CONLANG Digest - 18 Jul 2000 to 19 Jul 2000 (#2000-194)

> From:    Danny Wier <dawier@...>
> Subject: Re: Another phonological extreme, was: Nine
>
> Speaking of phonological extremes, who here has ever worked on a
> conlang, or studied a natlang with a *high* number of phonemes.
Daimyo language has forty-eight consonants and six vowels (er, six vowels,
or thirty counting diphthongs and pitches.)  I don't know if that's *high*
high, but it's enough to make Romanization difficult.  (The native alphabet
neatly solves all sorts of problems.)

(Brownie language has eight phonemes, having started the last time--er, time
before the last time that minimal phonologies came up.  /p t k S a e i u/,
with (C)(C)(C)CV(V) [!!] and voicing before vowels (eg /tke/ > [tge]) and
initial /pV/ to [mV].  I don't think they're regular stops though... they
might properly be ejectives;  I'm not sure, but it sounds funny.)

> From:    "SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" <smithma@...>
> Subject: Re: Vowels and Language Loudness
>
> American English would be a good counter-example of this generalization.
> We are in general, the loudest speakers I've ever met, but our vowel
> inventory is larger than average.  On the other hand, Japanese is not loud
> at all (especially females, who tend to speak IMHO too softly) yet they
> only have 5 vowels.  Chickasaw - 3 vowels, definitely louder than
> Japanese, but not as loud as Am. Eng.
Spanish is spoken pretty loud, though.
At least, ... either that or I have low patience with the native speakers I
come in contact with (pronounced "family")...

> On Wed, 19 Jul 2000, Joe Mondello wrote:
>
> > where P is a voiceless bilabial fricative (or is it F?).
Actually I think it was P\

....

Anyway I've been studying old Greek and it's pretty neat... Hadwan was
supposed to have come in contact with the koine and I'm wondering how much
influence it would have had (probably depending on how long the Terras
stayed in the area... at the very least there are some borrowings... but it
might be more sweeping than that...)    I got to thinking about what the
Romance languages would look like if they were Greek- instead of
Latin-based.  (Any conlangs like that around? ...)

Uh... yeah.

     *Muke!