Five-letter words.

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DV82LECM
sinic
sinic
Posts: 280
Joined: 16 Dec 2016 03:31

Five-letter words.

Post by DV82LECM »

So, this might seem like a strange question (or not), but does anyone have an affinity for five-letter words? I'm far from calling it a phenomenon, because I only ever recall seeing it mentioned in one place, a while ago...does anyone know what I'm talking about? If so, why does it seem so appealing? My present project, Crona, is loosely based on Quenya (but MORE Indo-European, Japonic, Muskogean, and Siouxan languages), which seems to have been bitten by said bug. Any thoughts?
𖥑𖧨𖣫𖦺𖣦𖢋𖤼𖥃𖣔𖣋𖢅𖡹𖡨𖡶𖡦𖡧𖡚𖠨
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eldin raigmore
korean
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Re: Five-letter words.

Post by eldin raigmore »

I don’t know that I have an affinity for them; but I’ve definitely thought about them some.

In particular, I’ve thought about a (or some?) ‘lang(s) with twenty consonants and five vowels;
and with a collection of (roots or words or morphemes) shaped like:
CCVCV
CVCCV
CVCVC
VCCVC
VCVCC
and
VCVCV

There’re possibly 200,000 of each of those that have three consonants and two vowels, for a total of 1,000,000.
(And another 50,000 in the VCVCV shape. Raising the total to 1,050,000.)
Rules are:
No vowel clusters
At most one consonant cluster
No consonant cluster longer than two consonants
Either two consonants or three consonants
Either two vowels or three vowels
Five phonemes altogether.

.....

Is that interesting to you?
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sangi39
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Re: Five-letter words.

Post by sangi39 »

I do have a tendency towards using monosyllabic and bisyllabic roots, and most of my conlangs so far have stuck to something along the lines of CV(C) syllable structure, often favouring CVCV(C) and CVCCV bisyllabic roots, so there is a chance that, were you do go through the roots I have so far for, say, Proto-Sirdic, where I'm using a one-to-one letter-to-phoneme correspondence, you'll find a fair number of roots with five letters.

I would imagine this might be similar for other conlangers as well, i.e. while whole words and derived stems might be longer, individual roots might be relatively short, and therefore typically of around five "letters".
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.
Khemehekis
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Re: Five-letter words.

Post by Khemehekis »

Perhaps you're thinking of Penta/Zengo, a five-letter-word language created by one of the conlangers named Rick, I think? (Rick Morneau or Rick Harrison.)

I have a lot of CVCVC words in Kankonian. Gives it a Semitic flavor.
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Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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