On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Eugene Oh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> But if some Englishes allow for [stju:dnt] (can't insert the syllable
> diacritic), then surely stubn is not that far-fetched (:
>

Not at allǃ My original intention was to have English-like phonotactics,
but it's changed now to something more like a cross of Estonian, Norwegian
and Frisian (at least what I understand of these languages). And it's
probably more accurately [stu(ː)ʔpm̩]. The morphosyntax, however, is
Uto-Aztecan-ish (at least Takic and Tepiman).

Dirk


>
> Eugene
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 25 Feb 2012, at 21:29, Dirk Elzinga <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > I recently presented a workshsop on language construction, and I took the
> > first approach--I had the workshop participants come up with twenty or so
> > "words" in their language and then reverse-engineered phonological
> > inventories and syllable structure from that. I think it worked pretty
> > well, though some of the participants were kinda stressed out about
> having
> > to come up with twenty words spontaneously. After seeing what they came
> up
> > with, I realized that one danger of this approach is that people who are
> > linguistically naive tend to reproduce something like English. This is
> > where the second method can come in handy. After creating a few words and
> > distilling inventories and syllable phonotactics, you could add sounds
> that
> > are "obviously" missing, and to refine the syllable canon and
> phonotactics.
> > But I am firmly of the opinion that the phonology should be intuitive,
> > rather than planned--at least in its initial stages. All of the
> languages I
> > have ever pursued beyond a simple one-page sketch started with a word or
> > several words that I thought sounded Just Right. For Miapimoquitch, that
> > word was [tɨβa]. For my current perpetually nascent project that word is
> > [stubn̩]. It's been a lot of fun to try to imagine what kind of language
> > would allow a word like [stubn̩] in itǃ
> >
> > Dirk
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 11:41 AM, Peter Collier
> > <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> >
> >> Broadly speaking there seem to be two different approaches to language
> >> construction. One is to coin some vocabulary and then to look at what
> you
> >> have and  "reverse-engineer" a language from it. The other is to work
> at a
> >> phonological level rather than a lexical one, i.e. to work out how the
> >> language is screwed together first and then see what it leads to. By
> >> necessity, the "what-if" type conlangs - Brithenig and the like - would
> >> have
> >> to be of the second type.
> >>
> >> My own project is of the latter type so I don't have any experience of
> >> working the other way around, but logically  there must come a point
> where
> >> things have to start getting a little more fixed and any new coinings
> start
> >> to comply with words you have already created, otherwise the thing is
> going
> >> to just keep on expanding to a ridiculously unwieldy state.
> >>
> >> As to making one language "feel" like another, it seems to me you need
> >> several things. Firstly, you need to have similar phonologies and
> >> phontactics. If you want something that sounds Germanic, you are going
> to
> >> need more fricatives and afficates in your phonology, a larger vowel
> >> inventory, and rules that allow for syllables with large consonant
> >> clusters.
> >> If you are looking to make something Romanic you'd want to be having
> more
> >> limited consonant clusters, fewer or no reduced vowels and so on.
> >>
> >> Secondly, the conlang's  grammar and syntax would need to be similar. If
> >> you
> >> were trying to create a language  that felt like English, you wouldn't
> want
> >> to have grammatical gender and adjectival agreements. If you want
> something
> >> of a Finnish feel, you'd need to be thinking about cases.
> >>
> >> Finally, orthography. To my mind this is the last thing you should
> >> consider,
> >> not the first, as it has nothing at all to do with the mechanics of the
> >> language. It is  just an arbitrary arrangement of symbols for encoding
> the
> >> language in writing. However, that said, if you are trying to mimic the
> >> feel
> >> of a language you need to mimic its orthography. When you look at a
> >> Brithenig it appears at first glance to be Welsh and that’s part of what
> >> makes it such a delight.
> >>
> >> So my suggestion would be to look at the language(s) you want to
> emulate,
> >> determine what it is that gives them their "feel," and then use those
> >> aspects to lay down some founding criteria for your creation. Do that
> >> before
> >> you do anything else. Then it’s a question of creating a language within
> >> those self-imposed constraints.
> >>
> >> P.
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> >> Behalf Of Ian Spolarich
> >> Sent: 25 February 2012 03:56
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Phonology Imitation
> >>
> >> I distinctly remember a thread here or somewhere where the poster had
> >> talked
> >> a bit about mimicking natural languages' phonologies in a conlang. I
> can't
> >> seem to find the email, so I thought I'd ask here: how does one truly
> make
> >> a
> >> conlang sound like another language or specific phonology?
> >>
> >> The thing is, when *I* conlang, I don't usually think about how one word
> >> will sound in context or what not, I usually think about what phonemes I
> >> can
> >> use and what sounds good. For one of my langs, "Csatau," I'm mimicking
> to
> >> an
> >> extent the Hungarian language--I have done so fairly easily in the
> >> phonology
> >> inventory (as well as the orthography, but really, who doesn't love the
> >> Hungarian alphabet? Although it should be noted that there is a
> >> corresponding native script and a script in another con-script made of
> >> Greek
> >> and Cyrillic letters... it's a complex country.), but I'm not sure how
> to
> >> achieve the overarching aesthetic "feel" of Hungarian.
> >>
> >> Also, besides making a conlang sound like I want it to sound, I tend to
> >> have
> >> trouble pronouncing the language--not because of the phonology but
> because
> >> of the sequence of sounds. For example, I had to change my numbers
> >> (originally "ská elt vec fört tüks fausz sal sval dvan..." to "ská elt
> föt
> >> tüks fau pes sval dvan") to make them easier to pronounce. Anyway, does
> >> anyone have any good tips on achieving a unified sound consistent
> across a
> >> whole language?
> >>
> >> -Ian Spolarich
> >>
>