Antregabua

[CrazyEttin]

Antregabua is plagued by a romanisation that makes it look like a Klingon satanic sabbah

Some of you might remember me posting a ridiculously minimalistic phonology in the random phonology thread, and Visinoid telling me to do a full conlang based on it.

So, i made one.

Grammar
•Version 0
•Version 0.1
•Version 1
•Version 2

Dictionary
•To Do

Script
•Example
•Font

[MONOBA]

Record yourself saying that last phrase.

[Visinoid]

I appreciate how you considered my wish to make it into a conlang. -_^ I'm pretty sure you're not crazy, unless your speaking about your nickname. :D And the grammar makes sense so far.

I know <u> represents that boring back rounded vowel, but think that it formats and reads much more easily than <x>. It's just a suggestion. -_^

[Khemehekis]

Nice name. Reminds me of QangTaq.

[CrazyEttin]

Record yourself saying that last phrase.

I think i'm actually able to pronounce it (I like to be able to pronounce my conlangs). Now i'll just have to find my microphone...

I appreciate how you considered my wish to make it into a conlang.

Your wish was a perfect excuse to create a lang with such a silly phonology.

-_^ I'm pretty sure you're not crazy, unless your speaking about your nickname. :D

I have no idea if i'm actually crazy.

And the grammar makes sense so far.

Good.

I know <u> represents that boring back rounded vowel, but think that it formats and reads much more easily than <x>. It's just a suggestion. -_^

Using ‹x› makes the orthography look more weird. And weird is good.

[rickardspaghetti]

I know <u> represents that boring back rounded vowel, but think that it formats and reads much more easily than <x>. It's just a suggestion. -_^

Using ‹x› makes the orthography look more weird. And weird is good.

But would a French missionary ever come up with that?

[CrazyEttin]

I know <u> represents that boring back rounded vowel, but think that it formats and reads much more easily than <x>. It's just a suggestion. -_^

Using ‹x› makes the orthography look more weird. And weird is good.

But would a French missionary ever come up with that?

The missionary in question thought the same way i think this: ‹u› is too associated with the rounded back vowel, using it is like using ‹e› for [ø].

Edit: ...And now somebody will find a language that has ‹e› for [ø].

[Xing]

Weird is not necessarily good.

The most "typical" use of <u> may be to represent the round, back vowel. But that's not it's only use. It may be a front vowel, or an unrounded one.

If it's unnatural to use <u> for [ɯ], then <x> would be even more unnatural.

Otherwise, it's a quite nice, semi-experimental language.

[Allekanger]

I prefer <x> over <u>, it fills the purpose of representing the sound as a very variable one (given the different allophones) and of course emphasizes the unroundedness. Keep it! =)

[CrazyEttin]

Weird is not necessarily good.

The most "typical" use of <u> may be to represent the round, back vowel. But that's not it's only use. It may be a front vowel, or an unrounded one.

If it's unnatural to use <u> for [ɯ], then <x> would be even more unnatural.

There have been much weirder orthographies.

Otherwise, it's a quite nice, semi-experimental language.

Thanks.

Edit: Thinking about changing the realisation of [ʔɯ] to [ʔɦ̩], if [ɦ̩] is possible.

Edit: Giving up on the syllabic glottal idea. Too weird even for this lang.

[Ralph]

I like it!

You probably should consider describing the phonology of the tone system in more detail though. There's scope to do all sorts of interesting phonological things with tones!

[CrazyEttin]

I like it!

You probably should consider describing the phonology of the tone system in more detail though. There's scope to do all sorts of interesting phonological things with tones!

For example?
This is my first time doing a conlang with tones, so i don't know much about them.

[Solarius]

I like it!

You probably should consider describing the phonology of the tone system in more detail though. There's scope to do all sorts of interesting phonological things with tones!

For example?
This is my first time doing a conlang with tones, so i don't know much about them.

Well, a lot of tone languages have lots and lots of tone sandhi, so you could do something with that. A lot of tonal languages have weird phonations. It seems to be very common for a low or falling tone to be realized as creaky voice.

[Ralph]

I like it!

You probably should consider describing the phonology of the tone system in more detail though. There's scope to do all sorts of interesting phonological things with tones!

For example?
This is my first time doing a conlang with tones, so i don't know much about them.

Also, from what I've learnt about tones in phonology, there's a rule that the underlying representation of the word can't have two of the same tone adjacent, although tones can be attached to multiple syllables in a row. (So, for example, something like [táká] would have one high tone attached to both syllables.) [That's called the Obligatory Contour Principle if you want to look it up.] This means interesting things can happen when you add an affix of the same tone as its base (for example, in Shona, a stem with a high tone changes it to a low tone if you add a prefix with a high tone).

Tones apparently also have a habit of moving around: in Somali, for example, you can't have a high tone at the end of a phrase, so it gets moved to the penultimate syllable if a syllable with a high tone ends up in phrase final position.

One thing to think about as well is that the phonological theory of tones I'm familiar with analyses them as on a separate 'tier' of the representation of the word, so that the string of tones is separate from the other segments of the word underlyingly, and is then linked to appropriate tone bearing units in the surface form.

Edit: A bit of further reading suggests that the Obligatory Contour Principle isn't necessarily universal (Shona, for example, doesn't seem to have a problem with multiple adjacent low tones, given changes a high tone to a low one doesn't seem to have any effect on a following low tone [although it could just merge with the later low tone, given this is another way languages can deal with two adjacent tones of the same time]).

[CrazyEttin]

Version 0.1!

Added the obligatory contour principle to the phonology, but kept the tone system otherwise very simple. Not really any other changes.

[Ralph]

Version 0.1!

Added the obligatory contour principle to the phonology, but kept the tone system otherwise very simple. Not really any other changes.

Cool! Glad to have been able to offer some useful feedback

[eldin raigmore]

Two mid tones can occur consecutively in a single word, right?
...
If you suffix a high-tone suffix onto a high-tone-ending base, why do you change the suffix's tone to low instead of to mid?
If you suffix a low-tone suffix onto a low-tone-ending base, why do you change the suffix's tone to high instead of to mid?
If you prefix a high-tone prefix onto a high-tone-beginning base, why do you change the prefix's tone to low instead of to mid?
etc.
...
Why did you choose to change the suffix's tone rather than move the base's ending tone earlier into the base? Similarly, why did you choose to change the prefix's tone rather than move the base's initial tone later into the base?
...
I am not saying the choices you made are unnaturalistic nor unrealistic; far from it! I'm only asking why you made the decisions you did make. Your reasons may have been purely aesthetic.

Spoiler:

(What would the opposite kind of reason be? Anaesthetic?)

[MrKrov]

(What would the opposite kind of reason be? Anaesthetic?)

unaesthetic

[CrazyEttin]

Two mid tones can occur consecutively in a single word, right?
...
If you suffix a high-tone suffix onto a high-tone-ending base, why do you change the suffix's tone to low instead of to mid?
If you suffix a low-tone suffix onto a low-tone-ending base, why do you change the suffix's tone to high instead of to mid?
If you prefix a high-tone prefix onto a high-tone-beginning base, why do you change the prefix's tone to low instead of to mid?
etc.

Because if there are two endings, eg. -ang and -áng, they would be identical if -áng changed to -ang instead of -àng when following a high tone.

Why did you choose to change the suffix's tone rather than move the base's ending tone earlier into the base? Similarly, why did you choose to change the prefix's tone rather than move the base's initial tone later into the base?

Because the tone is phonemic, so moving it around would create serious confusion. The changing of tone from low to high or high to low in endings and prefixes doesn't create confusion, since only two tones contrast in those (Eg. you can have -ang and either -áng or àng, but never all of the three).

I am not saying the choices you made are unnaturalistic nor unrealistic; far from it! I'm only asking why you made the decisions you did make. Your reasons may have been purely aesthetic.

Spoiler:

(What would the opposite kind of reason be? Anaesthetic?)

Actually my reasons were mostly to keep the system simple, since i've never created a tonal conlang before. In the next version of the lang, which i'm currently working on, i'm simplifying it even more into a pitch accent system.

[Omzinesý]

That's a nice lang, phonology is silly but it's meant to be.
Expressing grammatical meanings by tones is a nice idea I have been planning to employ, too.
Have yoy got acquainted with Nilo-Saharan languages. I've heared they are crazy.

- How is your vowel allophony? Are /r/ and /v/ allophones of the closed vowel?
Does /a/ have any allophony?

- You said you are scrapping the tone system, but I still ask about your 0.1 version: how is the stress realised? Normally it is the tone that makes a syllable stressed. Your stress system is by the way very Finnish-y (my all langs have that).

-The plural marker was a line above something. What does it represent?