The CBB

First point: The original draft of the language was a Satem Tocharian, and all the stop series were to fuse. However, I wanted a voiced series to continue. Therefore, I made the following assumption: I would speculate that in Pre-Proto-Tocharian the plain voiced series fused first, and it also unde...

I believe I read somewhere about an Australian Aboriginal language that requires a coda consonant but I couldn’t find anything when I searched with those terms. There are plenty of languages that require coda consonants - Aslian requires word codas and English at one point required codas in stresse...

/b d k/
/m n ŋ/
/v~w s ɣ~g/
/ɾ j/

/ɛ a ɔ/
/ɯ̆ ʌ̆/
[e o i u] < /ʌ̆j ʌ̆v ɯ̆j ɯ̆v/, [pp tt] < /bb dd/
stress on final nonshort vowel, except final /ɯ̆/ can sometimes bear stress (and be realized as nonshort)
CVC

Amqoli: /tʃihaʃtibʒ/ "cloudy" /a/ "take, have" Hlu: /ʄaŋniɬ/ "north", /tʰɤpjɯs/ "kind of tea", /kʰɯjwet/ "otherwise" no V words but plenty of CV words Kannow: /kʷipikʷtsʷʼəːw/ "ink" /waw/ "water" (shortest noun; verbs can never ap...

yes, Roland Pooth and various other people at Leiden breathy voiced consonants without the accompanying voiceless set also attested in Cao Bang (hence the "Cao Bang theory" for pre-PIE) a horizontal vowel system with ablaut probably actually vertical (*a *e = a ə) with a later chain shift,...

More sound changes: - syncope of unstressed vowels ('cabinet' with two syllables) or spelling-driven hypercorrection ('Everest' with three syllables) - ktʃ > kʃ (in e.g. 'picture' - I can't think of any words with /gdʒ/, so don't know if it happens there) - /ɛ/ in 'can', 'catch', 'am' "Catch&qu...

from, of, what, because; for some speakers also somebody, anybody, nobody Oh, thanks - I knew those (though I'd forgotten 'because'), but I assumed there were more. Wait, apparently also "was"? Also "was". I think "because" isn't universal. (Spelling pronunciation?) (m...

I guess. To me, the /I/ in 'American' is as far as possible from schwa, whereas the /I/ in 'destroy' is very close to it. But I'm not an American. Are there Americans who have this the other way around? I guess they might, since there's a good reason to 'strengthen' the latter in theory (initial sy...

Small mistake, though: you have the weak vowel merger in words like "Omerokon" (tangent: why mark schwa before /n/, but not before /l/?), but you don't have it in words like "disuyded" or "distiqgwish"... (should be either "disuyded" and "Omerikon" ...

Has anyone made a new orthography for English, where, if you see a written word, its spelling always tells exactly how it's pronounced, and if you hear a word, its sounds always tell exactly how it's spelled? In other words, you don't have to memorize both spelling and pronunciation. 𐐷𐐯𐑅 𐑅𐐲𐑋 𐐹𐐨𐐹𐑊 𐐨...

here is the cursed phoneme inventory of Bakhzon Rau p t k q b d̪ dz̠ gʲ ɢ m n ŋ ɬ s ʃ x χ a e ʌ o i ɯ + high, low, rising tones; all non-dorsal consonants also have palatalized variants Proto-Rau was probably something like p t ƛ c k b d λ ɟ g m n ŋ s ɬ ɕ x r l j a ə i u aː iː uː (there are also cli...

mrojryqvmzvg "the barbarian hacks sth. to pieces" > lqaswyqvmzeug wmrojr "I make the barbarian hack sth. to pieces" Did you never think to ask the barbarian whether they want to hack sth. to pieces? [:O] [:P] I did enjoy puzzling out what each morpheme must be, though [:)] Proba...

Rau causatives dafgia "the man descends" > lqasiau vndafg "I make the man descend" nafmwxkwvt "the woman shops" > lqac!wvuti wnafmwk "I make the woman shop" yiwgaulgw ra "the sailor fastens it" > lqaz!wu vnyiwgaul "I make the sailor fasten sth.&...

This PHOIBLE client makes searching a bit easier. Unfortunately, you can't directly filter for aspiration, but +spread_glottis selects aspirated consonants, /h/, and breathy-voice segments. +spread_glottis;+consonantal;-periodic_glottal_source will select only aspirated consonants (and breathy-voic...

/pʰ b̥ ɓ d̥ ɟ̥ ɢ̥/ <p b ƃ d ɟ q>
/ɸʷ sʰ z̥ x/ <ʍ s z x>
/n/ <n>
/l ʎ ɾ ɹʲ/ <l ʎ ɾ ɹ>
/|ʼ ǂʼ ŋǀ ŋǂ/ <ʇ ʞ nʇ nʞ>

/ɐ ʌ̃ ɔ̃ ə o ɪ ɯ u/ <ɐ ʌ ɔ ə o ᴉ ɯ u>
/ɪ u/ > [j w] / _V, but there's also [ɥ] <ɥ> before /ɪ/

I suppose, first of all, is to decide how geographically isolated and/or how strong the cultural/linguistic identity of these speakers is, as well as population size. With a strong identity and a big enough population, I don't think it's totally beyond the realms of plausibility for such a phonolog...

Get yourself a penny whistle and maybe a dulcimer or a violin and a little lap harp / psaltery. You're not looking to collect Stradivarii here, or even really to learn "how to play" the instruments; you're just looking for some small instruments to experiment with. Familiarise yourself wi...

I recently feel like making a maximally a-priori "SAE" language (phonology and grammar) which, ironically, is outside of my comfort zone. That got me thinking about a maximally SAE non-SAE phonology. If I've done everything correctly, which I almost certainly haven't, this should score 10...

Japanese had a lot of /k/s disappear at one point of its development, especially before /i u/ (tho /k/s were reinserted before /u/s in most dialects, or some verbs and adjectives had forms with a /k/ and forms with it dropped). Question: could there be a similar sound change for /t/ in some languag...

So, I noticed some natlangs where /b/ is the only voiced stop. I'm wondering what could have given rise to this asymmetry, as I want to incorporate it into my own phonology. One podcast I listen to says that in Arapaho, it's because the /m/ shifted to /b/ or something like that. Yet, there are some...