Common Avesan (bird scratch)

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Miar
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Common Avesan (bird scratch)

Post by Miar »

N ‘Ā Vée Ssā vée ssā, wée suh lzòoh ‘ā lsòo. Sā kuh caoh ccaoh: phà phà zù, lao llao naah sshó, qūh zaah vée rō, e n ta tài tài. Xa xa xa doh ksāa caoh.
[nə ʔa˥ βe:s˧˥ sa˥ βe:s˧˥ sa˥ we:˧˥ sɯ˧ ɮɤ̃˥˧ ʔa˧ ɬɤ:˧˩
sa˥ qɯ̃˧ kaɤ̃k˦ kaɤ̃˦
pʰa˧˩ pʰa˧˩ zɯ˧˩ laɤl˩ laɤ˩ nã:ʃ˧ ʃɤ˧˥ ɢɯ̃˥ zã˧ βe:˧˥ ʁɤ˥ e nə ta˧ tai˧˩ tai˧˩
♪˧ ♪˧ ♪˧ dɤ̃˩ ksa:˧ kaɤ̃˨]
In Bird Grand Land grand land, five billion (=five ten hundred-million) bird live. Land variety color-color: grass-grass yellow, tree-tree dark green, line-mountain grand red, and in sky island-island. Person-person-person same like color.
“The great nation of Avesa has a population of over 670 million birds. It’s a land of many colors: yellow fields, green woods, a large red mountain range, and islands in the sky. Its people are just as colorful.”

Well, it's a looser translation, but the message gets across

The Worldbuildy Background Stuff

In the Zodiac World, Avesa is a nation comprised of the many states and islands of bird species, each formerly their own country in the distant past. The Rooster is their symbol in the Alliance because Gallio, the original homeland of chickens, is the largest, most centralized state of the main continent’s Corn Belt. The modern-day capital of Tallo [Tà Lo] is in Gallio, too, which would be like if Omaha was the capital of the US.
“Main continent” is a keyword. Their land is the smallest, but they also inhabit hundreds of islands both in the ocean and in the sky. And as they’re the only sapient animal in this world that flies, they reached and claimed islands faster than most when the fogs lifted over the oceans centuries ago. Today they have territory in every corner of the world (think the British commonwealth), and are economically in the top 3.

Also because of flight, Avesan archaeologists were able to access Dragon ruins found on many sky islands around the world. Their findings gave Avesan scholars some more pull in the creation in Sorlóge (Lesser Dragonese, the Lingua Franca of the Zodiac Alliance. There will be some comparisons made in this. Feel free to find it and comment there too, but I’m considering some sound and grammar adjustments which may cause a full-on rewrite.)

Goals:
> I wanted a language that sounded songlike, so I printed out some sheet music and started writing lyrics ON the lines, rather than under them. This will be reflected in the writing system if I ever finish it.
> The language is in many ways Sorlóge/Lesser Dragonese’s opposite. Sorlóge wasn’t just atonal, but practically monotone, and liked run-on words and its copula. Avesan is basically bird Chinese.
> That said, it falls into a similar major trap Lesser Dragonese did: it’s all one-syllable morphemes, with enough tones and consonant sounds/clusters to make its dictionary mostly monosyllabic.
> Actually, I did distance myself a bit from Chinese. This language uses nasal vowels and reduplication, and of course that thing birds do.

“Common” Avesan?

Yeah, dialects exist. It’s like how songbirds can understand each other, they say. Modern-day Avesan dialects are as colorful as its speakers, but they’re intelligible to varying degrees. The exception is the penguins, which have their own language called Paang. (I can go into detail if requested, but it’ll be scratch at best)
“Common” Avesan is like RP or “news reporter” English: generic and textbook-y, but for that reason everyone understands it. It most resembles Turk and Gallian, 11% Kilven (Eagles), and ~5% each Balt and Seilu (10 points each for whoever guesses those species). Most speak the Common when conversing formally or with long-distance fliers. And Lesser Dragonese, of course, is made for off-continent travelers, but not many can hold conversation in it.

General grammar notes

* Nominative-Accusative, though the total lack of cases makes this debatable.
* Isolating: words are never fused or altered.
* SVO Boring but practical
* Head initial: Preposition, number, noun, adjective, possessor.
* Number system is base-8 (0-7, then 10 means 8.)
* Five written tones, but nine spoken, based on “high speech” and “low speech”.

Phonology

Avesans aren't human-like but still needed to talk like it. They can use their tongue, but can’t round their beaks.
So when talking, always keep your mouth wide. (Try smiling. It looks good on you. [:)] )

Nasals: m n < m n >
Stops: p b t d k g q ɢ Ɂ < p/ph b t/th d c/ch g k/kh q ‘ > Add <h> for aspiration.
Fricatives: φ β ɬ ɮ s z ʃ ʒ h < f v ls lz s z sh zh h >
Affricatives: tɬ kɬ dɮ gɮ ts ks dz gz tʃ kʃ dʒ gʒ < tls cls dlz glz ts cs dz gz tsh csh dzh gzh > (Mostly theoretical. I don’t think I’ll ever use some of them)
Liquids: w l j ʁ < w l y r >
Whistle: ♪ ♩ < xa xaa > (It’s okay as a human to round your lips here)

Glottal stops only come between vowels when there are no other pauses.

Vowels: a e i ɤ ɯ < a e i o u > There are no rounded vowels.
The barely-there schwa (ə) is never written. It only exists in vowel-less words
All vowels can be short, long, and/or nasal
a a: ã ã: < a aa ah aah >

Diphthongs: ai ei ɤi aɤ < ai ei oi ao >, as well as any double vowels (aa, ee, etc.) for long vowels

The first vowel is marked for tone:
1 = Soprano/High flat ˥ ā (macron): high voice (about “Ti”)
3 = Contralto/Medium flat ˧ a: normal speaking level (Fa-So)
5 = Baritone/Low flat tone ˩ a (underlined): low voice (Around a “Re” on the do-re-mi scale)
Rising tones ˩˧ ˧˥ á (acute): Rises from 5-3 or 3-1
Falling tones ˥˧ ˧˩ à (grave): The other direction

I’m not literally saying you need to hit notes THAT low/high. Use a vocal range that’s comfortable to you but still distinguishable to others. (There’s probably a better term for these but it’s eluding me)

So “a” or any other syllable has up to 20 meanings depending on how you say it.

Whistles:
I don’t think there’s an IPA for this, so I just used ♪ (an eighth-note). It’s Romanized exclusively as Xa (the a is silent, only to determine pitch). Whistles can be long (xaa, “Miar-PA” /♩/, a quarter-note), but not nasal. (*xah)
They tend to be simple words, and a few basic sentences can be whistled completely.
"Xa xá xāa." [♪˩ ♪˩˧ ♩˥] means "I see you."

I considered sharps and flats, but opted out since I have trouble with them myself. I thought, “I’m the sole speaker, so I need to be able to speak it.” Perhaps some of the old rural dialects use them?

Phonotactics: (C1)(C1)(C2)V1(V2)(H), seven letters max per syllable, factoring digraphs
C1: First consonant, may be geminated
C2: Second consonant
V1: Vowel + tone accent marker
V2: Long vowel or second vowel
H: < h >, the nasal marker

Two-consonant clusters are accepted if they follow this hierarchy (Though some will probably never be used even if they theoretically could be):
Whistle or Glottal stop (can’t cluster)
Stops
Fricatives (non-aspirated Stop + Fricative = Affricative)
L/M/N
W/R
Y

Tonal Harmony: High and Low singing

I marked the flat tones earlier as 1-3-5 because there are unwritten tones. Words frequently alter level, creating a total of nine tones. If you’re like me and have no ear for music, you’re already at a major disadvantage. If you have no range (independent from volume) or are otherwise hopelessly tone-deaf, you may fail this class.
If you took music lessons beyond 6th grade, goody for you. I didn’t.

The most important rule is that words can’t go straight from 1/”Soprano” to 5/”Baritone” or vice-versa

If a word ends high (1 or mid-rising), then low-tone words following it must raise tone. This is called “High Speech/High Song”. Nat-5s become 3s/”Contralto”, which if followed by a nat-3 must climb to a 2/”Mezzo” to differentiate it. Also, a Contralto word becomes Mezzo if placed between two words of the same level (if the first word ends high and the second starts high).

Likewise in what may be called “low singing”, 1s become 3s, and there’s a 4/”Tenor” tone.

Any pause (like punctuation) resets the scale. Rising and falling tones also readjust the scale, either going to or from medium. Rising makes low-tone speech medium, or medium to high, and falling tone does the opposite. A sentence can go from high song to low song with two falling or different lower tones.
** However!! Reduplicated words with rising or falling also duplicate tone exactly.

TLDR: 155 sounds like 133 (Ti-Fa-Fa), 153 sounds like 132(Ti-Fa-La). 135 = Ti-Fa-Re

The harmony also affects germination.
Any consonant other than whistles can be geminated if the word begins at the same vocal level the one before ended. In this case, the letter is written twice on the new word.
(Slight warning: Prepositions are vowel-less and neutral-tone. They don’t alter pitch but stop gemination)
Take the above: lao llao naah sshó “tree tree dark-color green.” (“Deep green woods” was the translation, I think.) The first two are the same word and thus have the same tone, therefore the L is doubled on the second and it sounds like one word (/laɤllaɤ/). Then “naah” jumps directly to mid-range and “shó” rises from medium to high (/nã:ʃʃɤ˧˧˥/, or something to that effect.)
* Actually, if you took naah out, shó would geminate onto llao anyway regardless of tone level (lao llao sshó /laɤllaɤʃʃɤ/)

Sentence Structure

A basic four-point sentence: S-V-DO-IO (“he give book to me”)
Preposition (for indirect objects), then number, noun, adjective, and finally determiner (literally “here” or “there”)
Adverbs follow the verb.
Anything else not pertaining to the basic SVO goes after it.
Adjectival clauses have an SOV order, though, where the verb must come last. They’re marked with the preposition “c” /kə/.
Birdlang
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Location: Virginia

Re: Common Avesan (bird scratch)

Post by Birdlang »

I have a whole bunch of bird languages but since the alien birds in my case can round their lips, and have small teeth, there are some sounds not in yours. I also have about 150 to 200 languages and dialects spoken by them in their language family including the ‘ancient/old/middle/proto’ languages. I feel like you’d be very interested. I also have a whole bird continent but they also have some other ethnic groups like the Bartalonians who are elephant people, and the Slarg who are lizardfolk.
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