diff --git a/book/src/01_phonology/index.md b/book/src/01_phonology/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a4562f --- /dev/null +++ b/book/src/01_phonology/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,100 @@ +# Phonology and Writing + +I am taking inspiration from Lojban, Esperanto, Mandarin Chinese and English to +design the phonology of L'ewa. All of the phonology will be defined using the +[International Phonetic Alphabet][ipa]. If you want to figure out how to +pronounce these sounds, a lazy trick is to google them. Wikipedia will have a +perfectly good example to use as a reference. There are two kinds of sounds in +L'ewa, consonants and vowels. + +[ipa]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet + +## Consonants + +*Consonant inventory*: /d g h j k l m n p q s t w ʃ ʒ ʔ ʙ̥/ + +| Manner/Place | Bilabial | Alveolar | Palato-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labio-velar | Uvular | Glottal | +|---------------------|----------|----------|-----------------|---------|-------|-------------|--------|---------| +| Nasal | m | n | | | | | | | +| Stop | p | t d | | | k g | | q | ʔ | +| Fricative | | s | ʃ ʒ | | | | | h | +| Approximant | | | | j | | w | | | +| Trill | ʙ̥ | | | | | | | | +| Lateral approximant | | l | | | | | | | + +The weirdest consonant is /ʙ̥/, which is a voiceless bilabial trill, or blowing +air through your lips without making sound. This is intended to imitate a noise +an orca would make. + +## Vowels + +*Vowel inventory*: /a ɛ i o u/ + +*Diphthongs*: au, oi, ua, ue, uo, ai, ɛi + +| | Front | Back | +|----------|-------|------| +| High | i | u | +| High-mid | | o | +| Low-mid | ɛ | | +| Low | a | | + +## Phonotactics + +I plan to have two main kinds of words in L'ewa. I plan to have content and +particle words. The content words will refer to things, properties, or actions +(such as `tool`, `red`, `run`) and the particle words will change how the +grammar of a sentence works (such as `the` or prepositions). + +The main kind of content word is a root word, and they will be in the following +forms: + +- CVCCV (/ʒa.sko/) +- CCVCV (/lʔ.ɛwa/) + +Particles will mostly fall into the following forms: + +- V (/a/) +- VV (/ai/) +- CV (/ba/) +- CVV (/bai/) + +Proper names _should_ end with consonants, but there is no hard requirement. + +L'ewa is a stressed language, with stress on the second-to-last (penultimate) +syllable. For example, the word "[zh]asko" would be pronounced "[ZH]Asko". + +Syllables end on stop consonants if one is present in a consonant cluster. Two +stop consonants cannot follow eachother in a row. + +## Writing + +I haven't completely fleshed this part out yet, but I want the writing system of +L'ewa to be an [abugida][abugida]. This is a kind of written script that has the +consonants make the larger shapes but the vowels are small diacritics over the +consonants. If the word creation process is done right, you can actually omit +the vowels entirely if they are not relevant. + +[abugida]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida + +I plan to have this script be written by hand with pencils/pen and typed into +computers, just like English. This script will also be a left-to-right script +like English. + +## Romanisation + +L'ewa's romanization is intentionally simple. Most of the IPA letters keep their +letters, but the ones that do not match to Latin letters are listed below: + +| Pronunciation | Spelling | +|---------------|----------| +| /j/ | *y* | +| /ɛ/ | *e* | +| /ʃ/ | *x* | +| /ʒ/ | *z* | +| /ʔ/ | *'* | +| /ʙ̥/ | *b* | + +This is designed to make every letter typeable on a standard US keyboard, as +well as mapping as many letters as possible on the home row of a QWERTY +keyboard. diff --git a/book/src/SUMMARY.md b/book/src/SUMMARY.md index 9f8d612..886a69f 100644 --- a/book/src/SUMMARY.md +++ b/book/src/SUMMARY.md @@ -4,3 +4,4 @@ - [L'ewa as a Diary Language](./intro/diary_language.md) - [eBook Version](./intro/ebook.md) - [Changelog](./intro/CHANGELOG.md) +- [Phonology and Writing](./01_phonology/index.md) diff --git a/book/src/build.sh b/book/src/build.sh index b4a645d..8755a5e 100755 --- a/book/src/build.sh +++ b/book/src/build.sh @@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ FILES=' intro/index.md intro/diary_language.md intro/CHANGELOG.md + +01_phonology/index.md ' set -x