Lagomorphese - Do These Phonemes Make Sense?

[AstroWildcat]

(Copying and Pasting from my vintagecivet Reddit post)

I'm creating a proto-langauge for what are essentially sentient, anthro rabbits ~295 million years in the future.

I want this language to have an overall softer sound, but I also want the sounds made to be plausibly made by a rabbit, assuming these evolved ones are not nose-breathers. This means following their mouth anatomy, which means no bilabial, labiodental, uvualar, or glottal noises.

So here's the charts I have so far:

Code: Select all

|                     | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Pharyngeal |
|---------------------|--------|----------|-----------|---------|-------|------------|
| Plosive             |        | d        |           |         | k g   |            |
| Nasal               |        |          |           | ɲ       |       |            |
| Frictative          | θ      | s        |           |         |       | ħ          |
| Lateral Frictative  |        | ɬ        |           |         |       |            |
| Approximant         |        |          | ɻ         | j       |       |            |
| Lateral Approximant |        | l        | ɭ         |         |       |            |
| Affricate           |        | ts       |           |         |       |            |

These are all possible consonants I was looking at for this language.

Their vowels will be a standard /a e i o u/ with an ə and ɑ thrown in.

Are there any suggestions on how to tweak this to make it better and to achieve the two goals listed above?

EDIT: Realized I may have posted this in the wrong subtopic. Might move it over to Beginner's Corner.

[Arayaz]

I'm not an expert on rabbits, but I will say if they have ɬ and ts, then they probably should have tɬ.

Engála is a rabbit language made by David J. Peterson and Jessie Sams. Look it up on LangTime Studios on Youtube (it's Season 1).

[WeepingElf]

There is also Lapine, the language of the rabbits in Richard Adams's Watership Down.

[AstroWildcat]

I'm not an expert on rabbits, but I will say if they have ɬ and ts, then they probably should have tɬ.

Engála is a rabbit language made by David J. Peterson and Jessie Sams. Look it up on LangTime Studios on Youtube (it's Season 1).

Thank you, I totally forgot about that. Also I checked out their language, and it was pretty helpful with giving me some ideas on how to go about the direction of my conlang.

There is also Lapine, the language of the rabbits in Richard Adams's Watership Down.

That's a good point! I was afraid of potentially copying his ideas, as his work was a huge inspiration to me in middle school. Very interesting to see some of the language's influences come from Adams' time studying Arabic!

[qwed117]

I'm creating a proto-langauge for what are essentially sentient, anthro rabbits ~295 million years in the future.

I want this language to have an overall softer sound, but I also want the sounds made to be plausibly made by a rabbit, assuming these evolved ones are not nose-breathers. This means following their mouth anatomy, which means no bilabial, labiodental, uvualar, or glottal noises.

So here's the charts I have so far:

Code: Select all

|                     | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Pharyngeal |
|---------------------|--------|----------|-----------|---------|-------|------------|
| Plosive             |        | d        |           |         | k g   |            |
| Nasal               |        |          |           | ɲ       |       |            |
| Frictative          | θ      | s        |           |         |       | ħ          |
| Lateral Frictative  |        | ɬ        |           |         |       |            |
| Approximant         |        |          | ɻ         | j       |       |            |
| Lateral Approximant |        | l        | ɭ         |         |       |            |
| Affricate           |        | ts       |           |         |       |            |

These are all possible consonants I was looking at for this language.

Their vowels will be a standard /a e i o u/ with an ə and ɑ thrown in.

Are there any suggestions on how to tweak this to make it better and to achieve the two goals listed above?

EDIT: Realized I may have posted this in the wrong subtopic. Might move it over to Beginner's Corner.

I'm not certain why rabbits wouldn't have a labial stop PoA? Rabbits also definitely have a glottis (why there are surprisingly many papers on rabbit tracheas is another question for another day). Watching some videos on rabbit sounds might give you some ideas. Rabbit grunts sound decidedly glottal to pharyngeal to me. Rabbits also use bidental percussives, rough phonations. With that said, I don't think rabbit anatomy allows strong control over lip muscles. In essence, it would be difficult for them to produce a wide range of vowels. In humans rounding allows us to further differentiate the back vowels from the front vowels, but I think it'd be more likely for a lagomorph to produce an entirely vertical vowel inventory. The epiglottis of a rabbit is fairly close to the velum, is it possible that the rabbit could essentially make entirely nasal sounds rather than using the oral cavity as a resonator?

There's a lot of options to go from