Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

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ltrout99
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Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby ltrout99 » 2015-08-21, 3:00

So I am deciding to finally create a fully priori conlang, and I am deciding on the sounds for the language. Currently what I have decided upon is that there will be 2 pairs for each consonant (voiced and unvoiced) and 4 pairs for each vowel (front (rounded/unrounded) & back (rounded/unrounded)). This would leave with around 16 vowel phonemes and i'm not sure how many consonant phonemes that would be. I'm just curious as to how many phonemes your conlang has; at least how many vowel phonemes it has. Because to me, 16 different vowel sounds sound a tad bit too much to me, even though English has more than 20.
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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Sebastian.S.R » 2015-08-21, 5:59

I did something kind of like what you're doing for my conlang. I like to imagine that there were originally voiced/unvoiced versions of each consonant, and rounded/unrounded/nasal forms of each vowel. But over time, the sounds changed and the language lost many of it's phonemes.

Originally it would have had 14 consonants each with it's voiced and unvoiced counterparts.
It would have had 5 vowels, each with it's rounded, unrounded and nasal versions.

Now, it has 13 consonants, only 4 of which still have both versions.
There are still the 5 rounded/unrounded versions of the vowels, but only 2 still have nasal.


I personally don't think 16 is too much, but it's all up to you!
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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Koko » 2015-08-21, 6:37

Isyan has eight phonemic vowels, only two of which have long phonemic variants (so that would make ten vowel phonemes in total I guess?). Long variants of the other vowels do occur, but (usually) only in stressed open syllables. I won't include diphthongs, because those are a little complicated. None of these vowels are rounded pairs (unless you consider /ø/ the rounded /ɛ/, despite the former being higher. It could easily be considered the rounded partner of /ɪ/ though).

It has 25 consonant phonemes. 26 if you consider either [ʎ] or [ʃː] a phoneme. 27 if both. Even though all consonants but /h/ may be geminated, it is disputed whether /ʃ/ has a long form or not, given there is no minimal pair between the two, but simply allophonic existence. This is a similar case with [ʎ], which can be considered an allophone of /lj/. However, there seems to be at least one minimal pair between /lj/ and /ʎ/: slyota when said [ˈsljoːtɑ] is simply "bubble," but as [ˈsʎoːtɑ] refers to a bubbleberry.

I think I took your request further than you'd want, but whatever :lol: Let's just say 10 vowels and 27 consonants :mrgreen: (as phonemes)

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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Irkan » 2015-08-21, 13:17

As for me, I feally quite uncomfortable having a lot of phonemes, specially vowels. Chuhuntali started with ten vowels —[i] [u] [e] [o] [a] [iː] [uː] [eː] [oː] [aː]—, the it lost the length distinction, falling to five, and now it only has three: [i], [u] and [a].

For the consonants, I don't use voiced-unvoiced pairs but tenuis-fortis pairs, specifically a tense-long (can be aspirated) vs lax-short contrast: [p͈ː(ʰ)] vs [p]. There's six tenuis plosives with five fortis counterparts —[ʔ] doesn't have a pair—, five fricatives, three nasals, two affricates and four approximants, which make a total of 25.

So, in total, 25 consonants + 3 vowels: 28 phonemes.
Last edited by Irkan on 2015-08-22, 9:55, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Levike » 2015-08-21, 15:16

These are all the sounds my language has.

I basically put all the sounds that I like and can also pronounce.

ConsonantsVowels
/p/ , /b/
/t/, /d/
/k/, /ɡ/
/f/, /v/
/s/, /z/
/j/, /h/
/l/, /r/
/m/, /n/
/ts/
/ɒ/, /a:/
/ɛ/, /e:/
/i/, /i:/
/o/, /o:/
/u/, /u:/

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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Mentilliath » 2015-08-21, 17:19

^That was the criteria for mine as well: "sounds I like and can pronounce". As much as I find vowels like /ɜ/ and /ɤ/ and /ɵ/ interesting, they all sound the same to my ears.

I have five vowels with long and short counterparts. I do have a possible sixth schwa sound, but I don't seem to be using it much. So I may just scrap that one altogether.
Primary Conlang: Halvian
Additional conlangs: Hesternese (Aikedenejo), Galsaic (sister language of Halvian), and Ogygian (unrelated to the others.

Koko

Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Koko » 2015-08-21, 21:49

Mentilliath wrote:I have five vowels with long and short counterparts. I do have a possible sixth schwa sound, but I don't seem to be using it much. So I may just scrap that one altogether.

NUU!! You should keep it. You liked having more than the basic five vowels :( And besides, there's lots of sounds in many languages that don't get much use ;)

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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Dormouse559 » 2015-08-22, 0:04

Distribute the schwa like /θ/ and /ð/ are in English. They appear in very few words, but the words they do appear in are incredibly common.
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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Mentilliath » 2015-08-22, 1:07

I'll think about it. Thing is, I didn't want the sixth vowel (its pronunciation seems to vary a bit depending on the word--it originally wasn't specifically a schwa) to just be a reduced vowel...when I first created this "sixth vowel", it was the stressed vowel in a few nouns. If I can come up with some more words I like the sound of where it's a stressed vowel, I'll consider keeping it in :)
Last edited by Mentilliath on 2015-08-22, 1:51, edited 1 time in total.
Primary Conlang: Halvian
Additional conlangs: Hesternese (Aikedenejo), Galsaic (sister language of Halvian), and Ogygian (unrelated to the others.

Koko

Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Koko » 2015-08-22, 1:31

"Arbëta" (penult stress)?? I like that… :mrgreen:

What it means, I know not :P

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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Irkan » 2015-08-22, 9:55

Just to add up on this. Remeber how I said I don't particularly enjoy large phonemes inventories?, I am seriously thinking of cutting palatal and labiovelar topsin Chuhuntali, which would take from 25 consonants to 21.

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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Ahzoh » 2015-08-22, 10:14

Vrkhazhian's phonemes are rather interesting: http://www.frathwiki.com/%CA%BEA%C5%A1d ... #Phonology
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Re: Vowel and Consonant Phonemes in your conlang!

Postby Патрислав Андреевич » 2015-08-23, 0:03

Ndasjä-tjenkjäles! Greetings! (Lit. may you all be healthy)

Consonant inventory for a conlang I've been working on recently, Bordish (Bjordn zarku):
Image

The whole system is based on a 4 degrees of consonant mutation for obstruents, and 2 degrees for the remaining ones. The mutations are sprirantisation and palatalisation, and they can appear together. In total there are 35 consonant phonemes. Four of them can also be used as syllabic nuclei, namely m̩, n̩, r̩, and l̩.

As for vowels, it's very simple:

FrontBack
Closeiu
Mid
Openæɑ


41 phonemes in total. And I don't think it's that many. :P

Bjäsn ˀuxturje ndasa-xalm! Goodbye! (Lit. may your journey be safe)


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