A little bit of conlanging stuff
Jul. 26th, 2011 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
becka_suttonFor the Mountain/Sea people language in the "Early Period" before it becomes two languages. I'm very much a novice at this.
Pronunciation:
Vowels:
There are only five vowels in (language name) and they are all very consistent.
a - as in cat
e - as in get
i - as in the the double e in meet
o - as in pot
u - as the Japanese u sound. That is similar to the oo in cool or the ew in dew, but not spoken with rounded lips.
There are no dipthongs, where there are two vowels together they are sounded seperately with a slight hiatus between them. It always represents the start of a new syllable. The one exception to this is a double vowel where it indicates that the vowel should be held for twice as long as usual.
Consonants:
b - as in but
d - as in dog
f - very soft as in the Japanese pronunciation of Fuji
g - as in get
h - as in house
hw - as the wh in whole
lh - as in Lhasa (unvoiced l)
m - as in money
n - as in noon
ny - as in the childish taunt "nyah nyah nyah ne ne"
r - as in roll
s - as in sudden
tj - this is the ch sound in church but without the starting t (think the Swedish tj).
ts - the sound at the end of boots. Make a t sound then hiss.
v - very soft. Try not to obstruct the air as much as in English
w - as in wedding
y - as in ye
zh - as in the soft j sound in the middle of measure
Stress and Tone:
The language places stress on the penultimate syllable of each word - except for the following.
Single syllable words are always unstressed unless they are a question verb or the subject (see below).
All syllables of the object (and the various cases subsumed into the objective in English) of a sentence are unstressed.
The whole of the subject in an sentence recieves prosodic stress as well as normal stress.
If the word a verb in a question in which case the last syllable is stressed.
It is not a tonal language but there is a question pitch on the verb in a question. This, together with the different stress, is what indicates that it is a question.
Phonotactics:
(C)V(C) and VC(V) Where two vowels or two consonants lie together in a word you know you have a syllable break. Considering a rule to stop a syllable that starts with a Consonant ending with an approximant. What do people think?
--
Feedback Welcome,
CONSONANT CHART (now with added IPA where needed).
| LABIAL | LAB-DENT | DENT | ALV | PAL | VELAR | GLOTTAL | |
| STOP | b | d | g | ||||
| FRICATIVE | f (ɸ) | s | h | ||||
| AFFRICATE | ts (t͡s) | tj (t͡ʃ) | |||||
| APPROXIMATE | v (ʋ) | r, lh (l̥) | y (j) | ||||
| NASAL | m | n | ny (ɲ) |
CO-ARTICULATED CONSONANTS
| ALV-PAL | PAL-VEL | |
| FRICATIVE | zh (ʑ) | |
| APPROXIMATE | hw (ʍ) | |
| STOP |
Pronunciation:
Vowels:
There are only five vowels in (language name) and they are all very consistent.
a - as in cat
e - as in get
i - as in the the double e in meet
o - as in pot
u - as the Japanese u sound. That is similar to the oo in cool or the ew in dew, but not spoken with rounded lips.
There are no dipthongs, where there are two vowels together they are sounded seperately with a slight hiatus between them. It always represents the start of a new syllable. The one exception to this is a double vowel where it indicates that the vowel should be held for twice as long as usual.
Consonants:
b - as in but
d - as in dog
f - very soft as in the Japanese pronunciation of Fuji
g - as in get
h - as in house
hw - as the wh in whole
lh - as in Lhasa (unvoiced l)
m - as in money
n - as in noon
ny - as in the childish taunt "nyah nyah nyah ne ne"
r - as in roll
s - as in sudden
tj - this is the ch sound in church but without the starting t (think the Swedish tj).
ts - the sound at the end of boots. Make a t sound then hiss.
v - very soft. Try not to obstruct the air as much as in English
w - as in wedding
y - as in ye
zh - as in the soft j sound in the middle of measure
Stress and Tone:
The language places stress on the penultimate syllable of each word - except for the following.
Single syllable words are always unstressed unless they are a question verb or the subject (see below).
All syllables of the object (and the various cases subsumed into the objective in English) of a sentence are unstressed.
The whole of the subject in an sentence recieves prosodic stress as well as normal stress.
If the word a verb in a question in which case the last syllable is stressed.
It is not a tonal language but there is a question pitch on the verb in a question. This, together with the different stress, is what indicates that it is a question.
Phonotactics:
(C)V(C) and VC(V) Where two vowels or two consonants lie together in a word you know you have a syllable break. Considering a rule to stop a syllable that starts with a Consonant ending with an approximant. What do people think?
--
Feedback Welcome,
