Hello everybody! Welcome back to ConFAB, a journey through the world of
constructed languages led by somebody entirely unqualified to talk
about the subject. My name is Aidan Wood, and I'm back at you again with a
fresh change of clothes to make it look like I'm not recording all these videos
on the same day. So, a few videos ago I talked about how I was struggling to
develop a phonetic inventory due in part to my processing issues with ADHD.
One of the lesser known symptoms of ADHD is difficulty processing auditory
information. I was trying to develop a phonetic inventory that was large and
complex, but didn't contain too many sounds that were really hard to
distinguish from one another. And I was also, like, wanting to branch outside of
the English phonetic inventory and incorporate sounds that are a little
more foreign to me but I also wanted to be able to pronounce the language, um, so
I was really sort of stuck between those different places and sort of being
pulled in those different directions but I'm pretty sure that I've developed a
phonetic inventory that's satisfying to me, and I'm really excited
to share it with you all today! Now, I'm going to be using a lot of IPA in
this video so if you aren't familiar with IPA or you would want some videos
that help explain it more in-depth, I've actually made a playlist,
which you can check out right ... here? Yeah? Okay.
So, without further ado, here are all the consonant sounds that are going to be in my language.
They are ma no no yeah cut cut cut cut ma no yeah ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha yeah no. I know I didn't pronounce all of those quite right but
I'm still working on some of them. Especially those frickin palatals -
they are very tricky. So, as you can see, for all the consonants that I've
included that occur in voiced/unvoiced pairs I'm using both of the voicings but
I'm treating them as allophones. The reason for this is that telling these
sounds apart is really tricky, but I like the idea of having a lot of variety in
my language. One of my favorite things about English is the large phonetic
inventory. I think that like English is very. like ... it's complex, its musical,
it has so many lilts and valleys and so many variants
and variations on the sounds. By pairing voiced / unvoiced pairs as allophones,
I will remove the need to distinguish them, so they won't occur in the same
place. Like, there won't be any words where, like, if this is voiced or
unvoiced it determines the meaning, you know? And I'm definitely going to
keep the allophonic rules pretty simple. Like, I'm thinking right
now like it'll be like, these sounds are voiced after stressed syllables and
unvoiced after unstressed syllables and at the beginning of words.
Easy peasy, lemon lemon.
As I mentioned in a previous video, I adore allophones, which is why
I've included three of them, although those also occur in voiced / unvoiced
pairs, so by total count of allophones is technically up to six.
I do think that uh and ja are a little hard to distinguish but I'm just going
to have to, like, sort of be cognizant of that as I develop my language.
I considered only having one of those but I just love affricates so much
I couldn't resist! I just find those sounds so delightful
to my ears and to my mouth. Like to say "dza" it's like ... ooh! It's like a little party
in my mouth! There are a few other key features of this system.
notably the implosives. They're just so distinctive that to not include them
would be silly. Like, considering I am trying to have as
many sounds that I can easily distinguish. And they're not that hard to produce
once you get the hang of it. And they're also really fucking fun to
produce like no no no yeah yeah except for that palatal. I don't
even know what's going on with that one. But speaking of palatals, check out
those bad boys! Palatals for me were definitely an acquired taste,
but once I sort of got into them. like ... The more I learned about palatals,
or the more I tried to produce them, the more I heard them, the more I liked them.
And then there are the fricatives. I actually almost considered cutting
fricatives entirely out of this language, but thank God I came to my
senses, and I actually end up going the opposite direction. I've included
a boatload of fricatives. The reason for this is because, one:
they're pretty easy to produce, and really easy to produce, actually they're
pretty easy to distinguish as well, and they're pretty common
cross-linguistically. I even included the uvular fricative,
the huh sound, which I'm not right super good at producing but I'll get there.
I was actually very strongly opposed to having that sound
at first because, like, I just think it sounds kind of ugly? Like ...
Also, it feels kind of ugly to say, sort of harsh on my throat, and
to my ears. But then I realized, like, not every sound in my language should be,
like, beautiful and flowing and, like, fun, because not every concept that I'll be
conveying is beautiful and flying and fun, you know? Like, I need
those sounds that are, like, gutsy or powerful or dominant or, like,
in-your-face, I think that huh sound is very ... I know that there's, like, those
stereotypical elements that people talk about, like, that we all think that
sound is harsh because of, like, our associations with German or
Arabic and, like, our stereotypes about that, but like ... I even usually think
French sounds kind of ugly, um, and like, other languages that have it, and I've
always had issues with that sound ... But I'm sort of starting
to see that sound less as just, like, a tool in language and more like a
character in a language or my phonetic inventory. I also considered adding some
click consonants, which I've always been so drawn to, but I thought between
all those palatals and the implosives and the bilabial trill,
and those fricatives, like that alveolar fricative - like, I
was giving myself plenty to work with already and adding click
consonants in - that would be just too much, you know? It would be, like, an
overload. But the a second language I'm to going to develop is definitely going to be, like,
heavy with the click consonants, like ... ten click consonants, like go crazy!
My vowel system is significantly smaller than English, because honestly, like,
fuck the English vowel system, but it is still on the large side when you look at it
cross-linguistically. I've settled on seven vowels. They are: ee, oo, ih, oh, uh, eh, ah. I'm
pretty sure I said all of those right, because vowels are so much easier than
constants, my god! No tones, nasalization, or length variation here, but I am
pulling an Artifexian and adding some nice, boring dipthongs!
I'm also going to be pulling an Artifexian and utilizing the glottal stop
between vowels as a way of distinguishing them from diphthongs and
also just, like, getting more mileage in general out of my vowel system. Alright.
So, that is my phonetic inventory! I might make a few small changes going forwards
as I work out phonotactics and allophony and all that good stuff,
but I think this is like a solid place to start. If you can offer a critique
of this inventory, I would absolutely love to hear your opinions in the
comments below, and if you would like to show your phonetic inventory, I would also
love to see that. Oh! And also, like, some information about your process, like
what was your decision making process like, why did you make the decisions you
made, because that's something I'm always really interested in hearing.
Thank you all so much for watching and as always I wish you the best of luck in your conlanging journey!
No comments:
Post a Comment