uu ai ei au>
botzeiteotiivo svabofiis vaab paitistii fuu

<aCC a e eCC o iCC uCC i u ai ei au> where CC = double next consonant and no CC = double vowel word-finally
botzeitettivo svabofis vab paitisstii fuu

[rr]

æ a e ə o ɪ ʊ i u aɪ eɪ aʊ

<ae a e eo o i u ii uu ai ei au>
botzeiteotiivo svabofiis vaab paitistii fuu

I like that one the most, but I'd change eo to eu.

botzeiteutivo, svabofis, vab fuu paitiisti.

I know that the last example was mixed up.
The sentence order was corrected in this post.

[Sacemd]

What I usually do is first use the basic letters, and then ask myself if I want digraphs or diacritics. (This is usually diacritics for vowels and digraphs for consonants for me). I usually don't like to use the same diacritic only once (as in only â, but no ô or ê)

So I'd spell /æ a e ə o ɪ ʊ i u aɪ eɪ aʊ/ as
<ä a e ë o ï ü i u ai ei au> or
<â a e y o î û i u ai ei au> or
<a á é e o i u í ú ai ei au> or
<à a e y o ì ù i u ai ei au> or
<ae a e y o i u ii uu ai ei au>
depending on what kind of feel I want for the language. (By the way, I don't recommend using y as a vowel if you already have it as a consonant.)

[rr]

What I usually do is first use the basic letters, and then ask myself if I want digraphs or diacritics. (This is usually diacritics for vowels and digraphs for consonants for me). I usually don't like to use the same diacritic only once (as in only â, but no ô or ê)

So I'd spell /æ a e ə o ɪ ʊ i u aɪ eɪ aʊ/ as
<ä a e ë o ï ü i u ai ei au> or
<â a e y o î û i u ai ei au> or
<a á é e o i u í ú ai ei au> or
<à a e y o ì ù i u ai ei au> or
<ae a e y o i u ii uu ai ei au>
depending on what kind of feel I want for the language. (By the way, I don't recommend using y as a vowel if you already have it as a consonant.)

Like I said before, although I do like diacritics, I want to stick with digraphs and diphthongs for this language.
Also, y is not a consonant in Flitiane. There are no palatal consonants at all, and there is no palatalization either.