no, watch your last video, you put some non-alveolar trill resembling the letter R by using your throat. But it was closer than the episode you hosted wwith Andi
I wrote a Python script that generates words for my alien conlang by selecting random syllables based on their frequency of occurence, constructing syllables, and chaining syllables together. At the time, I was not aware of any of this conlang stuff you've been covering, but its been really interesting. Perhaps when I have the time, I'll update the program to include all these new language rules.
Behold my language. Only nasals are permitted at the nucleus, and both the onset and coda must comprise of only plosives. Kpntb qtŋg tɢɱc n, to you, my good sir.
Interestingly, with a few exceptions that only consist of “m”s and possibly an initial “h”, syllabic consonants tend to be at the end of morphemes, after stopped consonants.
Hey Artifexian, I subbed recently when I found this series of videos, and they're good: you definitely have an intuitive sense of natural-ness. I do have a suggestion before you move too far on, though: don't forget that phonotactics isn't just what sounds can/cannot appear next to each other, but also what happens when sounds get put close enough to be illegal: when an unexpected affix is added to a word, when two syllables unexpectedly end up inside the same word, or when words unexpectedly end up next to each other in a sentence (not all languages care much about his last one, which is called sandhi). For example, what happens if a speaker combines the words 'nav' and 'sat' into a compound? /vs/ is an illegal cluster (maybe, see later), so nav + sat = navat? navvat? nassat? napsat? navisat? Or maybe /vs/ is totally legal, but only across a syllable boundary, so it really is just navsat? (It's not as important, but also remember that you have to decide on inter-syllable clusters, not just intra-syllable ones, which in your lang could be up to four consonants--yikes--but don't go making a giant four-dimensional chart just yet :P ). Honestly, the way I tend to deal with this is to make the same stuff you presented, but then not treat those charts as a finished product. Once I'm looking at a chart, I try to pick up on the general rules that might be there. For example, it's not just glottal stop and wh that don't cluster, it's also v, z, x, h (with exceptions for liquid + v in the coda). If it were my language--which it isn't, but--my rule #6 might be something along the lines of "glottals and voiced fricatives don't form clusters, x patterns as h for these purposes, and /f/ > /v/ after sonorants". That would eliminate your /fr, fl, fn/ clusters, though, but that's part of the fun, because you're negotiating your wants against the language itself. First I make charts I want, but then the language wants simple explanatory rules, so I revise the charts to follow the rules, and it goes on like that until I'm happy. I find out if I'm happy when I stick religiously to the rules, but still come up with the kinds of words I want to hear. This technique also helps with more complex clusters, for example: under the rule I proposed, kung + fu = kungvu, which I had absolutely no idea would happen when I made that rule! That's where you can say definitively that a language takes on a life of its own. Hope this helps, and have fun!
Well crap, I've been doing it wrong the whole time >.< Maybe? I mean, the two subjects touch so much I hadn't separated them in my mind before now. I guess the difference is that phonotactics sets the rules and allophony enforces them, but if you start with allophony and add language change, you can end up generating phonotactics. Perhaps allophony vs. phonotactics is another of those too-theoretical concepts that happen in linguistics? Regardless, my technique uses both, and Artifexian has another search term to nerd with. And now it's time to find the time to revise my grammar docs T.T
Allophony describes how phonemes become the phonetic pronunciation, while phonotactics describes what the phonemic description can even be. Allophony does tend to lead to phonotactics when looked at diachronically, yes.
Ah wonderful! I am enjoying following along and slowly devising my own conlang, but as someone else who has no formal linguistics training, I find it much to difficult to find information on what comes next myself. I applaud your dedication here, these videos are the best.
@@Artifexian Hey, weird question, but what if instead of doing all this intensive phonotactics stuff I just didn't make sounds or syllables that weren't easily pronouncable? Essentially, could I just get by on not worrying about this and just making words that feel right?
@@rohankishibe6433Then you would make a one-to-one copy of your native language's phonotactics. Which would be very tiresome, specially if it's English. And you wouldn't have a way to automate the creation of words using software, which is specially useful if you intend your language to have a large vocabulary and be useful for actual communication.
+James Oldfield As our vocal chords and mouths began evolving to be more precise at making noises, we started speaking languages. They didn't really come up with it, it just sorta started happening. Writing, on the other hand, pretty much did come from artificial creation.
James Oldfield The oldest forms of writing we know of are ancient Sumerian texts, which come from the Fertile Crescent. It gives a really good idea of what early writing was probably like. Their script, called Cuneiform, was just made by pressing a little wooden or bronze stick into wet clay and then letting it dry. And yes, it does take a very long time to just write a single word, so I imagine it was pretty hard for them.
Artifexian on languages: "I'm a minimalist! My conlang only has 4 vowels." Artifexian on cartography: "... and this pixel riiight here is part of that 27.65-cubic-meter copper deposit. Remember, you can approximate the size of it by taking the atomic mass of copper, 63.55, then divide that by the altitude of the river here in tens of meters: we're at 11.47m here, so that's 1.147. Lastly, don't forget to divide once more by half the number of vowels spoken in the language of the natives who live here, which should always be 4."
Michael King If you want to be far to technical [sʈɻʷε͜ẽŋɡ̊d̥͡θs] would be how it’s pronounced for most native English speakers (supposedly I just looked that up to be honest). Annoyingly that’s still technically only four consonants at the end so angsts still wins. Since it’s been in English for over a century though it’s kind of ridiculous to discount it in a language as fast evolving as English.
2Tri that doesn’t really mean a whole lot since this is a discussion on pronunciation, not spelling. The “sch” is only one sound, so the actual pronunciation only has four consecutive consonants, moreover, they’re split between syllables, so the longest significant consonant cluster is “spr” anyway, which appears in English words like spring, sprite and sprig anyway. (If you count words with multiple syllables “hamstring” from English four consecutive consonants sounds in the middle by common pronunciation, and that’s just the first thing that came into my head, a quick look and “windstruck” has at least five in the middle, but really it doesn’t matter since it’s no harder pronouncing two difficult syllables next to each other in a scentece, for instance “angst’s strudel” is functionally eight consonants without a break since there’s no gap in speech, though that’s pushing it, especially with the German loanwords)
I'm almost giving up too, although I've given up for a time ago, conlanging sometimes make me feel close to the world, so I need air and some adventures with my family in the woods
Learn IPA on Wikipedia. It's really not hard. If you want to conlang. It's critical. Also reading The Language Construction Kit is a great start. It's fairly short, but dense, yet simple to follow.
hello, Artefexian! I have been making my conlang in about an entire day, the language's excel sheet is somewhat messy(sorry for that this is my first full-fledged conlang!), I used your tutorial on how to make words and different vowels and consonants sound good together. I also used the tutorial from biblaridion. You guys have taught me a lot about making conlangs and for a 14-year-old it's a lot to take in. I showed what I had already gotten done the four hours I worked before coming to school. I had pretty much the basic concept of the language itself, but I didn't finish some of the subject pronouns. Which I quickly finished in Spanish class. I made sure that the language started in a proto stage, where the [tʃ] sound was written tch, [dʒ] was dzh, [x] didn't exist, [ɲ] didn't exist, and the only diacritic I had was for the schwa. The language was extremely hard to read and pronounce, was of my words being ngadzh /ŋadʒ/, eventually, I thought to myself and said... this is too hard to read and pronounce, so I took all of the long vowels I had made and gave them the appropriate diacritic(macron) and then introduced some new sounds, [x] and [ɲ] these ideas in my head sparked from the languages Swedish(i think) and Spanish as I am currently learning Spanish and pretty much everyone can pronounce those sounds, so ngadzh changed into, ñaj /ɲadʒ/ the changes I made to the language made it so much clearer to read and pronounce and I wanted to thank you for the great knowledge you have given me. The language's name is klauī btw! Heres the Google Drive link for the excel spreadsheet, in wondrous colors: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YrC-s4bOqsqhhn9eoGUAPO1G8U7PlasWlVngHFEt9cc/edit?usp=sharing
Duuuuuuude I remember trying to conlang in 6th grade, about 12 yo, but I had ADHD and had like one or two pages of vocabulary with basic English letters, sounds, grammar, and syntax. But for a 14yo to be building the phonology from the ground up? I'm going on 40 now and I'm impressed! I'm curious to know how far you got in the last couple years!
Just so you know, /n/ is syllabic in most English dialects: "button" has a syllabic N in it. /l/ and (in rhotic accents) /r/ are also syllabic: "sidle" has a syllabic L in it, and Americans pronounce "center" with a syllabic R. (Similarly, the French R is syllabic in words like "centre" and L is syllabic in some Alpine German dialects, which can be seen in names like Ischgl, Austria.)
I'm worldbuilding and outlining and overall planning a novel for nanowrimo, and I can't put into words how much your channel has helped me so far! You, along with Mark Rosenfelder's Planet and Language Construction Kits, have been my go-to place for worldbuilding purposes!
5:31 in my language (bulgarian in question) we kinda have that /kva/. It appears like the shortened female of "What". The normal form is /Kakva/, but we-Bulgarians - drop the /ak/ when we are in an unofficial condition. it ends up something like /kva e tazi iabalka/ instead of /kakva e tazi iabalka/
i'm so glad you've finally uploaded another conlanging video! i like how well you organise your work, it really makes me want to go back to conlanging myself xd
great timing! I've just started working through on my conlang again, focused on vowel harmony and inherent iambic meter. Just finished selecting the consonants this weekend, to find this gem in the subscription box! Keep up the good work mate!
I think that this might just be too advanced for me. A conlang may be more than I can do, except in a limited, amateurish way. I'm not thrilled about that, but there it is. And I was having such fun with ideas like "words can begin with R but not with L; R's which wind up in the middle of words become L's." I had a character introduce herself as "Rillakishoi! Ree Rah Kee Shoi, Rillakishoi!" She pronounced a little boy's name as either "Ahnd-thlay" or "Ahn-duh Ray."
I just don't understand: what is exactly a cluster (3:48 i got lost there)? Another question: Can you put vowels in the parts that are not the nucleus? If somebody can help me, please do it
Honestly I love the idea of an initial velar nasal. It just sounds nice to me and its not the most common of sounds, so it'll give the language a certain feel to it.
My phonotactics are as follows *Syllable Structure* (C)VC(C) *Phonotactical Restraints* 1) Nasals do not cluster with each other 2) Nasals cannot begin consonant clusters 3) The coda must consist of a consonant; all are allowed 4) No more than three consonants are allowed per syllable 5) The onset must consist of a consonant; all are allowed 6) the coda cannot consist of an affricate
Well, Japanese is traditionally regarded as not having syllables but rather moras. Each mora should in theory be pronounced with the same length. There are six mora types, namely: V, jV, CV, CjV, N, and Q. ‘Q’ refers to doubling next consonant, as in kokko.
+tuxcup True indeed, jV can be seen as a variant of CV, as +asdfpersonguy states. The thing is, though, that problems arise when trying to explain the CjV mora. The jV and CjV are called palatalized morae, meaning that the consonants of the morae are pronounced with a y-sound or that the same y-sound is put in front of vowel-only morae, i.e., ka -> kya, u -> yu. As the y-sound cannot be palatalized, it is useful to define C to be all consonants but ‘j’, keeping that specific sound separate from palatalizable consonants. I.e., there can be no double ‘j’ (yya).
For clustering, I'd probably just put the sounds in groups based on manner of articulation, sound out clusters with a sound from each manner, and see what fits. If a group fits, make a general clustering rule. If only one sound fits, make a specific rule. If no sounds fit, make an exclusionary rule.
Just last week someone told me that a word like the German "Angstschweiß" would not exist in many other languages because of all the consonants clustering together.
Love your videos, I'd love to learn more! Can you include a compendium video on why you chose these options? Maybe provide other options for us at home to try too
+Henry Zakay I think that closest thing I have to this is my podcast. www.artifexian.com/ It's a place where I and my co-host often continue on the discussion started by my videos.
Great video, but I wanted to mention that /n/ can be syllabic in English too - like in "button". English also permits /l/ to be syllabic (like in "little")
My brain always stops working halfway through these video, making me have to re-watch certain parts, but I don't mind it lol. Your accent (dialect?) is cool to listen to
I was a big fan of your phonological inventory (although, personally, I like when I can have fun with large inventories), and I understand the choices you made as to what was in for the phonotactics, I was just wondering if only adding [n] as a syllable nucleus wasn't a but restrictive, 'cause my brain can't help thinking "why no other nasal syllable nuclei?" (haven't heard of any language with only one or two consonant syllable nuclei allowed), but you know, why not? Also, are you planning on making your language evolve to add some complexity to it? I know it'd completely mess up all the minimalist efforts you've put into it so far, but I just love the idiosyncrasies of natural(istic) languages, which the reason they're so awesome!
+Baloung Indeed. It's generally a better idea to say "nasals" than just /n/. /n/ by itself is somewhat restrictive and Edgar may find it too repetitive when he comes to build words later on.
+Baloung Where did he say that he was only going to use /n/ as a consonant syllable nucleus? He only just used /n/ in his example, but IIRC, he mentioned /m/, /n/, /l/, and /r/.
It is very simple and logical. It may be a proto proto language spoken probably 10000 years ago or something. He may evolve it Proto-Oa Old-Oa middle-Oa (Some dialects) (Some languages derived from each dialect) New languages Boom Note: there could be few dialects that emerge from proto or old oa
Artifexian I'm having trouble with the ŋ sound. I tried using ng, but it looks really bad at the onset (like ngu), and it looks like /ŋgu/, not like /ŋu/. Then I tried using ŋ itself, but it's hard to type, and ConWorkShop doesn't seem to like it. I considered using ñ, but I'm already using it as a palatal nasal. I also don't like digraphs, but I'm still using dh for the voiced palatal plosive, gh for the voiced velar fricative, bb for the bilabial trill and rr for the uvular trill. How do you find a way to represent all these sounds with a clear latinization?
The chart with all your possible clusters was a good idea, but if I want more than a CCVCC language, you can't easily chart that. So, I think I'll just skip phonotactics as a step and decide on them as I make words.
My language is one with consonantal roots and thus I found that I would run into consonant clusters all over the place when altering the patterns of consonants and vowels for various grammatical purposes. I chose a (C)(C)V(C)(C) sequence as well and would use schwas to separate either a consonant of the onset or of the coda of any (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C) patterns that formed (the placement of the schwa is dependent on the positions of vowels and their lengths). Only if a pronounceable affricative cluster in my language was formed would the three consonants stay together, and that's extremely rare. Only a few loan words from other languages have three consonant clusters.
depends on the utterance I would say. 'mission' is probably phonemically /'mɪʃən/ but may be realized as [mɪʃn̩] I'm not actually sure which is more relevant to phonotactics though :|
I love these videos! Dunno why I haven't subscribed until now, but here you go, another subscriber :) One of my favorite things about these is that they often remind me of things I've either forgotten or never thought of considering when worldbuilding/conlanging. For my conlangs in development, I haven't really thought in depth about phonotactics, instead just going by what sounds like it fits in the language instead of being more methodical about it. Perhaps I should change my habits if I want consistency.
Pretty neat part of language, that I had never heard of before .-. huge help if I ever decided to make my own conlang But now what matters most is one thing... 7:26 what's that sound you just pronounced just there. Explam
I recently found my notes from when I tried conlanging when I was 15 and knew nothing of phonetics (or any other subject in linguistics, really). I should dust them off and start again. The only thing I remember from the language is that it was VSO (like Irish), did not conjugate for person (like Irish), had a set of verb endings each of which inflected differently (like French), and used the prefix "og" on a verb to indicate conditionals. And that it had largely English phonetics, of course. TRiG.
I've been making a (C)V language without diphthongs or consecutive vowels, and I feel offended by you thinking that is overly simplistic. /s Good video though. If I ever decide to do some non-stupid conlanging I might use this method. Tudibon!
I hope you come across NAD (net auditory distance). I found that more helpful and natural than sonority hierarchy which does not tell much more than the evident. There is a free NAD calculator online.
The Ancient Greek "φωνή" is pronounced as pʰɔːne in Ancient Greek, not like the modern English phone. I'm sorry, but that just made me cringe. I can deal with the aspirated consonants in τακτικός, but not that horrendous pronunciation when the word shouldn't be difficult at all for an English speaker to pronounce, except for the tone on the η. I don't expect anyone to do tones without knowing a tonal language.
The interesting thing in this process is how I get to see how a priori languages are constructed. The conlangs I've created have all been based on real world languages (Acadian for example being a future dialect of English). And the process for creating those languages is radically different to creating an a priori language such as this one.
+Spencer O'Dowd Conlangs are interesting no matter if they are a priori or if they are based on another language. I'd love to hear how the creator of loglan thought when he made it. Conlangs are interesting from a linguistic and from an educational point of view as well. And even from an entertainment point of view, conlangs are mildly interesting to everyone, except my one friend who think everyone should speak the same language as him.
Great stuff Edgar! I'd seriously recommend changing the syllabic /n/ to any syllabic nasal (/m/, /n/ and /ŋ/ in your case) though, to make it more realistic and less restrictive. If you find it difficult to come up with words beginning with /ŋ/ then why not introduce an initial consonant mutation system like the Celtic languages have? A nasal mutation would be very easy: /p/ > /m/ /t/ > /n/ /k/ > /ŋ/
If you wanted to take the mutation thing further you could introduce an aspirate mutation. Being an Irish lad you probably aspirate unvoiced stops all the time anyway, so producing them should be easy. /p/ > /pʰ/ /t/ > /tʰ/ /k/ > /kʰ/ maybe even /g/ > /gʰ/ Seeing as languages with initial mutations don't usually have just the one type. How these mutations occur is completely up to you to play around with of course :-)
Great Videos, good Design but two bits of advice: A) Avoid using Arial, use Helevetica or even Avenir instead B) DO NOT. AT ALL. EVER. USE. COMIC SANS (Please)
+Hexbugman213 It was written like that because Microsoft was making a program that the font looked good in. Besides, people hate comic sans because other people use it incorrectly. Otherwise, it's a perfectly good font
Awesome, I've been waiting for this for a while now. This video was a great help. It helps to clearify and outline phonotacitcs. I learned a lot here. Thank you. :)
tl;dr -- I found this handy page: westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard/ Yeah, takes some time to find all the proper characters on the windows character map. I copy/pasted them from the IPA pdf and tabled them according to my needs. Here's most of the 2015 IPA. Save the following comma-separated text as something.csv, then use the import function in whatever sheet software you're using. You're welcome! CONSONANTS,Bilabial,Labio-dental,Dental,Alveolar,Postalveolar,Retroflex,Palatal,Labial-velar,Velar,Uvular,Pharyngeal/Epiglottal,Glottal,, Plosive,p / b,p̪ / b̪,t̪ / d̪,t / d,,ʈ / ɖ,c / ɟ ,,k / g,q / ɢ,ʡ,Ɂ,,LEGEND Implosive,ɓ̥ / ɓ ,,,ɗ,,ᶑ,ʄ,,ɠ,ʛ,,,,voiced Ejective,pʼ,,t̪ʼ,tʼ,,ʈʼ,cʼ,,kʼ,qʼ,,,,voiceless Nasal,m̥ / m,ɱ̊ / ɱ,n̪̊ / n̪ ,n̥ / n,,ɳ̊ / ɳ,ɲ,,ŋ,ɴ,,,, Trill,ʙ,,,r̥ / r,,ɽ͡r,,,,ʀ,ʢ,,, Tap/Flap,ⱱ̟,ⱱ,,ɾ,,ɽ,,,,,ʡ̆,,, Fricative,ɸ / β,f / v,θ / ð,s / z,ʃ / ʒ,ʂ / ʐ,ç / ʝ,,x / ɣ,χ / ʁ,ʜ / ʢ,h / ɦ,, Lateral fricative,,,,ɬ / ɮ,,ꞎ,,,,,,,, Approximant,β̞̊ / β̞,ʋ̥ / ʋ,ð̞,ɹ̥ / ɹ,,ɻ̊ / ɻ ,j,ʍ / w,ɰ,,,,, Lateral approximant,,,,l̥ / l,,ɭ,ʎ,,ʟ,,,,, Click consonant,ʘ,,ǀ,ǃ,ǃ / ǂ,,,,,,,,, Lateral click,,,ǁ / ʖ,*,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, I did not include the class alveolo-palatal and skipped lateral flap and percussive. I've also merged Pharyngeal with Epiglottal since I haven't found any distinction,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,Front,Near-front,Central,Near-back,Back,,Diacritic,Function,Diacritic,Function,Diacritic,Function,, Close,i / y,,ɨ / ʉ,,ɯ / u,,,,,,,,, Near-close,,ɪ / ʏ,ɪ̈ / ʊ̈,ɯ̽ / ʊ,,,˳,Voiceless,̤,Breathy Voiced,͏̪,Dental,, Close-mid,e / ø,,ɘ / ɵ,,ɤ / o,,ˬ,Voiced,˷,Creaky Voiced,˽,Apical,, Mid,,,ə,,,,ʰ,Aspirated,͏̼,Linguolabial,͏̻,Laminal,, Open-mid,ɛ / œ,,ɜ / ɞ,,ʌ / ɔ,,̹,More Rounded,ʷ,Labialized,̃,Nasalized,, Near-open,æ,,ɐ,,,,͏̜,Less Rounded,ʲ,Palatalized,ⁿ,Nasal release,, Open,a / ɶ,,,,ɑ / ɒ,,˖,Advanced,ˠ,Velarized,ˡ,Lateral release,, Vowel length marker,ː,,,,,,ˍ,Retracted,ˤ,Pharyngealized,˺,No audible release,, secondary stress,ˌ,,,,,,̈,Centralized,̴,Velarized,,,, primary stress,ˈ,,,,,,˟,Mid-Centralized,˔,Raised,,,, ,,,,,,,ˌ,Syllabic,˕,Lowered,,,, ,,,,,,,͏̯,Non-syllabic,͏̘,Advanced Tongue,,,, ,,,,,,,˞,Rhoticity,͏̙,Retracted Tongue,,,,
2:44 /ʔ/ shouldn't be at the coda. Because for a consonant to be at the coda, it must either appear at the end of the word or followed by onset of another syllable. These can't happen because /ʔ/ can only be intervocalic. Also, /ʍ/ is also intervocalic because it doesn't cluster and it can't appear an the end of the word.
Something like kʔa or kʍa isn't allowed. The glottal stop is always used between vowels so there can't be any consonant next to it. And the voiceless labio-velar approximant has to be all alone in the onset or coda. Understand?
DeepSea King no idea why. There are plenty of languages with glottalized consonants. I don't know whether there is a language that has a cluster with the voiceless velar approximant but it isn't difficult to pronounce
DeepSea King Arabic has pharyngealized consonants but no glottalized consonants. I haven't heard of any clusters with the glottal stop or glottalized consonants in any of the modern languages but Proto-Semitic had probably ejectives, a kind of glottalized consonants (but only θʼ, ɬʼ and sʼ). All of them merged with other consonants. To answer your question: no the arabic/semitic glottal stop never clusters with consonants or produce glottalized consonants. Are creating a conlang based on Semitic languages?
Hope things get better on the irl side of things. Your channel is awesome and this conlang series is honestly one of the best resources for language constructing I,ve ever found. Anyways, good luck wit yo bad self!
Wow, you came out with this yesterday. I found this series' first video yesterday. Can't wait for more! Though, I'll have to wrap my head around this whole C V thing before I can move on anyway...
@@demidron. if u got eg arabic yes also that reminds me of voiceless meet voiced iirc its in wiktionary or wiki example as bag something I forgot personally no cuz I got no qalqalah as in Arabic my id unless ur talking velar nasal ng then yes iirc a lot of it is from the peninsula near of it I guess eg ngarai instead of jurang also nice one menganga I'm sure foreigner that didn't have initial last and middle ng pronounce it as isolated n & g
omg the sonority of the english word "spins" actually sounds like a spinning sound emitter, alternating between high and low sonority as if it's facing towards and away from you. Very cool.
Hey Edgar, have you ever thought of doing podcasts? The topics you talk about are very interesting and the information is fairly dense. The way you convey everything is so concise it makes the topic easy and enjoyable to listen to. Idk how many other people would listen to a pure audio recording but I know I would! Also I was just thinking but, the quality of your videos are always excellent. I think you should take some pride in that and not worry about pumping them out rapidly. I don't think anyone minds waiting for content!
+Artifexian That's awesome, I have a lot to catch up on! Have you gotten any licorice yet? To be honest the standard black licorice is pretty horrendous. It's similar to the Marmite folklore in that it's either loved or hated. On the other hand red licorice is pretty moderate, there's all kinds of wonky flavours but red is a staple.
That's it, this is driving me crazy. Americans, when writing ancient Greek in IPA, this "΄" you see over vowels is the tone. It means the vowel is stressed and more importantly higher pitched. And in IPA you pronounce the vowels, like in phoné (I can't write the - over the vowels) you pronounce the final é.
+aantony2001 I made no attempt to try and pronounce the ancient Greek correctly. I know so little about ancient Greek that it was always going to come out wrong. :(
* ponders * What would happen if I try to cluster all three trill sounds...
* nearly drowns in own saliva *
Bad idea...
As a tuba player, I can do this.
_cough cough_ coarticulated trill _cough cough_ /ʙʀ/
I did'em all easyly.
It's called Danish.
Coarticulate them and it sounds like a motorboat with engine troubles ...
this would mean "nnn" is a valid syllable
nnnma
niall 🤔 ʔʔʔ
Redwolf Plays nnn nnn nnn? nnn! nnn nnn.
We can fix that by adding to our set of phonotactic rules the rule that "no consonant can cluster with itself"
@@alexanderboukal5332 yep, but maybe allow the "nnn" syllable to exist as an expresion, kinda like "oof", or "whew" or anything like that
The „minimalist inside you” must love Japanese.
i know i sure do. japanese is beautiful
@@tigrisardens username checks out
@@kingturboturtlednoc5722 😂
Well he said he found (C)V too restrictive
IM GONNA GO CRAZY AND NOT HAVE A SYLLABLE STRUCTURE
7:26
You actually can pronounce [r]!
Such an amazing allophone.
The alveolar trill is my favourite.
+Modr Chi Wait...was that actually the alveolar trill???? Holy...cow....
Iykury
Sounds like a trill to me
no, watch your last video, you put some non-alveolar trill resembling the letter R by using your throat. But it was closer than the episode you hosted wwith Andi
I don't get how he struggles with this. It's basically just vibrating /d/
Challenge: Do a whole video in your language.
(w/ captions)
vesszen trianon
Yes
I may do this some day
RFT icu icu! Komeni panta kyu gamite!
(Yeah! It'll be a piece of cake!)
*without captions**
I wrote a Python script that generates words for my alien conlang by selecting random syllables based on their frequency of occurence, constructing syllables, and chaining syllables together. At the time, I was not aware of any of this conlang stuff you've been covering, but its been really interesting. Perhaps when I have the time, I'll update the program to include all these new language rules.
Time to wait another 10 years for a conlang video
What? You........... WHAT?
But you're like a... cringe comp person....
+HandSanitizerAttack No more
BlueUmbrella
Oh riiight. Sorry for the unsub, I just liked your cringe comps :(
+HandSanitizerAttack It's all good Sani bro! We still having a good time
Behold my language. Only nasals are permitted at the nucleus, and both the onset and coda must comprise of only plosives. Kpntb qtŋg tɢɱc n, to you, my good sir.
Primaski Can you translate that?
Mine has no limit to consonant clusters lol, I have a few voweless words
I'm gonna stick with ccvc
@@yerdasellsavon9232 based
@@yerdasellsavon9232 based
3:00 English allows /n/ and /l/ to be nuclei, as in “eat *en* ” and “batt *le* “
It's mentioned in the description.
Interestingly, with a few exceptions that only consist of “m”s and possibly an initial “h”, syllabic consonants tend to be at the end of morphemes, after stopped consonants.
Also as in "mart *yr* " and "wat *er* ", depending on your accent
Not universally. Some English speakers (including myself) pronounce those syllables as /ən/ and /ʊl/, respectively.
@@HeadCannon19 water is one syllable, its pronouncuation is watr
Hey Artifexian, I subbed recently when I found this series of videos, and they're good: you definitely have an intuitive sense of natural-ness. I do have a suggestion before you move too far on, though: don't forget that phonotactics isn't just what sounds can/cannot appear next to each other, but also what happens when sounds get put close enough to be illegal: when an unexpected affix is added to a word, when two syllables unexpectedly end up inside the same word, or when words unexpectedly end up next to each other in a sentence (not all languages care much about his last one, which is called sandhi).
For example, what happens if a speaker combines the words 'nav' and 'sat' into a compound? /vs/ is an illegal cluster (maybe, see later), so nav + sat = navat? navvat? nassat? napsat? navisat? Or maybe /vs/ is totally legal, but only across a syllable boundary, so it really is just navsat? (It's not as important, but also remember that you have to decide on inter-syllable clusters, not just intra-syllable ones, which in your lang could be up to four consonants--yikes--but don't go making a giant four-dimensional chart just yet :P ).
Honestly, the way I tend to deal with this is to make the same stuff you presented, but then not treat those charts as a finished product. Once I'm looking at a chart, I try to pick up on the general rules that might be there. For example, it's not just glottal stop and wh that don't cluster, it's also v, z, x, h (with exceptions for liquid + v in the coda). If it were my language--which it isn't, but--my rule #6 might be something along the lines of "glottals and voiced fricatives don't form clusters, x patterns as h for these purposes, and /f/ > /v/ after sonorants". That would eliminate your /fr, fl, fn/ clusters, though, but that's part of the fun, because you're negotiating your wants against the language itself. First I make charts I want, but then the language wants simple explanatory rules, so I revise the charts to follow the rules, and it goes on like that until I'm happy. I find out if I'm happy when I stick religiously to the rules, but still come up with the kinds of words I want to hear. This technique also helps with more complex clusters, for example: under the rule I proposed, kung + fu = kungvu, which I had absolutely no idea would happen when I made that rule! That's where you can say definitively that a language takes on a life of its own.
Hope this helps, and have fun!
+Okuno Zankoku I'm 95% sure that's allophony and not phonotactics.
Well crap, I've been doing it wrong the whole time >.<
Maybe? I mean, the two subjects touch so much I hadn't separated them in my mind before now. I guess the difference is that phonotactics sets the rules and allophony enforces them, but if you start with allophony and add language change, you can end up generating phonotactics. Perhaps allophony vs. phonotactics is another of those too-theoretical concepts that happen in linguistics? Regardless, my technique uses both, and Artifexian has another search term to nerd with. And now it's time to find the time to revise my grammar docs T.T
Allophony describes how phonemes become the phonetic pronunciation, while phonotactics describes what the phonemic description can even be. Allophony does tend to lead to phonotactics when looked at diachronically, yes.
Cool
In the word of the cat from Pixar's _Bolt,_
"Woah, woah, woah, WAY too many words."
Ah wonderful! I am enjoying following along and slowly devising my own conlang, but as someone else who has no formal linguistics training, I find it much to difficult to find information on what comes next myself. I applaud your dedication here, these videos are the best.
+Mage of Void Cheers man. Always good to meet a fellow autodidact.
@@Artifexian Hey, weird question, but what if instead of doing all this intensive phonotactics stuff I just didn't make sounds or syllables that weren't easily pronouncable? Essentially, could I just get by on not worrying about this and just making words that feel right?
@@rohankishibe6433Then you would make a one-to-one copy of your native language's phonotactics. Which would be very tiresome, specially if it's English. And you wouldn't have a way to automate the creation of words using software, which is specially useful if you intend your language to have a large vocabulary and be useful for actual communication.
Oh my. How interesting. I didn't realise constructing a language was so complicated.
Yeah, I always tried to make my own language... I know now that everything I did was completely wrong! XD
OrangeCreeper217 I mean how did cavemen and shit construct languages? :/
+James Oldfield As our vocal chords and mouths began evolving to be more precise at making noises, we started speaking languages. They didn't really come up with it, it just sorta started happening.
Writing, on the other hand, pretty much did come from artificial creation.
BetaDude40 It must have hurt their hand at first until they got used to it :/
James Oldfield The oldest forms of writing we know of are ancient Sumerian texts, which come from the Fertile Crescent. It gives a really good idea of what early writing was probably like. Their script, called Cuneiform, was just made by pressing a little wooden or bronze stick into wet clay and then letting it dry. And yes, it does take a very long time to just write a single word, so I imagine it was pretty hard for them.
oh jeez this feels like the syntax and semantics course in computer science all over again
+Nikolaj Lepka Yeah, seems like weird language algebra.
And he hasn't even gotten to the syntax portion of the conlang lol
Automata!!
Artifexian on languages: "I'm a minimalist! My conlang only has 4 vowels."
Artifexian on cartography: "... and this pixel riiight here is part of that 27.65-cubic-meter copper deposit. Remember, you can approximate the size of it by taking the atomic mass of copper, 63.55, then divide that by the altitude of the river here in tens of meters: we're at 11.47m here, so that's 1.147. Lastly, don't forget to divide once more by half the number of vowels spoken in the language of the natives who live here, which should always be 4."
"Angst" was borrowed from German fairly recently, so it may not be the best example. "Strengths"?
Søren Poulsen /k/ is known to make an appearance there sometimes
Michael King
If you want to be far to technical [sʈɻʷε͜ẽŋɡ̊d̥͡θs] would be how it’s pronounced for most native English speakers (supposedly I just looked that up to be honest). Annoyingly that’s still technically only four consonants at the end so angsts still wins.
Since it’s been in English for over a century though it’s kind of ridiculous to discount it in a language as fast evolving as English.
Mischsprache (German, 6 letter combo “schspr”)
2Tri that doesn’t really mean a whole lot since this is a discussion on pronunciation, not spelling. The “sch” is only one sound, so the actual pronunciation only has four consecutive consonants, moreover, they’re split between syllables, so the longest significant consonant cluster is “spr” anyway, which appears in English words like spring, sprite and sprig anyway.
(If you count words with multiple syllables “hamstring” from English four consecutive consonants sounds in the middle by common pronunciation, and that’s just the first thing that came into my head, a quick look and “windstruck” has at least five in the middle, but really it doesn’t matter since it’s no harder pronouncing two difficult syllables next to each other in a scentece, for instance “angst’s strudel” is functionally eight consonants without a break since there’s no gap in speech, though that’s pushing it, especially with the German loanwords)
I can't pronounce "strengths" at all. Anything with a "θ" followed by an "s" is impossible for me. :(
Hopefully by the end of the Conlang series i can design my own for my scifi story. woo. excited.
+Kenji Wardenclyffe Awesome.
I've given up on conlanging but this is still pretty interesting.
I'm almost giving up too, although I've given up for a time ago, conlanging sometimes make me feel close to the world, so I need air and some adventures with my family in the woods
Interesting!
+Christian Wilson AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
*Gasp* Don't give up! It's too awesome and cool and fascinating and... And stuff...
/BR/uh
This episode was hard for me to follow. I zoned out at the end. I'll need to re-watch this later.
I have watched it 3 times now, trust me it doesn't get any easier.
Yikes.
Learn IPA on Wikipedia. It's really not hard. If you want to conlang. It's critical. Also reading The Language Construction Kit is a great start. It's fairly short, but dense, yet simple to follow.
You need to watch these in order as well.
it's not critical to learn most of ipa
"To take a step away from English, I am going to allow n as a syllabic consonant."
Laughs in Alabama accent.
hello, Artefexian! I have been making my conlang in about an entire day, the language's excel sheet is somewhat messy(sorry for that this is my first full-fledged conlang!), I used your tutorial on how to make words and different vowels and consonants sound good together. I also used the tutorial from biblaridion. You guys have taught me a lot about making conlangs and for a 14-year-old it's a lot to take in. I showed what I had already gotten done the four hours I worked before coming to school. I had pretty much the basic concept of the language itself, but I didn't finish some of the subject pronouns. Which I quickly finished in Spanish class. I made sure that the language started in a proto stage, where the [tʃ] sound was written tch, [dʒ] was dzh, [x] didn't exist, [ɲ] didn't exist, and the only diacritic I had was for the schwa. The language was extremely hard to read and pronounce, was of my words being ngadzh /ŋadʒ/, eventually, I thought to myself and said... this is too hard to read and pronounce, so I took all of the long vowels I had made and gave them the appropriate diacritic(macron) and then introduced some new sounds, [x] and [ɲ] these ideas in my head sparked from the languages Swedish(i think) and Spanish as I am currently learning Spanish and pretty much everyone can pronounce those sounds, so ngadzh changed into, ñaj /ɲadʒ/ the changes I made to the language made it so much clearer to read and pronounce and I wanted to thank you for the great knowledge you have given me.
The language's name is klauī btw!
Heres the Google Drive link for the excel spreadsheet, in wondrous colors:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YrC-s4bOqsqhhn9eoGUAPO1G8U7PlasWlVngHFEt9cc/edit?usp=sharing
Duuuuuuude
I remember trying to conlang in 6th grade, about 12 yo, but I had ADHD and had like one or two pages of vocabulary with basic English letters, sounds, grammar, and syntax. But for a 14yo to be building the phonology from the ground up? I'm going on 40 now and I'm impressed! I'm curious to know how far you got in the last couple years!
Just so you know, /n/ is syllabic in most English dialects: "button" has a syllabic N in it. /l/ and (in rhotic accents) /r/ are also syllabic: "sidle" has a syllabic L in it, and Americans pronounce "center" with a syllabic R. (Similarly, the French R is syllabic in words like "centre" and L is syllabic in some Alpine German dialects, which can be seen in names like Ischgl, Austria.)
I'm worldbuilding and outlining and overall planning a novel for nanowrimo, and I can't put into words how much your channel has helped me so far! You, along with Mark Rosenfelder's Planet and Language Construction Kits, have been my go-to place for worldbuilding purposes!
Although my understanding is limited, my fascination is infinite. Great vid.
5:31 in my language (bulgarian in question) we kinda have that /kva/. It appears like the shortened female of "What". The normal form is /Kakva/, but we-Bulgarians - drop the /ak/ when we are in an unofficial condition. it ends up something like /kva e tazi iabalka/ instead of /kakva e tazi iabalka/
i'm so glad you've finally uploaded another conlanging video! i like how well you organise your work, it really makes me want to go back to conlanging myself xd
I made up a language and I'm nearly fluent in it! Yay
How many words does it have?
I'll speak it with you!
wOw congrats!
Môhru: Artifexian, tibe tê ingonýama ânįp!
English: Artifexian, great job on the video!
For my ConLang I used a strange CVV' style
*at the coda you CAN actually use a glottal stop but you can't use a letter or my ConLang's case symbol
Do you think there will be a time when you could teach us your language when you've finished creating it?
I think he will create it and show every step in the videos, so he will teach us as a consequence.
Mosco Monster Good point.
@@MrBeiragua he's already created most of the words so i don't think he'll share the vocab as a dictionary but wHo knows
It's so funny that Artifexian moved r to ʀ because he can't pronounce r, but he even pronounces ʀ as ʁǃ
What about stress? Single phoneme rules? Simplifications? This language needs more
great timing! I've just started working through on my conlang again, focused on vowel harmony and inherent iambic meter. Just finished selecting the consonants this weekend, to find this gem in the subscription box! Keep up the good work mate!
pnt can be hole in your language (thumbnail)
The word for "disagree" should be nʔn 😁
I keep coming back to this video every now and then, the spreadsheet approach is extremely useful.
By any chance could you upload a sample spreadsheet like the one shown in the video? It looks really helpful for organizing.
I think that this might just be too advanced for me. A conlang may be more than I can do, except in a limited, amateurish way. I'm not thrilled about that, but there it is.
And I was having such fun with ideas like "words can begin with R but not with L; R's which wind up in the middle of words become L's."
I had a character introduce herself as "Rillakishoi! Ree Rah Kee Shoi, Rillakishoi!" She pronounced a little boy's name as either "Ahnd-thlay" or "Ahn-duh Ray."
I just don't understand: what is exactly a cluster (3:48 i got lost there)? Another question: Can you put vowels in the parts that are not the nucleus? If somebody can help me, please do it
Clustering is when a number of related vowels or consanants are clustered together.
You should keep up with this. Upload more examples of our language! This is super interesting and a very useful guide
Honestly I love the idea of an initial velar nasal. It just sounds nice to me and its not the most common of sounds, so it'll give the language a certain feel to it.
+rzeka #TeamInitialVelarNasal
Make conlangs great again
It's common outside of Europe.
Don't you mean 'ngight vision'?
rzeka I like retro flex sounds especially the nasal and fricative
My phonotactics are as follows
*Syllable Structure*
(C)VC(C)
*Phonotactical Restraints*
1) Nasals do not cluster with each other
2) Nasals cannot begin consonant clusters
3) The coda must consist of a consonant; all are allowed
4) No more than three consonants are allowed per syllable
5) The onset must consist of a consonant; all are allowed
6) the coda cannot consist of an affricate
Japanese be like: (C)V(N) anybody?
Well, Japanese is traditionally regarded as not having syllables but rather moras. Each mora should in theory be pronounced with the same length. There are six mora types, namely: V, jV, CV, CjV, N, and Q. ‘Q’ refers to doubling next consonant, as in kokko.
+Oskar Ekestorm can't Ya yu and yo have the y be classified as a consonant?
Yeah, jV is just a type of CV mora. :V
+tuxcup True indeed, jV can be seen as a variant of CV, as +asdfpersonguy states. The thing is, though, that problems arise when trying to explain the CjV mora. The jV and CjV are called palatalized morae, meaning that the consonants of the morae are pronounced with a y-sound or that the same y-sound is put in front of vowel-only morae, i.e., ka -> kya, u -> yu. As the y-sound cannot be palatalized, it is useful to define C to be all consonants but ‘j’, keeping that specific sound separate from palatalizable consonants. I.e., there can be no double ‘j’ (yya).
+Oskar Ekestorm ahh, right, I didn't think about the fact that jj is impossible.
For clustering, I'd probably just put the sounds in groups based on manner of articulation, sound out clusters with a sound from each manner, and see what fits. If a group fits, make a general clustering rule. If only one sound fits, make a specific rule. If no sounds fit, make an exclusionary rule.
When he mentioned Minecraft, I was actually playing Minecraft and watching this in the background.
Just last week someone told me that a word like the German "Angstschweiß" would not exist in many other languages because of all the consonants clustering together.
So, when are we going to hear you speak your new language? :)
+TimmacTR
Well, you could start coming up with words for the language based on these constraints.
+TimmacTR When it actually has words and grammar! He only just managed the bloody phonotactics!
+TimmacTR As soon as humanly possible. :)
Chill, Valo. He knows.
Chill.
TimmacTR Hey ! i have an assignment.If i tell u about it u will help me?
Artifexian and the Bamboozled Space Linguists is a great band name.
Love your videos, I'd love to learn more! Can you include a compendium video on why you chose these options? Maybe provide other options for us at home to try too
+Henry Zakay I think that closest thing I have to this is my podcast. www.artifexian.com/
It's a place where I and my co-host often continue on the discussion started by my videos.
Great video, but I wanted to mention that /n/ can be syllabic in English too - like in "button". English also permits /l/ to be syllabic (like in "little")
My conlang is a (C)(C)V(C)launguage
Nobody asked that's why you have 4 likes
@@mertatakan7591 atleast I didn't like myself
@@Dark.Pri77 At least I can shut up whem nobody asked
same! it took me hours to fine tune the onset clusters. now I’m working (struggling really) on vowels.
@@jajajali4496 how many vowels there are for you to struggle?
My brain always stops working halfway through these video, making me have to re-watch certain parts, but I don't mind it lol. Your accent (dialect?) is cool to listen to
I was a big fan of your phonological inventory (although, personally, I like when I can have fun with large inventories), and I understand the choices you made as to what was in for the phonotactics, I was just wondering if only adding [n] as a syllable nucleus wasn't a but restrictive, 'cause my brain can't help thinking "why no other nasal syllable nuclei?" (haven't heard of any language with only one or two consonant syllable nuclei allowed), but you know, why not?
Also, are you planning on making your language evolve to add some complexity to it? I know it'd completely mess up all the minimalist efforts you've put into it so far, but I just love the idiosyncrasies of natural(istic) languages, which the reason they're so awesome!
+Baloung Indeed. It's generally a better idea to say "nasals" than just /n/. /n/ by itself is somewhat restrictive and Edgar may find it too repetitive when he comes to build words later on.
+Baloung Where did he say that he was only going to use /n/ as a consonant syllable nucleus? He only just used /n/ in his example, but IIRC, he mentioned /m/, /n/, /l/, and /r/.
At 3:05 th-cam.com/video/1Up5hSm7LYI/w-d-xo.htmlm5s Edgar said he's only including vowels, diphthongs and /n/ in the nucleus.
It is very simple and logical. It may be a proto proto language spoken probably 10000 years ago or something. He may evolve it
Proto-Oa
Old-Oa
middle-Oa
(Some dialects)
(Some languages derived from each dialect)
New languages
Boom
Note: there could be few dialects that emerge from proto or old oa
(C)(H)V(C)
Onset: every consonant.
Medial: only semi-vowels.
Nucleous: all vowels, all diphtongs.
Coda: only s, z and n are allowed there.
My internet is as slow as hell, but I'm early, and that's what matters!
+Felipe Vasconcelos Huzzah!
Artifexian I'm having trouble with the ŋ sound. I tried using ng, but it looks really bad at the onset (like ngu), and it looks like /ŋgu/, not like /ŋu/. Then I tried using ŋ itself, but it's hard to type, and ConWorkShop doesn't seem to like it. I considered using ñ, but I'm already using it as a palatal nasal. I also don't like digraphs, but I'm still using dh for the voiced palatal plosive, gh for the voiced velar fricative, bb for the bilabial trill and rr for the uvular trill.
How do you find a way to represent all these sounds with a clear latinization?
+Felipe Vasconcelos
use ^ can be ng and ^> and so on in other words use the rest of the key board for the awesomeness
The chart with all your possible clusters was a good idea, but if I want more than a CCVCC language, you can't easily chart that. So, I think I'll just skip phonotactics as a step and decide on them as I make words.
I think I won't be able to pronounce any of this. I still have trouble when speaking English... xD
+27danjel You and me both...have you heard the way I pronounce my "th"s :/
My language is one with consonantal roots and thus I found that I would run into consonant clusters all over the place when altering the patterns of consonants and vowels for various grammatical purposes. I chose a (C)(C)V(C)(C) sequence as well and would use schwas to separate either a consonant of the onset or of the coda of any (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C) patterns that formed (the placement of the schwa is dependent on the positions of vowels and their lengths). Only if a pronounceable affricative cluster in my language was formed would the three consonants stay together, and that's extremely rare. Only a few loan words from other languages have three consonant clusters.
English does allow for an /n/ in the nucleus, as in mission /mɪʃn̩/. (/l/, /m/, and /r/ are also allowed in the nucleus)
+k3aschas "Mission" contains a schwa: /'mɪʃən̩/
depends on the utterance I would say. 'mission' is probably phonemically /'mɪʃən/ but may be realized as [mɪʃn̩]
I'm not actually sure which is more relevant to phonotactics though :|
[ən] is considered the same as [n̩] in English
"I found these sounds really hard to easily and consistently pronounce" - Proceeds to pronounce both sounds at the end of syllables perfectly
Over time, /sj/ & /zj/ would probably morph into /ʃ/ & /ʒ/, like in Swedish.
ccityplanner12 in Hindi to Bangla it goes kshmo to kkho
It doesn't even need time when try to pronounce sj or zj fast i end up with sh and zh voices
The /j/ could also just disappear. That’s what happened in American English.
I love these videos! Dunno why I haven't subscribed until now, but here you go, another subscriber :) One of my favorite things about these is that they often remind me of things I've either forgotten or never thought of considering when worldbuilding/conlanging. For my conlangs in development, I haven't really thought in depth about phonotactics, instead just going by what sounds like it fits in the language instead of being more methodical about it. Perhaps I should change my habits if I want consistency.
This channel needs More suscribers....
1:37 fine shaft u have there
Will you make your own symbols for the alphabet or use Latin alphabet?
Right now he is using the Latin alphabet, later he will create a script.
This is really complicated, I feel like I need a pre reading of how conlang works before I even try and get into it
Pretty neat part of language, that I had never heard of before .-. huge help if I ever decided to make my own conlang
But now what matters most is one thing... 7:26 what's that sound you just pronounced just there. Explam
+Lock Ray To me it sounds like he said impu/ɾɾɾ/t but it sounds strangely velar, which is an impossible sound to make so...
+Nosirrbro Apparently not impossible for him! Call in the phoneticians!
He pronounced the last syllable of inputted too quickly and it sounded like an alveolar trill. Nothing really special. :v
button, rhythm, bottle, turn. all of these have consonants in the nucleus
"check it out:
i-in-mine, a-aft-craft
*MINECRAFT*"
'Onset, nucleus, coda' are just really fancy words for beginning middle and end
I wonder, how does one go about with making a Lexicon though?
I recently found my notes from when I tried conlanging when I was 15 and knew nothing of phonetics (or any other subject in linguistics, really). I should dust them off and start again. The only thing I remember from the language is that it was VSO (like Irish), did not conjugate for person (like Irish), had a set of verb endings each of which inflected differently (like French), and used the prefix "og" on a verb to indicate conditionals. And that it had largely English phonetics, of course.
TRiG.
I've been making a (C)V language without diphthongs or consecutive vowels, and I feel offended by you thinking that is overly simplistic. /s
Good video though. If I ever decide to do some non-stupid conlanging I might use this method. Tudibon!
I hope you come across NAD (net auditory distance). I found that more helpful and natural than sonority hierarchy which does not tell much more than the evident. There is a free NAD calculator online.
Stargate reference! YAAAAAAAAAASSS!
+MrC0MPUT3R Hells yeah!
+MrC0MPUT3R +Artifexian YAY Daniel Jackson!!
Who was the lady, though?
+Comeacar Hoshii. The xenolinguist from Star Trek Enterprise.
Comments: ‘Nnn’ is a valid syllable
Georgian: Gvprtskvni...
The Ancient Greek "φωνή" is pronounced as pʰɔːne in Ancient Greek, not like the modern English phone. I'm sorry, but that just made me cringe. I can deal with the aspirated consonants in τακτικός, but not that horrendous pronunciation when the word shouldn't be difficult at all for an English speaker to pronounce, except for the tone on the η. I don't expect anyone to do tones without knowing a tonal language.
And now, it's/foni/, right?
@@cosmopoiesecriandomundos7446 correct!
The interesting thing in this process is how I get to see how a priori languages are constructed. The conlangs I've created have all been based on real world languages (Acadian for example being a future dialect of English). And the process for creating those languages is radically different to creating an a priori language such as this one.
+Spencer O'Dowd Conlangs are interesting no matter if they are a priori or if they are based on another language.
I'd love to hear how the creator of loglan thought when he made it. Conlangs are interesting from a linguistic and from an educational point of view as well.
And even from an entertainment point of view, conlangs are mildly interesting to everyone, except my one friend who think everyone should speak the same language as him.
"fine shaft"
Thank you for spending the time on this. I appreciate your videos and what they cover.
Are you going with the Latin alphabet? Or are you going to make up an alphabet.
+Mr.Tas Eventually, I'll come up with a script. For now the latin alphabet is the most convenient.
+Artifexian I'm a huge fan of the abugida! ;-)
It would look cool in Cyrillic. A lot of my Conlangs are written in both Latin and Cyrillic.
Could you use the International Phonetic Alphabet as it is in a language as the alphabet?
Spoiler: Own alphabet.
Great stuff Edgar! I'd seriously recommend changing the syllabic /n/ to any syllabic nasal (/m/, /n/ and /ŋ/ in your case) though, to make it more realistic and less restrictive.
If you find it difficult to come up with words beginning with /ŋ/ then why not introduce an initial consonant mutation system like the Celtic languages have? A nasal mutation would be very easy:
/p/ > /m/
/t/ > /n/
/k/ > /ŋ/
+The_Parson Yes, perhaps that might sound like a good idea.
If you wanted to take the mutation thing further you could introduce an aspirate mutation. Being an Irish lad you probably aspirate unvoiced stops all the time anyway, so producing them should be easy.
/p/ > /pʰ/
/t/ > /tʰ/
/k/ > /kʰ/
maybe even /g/ > /gʰ/
Seeing as languages with initial mutations don't usually have just the one type.
How these mutations occur is completely up to you to play around with of course :-)
Great Videos, good Design but two bits of advice:
A) Avoid using Arial, use Helevetica or even Avenir instead
B) DO NOT. AT ALL. EVER. USE. COMIC SANS
(Please)
COMIC SANS IS AMAZING AND don't you dare say that comic sans is... *whispers* bad... you'll get dunked on if you say it. : )
+OrangeCreeper217 no, comic sans makes me think it was written by a 3 year old, lel
+Hexbugman213 It was written like that because Microsoft was making a program that the font looked good in. Besides, people hate comic sans because other people use it incorrectly. Otherwise, it's a perfectly good font
+Hexbugman213 Oh, and your hypothetical three year old is very smart for their age.
But yeah _I_ like *comic sans* because of the way it looks, _Other people_ hate it because of the way _people_ use *comic sans*.
Awesome, I've been waiting for this for a while now. This video was a great help. It helps to clearify and outline phonotacitcs. I learned a lot here. Thank you. :)
+Brian Hill (Messenger) Awesome. (and sorry for the delay)
anyone have an excel chart of ipa that they could send to me?
Google it mate
tl;dr -- I found this handy page: westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard/
Yeah, takes some time to find all the proper characters on the windows character map. I copy/pasted them from the IPA pdf and tabled them according to my needs. Here's most of the 2015 IPA. Save the following comma-separated text as something.csv, then use the import function in whatever sheet software you're using. You're welcome!
CONSONANTS,Bilabial,Labio-dental,Dental,Alveolar,Postalveolar,Retroflex,Palatal,Labial-velar,Velar,Uvular,Pharyngeal/Epiglottal,Glottal,,
Plosive,p / b,p̪ / b̪,t̪ / d̪,t / d,,ʈ / ɖ,c / ɟ ,,k / g,q / ɢ,ʡ,Ɂ,,LEGEND
Implosive,ɓ̥ / ɓ ,,,ɗ,,ᶑ,ʄ,,ɠ,ʛ,,,,voiced
Ejective,pʼ,,t̪ʼ,tʼ,,ʈʼ,cʼ,,kʼ,qʼ,,,,voiceless
Nasal,m̥ / m,ɱ̊ / ɱ,n̪̊ / n̪ ,n̥ / n,,ɳ̊ / ɳ,ɲ,,ŋ,ɴ,,,,
Trill,ʙ,,,r̥ / r,,ɽ͡r,,,,ʀ,ʢ,,,
Tap/Flap,ⱱ̟,ⱱ,,ɾ,,ɽ,,,,,ʡ̆,,,
Fricative,ɸ / β,f / v,θ / ð,s / z,ʃ / ʒ,ʂ / ʐ,ç / ʝ,,x / ɣ,χ / ʁ,ʜ / ʢ,h / ɦ,,
Lateral fricative,,,,ɬ / ɮ,,ꞎ,,,,,,,,
Approximant,β̞̊ / β̞,ʋ̥ / ʋ,ð̞,ɹ̥ / ɹ,,ɻ̊ / ɻ ,j,ʍ / w,ɰ,,,,,
Lateral approximant,,,,l̥ / l,,ɭ,ʎ,,ʟ,,,,,
Click consonant,ʘ,,ǀ,ǃ,ǃ / ǂ,,,,,,,,,
Lateral click,,,ǁ / ʖ,*,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I did not include the class alveolo-palatal and skipped lateral flap and percussive. I've also merged Pharyngeal with Epiglottal since I haven't found any distinction,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,Front,Near-front,Central,Near-back,Back,,Diacritic,Function,Diacritic,Function,Diacritic,Function,,
Close,i / y,,ɨ / ʉ,,ɯ / u,,,,,,,,,
Near-close,,ɪ / ʏ,ɪ̈ / ʊ̈,ɯ̽ / ʊ,,,˳,Voiceless,̤,Breathy Voiced,͏̪,Dental,,
Close-mid,e / ø,,ɘ / ɵ,,ɤ / o,,ˬ,Voiced,˷,Creaky Voiced,˽,Apical,,
Mid,,,ə,,,,ʰ,Aspirated,͏̼,Linguolabial,͏̻,Laminal,,
Open-mid,ɛ / œ,,ɜ / ɞ,,ʌ / ɔ,,̹,More Rounded,ʷ,Labialized,̃,Nasalized,,
Near-open,æ,,ɐ,,,,͏̜,Less Rounded,ʲ,Palatalized,ⁿ,Nasal release,,
Open,a / ɶ,,,,ɑ / ɒ,,˖,Advanced,ˠ,Velarized,ˡ,Lateral release,,
Vowel length marker,ː,,,,,,ˍ,Retracted,ˤ,Pharyngealized,˺,No audible release,,
secondary stress,ˌ,,,,,,̈,Centralized,̴,Velarized,,,,
primary stress,ˈ,,,,,,˟,Mid-Centralized,˔,Raised,,,,
,,,,,,,ˌ,Syllabic,˕,Lowered,,,,
,,,,,,,͏̯,Non-syllabic,͏̘,Advanced Tongue,,,,
,,,,,,,˞,Rhoticity,͏̙,Retracted Tongue,,,,
That's a good idea
www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/
2:44 /ʔ/ shouldn't be at the coda. Because for a consonant to be at the coda, it must either appear at the end of the word or followed by onset of another syllable. These can't happen because /ʔ/ can only be intervocalic. Also, /ʍ/ is also intervocalic because it doesn't cluster and it can't appear an the end of the word.
Can somone explain to me what he exactly means that the glotal stop and "w" can never cluster.
Something like kʔa or kʍa isn't allowed. The glottal stop is always used between vowels so there can't be any consonant next to it. And the voiceless labio-velar approximant has to be all alone in the onset or coda. Understand?
Niku Yeah thanks. Any idea why though? Is this common in almost every language?
DeepSea King
no idea why. There are plenty of languages with glottalized consonants.
I don't know whether there is a language that has a cluster with the voiceless velar approximant but it isn't difficult to pronounce
Niku Would an Arabic or Midlle Eastern/North African language have glottalized consonants?
DeepSea King
Arabic has pharyngealized consonants but no glottalized consonants. I haven't heard of any clusters with the glottal stop or glottalized consonants in any of the modern languages but Proto-Semitic had probably ejectives, a kind of glottalized consonants (but only θʼ, ɬʼ and sʼ). All of them merged with other consonants. To answer your question: no the arabic/semitic glottal stop never clusters with consonants or produce glottalized consonants.
Are creating a conlang based on Semitic languages?
Hope things get better on the irl side of things. Your channel is awesome and this conlang series is honestly one of the best resources for language constructing I,ve ever found. Anyways, good luck wit yo bad self!
... I'm going to pretend i understood all of that... I mean, it was interesting but my brain was a bit WTF? during it...
... Ok... rewatching this and the previous language creation video helped... i get it better now.
I understood it but then I got lost when he got to clusters.
Wow, you came out with this yesterday. I found this series' first video yesterday. Can't wait for more! Though, I'll have to wrap my head around this whole C V thing before I can move on anyway...
More xidnaf
+d'grassed We'll see.
+Artifexian you answered......... Yay
Idea: simultaneous R and r: trill all the way in the back and in the front at the same time.
Now you are Perry the Platypus.
There's a /k/ in angsts? I certainly don't say it. Then again, I don't pronounce the /p/ in empty.
Her0plays LC You *can* pronounce a [k] in "angst" but I don't. I guess it's like how some people pronounce a [t] in "mince".
yeah, I just say /æŋstʰ/
Demidron lol, yes you do pronounce the p in empty. Going from a different manner and place of articulation is just not English.
@@parthiancapitalist2733 Lol, no. Do you pronounce the "b" in "thumb drive"?
@@demidron. if u got eg arabic yes also that reminds me of voiceless meet voiced iirc its in wiktionary or wiki example as bag something I forgot personally no cuz I got no qalqalah as in Arabic my id unless ur talking velar nasal ng then yes iirc a lot of it is from the peninsula near of it I guess eg ngarai instead of jurang also nice one menganga I'm sure foreigner that didn't have initial last and middle ng pronounce it as isolated n & g
omg the sonority of the english word "spins" actually sounds like a spinning sound emitter, alternating between high and low sonority as if it's facing towards and away from you. Very cool.
I created my lenguage put in the comment what you think it is "Mi Qierantte Kömať Fretto Avëшоkæño"
@SillyBuckz acceptable, its correct
Hey Edgar, have you ever thought of doing podcasts? The topics you talk about are very interesting and the information is fairly dense. The way you convey everything is so concise it makes the topic easy and enjoyable to listen to. Idk how many other people would listen to a pure audio recording but I know I would! Also I was just thinking but, the quality of your videos are always excellent. I think you should take some pride in that and not worry about pumping them out rapidly. I don't think anyone minds waiting for content!
+Paul Bourget Way ahead off you buddy. May I present the Artifexian Podcast
www.artifexian.com/
+Artifexian That's awesome, I have a lot to catch up on! Have you gotten any licorice yet? To be honest the standard black licorice is pretty horrendous. It's similar to the Marmite folklore in that it's either loved or hated. On the other hand red licorice is pretty moderate, there's all kinds of wonky flavours but red is a staple.
Xidnaf is clearly pronounced ecks-id-naff
*zid naff
+GigaBoost •Bob :P
He held a poll, people said z-id-naff
+conor skeffington well i can still say qhidnaf all i want!
TransHailey I say that too because it was that originally, but it was never (I think) ksidnaf.
That's it, this is driving me crazy. Americans, when writing ancient Greek in IPA, this "΄" you see over vowels is the tone. It means the vowel is stressed and more importantly higher pitched. And in IPA you pronounce the vowels, like in phoné (I can't write the - over the vowels) you pronounce the final é.
+aantony2001 I made no attempt to try and pronounce the ancient Greek correctly. I know so little about ancient Greek that it was always going to come out wrong. :(
Artifexian Oh, thanks for answering! :) Sorry if I came out mean but everyone has been making this mistake.
I'm vegan.
With the way mine works it is a C6V4C6 language. That's just because it breaks what would be any vowel like A E I into two because they're dipthongs.
*IQ insufficient* *error: complexity levels dangerously high*
"death by clustering" will always be an iconic phrase in conlanging