The Human Languages of Yantas

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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote:I kind of fell behind on my work on Yantas for the week again. It's always work [:P] I remember that I had an idea about them, but annoyingly didn't write it down so I've completely forgotten what it was.
Oh, no, I'm sorry to hear that. [:(]
sangi39 wrote:What I might do, though, is get back to naming the various areas of Yantas, something I started doing back in April, but never really progressed with. So at the moment I'm mostly filling in some gaps in the world with names which I can refer back to. At this stage, I won't be referring to any states/countries/nations though, just geographic features. I'll get to things like countries eventually, when I start working on history, but right now I'm really just setting things up as best I can before moving forward.
Good idea! Sorry if I've accidentally overlooked the answers to these, but do you have any thoughts as of now regarding what point in history states might start showing up, and if so, where the first states might exist in different regions of the world, and what those states might be like, at least generally?
sangi39 wrote:This means that the Proto-Sirdic, Proto-Skawlas and Lesi Kirra threads might be fairly quiet for a while, although I may attempt some translations with the vocabulary I have so far, just to show the languages actually working.
It would be really cool, in my opinion, to see some translations of any length in those languages.
sangi39 wrote:There's a slight chance I might also start working a bit more on Proto-Mesit, but we'll see how that goes [:)]
Looking forward to seeing this as well if you decide to go down that road, so to speak. [:D]
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote:I kind of fell behind on my work on Yantas for the week again. It's always work [:P] I remember that I had an idea about them, but annoyingly didn't write it down so I've completely forgotten what it was.
Oh, no, I'm sorry to hear that. [:(]
Meh, it happens. I tend to conlang/world on my days off. If I don't have any, then I don't get an work done, or at east nothing major or serious.


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote:What I might do, though, is get back to naming the various areas of Yantas, something I started doing back in April, but never really progressed with. So at the moment I'm mostly filling in some gaps in the world with names which I can refer back to. At this stage, I won't be referring to any states/countries/nations though, just geographic features. I'll get to things like countries eventually, when I start working on history, but right now I'm really just setting things up as best I can before moving forward.
Good idea! Sorry if I've accidentally overlooked the answers to these, but do you have any thoughts as of now regarding what point in history states might start showing up, and if so, where the first states might exist in different regions of the world, and what those states might be like, at least generally?
I'm thinking agriculture would have turned up around 10-8,000BC, as in our world, in various regions at about the same time. The first "states", at least with a form of writing, would probably turn up around 4-3,000BC in western Sirden, likely representing one of the Nemita languages, and writing might also have appeared in the Skawlas-speaking regions at around the same time, but representing a now extinct language.

The map of languages at this point shows the distribution of language families much later (1AD), so states, kingdoms and even empires will likely exist at that stage. The Kusan Empire (home to the Sirdic language, Classical Kusan), for example, spreads across a large portion of the western coast of Sirden, as well as several islands. It borders another fairy large empire covering the rest of the coastal regions and most of the Sword Islands.

That's all I have worked out for that.


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote:This means that the Proto-Sirdic, Proto-Skawlas and Lesi Kirra threads might be fairly quiet for a while, although I may attempt some translations with the vocabulary I have so far, just to show the languages actually working.
It would be really cool, in my opinion, to see some translations of any length in those languages.
I'm hoping that if I post short translations first, then longer translations might be easier, and that way the grammar might fill itself out too.


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote:There's a slight chance I might also start working a bit more on Proto-Mesit, but we'll see how that goes [:)]
Looking forward to seeing this as well if you decide to go down that road, so to speak. [:D]
I might throw out some sketches to start with, see how it goes. It won't be anything too in-depth in the beginning :)
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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The Nemita Languages

Image

Spoken in the red-in-blue areas in the map above at around 1AD in our timeline, the surviving Nemita languages are the remnants of a much more widely spoken language family that has been replaced over time by the Sirdic languages (in blue) which originated further south.

The phonology for Proto-Nemita (spoken at roughly the same time as Proto-Sirdic, i.e. ~3000BC or so, was briefly discussed in the Conlangs Q&A Thread, here, with the defining characteristic of the language being pitch accent and stress-determined allophony of both consonants and vowels. The main reason for posting about this language family is that I'd quite like to have a set of languages from which loans could come from so for the moment I'm not likely to throw much in the way of grammar into it.



Consonants

/pʰ tʰ kʰ qʰ/ <p t k q>
/p t k q/ <b d g y>
/p' t' k' q'/ <p' t' k' q'>
/f s x~χ/ <f s h>
/m n/ <m n>
/r l/ <r l>
/w j/ <w j>

Nothing too fancy, really, but something I think I could mess around with fairly easily.


Vowels

/i ɨ u/ <i ị u>
/e o/ <e o>
/a/ <a>

Again, nothing too over the top, although it does get a bit more interesting when stress comes into play.


Pitch Accent

Pitch accent is marked by a high pitch on the accented syllable, followed by a gradual downward shift in tone until the next accented syllable appears within the phrase. Each non-compound root can only take one accented syllable which can appear in any syllable within that word, or on none at all.


Stress

Stress plays the largest role in allophony for Proto-Nemita. As mentioned above, it affects both consonants and vowels.

Primary stress is randomly placed on the final three syllables of a full word.

Secondary stress cannot appear adjacent to primary stress, nor can it appear on the final syllable of a word. Before the final three syllables of a full word, secondary stress placement is predominantly predictable, falling on every odd syllable backwards through the word, although it shifts backwards one step further if the preceding syllable is heavy and the preceding odd syllable becomes unstressed. The next available placement for secondary stress takes primary stress and so on and so on.

/nemitʰa/, for example, could be stressed on any syllable (with secondary stress on the first syllable if the final one is stressed), but /sonnemitʰala/ could stressed in any of the following ways:

/'son.neˌmi.tʰaˈla/
/ˌson.ne.miˈtʰa.la/
/ˌson.neˈmi.tʰa.la/


Consonant allophony

/pʰ tʰ kʰ qʰ/ > [p t k q] when the onset of an unstressed syllable
/p t k q/ > [b d g ɢ] when the onset of an unstressed syllable
/p' t' k' q'/ > [ɓ ɗ ɠ ʛ] when the onset of an unstressed syllable
/f s x~χ/ > [v z ɣ~ʁ] when the onset of an unstressed syllable
/m n/ > [bm dn] when the onset of a stressed syllable (primary only)
/r l/ > [ɹ̝ ɮ] when the onset of a stressed syllable (primary only)
/w j/ > [ɣʷ ʝ] when the onset of a stressed syllable (primary only)

The only consonants which may appear as coda consonants are /s x~χ m~n n r l w j/.


Vowel allophony

/i ɨ u e o a/ > [i ɨ u e o a] in syllables carrying secondary stress, or in closed syllables carrying primary stress
/i ɨ u e o a/ > [i: ɨ: u: e: o: a:] in open syllables carrying primary stress
/i ɨ u e o a/ > [ɪ ə ʊ ɛ ɔ ɐ] in unstressed syllables

This gives the following realisations for /sonnemitala/:

/ˈson.nɛˌmi.tɐˈla:/
/ˌson.nɛ.mɪˈtʰa:.lɐ/
/ˌson.nɛˈbmi:.tɐ.lɐ/

Excluding placement of pitch accent.


And that's all I have so far [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote:
Spoiler:
Image
Spoken in the red-in-blue areas in the map above at around 1AD in our timeline, the surviving Nemita languages are the remnants of a much more widely spoken language family that has been replaced over time by the Sirdic languages (in blue) which originated further south.
I assume you mean the red-in-dark blue? Also, just to make sure, is that brown at the tip of the westernmost-stretching island chain that's mostly dark blue?
sangi39 wrote: The phonology for Proto-Nemita (spoken at roughly the same time as Proto-Sirdic, i.e. ~3000BC or so, was briefly discussed in the Conlangs Q&A Thread, here, with the defining characteristic of the language being pitch accent and stress-determined allophony of both consonants and vowels. The main reason for posting about this language family is that I'd quite like to have a set of languages from which loans could come from so for the moment I'm not likely to throw much in the way of grammar into it.
All very cool. [:D] Hopefully we get to see more of this language and others in the future!
sangi39 wrote: /p t k q/ <b d g y>
Interesting, particularly <y> for /q/.
sangi39 wrote: Pitch accent is marked by a high pitch on the accented syllable, followed by a gradual downward shift in tone until the next accented syllable appears within the phrase. Each non-compound root can only take one accented syllable which can appear in any syllable within that word, or on none at all.
Are pitch accent, stress, and allophony reflected in the orthography at all? Sorry if I've missed the answer to this somewhere.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote:
Spoiler:
Image
Spoken in the red-in-blue areas in the map above at around 1AD in our timeline, the surviving Nemita languages are the remnants of a much more widely spoken language family that has been replaced over time by the Sirdic languages (in blue) which originated further south.
I assume you mean the red-in-dark blue? Also, just to make sure, is that brown at the tip of the westernmost-stretching island chain that's mostly dark blue?
Sorry, yeah, red-in-dark blue [:)]

And that is an area of brown on the Sword Islands there, representing the Ilija languages as of 1AD [:)] (lots and lots of maps everywhere, lol, so even I had to look that one up to see if I'd missed anything)


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: The phonology for Proto-Nemita (spoken at roughly the same time as Proto-Sirdic, i.e. ~3000BC or so, was briefly discussed in the Conlangs Q&A Thread, here, with the defining characteristic of the language being pitch accent and stress-determined allophony of both consonants and vowels. The main reason for posting about this language family is that I'd quite like to have a set of languages from which loans could come from so for the moment I'm not likely to throw much in the way of grammar into it.
All very cool. [:D] Hopefully we get to see more of this language and others in the future!
Yeah, progress for me effectively stalled after I wrote that post. [insert vague "not a good time" statement here]

I'm hoping to get back into conlanging again, but I'm not sure I'm posting on the board in general very much at the moment. Mostly lurking. We'll see [:)]


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: /p t k q/ <b d g y>
Interesting, particularly <y> for /q/.
Yeah, I usually use <y> to indicate palatalisation, /ɢ/, /ʁ/ or /ɣ/, but since I'm using the typically "voiced plosive" letters for /p t k/ it made sense to switch it over.


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: Pitch accent is marked by a high pitch on the accented syllable, followed by a gradual downward shift in tone until the next accented syllable appears within the phrase. Each non-compound root can only take one accented syllable which can appear in any syllable within that word, or on none at all.
Are pitch accent, stress, and allophony reflected in the orthography at all? Sorry if I've missed the answer to this somewhere.
I did actually miss that out. Since both are primary irregular, it does make sense to mark them in some way. I was thinking an acute accent for pitch accent, a grave accent for stress and then a circumflex for when they appear in the same syllable.

As for allophony, I don't think I'll be representing that at this stage. Given how much there can be, it could get a bit messy to mark it all, and it's entirely dependent on stress anyway, so it's kind of marked out enough by the grave accent.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote: Sorry, yeah, red-in-dark blue [:)]

And that is an area of brown on the Sword Islands there, representing the Ilija languages as of 1AD [:)] (lots and lots of maps everywhere, lol, so even I had to look that one up to see if I'd missed anything)
Ahh, OK, got it! [:D]
sangi39 wrote: Yeah, progress for me effectively stalled after I wrote that post. [insert vague "not a good time" statement here]

I'm hoping to get back into conlanging again, but I'm not sure I'm posting on the board in general very much at the moment. Mostly lurking. We'll see [:)]
Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. I've been feeling stuck/stalled conlanging-wise as well lately.
sangi39 wrote: Yeah, I usually use <y> to indicate palatalisation, /ɢ/, /ʁ/ or /ɣ/, but since I'm using the typically "voiced plosive" letters for /p t k/ it made sense to switch it over.
Yeah, I figured. It does make sense.
sangi39 wrote: I did actually miss that out. Since both are primary irregular, it does make sense to mark them in some way. I was thinking an acute accent for pitch accent, a grave accent for stress and then a circumflex for when they appear in the same syllable.

As for allophony, I don't think I'll be representing that at this stage. Given how much there can be, it could get a bit messy to mark it all, and it's entirely dependent on stress anyway, so it's kind of marked out enough by the grave accent.
Good ideas!
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

Post by sangi39 »

shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: Yeah, progress for me effectively stalled after I wrote that post. [insert vague "not a good time" statement here]

I'm hoping to get back into conlanging again, but I'm not sure I'm posting on the board in general very much at the moment. Mostly lurking. We'll see [:)]
Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. I've been feeling stuck/stalled conlanging-wise as well lately.
Yeah, I saw that you hadn't logged in in a while. Glad to see you back, though [:)]


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: Yeah, I usually use <y> to indicate palatalisation, /ɢ/, /ʁ/ or /ɣ/, but since I'm using the typically "voiced plosive" letters for /p t k/ it made sense to switch it over.
Yeah, I figured. It does make sense.
I think I got it from a misreading of a Mongolian romanisation that used gamma for /ɢ/ and since it always appeared in italics, I read it as being <y> /ɢ/ (the font may have had something to do with it as well).


sangi39 wrote: I did actually miss that out. Since both are primary irregular, it does make sense to mark them in some way. I was thinking an acute accent for pitch accent, a grave accent for stress and then a circumflex for when they appear in the same syllable.

As for allophony, I don't think I'll be representing that at this stage. Given how much there can be, it could get a bit messy to mark it all, and it's entirely dependent on stress anyway, so it's kind of marked out enough by the grave accent.
Good ideas![/quote]

Thanks [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote: Yeah, I saw that you hadn't logged in in a while. Glad to see you back, though [:)]
Thank you!
sangi39 wrote: I think I got it from a misreading of a Mongolian romanisation that used gamma for /ɢ/ and since it always appeared in italics, I read it as being <y> /ɢ/ (the font may have had something to do with it as well).
Ohh, interesting, I can definitely understand that happening. I love it when inspiration comes from a misinterpretation of what one is reading.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

Post by sangi39 »

shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: Yeah, I saw that you hadn't logged in in a while. Glad to see you back, though [:)]
Thank you!
You're very welcome. Don't see much in the way of conlanging/worlding from you, but you always seem to turn up to ask questions basically everywhere. It's quite nice to see that kind of interaction when normally a thread might otherwise be fairly empty [:)]


shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: I think I got it from a misreading of a Mongolian romanisation that used gamma for /ɢ/ and since it always appeared in italics, I read it as being <y> /ɢ/ (the font may have had something to do with it as well).
Ohh, interesting, I can definitely understand that happening. I love it when inspiration comes from a misinterpretation of what one is reading.
Yeah, it doesn't happen often, but I think that one happened long enough ago that it's just stuck with me and I don't tend to use <y> for much beyond "voiced uvular thing" [:P]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote:You're very welcome. Don't see much in the way of conlanging/worlding from you, but you always seem to turn up to ask questions basically everywhere. It's quite nice to see that kind of interaction when normally a thread might otherwise be fairly empty [:)]
Heh, thanks again. I have been having some "conlanger's block", but I still like to comment on things to show how glad I am to have found other people with similar hobbies to mine and to be able to see their work. [:D]
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote:You're very welcome. Don't see much in the way of conlanging/worlding from you, but you always seem to turn up to ask questions basically everywhere. It's quite nice to see that kind of interaction when normally a thread might otherwise be fairly empty [:)]
Heh, thanks again. I have been having some "conlanger's block", but I still like to comment on things to show how glad I am to have found other people with similar hobbies to mine and to be able to see their work. [:D]
Now that's an idea that I really like. I don't tend to comment much on people's conlangs, including new threads, but I do read them. When I can, though, I like the try and answer questions in the Q&A sections. Sometimes I end up having to do some research to come up with an answer, and sometimes that leads to some inspiration (Proto-Sirdic's noun class and agreement system came about through that sort of process).

Conlanger's block, though? Urgh, I hate conlanger's block, especially when it last for weeks or months on end.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote: Now that's an idea that I really like. I don't tend to comment much on people's conlangs, including new threads, but I do read them. When I can, though, I like the try and answer questions in the Q&A sections. Sometimes I end up having to do some research to come up with an answer, and sometimes that leads to some inspiration (Proto-Sirdic's noun class and agreement system came about through that sort of process).

Conlanger's block, though? Urgh, I hate conlanger's block, especially when it last for weeks or months on end.
You know, I should try doing that more often; I'd never considered the part about finding inspiration through doing research to answer people's questions. I usually just respond when I'm confident enough with the answer that comes to my mind.

Definitely, it's an awful frustration.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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shimobaatar wrote:
sangi39 wrote: Now that's an idea that I really like. I don't tend to comment much on people's conlangs, including new threads, but I do read them. When I can, though, I like the try and answer questions in the Q&A sections. Sometimes I end up having to do some research to come up with an answer, and sometimes that leads to some inspiration (Proto-Sirdic's noun class and agreement system came about through that sort of process).

Conlanger's block, though? Urgh, I hate conlanger's block, especially when it last for weeks or months on end.
You know, I should try doing that more often; I'd never considered the part about finding inspiration through doing research to answer people's questions. I usually just respond when I'm confident enough with the answer that comes to my mind.
That's my usual way of doing things, i.e. answering when I'm confident, but sometimes someone asks just the right question for me to go "huh, let's have a look" and sometimes you get something amazing from it, whether it relate to phonology, morphology or syntax.


shimobaatar wrote:Definitely, it's an awful frustration.
I'm slowly getting there. Right now I'm trying to get back into a habit of surrounding myself with different languages in a non-musical context, so a lot more anime, I've been watching the Icelandic Næturvaktin series and then I've been trying to watch some foreign stand-up. Hopefully that will put me more in a mood to explore, and then I'll throw some of that into conlanging [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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sangi39 wrote: That's my usual way of doing things, i.e. answering when I'm confident, but sometimes someone asks just the right question for me to go "huh, let's have a look" and sometimes you get something amazing from it, whether it relate to phonology, morphology or syntax.
sangi39 wrote: I'm slowly getting there. Right now I'm trying to get back into a habit of surrounding myself with different languages in a non-musical context, so a lot more anime, I've been watching the Icelandic Næturvaktin series and then I've been trying to watch some foreign stand-up. Hopefully that will put me more in a mood to explore, and then I'll throw some of that into conlanging [:)]
I definitely think I should do more of both of these things myself. [:D]
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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So it's been about 9 months since I've even touched the languages of Yantas (and close to 6 since I've even touched Yantas as all), and over a year since I've touched the three main language families, but I thought I'd throw some random vocab ideas out there.

I'm certainly not dropping this project. It's just become difficult to motivate myself to do anything outside of work throughout 2016.

Anyway, vocab time. What I normally do is randomly generate roots using a combination of a random number generator and list of monosyllabic and bisyllabic roots, about 30,000 to 50,000 entries each, but occasionally I like to throw in words taken from real-life. Easter eggs, basically.

So far I have the Proto-Skawlas word for "elephant", /'pʰin.kʰa/ ['pin.kʰə] binkë, which comes from the pink elephants of Disney's Dumbo, and the Proto-Sirdic word pinkes (root, pink-), meaning "a strong alcoholic beverage", from the same thing.

I was also thinking of throwing in /pʰrat'ʂit/ [pʰrəʈ'ʂit] prëḍṣid (identical in the plural) into Proto-Skawlas, meaning "story-teller", from Terry Pratchett's surname, and then /'ter.riar/ ['ter.rer] terrer (stem: terri-) into Proto-Sirdic as something like "wise man" or "dispenser of knowledge", and finally [nyaxa] terri and [qido] terri in Lesi Kirra as "wizard" and "deity" respectively, all from "Terry".

I want to throw in little other ones every so often, like /'wes.lias/ ['wesles] wesles in Proto-Sirdic for "to silence oneself" From "Wesley", i.e. Wesley Crusher... [:P]. Just small things like that [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

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Image

I posted this over on the "random phonology/phonemic inventory" thread, but I want to apply it to Proto-Gadar, the ancestral language to the Gadar languages (spoken in 1AD in the orange region):



Consonants

/p t ʔ/ (P) <p t q>
/b~β~m d~ɾ~n h₁~ŋ/ (B) <b~m d~n g~g̃> (<m n g̃> are used to represent the nasal allophones)
/s h₂/ (F) <s h>
/l j/ (R) <l j>

Consonants are divided into 4 groups based primarily on their manner of articulation, noted as P (voiceless plosives), B (voiced plosives ~ voiced fricatives ~ nasals), F (fricatives), R (approximants) as a shorthand.

/h₁/ and /h₂/ are phonetically identical when /h₁/ isn't a nasal, both being realised as [h]. Further explanation shall be covered below under allophony.



Vowels

/i/ <i>
/(ə) o/ <(e) o>
/ã/ <a>

/ã/ is always nasalised, while nasalisation of other vowels is purely allophonic.



Syllable Structure

Syllables are strictly CV, with onsets being obligatory. No consonants can appear as a coda and consonant clusters are prohibited.



Stress

Stress is penultimate. In non-compound words, "secondary" stress appears every even syllable back through a word after primary stress, e.g. ˌCV.CVˌCV.CVˈCV.CV. Syllables carrying stress further back in the word act in the same way as final stressed syllables.

Stress is primarily realised as a mix of vowel length and pitch, with stressed vowels being slightly longer than unstressed one. Pitch rises through a word, peaking on the syllable carrying primary stress where the level drops down again.



Allophony

Palatalisation

/i/ causes palatalises preceding consonants to a certain degree, but this is most noticeable for the alveolar sounds /t d~ɾ~n s l/ which are realised as [tɕ dʑ~ʑ~ndʑ ɕ ʎ̟] respectively. This palatalisation is not indicated orthographically.


Nasalisation

/ã/ causes preceding "B" to become nasal which in turn causes the preceding vowel to become nasalised, e.g. /tibã/ > [ˈtɕĩmã] tima.

/ã/ also causes following "B" to become nasal, e.g. /pãdi/ > [ˈpãndʑi] pani.

Note, however, that nasalisation of the following vowel does not occur in this instance (not [ˈpãndʑĩ]). Similarly, "B" preceding nasalised non-/ã/ vowels do not become nasal, e.g. /doh₁ã/ > [ˈdõŋã] dog̃a, not [ˈnõŋã] nog̃a.



Spirantisation

Between vowels (when neither vowel is /ã/), "B" consonants become voiced fricatives, e.g. /ʔobi/ > [ˈʔoβi] qobi



The Two Hs

The difference between /h₁/ and /h₂/ lies in the former being subject to nasalisation while the latter is not, with /h₁/ deriving from older *g. /h₂/ also appears in order to break up vowel clusters.

/h₁/ thus appears as [ŋ] when adjacent to /ã/ while /h₂/ appears as [h]. There is no synchronic indication of whether an [h]~[ŋ] should be present in a word or not and must be learnt by speakers of the language.



The Schwa

/ə/ is an epenthetic vowel appearing to break consonant clusters. It is typically pronounced as [a] but without causing any nasalisation, either preceding or following, although it is subject to nasalisation. When stressed it appears instead as [*i] but does not trigger preceding palatalisation.

The result of this allophony is that it can produce minimal pairs such as [ˈti] vs. [ˈtɕi] or [ba] vs. [mã].

Orthographically this sound is always represented as <e>, regardless of surface pronunciation, thus [ˈti] appears as te and [ba] as be



Further Vowel Allophony

/i/ and /o/ are subject to changes affected by both stress, position in the word, and the vowels of surrounding syllables.

/o/
- Stressed: [o]
- Unstressed
- - [*u ] when the following syllable contains /i/
- - [*u ] when word-final
- - [o] elsewhere

/i/
- Stressed: [*i ]
- Unstressed:
- - [ẽ] when the following syllable contains /ã/
- - [*i ] elsewhere

As mentioned above, whether stressed or unstressed, all instances of /ã/ cause the vowel of an immediately preceding vowel to become nasalised.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

Post by sangi39 »

So just to throw another phoneme inventory out there, and this time for a language family in Konyur, which I've largely ignored, I thought I'd attach something to the Siwida language family, spoken in the yellow area below:

Image


The languages of this particular family, especially those in the north-western coastal area, would have some interaction with the northern Skawlan languages (which is why I chose this particular family to work with).

The phoneme inventory of Proto-Siwida is possibly looked at best from a slightly historical perspective, to aid in understanding morphophonological processes.



Consonants

/p t ts k/ [p~f~w~h t ts k]
/p: t: t:s k:/ [ʰp: ʰt: ʰt:s xk]
/b d dz g/ [v d dz g]
/b: d: d:z g:/ [b: d: d:z g:]
/m n ŋ/ [m~b n ʔ]
/m: n: ŋ:/ [bm dn gŋ]
/s h/ [s~z h]
/s:/ [s:]
/r l/ [r l]
/r: l:/ [dɹ̝ dɮ]
/w j/ [w j]
/w: j:/ [gw gj]

/p/ is [f] before stressed /u/ and [w] before unstressed /u/, and [h] elsewhere, except when preceded by /n/ or /ŋ/ when it's just [p]
/s/ is [z] when between vowels
/m/ is [*b] word-initially



Vowels

/i y u/ [i~ɪ y~ɪ u~ɯ̽]
/e ɘ/ [e~e ɘ~ɤ]
/ɛ ʌ/ [ɛ~a ʌ~ɤ]
/ɑ/ [ɑ~a]
/r l n w j/ [ɨr~r ɨl~l ɨn~ã ɨw~u ɨj~i]

The allophones shown on the left appear in stressed syllables, while those on the right appear in unstressed syllables.



Syllable Structure

The basic syllable structure is (C)V(n/r/l/w/j/Q/ŋ), although if the nucleus is one of /n r l w j/ then the syllable must be open.

Q, similar to Japanese and Finnish, represents a "chroneme", most often the doubling of the following consonant. However, it may also appear word-finally where it appears as [ʔ] (distinct from /ŋ/~[ʔ], which can also only appear word-finally, elsewhere it merges into [n]).



Stress

Stress affects vowel quality, as noted above, usually appearing on the final syllable of a word (the majority of words are two syllables long, but some suffixes and prefixes are employed that increase this number to three or four syllables and also leads to stress movement).



Morphophonology

The main aspect of morphologically determined phonetic change involves the "gemination" of consonants that, without an historical perspective, appear somewhat random.

For example, should /w/ be geminated, it could appear as either [gw] or [ʰp:].

Similarly, should /ʔ/ be followed by a consonant, this can either lead to gemination or a nasal-initial clusters, e.g. [ʔt] > [ʰt:] or [nt] depending on the origin of the glottal stop (this further means that /ʔw/ could be realised as any of [gw], [ʰp:], [mw] or [mp])

The majority of consonants, though, are quite predictable /Qd/ is always [d:], /Qs/ is always [s:] and so on.
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Re: The Languages of Yantas

Post by sangi39 »

So I've tried to work on a sort of Yantas-IPA, which is pretty diacritic-heavy compared to IPA, but this is what I have for consonants:

/m n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ/ <m n ṅ ń ŋ ŋ̇>
/p t ʈ c k q ʔ/ <p t ṭ ṯ k ḳ q>
/b d ɖ ɟ g ɢ/ <b d ḍ ḏ g ġ>
/ts tʃ ʈʂ tɕ/ <c č ċ ć>
/dz dʒ ɖʐ dʑ/ <ʒ ǯ ʒ̇ ʒ́>
/s ʃ ʂ ɕ/ <s š ṡ ś>
/z ʒ ʐ ʑ/ <z ž ż ź>
/f θ ç x χ ħ h/ <f ș x́~ʂ x ẋ ḥ h>
/v ð ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ɦ/ <v z̦ ý~ʐ y ẏ ɦ̣ ɦ>
/w j ɰ/ <w j ẇ>
/r ɽ ʀ/ <r ṙ ṟ>
/l ɭ ʎ ʟ/ <l ḷ ĺ ḻ>
/ɬ ɮ/ <ł ƶ>
/tɬ dɮ/ <ŧ đ>

In most cases, there is a systematic approach to what each diacritic represents, under- and overdots most often representing backing, acutes for palatals (except in the case of plosives where the "further-backing" underbar is used), haceks for post-alveolars, etc. The under-hook represents "dentals" (and thus can be used for dental plosives as well)

Voiceless nasals, laterals, approximants and trills are represented with a preceding superscript <h>.

Ejectives and implosives are marked by a following superscript <'> after the pulmonic counterpart letter.

Aspiration, labialisation and palatalisation are marked as they are in IPA, while velarisation is marked with a superscript <y> and pharyngealisation is marked with a superscript <x>.

Clicks follow a modified Kirschenbaum representation, e.g. /ʘ ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ/ <p! t! ł! k! ṯ!> and <b! d! ƶ! g! ḏ!> for their voiced counterparts. The nasal clicks are represented using the corresponding nasal, except for <nł!> and <nƶ!>.

In instances where ambiguity may occur, especially with clicks, and interpunct <·>. In some texts, there are no instances of superscript letters, so the interpunct is used more regularly, e.g. /n nʲ n.j/ in standard notation would be <n nʲ nj>, but without diacritics it appears as <n nj n·j>.

However, some writers modify the sounds certain letters represent, especially where some phonemic contrasts aren't made, e.g. <ń> might stand in for /nʲ/ if there are no phonemic instances of /ɲ/, thus freeing <nj> to unambiguously represent /nj/ and <p> vs. <b> might represent a difference in voicing, aspiration, glottalisation, etc. in languages with a binary plosive contrast.

There is some variation in the representation of palatal fricatives in narrow transcriptions. Some use <x́ ý> for the sake of consistency, while most use <ʂ ʐ>.

Unfortunately, not all consonants are represented here, but I'll likely figure something out [:)]

Now onto vowels!
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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