From 21045ef132e4294c5530307b026956d217f2e779 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christine Dodrill Date: Fri, 8 May 2020 08:13:35 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] blog: reconlangmo 2 - phonology and writing (#142) --- ...mo-2-phonology-writing-2020-05-08.markdown | 130 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 130 insertions(+) create mode 100644 blog/reconlangmo-2-phonology-writing-2020-05-08.markdown diff --git a/blog/reconlangmo-2-phonology-writing-2020-05-08.markdown b/blog/reconlangmo-2-phonology-writing-2020-05-08.markdown new file mode 100644 index 0000000..36c2679 --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/reconlangmo-2-phonology-writing-2020-05-08.markdown @@ -0,0 +1,130 @@ +--- +title: "ReConLangMo 2: Phonology & Writing" +date: 2020-05-08 +series: reconlangmo +tags: + - conlang + - lewa +--- + +# ReConLangMo 2: Phonology & Writing + +Continuing from [the last post][rclm1], one of the next steps in this process is +to outline the phonology and basic phonotactics of L'ewa. A language's phonology +is the set of sounds that are allowed to be in words. The phonotactics of a +language help people understand where the boundaries between syllables are. I +will then describe my plans for the L'ewa orthography and how L'ewa is +romanized. This is a response to the prompt made [here][rclm2prompt]. + +[rclm1]: https://christine.website/blog/reconlangmo-1-name-ctx-history-2020-05-05 +[rclm2prompt]: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/gfp3hw/reconlangmo_2_phonology_writing/ + +## Phonology + +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. + +--- + +I am still working on the tooling for word creation and the like. I plan to use +the [Swaedish lists][swaedish] (this site is having certificate issues at the +time of writing this post) to help guide the creation of a base vocabulary. I +will go into more detail in the future. + +[swaedish]: https://cals.info/word/list/